Not Quite Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Tonality but Were Afraid to Ask (but I’m Going to Tell You, Anyway)

Whenever I start off talking about how music is “put together,” whatever level of student I’m dealing with, I usually begin by making some obvious analogies.

When we talk about learning a language – and we all speak or read a language or two – I start by saying, We have
letters which we combine with other letters to form
words which we group together to form
sentences which convey ideas or thoughts or observations or whatever it is we’re talking about.

We can take these sentences and combine them in ways to create
paragraphs which, given the flow of those ideas or thoughts or whatever, form perhaps some kind of
conversation or, in the larger sense, a chapter in a book, perhaps, or maybe sub-sections of some kind that, strung together, form longer and longer units until, eventually, we might have a
short story, a novel or some kind of book whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

Once we start getting into larger groupings of these letters, we have more options as to what they can become or how they become something.

For instance, the idea of putting words into sentences requires some kind of logical way of conveying sense, and so we have singular and plural forms of nouns, tenses of verbs, agreement between nouns and adjectives; we have pronouns and adverbs and adjectives and prepositions. And how they’re used we call grammar.

So the same kind of thing – being careful not to be too literal – exists in music. We can start with a tone which we call a
pitch which we can combine with other pitches in a linear way to create a
melody which, depending on how we shape it, can be grouped into larger units called
phrases which can also be grouped into larger units comparable to a sentence which can also be grouped together to form the equivalent of musical “paragraphs” until we have
sections which might be identifiable by different ways to create larger and larger units until we’d have something more or less complete which might be a
complete piece of music or, if not quite so complete but leading on to more, would be called
movements which, in their totality, would form larger and larger pieces of music, compositions that might be called
a minuet or a sonata or a symphony or maybe a song, or an opera.

We can also take another pitch and add it on top of our original single pitch to create an
interval and then, by combining two intervals or more on top of each other, you create a
chord which can be played in succession, one after the other, to form a
chord progression which then, depending on how we group them, can form
phrases and larger units until we have sections and movements and eventually a complete composition, whether it’s a song, sonata or symphony.

There are of course many other things these units can form: like leggos, these blocks of melodies and chord progressions are the building blocks any composer would use for any piece of music, no matter what it’s called, no matter how long or short it is, no matter when it’s written but speaking primarily in terms of standard Western Classical Music between, say, 1600 and the present.

Another aspect of organizing pitches, intervals and chords into a series of chords called a “progression” is what we call
harmony which is the equivalent in music of grammar in language.

We can take phrases and put them together and they have a kind of “musical punctuation” with something called a
cadence which can mean one thing to somebody in marching band (a repeated rhythmic pattern you march to) or in the military (“sound off!”) but in classical music, it refers to the “point of repose” at the end of a phrase, how it comes “to rest.”

So, like a comma, you can have a “half cadence.” Or, like a period, a “full cadence.”

There can also be something that might be the equivalent of a semi-colon which continues the sentence with another phrase in order to give you more information or possibilities of understanding, and this might be a “deceptive cadence,” one that doesn’t go where you expect it (it deceives you by going someplace unexpected).

In the simpler music of the late-18th Century, for instance, these cadences can be fairly obvious. This is a fingerprint of the “classical” or “left-brained” style.

But in more complex music – for instance the first half of the 18th century or the second half of the 19th Century which we might describe as more “right-brained” – these phrases can run together and sound like the musical equivalent of a run on sentence which seems to never stop, where the cadences may blend together in such ways you have these long strings of phrases, perhaps taking you into different directions – and maybe digressions like, for instance, pointing out somebody’s expression or how the sun glinted off the new-fallen snow – before taking you back to the original intent of the thought and getting it bloody well finished. End.

(See? That’s two sentences of 26 words in the simpler style as opposed to one sentence of 108 words in the more complex style.)

Now, expectation is something very important in music: a composer sets up certain expectations and if those expectations are satisfactorily met, the piece (or example) could be satisfying – or, if it’s too predictable, it might be unsatisfying or not as satisfying. So, composers like to throw in bits of things that might not be expected – a note in the melody that might raise an eyebrow, a chord that might make you (even minutely) sit back a moment, a resolution of a chord that… well, just wasn’t what you expected.

These may be emotional responses and they have ways, in varying degrees, of turning the unexpected into some form of
tension which then requires, sooner or later, some form of
release or resolution.

This tension could be a kind of dissonance if only because it’s unexpected and requires it to be resolved. When it resolves, it resolves to something expected but maybe overdue… and we sit back with some kind of “sigh of relief.” We have arrived at the expected and this would be a consonance.

