On My Mind 4

Names, names, names. Col des Moulinets, Graz-Burya, Rostov, Lubyanka, Prague, Lidice. ベンシヤーン and his Lidice poster, at the 1970 exhibition at the Hiroshima Prefectural Museum of Arts. It’s good to have stories connect in this way, since I don’t presently self-select to hear about those atrocities as creative nonfiction. Así se deje cantar las historias, además en la poesía con sus colores concretos. Too, in the TTRPG space where names and locations, historical or mythological, gain provenance in lived experience: case in point, Regency intrigue in the feywild in 2023. In the nexus between roleplay comedy and fictional espionage, there’s a preoccupation with the “perfect performance,” which as a working musician I’ve renounced for my sanity. Maybe I’m wrong.

On my mind 3

“Turns out, you really can’t do that,” says Callaghan after illegally crossing into the United States as a US citizen. In the background are carefree Medellín boys who want to end up in Nashville meeting Taylor Swift. There’s a tornado watch here and I rehearsed a putative Handel trio-sonata with AS this morning. When the rent came due I was listening to Taeko Ohnuki again and reading 村上 春樹 — “アフターダーク” and considering the stories that 村上 春樹 tends to tell about women. Are those stories supported by the gendered idol culture of Japanese pop media? How does that culture coexist with manga portrayals of queerness? If I grew up there the answers would be natural to me and possibly as unexamined as xenophobia is in my home culture. — Drawfee put me onto “nightcore” as an umbrella genre containing, arguably, all of kiyosumi even in their new album release. Or, if not “contains,” at least “tangents.” — In the meantime DCFC’s “Plans” (thanks, BC) found me with Adam Young’s emo-tinged vocals and A Beacon School’s sound and synths. Must get ND to compare this latter.

On my mind 2

The bassoonist’s monologues in Shostakovich’s 9th got plenty of room in his recording. He coulda been wearing a stripey sweater and a resigned expression, as one in Bernstein’s orbit — though he’s surely older than he looks. Able performances all around, and I see the sacrifices of control where precision or flexibility might suffer to make the phrase readable. Readability will likely be a theme here for a while — it might be a central hook (control hook) for my anime experience, which four years after watching the first gateway media franchises? will take some doing. Cameron’s work in “Alita” described a good starting point: digital ultra-realism as an expressive language. I got to explain away the pro-forma exaggerations of a manga-inspired visual adaptation and just enjoy the film seriously. (It was long before I would enjoy the gleeful excess of Chainsaw Man or Jujutsu Kaisen — I only appreciated/enjoyed such magical realism as Death Note and the Ghibli/Miyazaki complex.) It didn’t help that I had parasocial relationships with any and all of my favorite characters; their design was so much more resonant than the writing of the show that I’d struggle to reconcile the two. — In the meantime, I wonder about facilitating the access that makes good taste possible: what good is it to play across leisure cultures like classical music, animation, and storytelling, if the people whom I want to reach with these cultures aren’t yet inclined to try them out? Like AB or JW in their explorations as scholar-performers, I don’t want slack jaws or applause so much as partners to find the “new poetics = expressive language + expressive language + perceptual environment.” Needs refinement.

I certainly wouldn’t reach Nathalie Simper’s studio by talking like that in my class tomorrow. — Though now I have a goal for these paragraphs: to establish a “constellation” of influences for myself. AV would have some ripe comments on humanistic goals, and with Maglaque’s & Yelle’s narratives of Protestant disenchantment I’d stand pinned, limned, guilty as charged.

Christmas present - part 3

Playing with the chorus to notice more stuff about it.

  1. The melodic contour (in green) in bars 3-4 and 7-8, but the rhythm (in blue) references the verse.

  2. Unit C bridging us back to the verse is a more elaborate version of the ending recit. I’d love to start and finish with that recit to bring out the Portuguese and prioritize text in general. Being a producer, ND is probably gonna see this as a missed opportunity, but oh well.

Christmas present - part 2

Since I wasn’t getting much from the lyrics yet, I opted for a first-pass transcription to see if the text suggested any orchestration.

Since I was working from memory of the studio version, the distinction between bassline and upper structures kinda eluded me, so it was a little touch-and-go between (ii7 or IV) and (Imaj7 or iii). No doubt, when I eventually consult the unplugged version, Robin’s gonna throw me a curveball with his guitar voicings. I always noticed those were simpler than the fully-produced versions.

