La Roux ~ Kiss and Not Tell

Rite of Spring

Concert Report ~ Piano Recital

      

      This was the first recital I have been to here at Ithaca College that took place inside the Nabenhauer Recital Room in the Whalen Center. The room itself is small, amphitheater shaped, and contains a slightly raised floor level towards the front where there is a rather beaten-up looking grand piano. 

The recital was by a young pianist, Binghao Li, and began soon after I arrived.

           The first song was Sonata in G Major, HobXVI/27 (17776), by Haydn-- a composer who we have recently studied in class. The first movement contained a harmonic "bouncing" that reminded me of jumping up and down on a cloud. This transitioned easily into the second movement which was largely a toned down version of the first. The finale (third movement) was a brilliant combination of the energetic bounciness of the first movement, contained within a regal and confident facade. In many respects, the song is like a coming of age, and the listener can experience a growing maturity in the progression through the three movements. 

The next song was Abegg Variations, Op. 1 (1830), by Schumann. This song featured a flury of sound as Li would sweep her hands up and down the piano creating a confusing, yet oddly soothing melodic texture. In many ways, it was like Claude Monet poem-- up close it looks like a bunch of random colored brush strokes (or in this case, notes), but when seen  (or heard) with more context and from a greater distance, they become a beautiful work of art.

The final song, 6 Moments Musicaux, Op. 16, told the same story, but from 4 different perspectives. Each began at a similar place, musically, but ended up with a different perspective. Some of the perspectives seemed endlessly energetic, while others were delicately constructed and performed with dainty care. 

All in all, it was a soothing and joyful concert to be in attendance of, and I look forward to the next one.

E

Exploring 18th Century Phrase-- Haydn's Symphony No. 94

Listen to the first 30 seconds of this symphony:

              The phrase begins with several voices, close together in pitch and in harmony. The meter is 4/4 time and there are two phrases-- each around six measures long, which combine to make up a Parallel Interrupted Period that is 16 measures in length, roughly.

  Parallel Interrupted Period Diagram:

   I  ____________________  IAC      I _____________________ PAC

                                             8 mm                                                    8mm

                              _________a_____________________________a'_____________

This phrase accurately represents the ideals of the enlightenment because it's sharp and unexpected wavering (which occurs at the closure of the second phrase, defies typical behavior of a song and could stand for rebellion, differentiation, among other things. The second phrase is also slightly varied from the first, which is similar to a Salon in the enlightenment, because ideas would be stated and then altered, as the discussion continued. The phrase finishes with a a conclusion with the same certainty and finality as the conclusion of an idea in the enlightenment might have.

E

The Enlightenment Era and It's Ideals

                The enlightenment was an extremely fascinating era, if not for it's musical output, then because of it's architecture, art, or philosophy. However, the most fascinating aspect of the Enlightenment era is when you step back and realize the connections and similarities of all four of those feature.

The similarities between architectural features and enlightenment music is particularly fascinating. Elements of grandeur exist in both-- walls of moving sound compared to a towering wall of a building. And in this case, size really does matter. But it wasn't necessarily the whole picture. Grandiose facades and chord progressions were juxtaposed with ornamentations designed to add color and detail to what would otherwise be a blank canvas.

For example, the walls of a building might be towering and massive, but it will usually have some unique architectural details at the top (or anywhere for that matter) which will make each inch of the structure inherently unique, despite it's size. Likewise, an Opera may have a song composed of the same phrase repeating many times, yet each phrase is embellished in a unique and different manner each time. This practice, while first used during the enlightenment, is now a common feature in many parts of modern society (including music and architecture).

Moving away from comparisons between architecture and music, the ideals, and thoughts of the Enlightenment are a fascinating thing to behold. For one thing, it was one of the first times in world history that science was accepted as an alternative to religious beliefs as the answer to many of the world's unanswered questions. I find it all particularly fascinating, especially in the fact that today, hundreds of years later, some of the ideas and scientific progress of that era are still being explored.

The Enlightenment Era was also the rise of the middle class, and the significance of that on today's society cannot be understated. As I delve further into the music of the Enlightenment in the coming weeks, it will be fascinating to learn about and further understand the impact the middle class had on the music of that time.

E

Folk Music: What is it really?

            Anyone who has ever studied folk music knows it is both a vast and ambiguous genre of music-- in fact, "genre" may be too narrow a narrow of a term to describe folk music. It's really more of a category, and a massive one at that. 

When most people think about Folk Music, the first thing usually comes to mind is usually acoustic guitar, blended with vocals and other instruments such as a banjo or violin. However, upon further investigation, it is so much more than that.

For one thing, it is far more diverse than the instrumentation described above. In fact, the instrumentation and characteristics of the folk music tends to vary based on where it was created in the world. 

The word folk is an alternate word for "People," (usually in the plural sense). In this way, I think it is the easiest to define folk music-- music by people, for people. 

Of course, that definition could apply to nearly any genre of music, but there are other differentiating factors that render folk music unique. For one, all folk music is storytelling. Whether through the lyrics of Bob Dylan or an instrumental banjo number, hell-- even through a hip hop street performance; all folk music is sending some time of message and telling some kind of story. In fact, for the most part at least, most most folk music tends to put lyrics (or the content thereof) at the forefront of the arrangement. An instrumental folk song, on the contrary, while not technically able to do so, may have a story that inspired the song OR, simply tells the story of the composer based merely on the textures of the piece.