You can read more about consonance and dissonance at this earlier post.

I often describe something that is entirely consonant as the musical equivalent of plain oatmeal, perhaps not very satisfying in the long run. While we often think of dissonance as something ugly, it can be a carefully placed chord that spikes your interest – and, given our bowl of bland oatmeal, might be the addition of maple flavor or raisins or a dash of cinnamon which can be very pleasant. Of course, you could also add, say, cayenne pepper a dash of Mongolian Throat-Burning Sauce and the response might be not so pleasant (though there's probably somebody out there who’d like it).

Dissonance is like adding spice to food: it enhances everything around it and makes it more interesting. The degree of dissonance and how it’s handled makes the difference: a badly plunked chord where it doesn’t belong or doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do can ruin it, expectations or not.

What is your emotional response to the cliff-hanger ending of a chapter or a story: will the wedding be postponed? Will our hero, knocked unconscious in that bomb-blast, revive in time to rescue his abducted partner? This is what makes a novel a "page-turner:" to find out what's going to happen next, you keep reading. I hate May in television season when all my favorite shows end in cliff-hangers: I have to deal with this tension all summer long until we find out “how it works out” in the fall! Yikes! Talk about waiting for the tension to resolve! But they make sure you're going to tune in to that first show of the new season.

So this “play of tension/release, consonance/dissonance” is very important to the organization of music and becomes a very important part of something we call
Harmony, which doesn’t necessarily imply something that is merely “harmonious” (as in peaceful).

Harmony, in this sense, is the study of the grammar of music – what makes chords work and how they work together, moving from one chord to the next. This hierarchy of chords is similar to the hierarchy of pitches in a given scale (see below). There is a perceived logic to the way one pitch moves to the next and the way one chord moves to the next.

Music students take courses in theory which, unlike science where a “theory” is something that’s not yet proven, is regarded in music as a collection of “rules.” And we’re not supposed to break these rules until we’ve figured out how to use them (some teachers say “never”) – and then we do so with the caution that a badly broken rule is not the same as a “well-broken” rule.

In other words, there’s a logic to the rules of Harmony but if we apply a similar (if different) kind of logic to breaking them, then we can create a different sound out of our chords with new expectations and perhaps new ways of applying the same old concepts but with a new sound.

This is how we’ve gotten from monks singing Gregorian Chant in 900A.D. to orchestras playing a Beethoven symphony in 1803. It will also become more important as we work our way through the rest of the 19th Century toward the 20th Century when many traditional classical music lovers would think “there are no rules, any more! They don’t write music like they used to.”

There are not the same rules any more, just like they weren’t using the same rules they'd used in 1775 to write a symphony in 1875.

If everybody kept writing music like they used to, we’d still be a bunch of monks singing Gregorian Chants.

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One important thing to realize is that “theory” (or the study of these musical rules – “harmony” is only a part of this) comes after the fact. It analyzes what’s been done and codifies the rules into some kind of awareness of what’s accepted and not accepted.

Keeping that in mind, if we’re talking about the rules that Haydn and Beethoven may have lived by, it’s unfair to criticize composers like Bach in the early-18th Century or Josquin des Pres in the 15th who came before them for not following the rules. They had their own rules – but very often, these rules (at least early on) were not written down: they were understood. You did it this way because that’s how it worked.

Bach learned how to write music by doing two things: he studied other composers’ music and he wrote lots of music to both imitate those composers and find out how – and more importantly why – these things worked. He didn’t read text books. There was no “Idiots Guide to Writing a Fugue.”


Theorists, long after Bach died, examined the fugues Bach wrote and came up with different ways of codifying the rules of fugue-writing. This meant composers in the 19th and 20th Centuries could read these books and no longer have to “reinvent the wheel.” But it also turned fugue-writing into a kind of musical puzzle which often left the final product sounding a bit too academic.

When we take our single isolated note and play it on a piano, we can create a scale by playing the successive notes on the keyboard, moving upward till we’ve reached that same note an octave higher than our original pitch.

This is called a scale and the pitches within the scale follow certain patterns of whole steps (here, shown by slurs underneath the notes) and half steps (the thingee shown above the notes) that can become major or minor scales – there are others and variants of these, too, but these are the most important ones for music between 1700 and the present day. In the illustration, it's a C Major scale. C is the primary pitch generating the scale, so it's called, for some reason, the tonic.

