Timeless French Timepieces

[This post was an unexpected journey in many ways. It started simply with having fun entering some notes by Messiaen into a computer...Eventually, I get around to that.]

For years I've had this quarter-baked idea that there are certain compositions which exhibit a special kind of small-scale perfection. Although these impressions are certainly subjective, the feeling I have is that every part of the whole has an inevitable, organic quality - almost as if the composer simply discovered a perfectly formed crystal and shared it with the world. With such pieces, it's as if the music simply generates itself like some sort of mathematical proof.

There are fine examples of this from core German composers, such as Bach's Air, Pachelbel's You Know What, Mozart's Ave verum corpus, the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Schumann's Des Abends, Rheinberger's Abendlied, Strauss's Morgen. What all of these works have in common is a kind of continuity that makes it possible to hear the whole piece as one thing - like a beautiful sphere which simply rotates so we can experience its oneness across time. 

An important part of this phenomenon (as I experience it) is that there be a certain degree of emotional detachment - which, oddly, makes it hard for me to find something to include by Schubert, Mendelssohn, or Brahms, even though all are expert at crafting miniatures. (Maybe this is the closest I can think of for Mendelssohn.) The same goes even more so for Chopin and Italian opera arias which tend towards full heart on sleeve. As a natural introvert, sometimes I appreciate a little distance from overt expressions of feeling. 

On the other hand, the French sensibility is ideal for this vague, barely defined thing I'm trying to articulate. Stravinsky famously compared Ravel to a Swiss watchmaker, and it is that kind of craftsmanship I have in mind. A perfectly made watch can be a thing of beauty, but it also exhibits a pure, objective kind of elegance which is the perfect marriage of machine and magic. Each little part does its part in sync with others and the result is a very slow and perfectly coordinated ballet which marks time. Each movement (a word which happens to be connected with watches and music) is logically connected to what comes before and after. Music which exhibits such elegance is often less about feeling on the surface, though our response to that formal satisfaction might feel emotional in a less obvious way.

Ravel has some lovely miniatures, including this exquisite Menuet, and perhaps even this paradoxical monstrosity (which I love). But my favorite examples of this kind of...you know, I almost used the word "confection," but that's not right as that would be too sweet...my favorite examples of this kind of crystalline construct are not from Ravel or Debussy. (Debussy wrote some excellent miniatures, but they are too improvisatory or too sensual to qualify here.) 

The ideal embodiment of this kind of nonchalant perfection has to be Couperin's Les Barricades Mystérieuses, a work which has its own mythology. (I highly recommend checking out the multiple subsections found under the "Mysterious Barricades" tab there.) 

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That's not my favorite recording (I prefer something fleeter), but I chose it because the visual of the score, with its lovely interlocking suspensions, is such a part of how I experience this music. (I also like this recording, although the sound is a little too soupy.) Maybe that's part of what I'm looking for - music that looks the part even when you don't hear it. It's hard not to feel that this music really could unlock something purer and deeper in how we understand the world. Music which sounds right on a sub-aural level? (Once again, this concept is only a quarter baked!)

Honestly, nothing quite matches Couperin's barricades for balance and subdued expression. (The music doesn't tell you what to feel, but it might make you feel something profound.) Moving on to other French composers, there are a couple of perfect tunes which are perhaps too famous and too expressive for this topic, but still worth mentioning: Gounod's uncanny "discovery" of a melody which floats above a Bach prelude and Saint-Saëns' perfectly poised evocation of a floating swan. (Sorry, Massenet, great tune - but too sappy!)

Fauré perhaps come closest with this song, which loses points for being a bit too emotional but gains points for the refined counterpoint in the piano part. Turn it into a piano solo (why haven't I done this?) and it would be a model example. Poulenc offers a few options as well, including this and this. Both of those songs are deeply expressive, but contained within French reserve.

An unexpected entry here, which nevertheless always finds its way into my thinking on this topic, is the brilliant Widor Toccata. As thrilling and dramatic as it can be, the perpetual motion figuration and the inexorable logic of the harmonies give it the same sense of inevitability and unified construction as other works mentioned here. I play it every Easter Sunday, and from the moment I dive in, it feels like one big spin cycle from beginning to end.

