Goodbyes and Reflections

The semester is coming to a close and so is this blog. I have to admit that it was quite a roller-coaster ride. I started out ignorant about much of the context and and musical devices explored in this course, and if I remember correctly, I believe that I strongly disliked the first piece I ever analyzed: Monteverdi's l'Orfeo. It is amazing to see how much has changed since that first blogpost and how much still remains the same. Firstly, I no longer hate l'Orfeo, in fact, I love it and regularly play it on my computer--especially Orfeus' deeply touching and beautiful recitative "Tu sei morta." The beauty of the singer's voice, the expressiveness captured by the recitative style and lack of distracting music makes it one of my favorites. I get wonderful thrills when I hear an episode of madrigal-like or word painting. I am surprised at the change.

I feel that ever since that first negative experience with l'Orfeo, I have gained a new level of appreciation for musical pieces different from what I am familiar with and I have become a bit more appreciative of what I perceive as dissonance and rise up to analyze it instead of backing away. I do not feel however, that I have completely changed; my experience with the last piece for this class, Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, showed me that there still exist a very real limit as to what I can accept as beautiful or even striking. However, although I feel that although I do not like the piece, I have made my peace with it. 

I don't think I will ever call this piece a masterpiece--I am still not convinced that Stravinsky had a clear understanding of what he was attempting to portray or who he was presenting it too--and I believe that it is this generous nature of music and this interaction between material, composer, and audience which makes a piece come alive. Nevertheless, I can concede that it is a masterpiece to some people. However, I think that it has become a masterpiece and musical to many not because of a particular quality or gesture in the piece which attempts to engage its listeners but because Stravinsky's acknowledged talent as a great composer and his audience's desire to understand this talent and experience it for themselves has created a new type of connection between the music and its listeners--an educational one-- which has allowed Le Sacre du Printemps to survive into present times because there exists a following which has made an active effort to understand it and connect with it. 

I feel that if I have learned anything from this course, it is that t a musical piece's status as a masterpiece or a failure depends heavily on its audience's perception and that in many cases the composers who have been successful in fixing their name and works in history have done so either by deeply touching their audience at a fundamental level, or by inciting their listeners to take a second listen and seek to form a connection on their own accord. Both approaches seem to be effective and I honestly cannot say that one approach is more acceptable than the other.

Savage Beauty: Le Sacre du Printemps' Lost Potential

In Le Sacre du Printemps, Stravinsky attempted to do bring his audience on a musical journey which would transport them to a prehistoric time whose barbaric existence is at once jarringly cruel and irresistibly captivating. He attempts to do this by interjecting a harsh overbearing score—which at times can sound downright ugly in its metrical irregularity, uncomfortable instrumentation, unpleasant stacking of chords, and painful dissonance—with short interludes of airy breathtaking beauty.

One example of this juxtaposition can be found in the first few measures of the piece with an oboe solo accompanied by a bassoon in a thin texture. The texture soon thickens however with the addition other uncomfortably high pitch wind instruments. The piece which had started as almost peaceful, soon takes on a disturbing quality with metrical irregularities of melody and the piece overall. This quiet introduction, however, is quickly broken by the dissonant pulsing chords of string instruments and horns.

Other examples of a delicate beauty attempting to break through the garishness of the rest of the piece can be found throughout the piece. At the beginning of the Round Dances of Spring, right after the sacrificial victim has been chosen and abducted we hear brief clarinet solo. This light solo occurs over a tremolo of a high string in a very thin musical texture. Clean and simple it constitutes only of a few closely related alternate notes repeated in an almost sing-song pattern. This abrupt solo amidst the general heavy orchestration and thick texture of this piece is like a breath of fresh air and stands out all the more in comparison. Its clean sound is almost innocent and ephemeral; its haunting sound—perhaps representative of the individual voice of the sacrificial dancer or more generally of the beauty of nature among the tribe’s barbarism—disappears almost as abruptly as it started. This brief clarinet solo is repeated just one more time at the end of the Round Dances of Spring, this time however, it ends with an abrupt shift to another orchestra heavy piece.

I believe that through such examples that Stravinsky attempts to play with our understanding of what is beauty and ugliness by placing them in harsh juxtaposition. Unfortunately, I believe that Stravinsky attempts to separate that beauty from the harshness of the rest of the piece—perhaps to highlight the cruelty of the barbaric tribes. I feel, however, that this is perhaps where he and I must part company, because I do not believe that the beauty of the scenery he attempts to paint is separated from the actions of the tribes—after all to its participants, the pagan rituals holds some type of captivating beauty which entices them to repeat it every spring . This seemingly philosophical point has very important implications for how Stravinsky chose to use his musical innovations. His separation of the beautiful and familiar from what he might have seen as revolutionary in its barbarity also separated his musical innovations and insights from his audience. 