You can call them by their pitch names or, if you were European, you’d use syllables that had been applied to them since the 1400s – do (rhymes with “doe”), re, mi, fa, sol (pronounced “so”), la and ti before we come back to “do.” Now I have that song from The Sound of Music running through my head… But still, it’s not a bad introduction to what we call “solfege” (SOUL-fedzh)…

The notes in these scales have different roles, for lack of a better idea: the main pitch – in this case, the C – is called the tonic so when a piece is called “Thing in C Major,” that means the “key” of the piece is C Major built on the tonic, C.

A key is basically the set of pitches in that given scale. The key could be G Major or F Minor and the scale would be the appropriate pattern for that scale (major or minor) starting with that tonic (G or F). It can also imply other pitches in relation to it, pitches that are not in this particular scale but may be more or less related to it.

Since the second most important pitch in a C Major Scale is G – it just is – it is, unfortunately, called the dominant. Doesn’t that imply it’s actually the most important pitch? Uhm… yeah, this is where that whole logic thing kinda breaks down? But that’s how the term is used in music.

The F in that C Major scale, one step under the dominant, G, is called the “subdominant” (well, that makes sense).

The Tonic, Dominant and Subdominant are the three most important chords to create a basic chord progression - going in reverse order from the weaker to the stronger: the subdominant normally leads to the dominant which eventually resolves to the tonic. Like this:

a basic cadential formula

Going back to the scale (above), the note D, one step above the tonic, C, is called the “supertonic” (though it does not have any particularly super powers: it comes from the Latin meaning “above”).

The third note of the scale – in this case, the E – is called the “mediant” as it’s in the middle, between the tonic and the dominant – and the interval of a third between them, at that. Consequently, going in the opposite direction, the note that’s a third below the tonic, not quite halfway to the dominant, is the pitch A which is called the “submediant.” The note directly beneath the final or upper tonic, the B, is given the unglamorous name “Leading Tone” which is not like a “leading lady” in the cast, but a tone that leads to the tonic… If you sang the scale only to the B, it would feel unresolved – and you’d have to resolve the anticipation by playing the next note to end the scale – C.

There are stories that Leopold Mozart didn’t need an alarm clock to wake up his sleepy son, Wolfgang: he’d play a scale and end on the leading tone. This would automatically awaken him and he’d run to the keyboard and play the tonic to resolve the unexpected tension caused by… waiting. Cute story, probably not true, but still…

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Now, the idea of a scale with all these “scale degrees” creates the “universal set of available pitches” called a key. There are then off-shoots of these sets related to the original scale degrees which could create new keys because, like consonance/dissonance and the idea of variety, things get pretty oatmeally if we stay only in the original key.

So we can move or “migrate” to a different key – this is called modulation and there are any number of ways we can move from one key to another and to which key we can modulate to.

In the 17th and 18th Centuries, composers stuck to the basically closer keys – meaning those built on the scale degrees of the original tonic key (except for the 'leading tone'). And the two most logical were to the dominant for G Major and to the submediant if you wanted to go to a minor key, in this case A Minor. Now, I didn’t get into key signatures, here, but C Major and A Minor have the same key signature (no sharps or flats) – therefore, they’re closely related. Never mind that, for now, that’s just one of these rules.

But later, through the 19th Century, composers would become more adventuresome. Mozart in the 1780s was a little more adventuresome than most of his colleagues and it’s interesting that while we now consider Mozart one of the Great Composers from his era, he was not a typical composer from his era, and his sense of adventure often perplexed listeners who would often prefer something that was… well, a little more oatmeally…

Beethoven and Schubert (early-19th Century) and other composers like Brahms (late-19th Century) might just start moving to less closely related keys, in fact to keys whose tonic pitches aren’t even a part of that initial tonic scale. These, when first heard, would create that kind of raised eyebrow – what’s he doing, here? It created a sense of the unexpected – some tension – and the expectation was finally resolved when you’d come back to that original key.

This resolution of the dissonance – the statement of the initial key; the modulation away from it; the return to the initial key – became a hallmark of classical music between around 1700 to at least 1900.

Today, we call this tonality.

That initial tonic key now suggests a whole operation of rules that guide us in the control of expectations and how to treat the unexpected – the digression from the initial key to its inevitable return to it.

This began falling apart as music became more complex – again, the simplicity/complexity thing – when composers started going further afield for their digressions and the concept of the return was lessened because… well, sometimes you couldn’t recognize the initial tonic any more.