The coda transcribed here like a vocal score really suggests recitative to me. Wondering how I’m gonna make that work.

Christmas present - part 1

Wanted to make the right Christmas present for a pair of outdoorsy friends, and was casting about until I remembered Fleet Foxes’ “Going to the Sun Road,” a song from their most recent original album Shore. It’s enough of a seed kernel for a tangible object and a cover.

Last year, or the year before, I’d made a set of variations for handbell choir, and gifted it to some dear handbell-playing friends. This new cover seems like the right thing to spend a few hours whetting myself on.

I just copied down the lyrics to study.

San Angelo

On a car trip, MAH found a trivia quiz site and asked when Plato died. I proudly guessed the third century A.D. (dead wrong -- it was nearly a millennium before), because I'd been reading about Origen and wanted to talk about antiquity. On the same note, there's an image stuck in my head from Anthony Doerr's "Cloud Cuckoo Land," a novel EK lauded earlier this winter. A girl scratches Greek symbols in the dirt of a public street, instructed by a lean, goitrous scholar that trades her lessons for food. Origen, a my third-century theologian, didn't scratch in the dirt but paid for his studies from the generosity of a sister in Christ. His father had been killed, and his family impoverished, by a Roman raid. Origen's accomplishments as an Alexandrian scholar and Caesarean preacher give me an idea what was going on in those cities. Grateful to keep those windows open by reading and talking about them often.

I'd been driving around San Angelo, TX. There I spent a fair bit of time preparing "In Relig Odhráin: A Musical Exegesis," graciously hosted at Angelo State University by Connie Kelley. It was curious to present such an irreverent recital on the second day of Lent; certainly, it was quite a change of gears from the Ash Wednesday service the night before at FIrst Presbyterian. Too, I had little diddly-bits from West Side Story stuck in my head while teaching it to MAH and playing it in the San Angelo Symphony's movie concert. Socializing with my local friends after that event was quite a treat, as was making some new friends among the orchestra before getting a few hours of sleep before the Sunday service at First Pres. On that service bulletin was written, "Gabriel Fauré, Cicilienne," a charming misspelling that reminds me how fluidly descriptive titles were spelled in 18th century sheet music. (sicilienne-siciliano, jig-gigue-giga, minuet-minuet-minuetto, phantasy-fantasia-fantasia-fantasy)

Before singing Haydn's Creation with the Nashville Symphony Chorus this weekend, on Friday I get to join DMR in concert at Edgefield Baptist. Rehearsing his Nuevo Flamenco challenged me to find my voice outside the "classical sound," something I struggle with even in jam circles where I can hold my own. DMR offered valuable insight.

Odhráin, A Recital

The idea is to write from a place of riches -- if I'm not reading widely enough, my own writing bores me. Conversely, if I'm reading widely and producing responses, a steady trickle of those responses make it onto this platform.

Since the skill of memorization has been an ominous little clockwork dragon sputtering across my kitchen floor (thanks NLD), I decided to put together a memorized solo recital for an upcoming show in San Angelo, TX. Pulled out some old competition rep -- Paganini's fifth caprice, Piazzolla's Tango Etudes, Muczynski's solo flute preludes -- but it felt odd to program without some high-minded "thetical recital" objective. Is it sufficient to put together a show called "What's On my Stand Today?"

Luckily, NLD also gave me an audience when I recited Neil Gaiman's "In Relig Odhráin" on the car ride home from a climbing trip, and that was enough of a jumping-off point to restudy that poem and realize what a shambolic hash I'd been making of it. Trochaic octameter (poets, please correct me here) makes the poem musical enough to get stuck in my head, and its "act structure" feels more natural.

So...a recital structure inspired by Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, where you don’t get the whole poem unless you stick around to the end. Working title, "In Relig Odhráin: A Musical Exegesis."

Muczynski Prelude 1

IRO Stanza 1

Muczynski Prelude 2

IRO Stanzas 1-4

Muczynski Prelude 3

IRO Stanzas 5-6

Berio Sequenza

IRO Stanzas 1-8

Excerpt from Holliger "(T)aire"

IRO Stanzas 1-12

Encore: Bozza "Image"

Of course, calling the recital an "exegesis" is a little spicy. A violent, heretical little ghost story like "In Relig Odhráin" isn't for the faint of heart -- I'll have to attach a mild content warning to the recital if I go through with this idea.