Before I get to my final destination, I have to mention the Satie Gymnopédies, works which certainly look the part and are almost caricatures of this idea. As I've written before, they are directionless in a way that maybe seems less meticulous than a classic watch, but they beautifully embody the concept: a musical entity generated by a single idea which spins out for no other reason than its own internal logic. (Maybe more like mobiles than watches?) When everything lines up, experiencing these hand ballets is like stepping outside of time.

So...speaking of stepping outside of time, the composition which prompted all of this is by a composer who is more known for big, bold, heterogeneous works, including one about the end of time. When writing about Olivier Messiaen some years ago, I observed that his music "might variously be characterized as old-fashioned, modern, sweet, brutal, simple, challenging, mystical, colorful, sensual, sacred, jazzy, naturalistic, intellectual, etc." Messiaen's motet O sacrum convivium! - a relatively early, very approachable work - isn't brutal in any way, but just about everything else in that list might apply. Here's a lovely starter recording, sung a cappella:

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I first encountered this music when subbing as an accompanist for a local chorus, and I fell in love from the first rehearsal. Even the feeling of playing those ripe chords on the keys - the exotic F-sharp Major key signature, the unusual spellings, the hypnotically asymmetrical rhythms. I've since had my church choir sing it with organ accompaniment, and I've played it as an organ solo multiple times during church. Although it looks a little intimidating at first, it turns out to be very easy and gratifying to play on the organ. (I can handle a pedal part which moves that slowly and infrequently.) 

Because the choir is going to sing it again, I decided to create practice parts for them - which meant I had the extra privilege of getting to encounter and manipulate these notes from the engraving point of view. A major theme of this blog is that this kind of encounter can be as enlightening as playing or listening to music. 

I also knew there was tremendous potential energy in having the notes entered as data, and because this music can feel like it flirts with the eternal, I realized I would have to experiment with s..t..r..e..t..c..h..i..n..g it out, as I've done with other works in the past. This proved as satisfying as I'd hoped, and so we'll end today's journey with a couple of very different extremes. 

First of all, just as Couperin's mysterious barricades have drawn lots of interest outside of the classical world, especially with guitarists, I was surprised - and not surprised - to find multiple guitarists as well as marimbaists and jazz ensembles playing Messiaen's motet. The harmonies definitely lend themselves to those worlds, although it would seem that this music demands a constant sustain not natural to guitar. But I knew from my first time accompanying that this music is very satisfying on the piano, so I've made this informal little practice room version. I wish the pedal was quieter, but this is the kind of thing I'd love to include if I ever get around to creating another "Introspective Recital." I love the way it looks on the page, I love the way it feels under the fingers, and I love the way it sings and rings. (You may notice I took some liberties as to when I re-play repeated notes in the lower voices, although I haven't done very careful thinking about it.)

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But, at the other extreme is my new hyper-sustained version. The slowest "real" recording I'd found was one led by Myung-Whun Chung clocking in at just over seven minutes. Using virtual instruments, I created a "performance" - which will surely horrify some - which almost doubles that. (Yes, I could extend out to infinity, but I wanted to keep the metrical pacing within perceptive reach.)  In part because I find the synthetic sustained sounds can be a bit dull and because I liked the idea of an underlying pulse, I mischievously added some distant drum loops to which I'm now rather attached, but I'll leave that version in the playlist at the end of this post. This version is just pure sustain.

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So there you have it, two quite different takes on an extraordinary four...or seven...or fourteen minutes of music - music in which the 20-year-old composer evokes the wonder and mystery of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And he does seem to have captured something that is both tangible and earthly while also linking to something transcendental. Messiaen would touch on such glimpses of the eternal many times more, most notably in both the fifth movement and the final movement of his Quartet for the End of Time. I love both of those movements, but whereas the composer spins out endless melodies there (which would really suffer if played by non-humans), it feels as if the entire O sacrum convivium! is generated by the vibrant major seventh harmony with which it opens. I've listened to my fourteen-minute versions many times now and find they pull me along just as inexorably as if played in a quarter of that time.