But more on that, later…

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So basically, the whole idea of tonality is music that is centered in a given key (the tonic scale is basically the universal set of available pitches; later, this would become a basic set which could branch off into other more or less related sets) and which is conscious of the importance of that tonic, the dramatic impact of getting away from that tonic (for variety, if nothing else) and the significance of eventually returning to that tonic.

You could do that in a phrase: the first half of the phrase (to a half cadence) might modulate briefly to the dominant, then by the time you reach the full cadence at the end of the next phrase, you've firmly returned to the initial tonic. And you can do that within larger units as well.

So in this extended view, the formula becomes something like:

statement + digression + restatement (or return) = Tonality.

Interestingly, though Bach and Mozart and Beethoven were all consciously working within the rules of what we call Tonality, the term itself wasn’t invented until the 19th Century by one or another French theorist (not composers, but people who analyzed composers’ music). Some sources say it was first used in 1810, others in 1821. Regardless, that’s a lot later than Bach writing in 1720!

So you see how “after-the-fact” theory really is, compared to the music it analyzes?

Now, this isn’t THE END, unfortunately… because this concept of tonality is the hallmark behind the idea of FORM in music, during this period of time.

The structure of a piece of music isn’t actually determined by the melody which you may think is front and center in your attention, but it’s determined by the use of tonality which is constantly operating in the background whether you’re aware of it or not.

But, for now, we’ll say “more on that, later…”

- Dick Strawser

Classical Music and Terminology: Boggling the Mind on a Whole New Level since 1600

Terminology is confusing.

Sometimes I think it’s because people “in-the-know” want to maintain their elitist standing and  create these terms to confuse the outsiders. Instead of a secret handshake, it’s like some kind of secret wink.

Just as computer geeks have their own language and people in the insurance or banking business insist on bamboozling me with terms about interest rates and investments, musicians have their own way of getting back at the world.

When I worked in the classical-music-on-the-radio field, there were those who felt we needed to explain everything in laymen’s terms, translating the foreign words so they made sense to an audience only half listening. It was considered “off-putting” to give a piece of music its original French title or describe a tempo or playing technique when a translation or short definition would be better.

So perhaps that’s why I never got into sports: no one on a TV broadcast was going to explain every single time what a birdie was, or why a quarterback looks just as big as a fullback or what RBI means. The argument, I’m told, is, “if you want to follow the sport, you learn the lingo.”

So…?

Anyway, I admit there are tons of terms – and concepts – not all of which are easy to figure out, especially since music (or rather, the classical music I’m talking about: Western Classical Music between, say, 1600 and 1900) originated in Italy. So we have lots of Italian words for tempo indications (in fact, even tempo might not be universally understood: from the Latin “tempus” meaning time but in reality how fast that time is flying, so to speak). The basic handful would be

Largo – very slow
Adagio – slow
Andante – not too slow, more of a walking tempo (from “andare, to walk”)
Allegro – usually considered “fast” but more like “lively”
Vivace – fast
Presto – real fast

Even Germans and Russians will use these Italian terms though the French, being French, will use their own language. Otherwise, the Italian basics are fairly universal. We might talk about American composer Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings but would it sound as good as if we called it the Slow for Strings?

The piano, for instance, was originally a pianoforte, advanced technology over the older keyboard instrument called the harpsichord because, unlike that instrument from the Baroque era, the piano could play both soft and loud at the same time, whereas the harpsichord was either one or the other until you switched some levers to engage more strings. You couldn’t play a crescendo – that is, going from one dynamic level to a louder one – on a harpsichord, but you could on a piano. But since piano means “soft” and forte means “loud,” should we say I’m playing the Softloud?

The Doric Quartet in an intense moment

On the other hand, plain old English is good enough for other things, like “string quartet” which means a group of four string players but not just any four strings players: a string quartet is made up of two violins, a viola and a cello. If you had one violin, a viola, a cello and a bass (or double bass), then it would be “a quartet of strings.”

So you’d think a “piano quartet” would be four pianos, right? Sorry – that’s an ensemble that consists of a piano and three stringed instruments, usually a violin, a viola and a cello. Just as a “piano trio” is a piano, a violin and a cello.

And just because a piano has strings in it, it's played by hitting keys which activate hammers which then strike those strings so it's classed as a percussion instrument - like a drum or a xylophone because it's something you hit. Or is played by means of hitting.

(The roof, alas, is not generally considered a percussion instrument.)