15 Feb

Adding Debussy’s Syrinx to the list, so now we gotta talk about canonical thinking. I’ve got three meanings for the word canon, how about y’all?

CANON (n.)

  1. (ecclesiastical) a high churchman

  2. (almost as ecclesiastical) the established facts of the story, e.g. headcanon

  3. (classical music) a historically standardized body of pieces written for a specific instrument/ensemble

In class with CS, we’d sometimes study mediocre 18th-century compositions. If you’re answering the question, “How do I read music from 1740?” you’d be shooting yourself in the foot by only reading J.S. Bach, who elevated the German High Baroque. You’d get a more balanced perspective on the a priori’s of an 18th-century court musician by reading John Stanley, who wrote a couple of bangers and many more perfectly respectable, average pieces for soloist and continuo. Those never made it into the canon, but they’re still so useful to me.

So if I frame “In Relig Odhráin” against a canonical favorite that every professional flutist knows, Debussy’s little ballet interlude about a nymph and a predatory satyr — thank you, Ovid — is that a productive use of that old saw? Or am I missing an opportunity to present something more recherché but also more apropos (and, heaven forbid, written in the 2020’s)?

19 Feb

Program took shape today after I recited the poem on a hiking trip yesterday — an audience always helps crystallize ideas. I wrote some original material today, too, for Oran’s icy message from beyond the grave.

Let the memorization continue…

Fantasia

More reading for CS: Toni Morrison’s little book, The Origin of Others. In chapter 1, “Being or Becoming the Stranger," she spends a long time quoting nauseating 18th- and 19th-century memoirs of slaveowner atrocity. Then she shifts to the present tense:

“I am in this river place -- newly mine -- walking in the yard when I see a woman sitting on the seawall on the edge of a neighbor's garden.”

I'm learning to recognize this kind of fantasia because CS has pointed it out to me in Michelangelo and Winston Link. But in particular, the novelty of fantasia in academic lectures hasn’t worn off for me since I first began reading Lorca’s “Las nanas infantiles” and rediscovered literary criticism.

"En esta conferencia no pretendo, como en los anteriores, definir, sino subrayar; no quiero dibujar, sino sugerir. Animar, en su exacto sentido. Herir pájaros soñolientos."

["In this forum I don't pretend (as before) to define, but to underline; I don't wish to depict, but to suggest. To animate, in the word's literal meaning, to strike dreaming songbirds." (emphasis added)]

More often than not, when CS tries to get me to notice something new, he doesn't say, Here it is: have a look. He says instead, Go over there: see what you find. And in Morrison's lecture, after extended quotation, there's a sudden change of gears to the present tense, “I am in this river place,” that accelerates us into fantasia, a term that CS uses to combine playfulness, imagination, and indolence.

Fantasia makes a point on multiple levels. "I am in this river place..." Overtly, declaratively, Morrison goes on to talk about assumption and appropriation...but she's also deepening our field of view, pulling it out of focus for a moment so we can't razor out of the the lived experience (and poetic understanding) that underlies her metaphor.

Not too pithy

10 Jan

As things pick up after New Years, I've had caffeinated mornings and steady afternoons of fruitful work. Today marks a few watershed moments: I'll speak with LZ, a flute player whose CD's I heard as a twelve-year-old. I'll audition this evening for a contemporary a cappella vocal ensemble, one of potentially many chamber auditions I'll do over my budding performance career. In the meantime I'm maintaining my journaling/reflections and nibbling on the healthy bookshelf in my living room.

24 Jan

Update: LZ project moves forward, and I got into SONUS! Keep an eye out.

CS mentioned "The History Boys" with his highest recommendation, and the film exposed me to new queer voices lost in a world of symbols. I'm alluding to Ernest Becker here: this week I pulled "The Denial of Death" off Pastor M's bookshelf and started reading about immortality, spurred on by this high-quality video essay (CW: war) that references Becker and Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil." Folks try to cheat death using memory, symbols, and often (as in my case) in the promises of faith.

I'll keep munching on these good works and words.

Picking Up Steam

The more I read, the more I write. No surprise there.

Lately, it's been Marius Kociejowski's A Factotum in the Book Trade, given to me among a box of treasures from my dear CS. The name "Kociejowski" afforded me the chance to remind myself of the Polish ł -- though I'm not sure how he would pronounce it himself, being a Brit through and through. His talking reminds me of James Herriot, the kindly veterinarian diarist from Darrowby.