In my opinion, the separation that Stravinsky created between his music and his audience hampered him from demonstrating a level of sophistication which would have been truly spectacular.  I believe that Stravinsky failed to effectively capture the savage appeal the sacrifice holds for the barbaric tribe in his rite of spring and in turn failed to make an immediate connection with his audience on a fundamental level. This is a shortcoming which he felt soundly through his audience's initial resistance to his music at Le Sacre du Printemps' first performance; a resistance which I also exhibited when I first heard this piece. This simple lack of a connection for a human impulse which is as old as time could have been avoided if the composer had had more empathy for his audience and perhaps for the tribe he described. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this shortcoming of the piece has hampered and continues to hamper it from unlocking its true potential.

Islands of Peace Amidst Stravinsky's Chaos

Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps can often appear overwhelming in its cacophonous complexity. It's irregular meter and quickly changing rhythms, overlapping contrapuntal passages, unpleasant instrumentation, discordant chords, and overbearingly thick musical texture are only a few of the tools Stravinsky uses liberally to create a score which can sounds harsh and unpleasant.

At first, I was extremely put off by what I perceived to be unnecessary excesses in the use of standard musical techniques. In a manner similar to Berlioz's tampering with orchestration, Stravinsky had turned upside down and inside out musical concepts such as a discernible meter, a clear key, and familiar chords which I had come to take for granted after a few weeks in this course. To see these specific concepts and my general understanding of what constituted as music distorted and twisted beyond recognition to no understandable effect or justifiable musical innovation was incredibly unpleasant. I could not understand why Stravinsky had made these changes and I could see no other reason for what I perceived to be superfluous modifications than the fact that Stravinsky felt he could.

When Monteverdi had used the recitative, when Handel had enhanced the importance of choruses and differentiated the recitativo secco from the accompagnado, when Beethoven had turned traditional forms of orchestra music (such as the sonata) on its head , when Berlioz had revolutionized traditional orchestra instrumentation, when all these breaks from tradition were made, I could see a progression; I could see a connecting thread leading to new heights of musical appreciation. I could see that by breaking with the old in new innovative ways, these composers may help liberate our conception of what music should sound like and allow us to visualize new musical possibilities. In Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, I felt that I have lost this connecting thread and all that remains is chaos. How is that for a first impression?

After listening to this piece in its entirety and replaying large portions of it, I have begun to see some order in the chaos, and more importantly, I am finding short snippets of beauty amidst the sometimes ugly cacophony. I feel that perhaps by analyzing these small islands of peace, I may be able to anchor myself long enough to gain perspective of the entire piece and perhaps even regain the thread of comprehension which may connect it to earlier composers we have seen in this course.This comparative approach has not necessarily always been the focus of this course, but gradually I feel that is has become critical to understand the more recent musical pieces and Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps is no exception.

Berlioz: Master of Orchestration?

Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique is filled with eerie musical passages and sounds that often seem to overwhelm our senses. As complex as his music may be to a listener, however, the oddity of Berloz' sounds may lie in the instruments he uses and how they are arranged together in the symphony. Berlioz has an uncanny knack for using instruments in new ways and producing new, often disturbing sounds. The slight feeling of unease one often feels when listening to his music, however, comes in part from how incredibly human some of the orchestration sounds.

In the 5th movement of la Symphonie Fantastique, particularly, we are assaulted by a series of weird, almost grotesque sounds that could truly be the cackling laughter of a goblin army. First, we have the low pitch brass instruments at the very beginning of the piece playing one note three times successively, each time backing away quickly and leaving almost an echo behind. This sounds like a deep guffaw.

Then we hear the high pitch, grating sound of an e-flat clarinet playing one long note, followed by a series of shorter formulations of that one note; this pitch which is then held out one last time and allowed to slide  and decay as it ends. This passage by the e-flat clarinet which is repeated several times over the course of the movement distinctly sounds like an unpleasant high-pitched cackle.

Then as the texture of the movement becomes more thick, we hear these instruments again that we now associate with a certain character (cackling witch, guffawing ogre, or even snickering woodsprite) and we come to hear them almost as voices, speaking and shouting amidst the cacophony. In the 5th movement, we can hear this babble especially well at 3:26 after the first set of bell tolls and the coupling of the two brass instruments (one of a slightly lower pitch) in a passage that mimics the inflection of a human voice. It sounds like a demonic chant straight from the depths of hell.

The human qualities we give to these instruments stems from the fact that we have been given some context via the program, but also because our ears have been trained by Berlioz in the earlier segment to pick out certain instruments and associate them with some type of monster. This connection, which occurs mostly in our minds is what truly brings this piece to life. Berlioz may be an exceptional composer, but I do not believe that this piece would be as disturbing and consequently as powerful if he had not prepped our imagination to leap ahead and enrich his music with our own personal interpretations.

And now that we understand the power of visualization, here is a potential visual image of the scene that Berlioz describe from one of my childhood favorites, The Black Cauldron. Skip to 1:18, the goblins are pretty convincing.

Podcast

Podcasts seem to be the new response paper. Everywhere I turn, there they are. But as they say, if you can't beat them, join them.

Here's a short (and hopefully entertaining) podcast on an excerpt from the second movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.


Beethoven9 Podcast by herrissasol