The Appalachian Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina

An orchestra is a larger group of instruments combining various woodwind, brass and stringed instruments along with percussion which could include the harp, but it’s not necessarily a specific list of instruments. You could have pairs of woodwinds – flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon – or maybe just oboes and bassoons, or maybe a pair of these and a single flute. In Mozart’s day, you might have trumpets but they didn’t use trombones in a “symphony orchestra” until the next generation, even though trombones were often found for special effects in the opera orchestra. Go figure...

(Let’s save the difference between a chamber orchestra, a symphony orchestra (or just a symphony) and a philharmonic for later…)

A Bach-sized Orchestra

Originally, in Johann Sebastian Bach’s day (the early-1700s), an “orchestra” could be just a handful of players – maybe six or seven or a dozen. Mozart, in the 1780s, probably had 20-some or more, but not much more. A large orchestra in Beethoven’s day (the next generation) might have 45. By the end of the 19th Century, orchestras could have 100 players. Today, unless you’re playing a piece that required more, a typical orchestra might have about 75 players. So the term is a little vague and dependent on lots of other… things.

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Another thing that can be confusing are these “eras” that we divide classical music into. First of all, these are approximations – the Classical Era did not begin on January 1st, 1750. The Romantic Era did not end on Dec. 31st, 1899.

And there’s a problem already – classical music and Classical music. The generic ‘lower-case’ classical refers to the “art music” side of music as opposed to what we consider the “popular music” side of it. Which becomes a problem because “art music” sounds so high-falutin’ and must mean, conversely, that “classical music is unpopular.” Granted, it has a smaller audience – call it elitist if you want, or a niche, in modern marketing terms – but it has its devoted followers.

And Classical music (upper-case) refers to the era of Mozart and Haydn, between 1750 and around 1800, give or take...

Paganini

Now of course there’s also the added conundrum that, in the 1800s, popular music was being written by composers who wrote what we consider “art music” today. We think of Johann Strauss as “classical” but in his day, he was the equivalent of (pick a popular band of the day). If you consider the impact each had on their respective audiences as well as on their fellow musicians, Nicolo Paganini, a wizard of the violin in the early-1800s, could be described as the Michael Jackson of his day. Not only did both do amazing new things technically (Jackson as a dancer, Paganini as a violinist), they both knew how to put on a good show, toured all over the place, brought in huge sums of money, and had unfortunate ends.

Michael Jackson

Remember Michael Jackson’s thing about wearing one glove? Franz Liszt, as a handsome young man with long hair, played the piano with his profile to the audience (before that, the piano was placed so the pianist's back was to the audience) and would come out to the piano, sit down and peel his gloves off his hands before playing: it is said women used to swoon when he did this.

So let’s think of “art music” as music that requires you to “listen actively” to it – emotionally and intellectually engaged in it (right brain and left brain – check) where as “popular music” only requires that you enjoy it, meaning “passive listening” is sufficient to your enjoyment. You can listen to “art music” passively and still enjoy it, but there’s more to it than just that. If a pop song today gets you moving, that’s really all it needs to do (not that you can’t use your left-brain to analyze it but that’s not its intent).

The other thing is that we can talk about “classical” elements in music and we can talk about “romantic” elements in music – going back to the right brain and left brain idea: that the logical, literal left-brain personality is (like Apollo) “classical” and that the irrational, emotional, spontaneous right-side of the brain is (like Dionysus) “romantic.”

Let the confusion begin!

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So, most text books will say the Baroque Era is from 1600 to 1750 and the Classical Era is from 1750 to 1800. Some say 1820, others may say 1825 – give or take. (For anyone concerned about what’s correct on a test, any of these three end-dates would be deemed acceptable, as difficult as the concept of vagueness might be for those of you more literal and left-brained.)

J. S. Bach

If the Baroque began as a simplifying reaction to the complexity of the Renaissance around 1600, Baroque music had become more complicated around 1700 so that by the time of Bach’s death in 1750 – the arbitrary end-point for the age – it was just as complex in its own way as the Renaissance had become before 1600.

Then the Classical Era began as a simplifying reaction to the complexity of the Baroque, but it had already started before the death of Bach in 1750. In fact, some of the leading exponents of this “new simplicity” were sons of Bach himself – especially #2 Son, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach and his last son, Johann Christian Bach (there were, in all 20 children and every son became a composer – even the one who today would be called a ‘special needs child’ – and it’s quite possible several of the daughters were, too). The Bach Boys would refer to their dad as “The Old Pigtail” (behind his back).

Another great Baroque composer – George Frederic Handel (of “Hallelujah Chorus” fame) – lived past 1750 and was still composing in a Baroque style. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the leading “Classical” composers, was born in 1756 but Handel died three years later, still composing Baroque-style music (I guess he didn’t get the memo).