Near Factotum on my bookshelf is When Memory Speaks, a book that describes how people tell the stories of their own lives. And boy, does CS have some wonderful stories. He has a life, too, and a teaching method, that the world needs to hear about. I got the idea to become a biographer from Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, and now, nine months since my return to Nashville, I learn how to listen to someone's life.

BOOKS, MUSIC, FILM

  • Marius Kociejowski, A Factotum in the Book Trade

  • Donna Tartt, The Secret History

  • Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

  • Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

  • Keith and Kristyn Getty, "An Irish Christmas"

  • Birdtalker, "One"

  • Langhorne Slim, "Strawberry Mansion - Side A"

  • Langhorne Slim, "Lost at Last"

  • The Beths, "Expert in a Dying Field"

  • W.A. Mozart, Flute Concerto in G Major

  • Paul Thomas Anderson, The Phantom Thread

  • Guy Ritchie, Snatch

Getting back into it

I've wanted to start a blog for months. My Holland update letters, which I tied off last year, were a sort of romanticized journaling project to stay meaningfully in touch with my not-so-near but no-less-dear ones across the Atlantic. But that was a perfect storm: I knew exactly what to share with an audience I loved (and who I knew loved me back).

Having moved back stateside, I've needed long months to catch a new updraft beneath my wings. Deep-rootedness was more my style, and now Nashville is beginning to feel like home.

So I've been reading Bringhurst, and realizing that I really ought to read more biographies. Luckily, Bringhurst would be right up CS's alley, especially with a lecture he gave on Carpaccio's St. Augustine in His Study. Which in turn rhymes with LY's own mention of St. Augustine in our small group meeting last week. She linked me to a couple of sermons and recommended that I take a second look at his Confessions, as well as The Imitation of Christ, which she says is shorter and a better jumping-off point.

But as I sit here with my Earl Grey (half a teaspoon sugar, a teaspoon of cream, please), reading the perfect book and typing up a storm, I realize that the appearance of thriving is not enough for me. All the trappings and creature comforts gave me tangible goals to strive for...here I sit, indeed, in my own apartment with my own furniture, enjoying benefits I couldn't imagine from my lightfooted life in Amsterdam...but truly thriving is something that I'm going to have to figure out for myself, with only my gut and my prayers to guide me.

BOOKS, MUSIC, FILM

  • Bringhurst, "The Tree of Meaning"

  • Ferrell, "Harry S. Truman: A Life"

  • Ross, "Wagnerism"

  • Rodrigo, Concierto Pastoral for flute & orchestra

  • Muczynski, Three Preludes for solo flute

  • Köhler, Romantic Etudes

  • Fauré, Fantasie

  • Mamet, "Glen Garry Glen Ross"

Interview on Simone's Songlines (English/Nederlands) →

https://radio2.nu/RamaKumaran

DE SONGLINE CHOICE VAN RAMA KUMARAN

21 november 2019 16:44

Deze week is de muzikant en verhalenverteller Rama Kumaran te gast bij Simone! En hoe komt ze eigenlijk altijd aan haar interviews? Simone vertelt het in de podcast.

Op een koude herfstdag dwalend door de straten van Haarlem komt nomade Simone Walraven van alles tegen… Hoe komt zij toch altijd aan die mooie gasten, ze verklapt het in deze podcast. Tevens een bijzondere ontmoeting met muzikant en verhalenverteller Rama Kumaran uit Nashville. Hij studeert aan het conservatorium van Amsterdam, wat bracht hem hier? Een verhaal over roots, bijzondere plekken, een vroege muzikale herinnering én jammen met Shakespeare.

Article in THE GAZETTE (Croton-on-Hudson, NY)

Excerpted from The Gazette Vol. 36, No. 25 (Week of June 20 through 26)

by Cornelia Cotton

“Also at the library, a very special treat: the immensely gifted young flautist Rama Kumaran in a program that showed off his enormous versatility. Rama won the National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition — the youngest winner ever. After demanding pieces by Debussy, Poulenc, Faure, and the thrilling “Carmen Fantasy” by Francois Borne, he tackled “Voice” by Toru Takemitsu, the late, great Japanese modern master. This fantastic composition, testing the limits of the flute’s possibilities, was influenced by John Cage, the American avant-garde musician. It incorporates spoken words, shouts, and what sounds like the instrument being knocked against the teeth of the performer. He was accompanied by another prodigy — Jack Coen, who had been music director and organist at the Holy Name for several years. He is much missed. It was a treat to have him back for this rare recital.”