To give you a sense of the broad range of ways in which Messiaen's motet can be adapted, I've created this playlist which includes my new videos plus many varied takes in all sorts of contexts. I'm not surprised this music has transcended its expected classical boundaries. Hopefully, you'll enjoy getting to know it as well. Although I'm sure not everything on the list will be to everyone's tastes (and some might even be mildly scandalized), it's true of Messiaen in general that while his music has something for everyone, most will also find something bewildering in his idiosyncratic style. I love the Quartet for the End of Time and at least parts of the enormous Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus - and yet there are times when I have no idea what he's getting at. For me, that strangeness is strangely part of his appeal.

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P.S. One more honorable mention in the "whatever this category turns out to be" is Charles Stanford's partsong, The Blue Bird, which cast a spell on me decades ago which has never been broken. You may hear my piano take on it here, and note that its warm key of G-flat Major is the enharmonic equivalent of Messiaen's bright F-sharp Major. (They use the same set of mostly black-key pitches - and yet they somehow feel quite different, at least in part due to the appearances of the scores.)

Also, since quite to my surprise this post has now cited more than twenty different works, I'm adding a playlist which includes them all for convenience. (Yes, I've made a few "unusual" choices for recordings to include.) If you're wondering if my shaky thesis about a particular kind of perfect work is just an excuse for me to write about music I like - well, why do you think I have this blog? 

The Two Gustavs (Emptying the Desk Drawer #1)

[This is the first in a series of posts in which I simply document some of the odd little things I create when my internal virus is activated. In this introductory post, I'll begin with a quick exploration of the virus.]

Back when my blog was barely a year old and I nonetheless had the audacity to refer to "longsuffering readers," I wrote the following:

Longsuffering readers of this blog will have learned that I have a weakness for wordplay. (To quote my blogger profile, "I adore alliterations; elegant allusions; absurd non sequiturs; and buffalo wings.") My own experience of this weakness is that there seems to be a little software-like program running most of the time in my brain which samples incoming words, whether heard, spoken, read, thought, etc. and looks for connections that might produce something punny . . . er, um, funny.  .... 

[and, a few sentences later] Obviously, this software falls into the "virus" category, as I suggested awhile back about my sonnet "problem." 

[Note that I've also written about this kind of "punspiration" in another post.] 

In the same category as what might be called the "Dad Joke Virus" and the "Onegin Sonnet Virus" is the "Musical Mashup Virus." Indeed, if it turns out that I am merely some sort of AI automaton, this Pavlovian response would likely be my defining feature. When presented with any opportunity to combine two musical somethings which have been connected unexpectedly, it is almost impossible for me to resist finding a way. And there's always a way. Partly, this is simply about the pleasure of using magical technology (it all still seems magical to me because I grew up in a world before most of these tools existed), but it is also such a satisfying way to encounter or, dare I say, "play" [with] what is generally iconic music. Iconic music, by definition, is always at risk of being too familiar, so I think there's something useful in recontextualizing it by hearing it in conversation with something else.

On to today's exhibit. From a friend, I heard about a situation where a picture of Gustav Mahler was accidentally used in a video about Gustav Holst. Of course, I couldn't resist exploring this connection, and again, the more iconic the component parts, the better. For Holst, it was kind of a no-brainer to use the opening of "Mars" from The Planets, both because it's well-known and because it's suitable as an accompaniment to...something else. Since I had a Holst accompaniment in mind, the famous unaccompanied trumpet solo which opens Mahler's 5th raised its hand as a partner, and I liked the idea that the former emphasizes a low pedal G while the latter is centered on a C-sharp - an unsettling tritone apart. Of course, you might say, wouldn't it have been better if the two were centered on the same pitch or a perfect fifth apart? But since both openings express high stress, I think the distant dissonance (better here than a minor second) works well to set each work off from the other and take the stress to another level. 