The second factor that makes up folk music is the impact of the culture in which it was created, and how that impacts the story being told. Many stories have great significance to the culture and time that it was made, while in others the culture plays a major role in the sound which the music has.

With these two factors, the potential for what folk music is and could be is as wide open as ever. There is really no specific sound that is uniquely folk music-- rather, it could be anything from a street rapper in Chicago, to a violin and guitar duo in Nashville. As long the artists are writing music influenced by their culture that tells a story then any possible type of music could be folk music.

In a 1962 essay on folk music, Bruno Netti compared and contrasted folk music with that of 'art music"-- classical arrangements performed by orchestras and symphonic ensembles.  He calls that music "cultivated," referring to folk music as a"simple." Netti also considers folk music to be narratives, while calling art music "functional." 

These words could be considered insulting and demeaning to folk music, and even the word "art music" as the title for the music that ISN'T folk music is an insult to the art and craft that is a folk song itself. And so while there is no denying that folk music is an art in and of itself, Some of Netti's categorizations are somewhat accurate. 

For example, while folk music may certainly have complex musical elements and themes, in essence it truly is a simple genre. It is music for the people, by the people, telling stories influenced by the people who live where it was made. Also, it isn't created for any other purpose besides self expression or the expression of an idea, thought or emotion. It is not created without it's individual significance readily known by it's creator. 

The so-called "Cultivated" term also used by Netti to describe art music gives the impression that Folk music is some sort of loose, unstructured hiccup of unintended sound. This is absolutely false, yet a shred of truth does lie in the fact that Folk music is often created at the spur of the moment and without planning and be completed without slaving away in the studio. This is due to the nature of folk music itself. 

In that way, then it is agreeable that most folk music is not "cultivated," instead, folk music is dynamic, human, and real. It brings people together, and allows people to express themselves however they please. Despite the social expectation for folk music to contain an acoustic guitar, harmonica and violin, it really could sound like anything.

Any song created to communicate or share a story in the style of the culture it was created in is a folk song, and that song is just as significant and artful as one of Beethoven's symphonies as far as I'm concerned.

E

Modern Day Folk Song:

"Heart is a Drum" -Beck (2014)

Concert Report ~ "Pianamerica!"

Pianamerica! Part 2

A Festival of American Piano Music performed by the studio of Jennifer Hayghe

             It's an interesting thing to walk out of your bedroom, meander down a path for 2 minutes, and  suddenly find yourself inside a recital hall where extremely talent musicians perform for you (at no cost). As strange as it may be, that is what I did on Thursday at 6:35pm-- I got up and walked for two minutes into the Hockett Family Recital Hall in the Whalen Center for Music here at Ithaca College.

The concert in question-- a piano "festival" of sorts, lasted about an hour and a half, and consisted of five pianists each performing an individual performance of various classical arrangement or Opus', arranged in vaguely chronological order through history.

 I'd like to go back to the first piece performed in the recital: Ramble on Love from Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier (1922).


The piece was delicate-- the Pianist who performed it, Jonathan Vogtle, used intricate ornamental touches throughout the piece. Overall, the biggest impact from his performance was the silence when he was not playing. Some of his runs could almost be described as a rambling of sorts, so the moments when he held back and instead released a mere touch of sound after several seconds of only reverberation were by far the most impactful. In many ways the title of the piece was beyond accurate for the way Jonathan performed it-- a delicate and emotional ramble on love.

The next excerpt to be performed was the Suite for Piano, Op. 13 (1978), a three movement piece composed by Robert Muczynski. The pianist, Melody Zimmerman, talked to us for a minute before she began playing to talk about what to expect for each of the three movements. The first movement was hyper with "in-your-face" clusters of notes causing confusion for myself and I'm sure most other listeners. The title of the first part was, aptly enough, "Festival." The second part, "Vision" was far more downtempo, containing much more space sonically speaking. There was a dreamy atmosphere and single note melody which never contained more than one note playing at a time. What really set this movement apart was the juxtaposition of staccato (short) and legato (elongated) notes which formed the foundation for the slow and abstract melody. The third and final movement, "Scherzo" was similar to Festival, except with less confusion and while containing fewer notes. The melody was also more structured, even though this part shared many other characteristics with it. There was an urgent pulse within the rhythm of this movement that seemed to urge me as a listener to complete some sort of action or decision. This feeling ended when the piece ended on an abrupt note. 

Jumping ahead to the fourth piece, "Toccata for Piano" (1979), performed by Jennifer Pham-- this was for me the most impressive and fascinating performance of the night. It began with a whirlwind of murky harmonies and then Jennifer actually stuck her hand into the piano to mute certain strings, allowing her to create a clicking/ tapping sound which seemed to replicate raindrops or footsteps in quick succession. She used silence to her advantage here, outputting quick bursts of staccato rhythm followed by several seconds of silent, letting the notes reverberate. As the piece began to draw to a close she began playing the piano in a way I had never seen before-- she stood up and began to bang on the innards of the piano creating pounding beat and using the strings in a guitar-like way. This part was frantic and almost aggressive-- she utilized almost every surface to create a sense of turmoil and even legitimate concern, before ending the piece. 

Overall, the recital was phenomenal and I couldn't be happier that I went. There were many moments where my mind was opened by the diversity of sound and musical flexibility of the piano. I left the concert in a positive mood, and I will surely be back for another.

E