Lecture-Essay for "Love and Music"

Introduction: Subitizing

https://blog.wolfram.com/data/uploads/2011/05/subitize.gif

https://blog.wolfram.com/data/uploads/2011/05/subitize.gif

There’s an article published back in the mid-20th century coining a new word, “subitize.” Breaking it down, the word’s first root is the Latin verb subitare (“to arrive suddenly”). That word gave us the musical marking subito, i.e. subito presto, “suddenly quick” (when we’re jolted out of a lull). The second root, -ize, is Greek. This is because, as the authors confessed, the corresponding Latin suffix sounded wrong. “Subitate,” an all-Latin word, was too close to too many other English words; it sounded to them like a malapropism.

Take a look at the graphic. When we subitize the dots in the picture, we arrive at the correct answer without “having to think.” That’s a very different process from estimation or counting, as demonstrated by the experimental trials of Kaufmann, Lord, Reese, and Volkmann, and by the research that preceded their study. When a test subject estimated the number of dots in the picture, they were using characteristics other than what was immediately apparent to their subconscious; they were inferring their answer based on density of the dots, the shape they made, or any number of other observable principles. When they counted, of course, they were using a fully rational, conscious process to arrive at their answer. When they subitized (and here’s the critical point), they were fully validating the power of their subconscious, and the test results demonstrated the change: the answers were disproportionately faster, more accurate, and more confident when the test subjects could subitize. It turned out, as soon as the number of dots went 6 or lower, a different part of the brain went to work.

Today, subitizing is a recognized modality in several different pedagogical methods, including Montessori schooling and Zoltan Dienes’ theories for mathematics education. It’s also a central characteristic of the Boulanger-influenced Ploger method for musicianship, which I have studied for five years. In Prof. Ploger’s view, estimating is a poor substitute for subitizing, and counting is summarily pointless. She tells me faithfully, “If you can’t do it quickly, it’s irrelevant.” In other words, as soon as our work is dominated by our conscious mind, that work ceases to be fluent. Subitizing, conversely, is a “love-mode” response (another Ploger term). It’s as if our unconscious mind is telling us, “Of course it is. What’s next?” The unconscious loves to notice things, and it’s very, very good at it—but only when our conscious mind stays out of the way. “Love,” the saying goes, “is a harvest of attentions.” We’re going to explore manifestations of this love in the music that follows.

But let’s begin by imagining a room. The floorboards are honey-oak, carefully polished, and creak gently when they’re passed over by the two friends that enter. Mozart is humming a tune as he takes a seat on a cushion, leaning back against the wall with his legs splayed in front of him. Meanwhile, Jesus is relaxing cross-legged on his own cushion in another part of the room, while paying careful attention to the other man.

ADAGIO BEGINS AT 12: 48

Mozart, String Quintet no.3 inG Minor, k.516 I. Allegro - 00:00 II. Menuetto. Allegretto-Trio - 07:35 III. Adagio ma non troppo - 12:48 IV. Adagio-Allegro - 21:34 Amadeus Quartet & Cecil Aronowitz: Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel, violins Peter Schidolf, Cecil Aronowitz, violas Martin Lovett, cello London, 1966

MOZART

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith? [Luke 12, KJV]

JESUS

And here the fellow in his kingly garb

Pours out a stream of someone else’s words.

Why dost thou thus proclaim thy love for me

In a language that’s outside thy native tongue?

MOZART

OK, sure, fair enough. Consider then,

My string quintet’s Adagio. Here, listen.

What we’ll come to understand is that Mozart was showing us things that were as obvious to him as a sonnet was to Petrarch, or a river was to Claude Lorrain. Though it might not seem this way, we’re going to look at the obvious.

Numbers will govern our looking. The numbers from 6, on down to 1, are the numbers our brain naturally subitizes. They’re instantaneously apparent when they confront us. When we think about it, of course the most blindingly obvious things that happen to us—in life, love, and music—must happen in sixes, fives, fours, and threes! We’ll use this unifying phenomenon to examine the bridges between our chosen repertoire.