And, as so often happens, other connections quickly became apparent, most notably the importance of triplets in each motif, but also the way Holst's opening tune in very low instruments (not shown here) settles uncomfortably on a tritone (spelled by Holst as D-flat) above the pedal G - which, with a little finagling, meant it could land on the same pitch (spelled by Mahler as C-sharp) as the Mahler does at the end of its second phrase. And that arrival provided me a good excuse to end things there and not go too far with this. 

My favorite thing about this little experiment was taking advantage of how easy it is to combine simultaneous time signatures in Dorico, music notation software I've been learning. You'll see that I displaced the "Mars" melody by one quarter (inserting a single 4/4 bar into its 5/4 context) to make it resolve with Mahler. (Technically, this melody is delayed by a full bar minus that one beat.) Although this puts Holst's melody out of sync with its own accompaniment, I think that works fine because the point of that accompaniment is that it is metrically unstable, due to the unusual quintuple meter and the alternation of triplets and eighths. I only wish I could get Gustavo Dudamel to conduct it, but Dorico + Note Performer do a pretty decent job!

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The idea of combining two works in which one is more distinctly melodic and the other more accompanimental is foundational to the most amazing live mashup experience I've ever had, which you may read about here. This is also the basic principle of my recent re-working of "Morning Has Broken" with a Bachian backup. And if that's not enough, the Double Gustav video now joins a long list of other such videos which you may sample here. 

Stay tuned for more random things I smushed together when I seemingly had nothing better to do.

A Piece for Voices as Instruments of Peace

Last spring, at the Catholic boys school where I teach, we graduated four strong singers who provided a dependable core for our choir the past few years. With a larger but less experienced group to start this school year, the pressure of preparing them to lead the singing at our monthly all-school Masses has had me looking for creative choices for what they might sing.

Our most recent Mass was on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi (Friday, Oct. 4). I suppose I could have taken one for the team and tried to play this (Liszt's virtuosic evocation of St. Francis talking to the birds - and no, I'm not serious that I would ever try that in this context), but I had the idea that it would be nice to sing the famous words of the "Prayer of St. Francis." I'll admit I was partly attracted to the opening line, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace," because I liked the musical resonance of the word instrument, even if the prayer is not literally referring to musical instruments. I thought it would be interesting to think of the choristers as musical instruments who deliver this prayer about being instruments for good.

The day when I was thinking about this happened to be the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, perhaps the most famous composer of chant melodies, so pretty soon that connection had inspired a simple, chant-like melodic figure for the opening words of Francis's prayer: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." Because I wanted a bass part with a narrow range and which would not be difficult to learn, I leaned into the idea of treating this phrase as if it belonged to a musical instrument by turning it into an ostinato - which is a fancy way of saying it repeats a lot as a kind of accompaniment to the simple tenor melody above. Even when the basses finally get to sing new words (after intoning that opening line eight times in the background for the first half of the prayer), the melodic figure is mostly unchanged. The piano plays a series of chords in open fifths which provide varied harmonic context for the unchanging ostinato.

Of course, one of the most enduring lessons I've learned in working as a composer is that writing simple is hard, so the resulting piece is a little more complicated for young singers than I might have hoped, mostly because of the uneven rhythmic flow.* But I'm stubborn, so we went ahead with the arrangement as I first wrote it, and they did a nice job singing it with reverence and delivering the text. I, at least, found it moving, and I've appreciated the opportunity to get to know this prayer better. Although it is supposed to sound "old" (Francis lived a long time ago), I believe that chant can serve as a very natural way to deliver words in a way that can still be relevant for listeners.

The recording here is a fully synthesized one I created for practice purposes - which means that for now you can only hear this vocal music in instrumental form. I added some strings and harp to give it a bit more character and distract from the sound of wordless synthesized voices. Given that everything is in middle to low register, the result is a little muddy, but I this does a decent job of showing the basic idea. And these are beautiful words. I'll likely keep tooling around with this, including having my church choir sing a variation of it (with real cellos, since I have a couple of cellists under my roof), but here is where it is for now:

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* UPDATE: After reviewing the song with the choir this morning, I'm remembering that probably the most challenging thing about singing this for my students is understanding how to be expressive in this style. Learning the melody notes and even the timing with 5/4 bars is not so bad - but the fact that the mostly linear, unrhythmic melodic style isn't conventionally "catchy" is an issue; and understanding how to shape phrases like this with subtlety, informed by natural text inflections, is not - it turns out - something that can be learned overnight.

