Wthen historians look back at the various projects associated with this blog, today's exhibit will not be among the most important or impressive in terms of inspiration or effort. But, today's project is certainly right on brand, inspired as it is by a technological happenstance which lit up my own interest. We'll get right to it.
I was sending a message to a student, who had fallen in love with the second movement of Rachmaninoff's second concerto and teaching it to himself, with links to more Rachmaninoff, including the famous 18th variation from the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. The Rachmaninoff Rhapsody was perhaps the first substantial piece of music I fell for. I can still remember lying in the back of the family van on some long trip while this music played on the cassette player - and, something grabbed me and my life changed. (Curiously enough, there was a day some months later when I finally turned the family LP over and discovered the same second piano concerto which kickstarted this post.)
As happens often enough, I went to start up the YouTube link I sent and then, while trying to go full-screen, somehow started up the same video in a different tab about ten seconds apart. And I was instantly mesmerized. I know it's possible I'm an audience of one for this specific phenomenon, but I find this kind of listening absorbing, especially if it's music I know really, really well. Maybe too well? There are multiple ways to think of this:
- The experience is a more literal version of how our minds will often be thinking ahead or behind to what's coming or what we've just heard. Yes, music exists in time, but our experience of it in time is not necessarily as linear. I know that when listening to music I know well, my mind will often skip ahead in anticipation of what's coming, and I imagine many will also continue to rehear a moment just past, even as the music keeps going forward. Time may be relentless...but we can fight back.
- The music ends up functioning sort of like a canon - a canon of a single recording staggered against itself. I had accidentally managed to separate the two identical videos by almost exactly two bars, although the amount of rubato used means the barlines rarely line up, so maybe we could also call this a "rubato canon?" Because the music generally moves in two-bar phrases, some of which begin as repetitions of the previous phrase, there are times when the two parts are almost doing the same thing, but the rubato always keeps each part sounding independent of the other. The near misses are sometimes tantalizing.
- Because there is no real formal reason the piece should be heard against itself this way, many moments don't work that well, especially if either one part is much louder than the other or when the harmonies clash particularly badly. However, the way "successful" moments float in and out is its own kind of satisfaction, perhaps more precious and meaningful because they are fleeting.
- Both of the previous points suggest that musical mashups are a kind of counterpoint. Although we tend to think of counterpoint as an art governed by rules which help intertwining parts function both independently and harmoniously, at a more general level, counterpoint is about music which pushes the mind to follow multiple contrasting but related threads at once. I've been teaching my seventh grade music students to sing The Fugue for Tinhorns (which is really a simple canon, not a fugue) and though they at first love just belting out their own parts, I keep pushing them to hear how cool it is when you can process all three parts at once. Moving from formal to informal counterpoint, this scene I've referenced often before suggests a way in which the great contrapuntal mind of Glenn Gould experienced the world. The pleasure I get from hearing the Rachmaninoff canon below is in the same vein.
- As wonderful as Rachmaninoff's music it, it is so familiar that its overwhelming richness can seem a bit too rich and even trite - the layered effect helps dissolve any saccharine qualities while sometimes yielding wonderfully over-ripe layered harmony.
- I also love the power of random, and for that reason, although I have tried a few different temporal distances between the two parts, I remain committed to the way I quite randomly first heard this canon. Of course, I could manipulate the timing of each part to make more purposeful sounding intersections, but for my purposes, the variability of the rubato canon is just what I want.
- Way back in Aught Nine, I made this Canon a 2 Tempi which combines two very different sopranos singing the same famous Puccini areas at speeds which continuously diverge from each other.
- The closest I've come to today's Rachmaninoff/Paganini canon involves Liszt's famous arrangement of another Paganini work. In this case, with a steadier tempo, the result is more about the contrapuntal fireworks: MMmusing: The Dread Pirate Oswald
- Note that this post also discusses the "Plunderphonics" of John Oswald, a sort of unofficial Patron Saint of MMmusing,
- Here we find the most famous octave passage in history played at various tempi by eight and then sixteen pianists at once: MMmusing: An Octave of Octaves
- Here we find four sopranos singing one of the shortest songs on record all at once: MMmusing: The Last Roses of Summer?
- Finally, and most absurdly and yet dear to may heart, we have two crooners singing The Christmas Song in different tempi AND keys. I can't tell you how often I've listened to this with great satisfaction: MMmusing: Trippin' with Chestnuts (and I'm also proud of the trippy visuals).
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