(Why not twos, ones, and zero? The answer is a matter of substrates. It’s the same reason we won’t discuss the pervasive repercussions of figurenlehre—the library of atomic musical gestures that undergirds Western music from the early Baroque. The mechanics of this essay prohibit this particular magnifying glass. Everything we examine will be deliberately curated to show itself on the large scale and the smallest possible scale; but imagine, in a different field, analyzing a political race vis-a-vis the psychology of each American family, or each American voter, or each individual opinion of each American voter. As integral as all of these things are, using them as a substrate is analytically impossible. Likewise for overly tiny musical units. We shall toil not, nor shall we spin; rather we shall go on stating the blindingly obvious.)

Sixes: Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 6 in E minor, IV. Epilogue

EPILOGUE BEGINS AT 23:45

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - Andrew Manze conductors at the Royal Albert Hall - London - BBC PROMS 2012. Presenter: Petroc Trelawny

In preparation to understand this epilogue, let’s open the box with a concept that predates Vaughan Williams by several centuries. The sonnet is a poetic form that presents a basic two-part “conflict/resolution” structure: the opening octave presents the conflict, and the closing sestet resolves it. Our ears are liable to perk up with the sestet, since it’s the more flexible of the two parts: while the 2 quatrains of the octave tend to stick to a stolid ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme (notice the last word of each line), the sestet varies widely. Why does this matter?

If we are resolving a conflict using poetic means, we need need need to answer it simultaneously using our words’ meaning (the content) and their structure (the form). The sestet carries a heavy responsibility! Perhaps that’s why it needs to be versatile. In response to the conflict ABBA ABBA, Petrarch structured his sestets CDE CDE (through-rhymed triplets) or CDC CDC (rhyming palindromes). Shakespeare addressed the conflict in a different way: he capitulated with EFEF GG (a quatrain plus a final couplet). Instead of defying the opening quatrains, he assimilated them!

Now consider, in addition to the lilies, the first 8 bars of Vaughan Williams’ epilogue. Here in the first violin part are six notes (F G Ab B C Eb), which we beautifully subitize as soon as we hear them. I discard E and Bb as “musica ficta,” necessary modulatory alterations, to the original motif’s key area. Thus, the first six pitches define our musical unit. So, how does our friend Ralph use his six notes? He uses their rhythmic symmetries to suggest a sonnet (see below):

Scorn not the Sonnet

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, 

Mindless of its just honours; with this key 

Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody 

Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; 

A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; 

With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief; 

The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf 

Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned 

His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp, 

It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land 

To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp 

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 

The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew 

Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

Every half-measure (which we’ll call a “block”) equates to a line of English. Since the pitch content is limited to a single set (the six-note pitch set detailed above), we can allow ourselves the freedom to consider rhythm as our definitive content. Letting the rhythm be our guide, then, the “rhyme scheme” of our excerpt goes ABBB BCBA. Note the multiple symmetries:

  • Rhyme: blocks 1 & 8

  • Rhyme: blocks 3 & 4

  • Rhyme: blocks 5 & 7

  • Rhyme: block pairs 1-2 & 3-4

  • Alliteration: block pairs 5-6 & 7-8

  • Envelope: blocks 1-8. The imbalance of three “B” blocks in quatrain 1 are balanced by the “C” block in quatrain 2, and the final “A” block seals the palindromic structure. This proto-sonnet’s “conflict statement” is fully self-contained, and waiting for a resolution (remember this!).

The suggestion is even stronger in another instance. See right (violin 1):

The rhyme scheme here is (A) BCAB BDEB DFB. Overlooking the quasi-anacrustic “A” block, the symmetries are even closer to standard sonnet form:

  • Envelope: blocks 1-4

  • Envelope: blocks 5-8

  • Rhyme: blocks 1, 4, 5, 8, 11

  • Envelope: blocks 1-11. The overarching symmetry runs through the two enveloped quatrains and ends on the final block.

(Interlude)

JESUS

You see, dear one, sonata form this ain’t.

But your sonatas carried on into

Most beautiful things.

MOZART

Yet can the same be true,

For sonnet and sonata, song and chant?

Can they display a unity of themes,

Economy of content, and besides,

Through sexy tones and sleek chromatic slides,

Afford me virtuous scandal, beds enseam’d?

JESUS

O, tempt me not, young libertine, but list.

I tell you what you seek is there ahead.

For Ralph Vaughan Williams’ sixth is a gentle nod

To those who came before. Dear friend, desist,

And see what scandals spring from your dear beds,

Along with things more fitting for your God.

Fives: DOMINANT ASYMMETRY

LAM Scans_4.jpg

Let’s revisit the final moments of Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony (see video above), and observe the score below. Notice anything after the oboe solo?