Bach to Bach

Here's how I began an unfinished blog post back in 2017:

I'm slightly worried this blog is going to turn into a "Tales from the Organ Bench*" kind of thing, which really shouldn't happen until I've had at least two organ lessons in my life. But, much as my organ technique is kind of an improvised thing that has evolved in the context of real-time necessity, I take special delight in musical discoveries that happen under pressure.

I was sick for much of the week leading up to this past Sunday and had missed Thursday choir rehearsal, so things were already feeling a bit less settled than ideal. I then discovered about 20 minutes before the service that the music for the scheduled prelude (based on Salzburg, the opening hymn tune) was not on the premises, so I got to make up something on the spot, for which the poor listed composer will have to take all the blame. I've actually been scheduling hymn tune improvisations as preludes fairly regularly in 2017, so that wasn't too disconcerting.

The other place in the service where I'm most likely to do a bit of freestyling is at the end of Communion, depending on time needed. We generally have a choir anthem and a congregational hymn scheduled as the Eucharist is celebrated, but another 1-3 minutes of fill is often required. In such cases, I almost always just continue quietly with the hymn that's just been sung, sometimes noodling extra things here and there, slowing down, changing some harmonies, or making a fool of myself.

As it happened, both the anthem and hymn were pretty short, and so I'm most appreciative for the soprano who, during pre-service rehearsal, asked if I was going to have to keep playing that hymn over and over when we ran out of verses. The hymn, "Jesu, Jesu," based on a Ghanian folk song, is quite simple and circular, and as I thought about it while the service was already going, I did start to worry that I was going to get trapped in a loop. And, this tune wouldn't be high on my list of "tunes in which to get stuck looping." [UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's a tune I don't mind getting lost in.] 

So, as the service progressed, I started thinking about this potential problem and wondered if I should just plan on having something else ready to play once the hymn ended. In some cases like this, I'd pick something to anticipate the recessional hymn that would soon follow, but remembering that the communion hymn was in E Major, I did my standard mental trip to The Well-Tempered Clavier to ponder what Kapellmeister Bach had ready-made for me in this key. Then I remembered that the E Major prelude from the WTC Book I is in the same sort of lilting 6/8 [technically, it's in 12/8] as the hymn above, and it's a piece I know well as we used to analyze it every year in a class I taught.

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My WTC is always nearby, and as I had already chosen to play the folksy hymn on the piano, I was then able to segue right into the Bach. To my delight, it felt even more natural then I'd expected, and I'd also forgotten what a gratifying piece it is to play, fitting beautifully under the fingers and featuring lots of opportunity for dialogue between the hands. There are a couple of brief chromatic passages that made we sweat in the moment, but everything went smoothly. Because I did end up needing to fill time for a while, I played the Bach twice through (leaving out the brief coda the first time), and it could not have timed out more perfectly. If only every Sunday went this way.

I guess maybe I was waiting to make a recording to finish up the post, or maybe had some grander plan in mind, but that post never got published. Anyway, seven years later, I was thinking about this again since I recently made another unexpected Bach connection with a Sunday morning hymn. In this case, the processional hymn was to be the lovely, folksy Morning Has Broken, which is best known in a sweetly sung pop version by Cat Stevens. (That piano intro/interlude is famous, I guess, though it seems like an odd fit with the tune.) As this was a Sunday featuring a more relaxed musical style, with a couple of guitarists on hand, I knew I would be at the piano instead of the organ.