Mozart died in 1791, Haydn in 1809 – but by 1800, Beethoven was well on his way to becoming the Next Big Name with his first symphony and his first set of string quartets, all published or first heard in 1800. While to us, these still sound very much like the music of his teacher Haydn and his favorite composer Mozart, to listeners at the time, they were modern and innovative and, in some cases, “way out.” By 1803, when Beethoven wrote his 3rd Symphony, the “Eroica,” he was on to something quite new. And with that, Beethoven introduced what we consider “Romantic” Music for the 19th Century.

The problem is, until the 1820s, most of the other composers from this period were still writing in the Classical Style – Beethoven was kind of a one-man phenomenon, so it’s not entirely accurate to say he was the leader of the Romantic Era – he was it! At least for a while.

But more on that, later.

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Before 1600, we could divide “classical music” into two types –

sacred: since the church was the employer of most professional musicians and it was the church who felt the need to write down and eventually print the music written for the church service…

and

secular: music for everyday use, usually the entertainment music or – gosh – what we’d consider “popular” music today and which didn’t need to be written down since it was played by itinerant or “free-lance” musicians who, we might say, “will play hit tunes for food,” and who passed it on to future generations the same way folk songs and the ancient epics of Homer survived – through the “oral tradition” (as opposed to the “printed edition”).

But composers could write music for the church and they could write “love songs” for popular consumption. Josquin de Prez (or des Pres) could be famous for his masses but he might be more popular for that little “Cricket” song which was wildly popular in his day. (You can hear a not great performance here,but it gives you the translation of the text and a little story about it.)

In the Baroque Era, Bach was a Lutheran and a church composer who wrote mostly cantatas for the weekly church services. (Cantatas were the Protestant equivalent of the Catholic Mass. Even though one of the greatest Masses in the repertoire is by Johann Sebastian Bach, it was not written for a Catholic service, but was a compendium of different parts of the traditional mass texts that Bach could have used for various parts of the Lutheran service, over the years – or had been written upon request for use in a Catholic service by a Catholic king in Dresden.)

George Frederic Handel without his wig

Handel, meanwhile, was a “court musician” who was more or less employed by the King of England at various times in his career but also depended on the patronage of aristocrats who paid him to compose for them (“will write for money”). He also made (and lost) fortunes in the opera business, writing numerous operas for the London audiences, not all of which were successful. The only reason he’d write an oratorio – a work for chorus and vocal soloists with orchestra on a Biblical or sacred story as opposed to a typical opera with its story about love, intrigue and murder often based on Greek mythology or ancient history – was because the opera houses were closed during Lent and so for those forty days when he and his singers still needed to make money, he wrote these oratorios which were described as “sacred operas without staging or costumes” because, being based on religious subjects, that was okay. However, God-fearing (or at least Church-fearing) people stayed away because they saw the combination of sacred stories and profane opera as something sacrilegious.

During the times Bach had been employed by aristocrats (before he got the church gig in Leipzig), he would write instrumental music to perform for his patrons and their guests, back in the day before TV. There would be concertos and solo instrumental works and suites. One of his responsibilities in Leipzig, though, involved a secular hat and he would present concertos and suites for the public who – lacking a concert hall – would gather at Zimmermann’s Coffee Shop (apparently bigger than your average Starbucks today) where they would have public concerts.

Handel also composed concertos and sonatas and suites for secular audiences, most famously his “Water Music” which consisted of several suites of dances meant to be played by musicians floating along behind the King’s barge while out on the River Thames. If you saw any of the celebrations of the Queen’s Jubilee before last summer’s Olympics, you heard them playing some of Handel’s “Water Music” on their Thames outing.

(Incidentally, I mean the musicians had their own smaller, less ornate barges that trailed behind the Royal Barge. I realize that sounded like they might be being dragged along in inner tubes...)

A suite, by the way, was a collection of “dance movements” of different tempos and contrasting moods – at times lyrical or lively but originating in music to dance to – that were now meant to be listened to while you were sitting down (especially if you were on a barge in the river). They were now “stylized” dances – dances no longer meant to be danced to.

This didn’t change much in the latter part of the 18th Century. Haydn spent most of his life employed by Prince Esterhazy who owned a palace in a rural area not far from Vienna but, basically, in the middle of nowhere. For his own entertainment, he maintained an orchestra and an opera theater – also a marionette theater – and employed the musicians and singers to maintain a steady schedule of performances. He often had guests from Vienna who would spend weeks during the summer at his palace, and a new symphony or opera by his composer-in-residence Franz Josef Haydn was very much looked forward to.