There’s a sonnet-parallel we’ve missed, but this one has to do with fundamental asymmetries. Remember that the sonnet form is comprised of two quatrains and a sestet (a “trinity of forms,” if you like). Likewise, notice that two chords are in conflict in the upper strings: D# major and E minor. These comprise our functional “conflict statement.” But what happens in the “sestet motif” that could reconcile them? Now it is no longer six notes but five (Eb F G G# B). And, as if by coincidence, it is helpless to prevent the conflicting chords to spin on against one another. The motif wastes away into smaller and smaller truncations, and the chords spin on, conflict unresolved. The change from 6 pitches to 5 has suggested an asymmetry that undermines the closing of this piece. This suggested 5-unit asymmetry is fundamental to Western harmony. The V chord, inherently unstable and begging for tonic resolution, symbolizes both the faraway yearning and the homeward road.

I say with no little irony, Paul Nash demonstrates that he, too, has a finger on this pulse in “Dead Spring” (1929). So close that your eyes feel unfocused, Nash juxtaposes a limp cluster of dead leaves with a host of inanimate setpiece figures. The leaves’ lines show more life than the figures ever could, and yet here again, form battles with content. The leaves are officially “dead,” but nonetheless curl and flex in the center of the frame, a formal suggestion of life. The setpiece figures’ suggestions of triangular trinity and rectilinear duality give us a clear and lively implication of the number five—further highlighting the inherent asymmetries. “Five” appears to be the sonnet’s undoing, and artists across genres fight to contend with it.

JESUS

You knew this too, Wolfgangus, didn’t you?

Your urmotiv at first expanding, thus,

From trichord to triad, a 5-note span.

The instability, the eros blind,

All part o’ your plan.

MOZART

Of course it is. What’s next?

Brahms, in fact, is next. His Academic Festival Overture is a search for symmetry within a sprawling medley of song. The excerpt here is a prime example of this search frustrated by dominant function. C major (m. 88) drops a major third to A major, then a second to G major, the dominant. So far so good, but will Brahms be able to symmetrize? He begins again, promisingly, in E minor (m. 96, a diatonic iii), a major third above C. But instead of filling in F major for the full symmetry (a tempting diatonic IV, no less!) he repeats the major-third drop, this time to C major, and then trips bizarrely through Bb to D and G, landing on his butt back on the tonic C. Hindsight is 20/20, so we know that E minor could only have been a deceptive cadence that needed the secondary dominant D major to set it to rights. Still, the effect is squirmy. What Brahms does more comfortably in Academic Festival Overture is inhabit the realm of fours.

Mozart Quintet G minor K. 516, m. 23

Mozart Quintet G minor K. 516, m. 23

Fours: TETRACHORDS

Is it any surprise that a student of Michael Alec Rose would expound on the tetrachord? Before we dive, however, let’s open with Brahms’ own opening.

From the very first figure, we spy fours at work. The first violins have a power-packed first two bars: a four-note neighbor tone figure followed by a descending minor tetrachord. Opening bars like these offer nearly infinite versatility in the tonal sphere. Brahms, the ironic academic, takes the technical path of least resistance. No tonal shenanigans, no points of imitation, just a repetition in the dominant. Is he already jesting at the fact that he will never quite contend with dominant asymmetry? Maybe. After all, right under our nose, the first two statements are 3-bar phrases! It seems that there’s self-conscious asymmetry even in Brahms’ squarest motivic statements.

LAM+Scans_6.jpg
Brahms, Academic Festival Overture

Brahms, Academic Festival Overture

Just for another synechdochal example, take the cutesy bassoon solo at m. 157. What could be more foursquare than a march? Until, that is, Brahms, adds an extra bar at the end (m. 165), just before the oboe’s point of imitation. If asymmetry’s built into harmony, Brahms thinks to himself, then, well, form must reflect content—an extra bar it is. And just like any principle in this composer’s oeuvre, it’s utterly pervasive in the Overture, in ways that this lecture will not address.

Know what else features a descending tetrachord? Our Mozart piece, at last. Our excerpt begins at 12:48.

MOZART

Consider my Adagio, forthwith:

Five players and their slice of your Creation.

The second bar alone does give us good:

A tetrachord, with ornaments, descending

From B flat (dominant) to F below.

JESUS

Then, following the downward rush of [measure] 4,

Your chromatism brings it home in [measure] 7.