So, in looking for a prelude, I noticed I'd played Bach's well-known Prelude in C Major from Book I of  The Well-Tempered Clavier as prelude last time we'd sung this hymn (with the associated fugue played as postlude that day). I'm not really sure why I'd chosen that other than that it was low-key summer Sunday and C Major fit with the version of the tune in our hymnal. In thinking about it, I wondered if I could combine Bach's iconic, flowing arpeggios with Morning Has Broken. After all, Bach's prelude was turned into the accompaniment for a beautiful setting of Ave Maria by Gounod. (That may be one of the most perfect examples of building a new work on top of a completely, self-contained work. It's always felt to me like Gounod discovered the solution to a puzzle Bach had left behind.) After a bit of time noodling around in Dorico (notation software I'm learning upon the news that Finale, my old friend/nemesis, is being put out to pasture), I had something that works pretty well.

Since I had about five minutes of time to fill, I ended up playing Bach's original prelude flowing directly into my new "Morning has broken chords" arrangement. Although the first four bars stay very close to Bach, from there, the broken chords are led more by the tune in the left hand so that the entire arrangement is less mashup than homage. However, the power of suggestion should not be underrated in cases like this. I've often found that the mere hint of a connection can make two different works seem like natural partners. (Sometimes, if I'm playing a postlude with no specific connection to the recessional hymn which precedes, I'll start off the postlude - with apologies to the poor composer - by incorporating some bit of the hymn tune - even just a few notes. In my mind at least, this can make the entire postlude seem as if it was inspired by the hymn, even if the actual connection vanishes within a bar or two. Perhaps I'll post some examples of this kind of thing in a future post. UPDATE: There's one example found in this post.)

The recordings posted below were made in a slightly unusual way. I recorded them by playing a full-size Kurzweil digital keyboard connected to my computer, but I wasn't loving the sound. So I looked around at various virtual pianos on hand and found a nice "American Home Grand" in a set I'd downloaded for free. I simply ran the MIDI data through that, and I have to say I really like the result. The piano has a tender but clear sound that works really well here. It's still missing things I love about the feel and sound of a real piano, but it was fun to experiment with this not quite the real thing. Though a sampled virtual piano like this is intended to replicate the sound of an acoustic piano as closely as possible, in some ways the most interesting thing is discovering something new in a sound because it's different.

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To circle back to where I started, I also recorded the Ghanian hymn tune "Jesu, Jesu" transitioning into Bach's E Major Prelude using the same setup. The arrangement of the tune which I play here is worth a few words. Many hymnals publish the song with very simple, block chords, but this version (printed in F Major via that link) is written in a style that could be described as "Bachian," with active inner voices, countermelodies, and some subtle harmonic shadings. Though some might find the effect appropriative, I think it's a lovely meeting of two different styles that works quite well - and, of course, it makes the transition into Bach's prelude almost seamless. As for the prelude, I forgot how delightful and expressive it is. Though it looks conventional on the page, it's that perfect marriage of mechanical and magical that Bach does better than anyone. 

Since hymn tunes played such a vital role in Bach's career with all his chorale harmonizations and chorale preludes, it's very satisfying to find how well his music can work alongside these more contemporary melodies. (And I tossed in a little surprise at the end of the "Bach.")

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* See, from the past year (this footnote is from 2017 as well):

• NFL Pachelbel
• Sunday Jukebox
• Sunday at the Improv
• Triangulated Counterpoint

P.S. Just realized this at least the second blog post which I've titled "Bach to Bach." If you'd like to read these posts back to back, go here: MMmusing: Bach Day #3: Bach to Bach

It's a rap!

Last year in the summer I experimented with creating a major key version of Schubert's Erlkönig, and then before long, I'd added new English lyrics and eventually a voice to sing them in a post called: "It talks." So, perhaps it's no surprise that, having created a mashup of Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor with Dr. Dre's Still D.R.E., I realized I needed to create a rap to go with this new/old beat.

So I did, and though it's pretty silly, perhaps some music history profs will find it useful to help teach Vivaldi; the Red Priest drops some knowledge here students might want to know. Although I will likely find some need to tweak this more (getting the mix to work is a challenge - not so different from being an orchestrator/conductor), I'm going to release into the wild so you can use it for your cool weekend parties.

Piece out!

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