Fischer or Fidelity? (Part 2 of 2)

Asking readers to hear the difference between a harpsichord and a piano, as I did in Friday's post, is one thing. Asking them to hear tiny distinctions in musical phrasing is another. I still think my readers will be up to that task, so if you want to test your auditory mettle, read on.

Once again, you'll need to open this playlist in Spotify to hear today's examples. The last two tracks in that playlist are recordings of J.S. Bach's Fugue in F Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I. Close listening reveals the significant differences between the interpretations of the two performers, Edwin Fischer and Bob van Asperen.

The fugue begins with a distinct musical phrase played in only one voice. Musicians call this phrase the subject of the fugue. The following excerpt from the composer's manuscript (courtesy of imslp.org) shows the subject in the score.

Listen to track four, Asperen's performance, first. Hear how the first five notes are all separate from one another. You might almost imagine Asperen's fingers bouncing over the keys as he begins the subject. Listen for a while longer, noticing the distinct articulation of the subject each time it repeats.

Now listen closely to Fischer on the third track. When he plays the subject, he slurs the first two notes together, and he plays the second note louder than the first. This interpretation is also distinctive, but it's not very Baroque.

If you look at the excerpt from the score, you'll see that the first two notes are separated by a bar line. Bach rarely indicated phrasing in his music, but when he did, he wouldn't connect notes across bar lines. Bach's phrasing conventions were closely tied to the physical limitations of his instruments. If Fischer tried to transfer his interpretation to a harpsichord, his playing would sound muddled. By slurring the first two notes, he would hide the downbeat. On the piano, Fischer can and does emphasize the downbeat by accenting the second note of the subject, but he wouldn't be able to make that note sound any louder on a harpsichord. Without a clear downbeat, Bach's already complex texture would become even more dense, and the entire piece would lag.

Textual and musical evidence shows that Asperen is more faithful to Baroque style than Fischer. Nevertheless, Fischer's recording demonstrates lively playing and a creative use of pianistic resources. I'll leave it to you to decide which performance is better. Tell me what you think in the comments, and come back soon for a celebration of an important musical birthday.

Performing Like a Lawyer

During law school, I met a lot of people who looked at me funny when I told them I had studied music in college. Some articulated their confusion with a question: "What does music have to do with law?" Their implication was clear. In their minds, the rigorous, precise world of legal thinking was incompatible with the fuzzy, feel-good world of music.

Those people must not have known Gustav Leonhardt. Today as I reflected on the great Dutch harpsichordist's passing, the questions from my classmates reminded me of how important Leonhardt's work was.

If you've never heard of Leonhardt, this New York Times article summarizes his life well. The article notes that Leonhardt helped to define the historical performance movement. Unfortunately, many readers don't know anything about that movement.

Many keyboardists in the first half of the twentieth century played Baroque music the same way they played music by Romantic composers, such as Liszt or Brahms, who lived over a century after the Baroque period ended. They played on pianos, used heavy pedaling and legato phrasing, and made dramatic dynamic shifts. In the middle of the century, several performers, one of the most prominent of whom was Leonhardt, criticized that performance style. They argued that such playing was inappropriate because it would have been impossible on typical Baroque instruments. Bach and his contemporaries usually played on harpsichords, which lack pedals and don't allow performers to play louder or softer by varying their touch.

Leonhardt wasn't content to focus on Baroque instruments while interpreting music. He read musical instruction books written in the 17th and 18th centuries. He scoured archives to find early compositional drafts and compared different versions of pieces to determine which editions best represented composers' preferences. He approached music the way lawyers approach cases -- he researched texts thoroughly and carefully evaluated contrasting approaches before presenting his conclusions to an audience.

Leonhardt's life testifies to the power of rigorous thinking applied to heartfelt music making. The combination of those qualities revolutionized keyboard performance and inspired a generation of musicians to look to the past as a guide for the present. Just as importantly, it sustained a musical career that, as the video below shows, remained vital until its final days.

Burning

Today, tomorrow, and Saturday, the Philadelphia Orchestra will be presenting an All-Russian concert. The featured soloist is Stephen Hough, a British pianist. Hough is not only one of the most critically acclaimed virtuosi on his instrument but also one of the most famous classical music bloggers. In the following video, he shares the same insight that is characteristic of his blog posts.



Hough will play Tchaikovsky's, not Rachmaninov's, second piano concerto in Philadelphia. Many of his thoughts on the nature of pianistic interpretation still apply. My favorite part of this video is the end where he describes the "burning" that is essential to a human life. Musicians seem to have special license to use this kind of lofty, spiritual language to describe their lives, and I'm glad Hough takes advantage of it in his interviews and writing. I wish more people did. I'll write more about Hough after I attend his concert, but for now, I'm burning to hear how he handles Tchaikovsky.

Maiden Voyage

The man who suggested I start this blog told me that great writing is buoyant. I like that description, and I especially enjoy thinking about the times when words have helped keep me afloat. The more I think about it, the more I realize that all kinds of great art, not just writing, are buoyant.

An especially buoyant piece of music -- and an appropriate soundtrack to a first blog post -- is Herbie Hancock's classic track "Maiden Voyage." In this work for jazz quintet, Hancock creates a floating effect by suspending traditional musical patterns. He begins by playing repeated piano chords with subtle dissonance. Usually chords are built around intervals called thirds (On a piano keyboard, you can make a third by playing one white key, skipping the next one, and then playing the third). In this track, though, Hancock makes chords by stacking fourths. These piano harmonies immediately uproot listeners, who are suddenly unable to discern the key of the music, and force them to drift along with the flow of Hancock's playing.

Some jazz players use unusual chords to overwhelm listeners and submerge them in their intense vision. Not Hancock. Although his chords create dissonance, "Maiden Voyage" conjures a peaceful, occasionally dreamy mood. Part of this effect comes from the rhythm of the vamping piano. If you wanted, you could count four steady beats against the opening of the track. Hancock doesn't play on these beats, though; he plays in the spaces between them. This syncopated rhythm is another way in which Hancock suspends listeners' usual expectations and creates a sense of floating in his music.

Of course, "Maiden Voyage" is much more than just a distinctive, buoyant opening. Instead of trying to describe the rest of the track, I'm including a link to the song and the distinctive cover art of Hancock's classic LP with the same name:

That's the story of how a pianist keeps his music afloat. For more about how words and music keep me afloat, check back with this blog soon.