(Here is a post from 2009 for another class I had offered relating to a concert that season with the Harrisburg Symphony. It contains pictures of Haydn and the place he worked. Ignore the video clips: as luck would have it, those have been removed and are no longer available.)

In this picture (see right), Haydn (with reddish hair) is playing the violin while rehearsing a string quartet with some friends, including Mozart (in the light blue coat) playing viola.

Mozart didn’t fare so well. He began being employed by the narrow-minded Archbishop of Salzburg who also maintained an orchestra of which one violinist was Mozart’s father, Leopold. But he quickly tired of the situation there and went to Vienna hoping to get a job at the Imperial Court.

The Mozarts on Tour: Leopold & Kids

Now, when he was a boy, Mozart’s father Leopold took him and his sister "Nannerl" around Europe like a traveling music act, showing off his children and earning a good bit of money but mostly in hopes he could find a new and better (or at least better-paying) job for the family in some other aristocratic court – preferably the Empress in Vienna. But that didn’t materialize.

So eventually Mozart, then 25, left Salzburg for Vienna where he ended up writing operas, some for the Imperial Court, others for public theaters, but also piano concertos for his own concerts (or those by friends or students of his), lots of chamber music, some of which was sold to publishers for the “amateur market” because amateur musicians who had no TV or stereo sound systems made their own music for each other’s enjoyment and, if something was popular, they wanted to play it themselves.

But Mozart had a higher sense of life-style than he had an income to support it and was always dealing with financial issues no matter how much (or little) money he brought in from all this. It wasn’t what killed him, but the fact that he died at the age of 35 is often blamed on the stress of trying to compete in a “free-lance market” that didn’t really exist yet (more on that, later).

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So between the monks of the Middle Ages and the appearance of Beethoven around 1800, we have two points to make about the finances of music:

In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the primary employer of “art” musicians was The Church (either Catholic or, after the Reformation, Protestant).

In the Baroque and Classical periods, while the Church was still a frequent employer of musicians, more of them were now employed by the aristocratic courts who maintained private orchestras, opera theaters and resident composers who were kept on the payroll like one hired cooks, gardeners and cleaning staff. Haydn and his musicians, for instance, dined with the servants. Only in major cities like Vienna or London was it possible to make a living as a free-lance musician and this still depended largely on patron support whether from aristocrats or the “new rich” of the upper middle class, those successful merchants and entrepreneurs who could afford to imitate the aristocratic life-style but who lacked the heritage of being born to it.

Things would change in the 19th Century.

But (and sing along with me, here) more on that, later…

- Dick Strawser

What the Fugue?

In what is basically my “Introduction to Music” Class, in which I’m terrorizing five students majoring in non-music, we’re talking about Renaissance and Baroque music right now. This post is for them or for anyone else who’s heard the term “fugue” and wondered just what a fugue is.

First of all – yes, it’s pronounced “fyoog” and it comes from a Latin word meaning “flight.” For a lot of listeners, this could imply the “fight or flight response” when faced with something scary. For musicians in the 17th and 18th Centuries, it could also be “flight of fancy” as any organist or keyboard player worth his salt would love to improvise fugues – making them up on the spot. As a composer, I can tell you they’re not easy to compose even when you take your time, but every music student who ever took a music theory class (and certainly a “counterpoint” class) had to contend with writing fugues.

The problem is, it’s a very academic-sounding procedure and can sound very dry when it’s used without much imagination.

We start with the idea of a theme presented by itself. Technically, it’s now a “subject.”

Then the subject is heard in a second “voice” or line (either above or below the first one) and we hear a duet with the subject in the new voice and “something else” continuing in the original voice. Then it would probably continue in a third voice.

(Incidentally, to clear up any confusion, a "voice" refers to a line of music whether vocal or instrumental and not the number of voices or instruments playing it: five people can be singing a line of Gregorian Chant but it is still monophonic, or a single line.)


There are four-voice fugues and some five-voice fugues but the more voices (or instrumental lines) you add, the more complicated the process becomes. Especially if you’re writing for a single keyboard instrument like a piano.

If you’re writing for an organ, three voices divide nicely between two hands and then you can throw a fourth line into the pedals, played by the feet. It’s certainly easier to play if you’re dealing with several instruments like a string quartet or an orchestra, but that doesn’t always make it easier to write.