MOZART

How could I let it pass? Ascent, descent,

The eros and the pathos and the ludus

Descending tetrachords are but a foretaste.

Let’s onwards to the secondary themes

[measure 18 & 27, and their recapitulatory counterparts],

Descending all the way to tiptoe dancing

Upon the dominant in 32.

Then onward further to Transition Two,

And though it’s in the dominant right here,

In 72 it’ll soon be set to rights.

Here’s the best of our sonata-form:

Like chambered locks the potencies give way,

Until all tensions, sated, dissolve away.

JESUS

But, Mozart, with respect, a tetrachord

Was not the reason this work came to be.

That honor goes to holy number three.

Threes: Divine Flows

MOZART

Do note the grain we ground last Passover,

See how it swells itself upon our table:

Embodied now, the grain’s itself the bread.

JESUS

Likewise a trichord, ascending and descending:

The highest and the lowest changing voices,

This theme embodies your Adagio. [m. 1]

MOZART

Now track my trichord as you’ve tracked your nation.

JESUS

Writ large is your motif’s harmonic motion;

The first two beats [m. 1] encompass all the rest:

One tonic [m. 1], then one dominant [m. 17], then tonic [m. 37].

MOZART

My work is as a rocky seamed face,

Consistent by its very nature, formed

Most carefully, yet all inev’table.

Thus, see the very trichord thrice again,

As upward motion, sol la si [m. 1-2], and then

Truncation in bar 3, first violin,

And languorous elongation in bar 4.

See one seam here [m. 5], a cambiata theme

That frustrates th’ forming trichord with a leap

That seals it tighter for its dissonance.

JESUS

So likewise does a wound that healeth skin

Plain-bind it tighter, even after silence. [m.10]

The break in sound is no longer betrayal

When cambiata’d trichords reemerge [m. 11]

In counterpoint orchestrally prepared. [m. 5-10]

MOZART

And then, Transition One, we have our first

Bedazzling instance: triad as trichord,

Here [m. 17], see this sev’n diminished 6 of V.

The instability, the eros blind.

JESUS

And every descending line, from here

Through Exposition and the sewn-in Recap,

Is true rendition and remembrance fond

Of trichord, trichord, trichord?

MOZART

Verily!

JESUS

But where, oh, does it end?

MOZART

It’s infinite.

My urmotiv expands to fill a canyon, [Coda, m. 76]

And shrinks to fit a thimble, [chromatic descent, m. 37] if I ask.

It’s elemental, just like Claude Lorrain’s

Good study of a stream.

JESUS

Its levels three,

The first far ‘way above our heads, and then,

The second before our feet, and then the third,

A stone’s throw to the right. Your urmotiv

Is plain to see.

MOZART

And water washes still, in motion contr’y

As if it were a pair, violin and cello,

In measure 1 of my Adagio.

Adagio indeed these waters flow,

And eddying, ebbing, falling, never standing

Not for a moment’s rest, like time’s swift flow.

So easily it goes, while I’m at ease.

JESUS

If immortality you seek, go find

Some antic Roman who’ll remember you.

But try instead to see the unity

Your fertile mind has conjured while at work.

For God did grant you not a perfect life,

But a perfect road, and travel it you must.

For see the end that you yourself created.

MOZART

Sure, final vindication long-awaited: [m. 78]

Scar-tissue cambiata healing brings,

Behaving as a tree’s rich cambium

A “secondary thickening” that binds

Each measure in an anacrustic turn;

The final bars full bound together thus,

The trichord realized as healing salve.

JESUS

And all creation bound together thus,

The singularity from whence it came.

I6/4 to I: see, one, two, three! [m. 78-80]

Then I to V4/3: see, one, two, three! [m. 80-81]

Then I, I, I. A trinity divine,

Thrice witnessed, so, my brother, you are mine.

Drawing Games with My Cousins

I shared last Christmastime with my family--a dear blessing. I made these drawings together with my two brilliantly talented younger cousins: M. is a champion athlete, and S. is a dancer born to a dance-healer. Both my cousins are strong, beautiful, and beloved.

 [Untitled, Rama + M. + S., pen and ink]

 [Untitled, Rama + M. + S., pen and ink]

 [Untitled, Rama + M., pen/mechanical pencil]

 [Untitled, Rama + M., pen/mechanical pencil]

 [Untitled, Rama + M., pencil/watercolor]

 [Untitled, Rama + M., pencil/watercolor]