When the subject is only suggested – for instance, the opening motive is all you hear, but it moves around from voice to voice without actually stating the whole theme – this is an example of “imitation.” One line is “imitating” another but not stating or quoting it exactly. It’s a good way to get mileage out of a line of music.

And for greater variety, when this subject “migrates” from one voice to another, it usually appears starting at a different pitch. Technically, this would be a modulation to (usually) the dominant key but the important thing at this introductory level, it’s just a different pitch-area than you first heard it (which would be the “tonic”). The idea is that you start in the familiar “tonic” and move to a secondary area like the “dominant” and then return to the “tonic.” This is another form of creating tension and resolving it – you expect it to digress and return.

Here is a humorous approach to "How to Write a Fugue." Considering a fugue is considered a high-point of academic achievement in music, the presenter here has fun with his academic approach.

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The long stretch where his three different selves are talking about how the procedure works points out the need for differentiation in these musical lines which cannot be understood when different people are speaking at the same time. It would be better - Monday Morning Critic that I am - if he had taken a few more breaths, let one voice drop out for a bit so you could hear something in another "voice," and above all used the same phrase now and then so you could recognize his subject in one voice or another. But hey...

Still, it's a good example of how the process of the fugue works. And does it really sound like a pop song when you're done with it?

Now, in this short fugue – from a set of 48 preludes and fugues by Bach, this is No. 2 from Book 1 – you can follow how he uses the “subject” (or theme) and surrounds it in other voices with additional, independent lines.

(Again, even though it's played by one keyboard instrument, there are still separate strands of music, possibly even playable in one hand: in this case, there are three "voices" or strands in the music, despite the number of instruments involved.)

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Follow the subject, here: it enters in what’s actually the middle “voice” at the beginning (0:00) then follows immediately in the upper “voice” at 0:06 – some free stuff before the subject appears in the lower voice at 0:17. He “suggests” the subject at 0:22 when we hear the opening bit, the main motive of the subject, which is bantered back and forth. Then at 0:39, the full subject returns in the middle voice (again) but rather than go the full round of other voices, it wanders off in some more “free stuff” based on the opening motive… then at 0:54/55 it shows up in the top voice but again doesn’t continue in the other voices as it did the first time.

Instead, he gets more mileage out of tossing the opening motive back and forth, starting at 0:58… but then the subject shows up in the bass (the lowest voice) at 1:11 coming right out of the “free stuff”… It comes to brief halt (an unfinished cadence) on a really crunchy little chord at 1:18 (speaking of “dissonance” which needs to resolve). If you can, STOP the clip right there: could it end there? No – he needs to extend the cadence so it resolves that harmonic tension at 1:21 by bringing the subject back in one more time before ending it.

Anyway, that’s one way of writing a fugue – taking one theme and moving it around in different voices and adding other voices to it to fill out this polyphonic texture. Technically, we’ve got “several voices” (poly-phony) – specifically three, even though it’s one piano – which move independently of each other both in terms of melodic line, linear shape and individual rhythms (counterpoint) and which also follows a procedure we call “a fugue.”

Not all polyphony uses counterpoint (or is “contrapuntal”) and not all counterpoint is a fugue. But all fugues would most likely be examples of counterpoint and create the impression of multiple voices or polyphony. It is possible for a violin to play a fugue, but it takes skill both in writing it and playing it: even though it’s a single instrument, it can still give you the perception of multiple “voices” or lines.

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A “canon” is a simple form of creating texture out of a single line, but it has to be written in such a way it works both as a melody (horizontally) and as harmony (the vertical sonorities and the way chords move from one to the next).

“Row, Row, Row your boat” is an example of a canon (technically, it’s called a “round”). At a specific point, you can have the next person come in and now two voices work as one melody harmonizing itself. Many of these work with several voices.

Here’s an example of a popular 13th Century (medieval) round called “Sumer is icumen in” (Old English for “Summer Is a-Comin’ In”: it’s sung over a repeating bass drone which is itself two voice parts.

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It’s sung through once as a single line, then by two voices and then, finally, by four voices.

Since it’s all very basic, it sounds like a denser and denser texture using only one or two chords, especially when sung by all men or all women who sound pretty much the same.

And now for something not quite completely different:

The examples of Canon and Fugue which Jan Swafford uses in his book also includes a couple of far more complex canons, some of them notated in such a way they’re a “puzzle” to figure out – or sometimes a clue is offered and the performers are supposed to figure it out. The second voice of the canon comes in at the same pitch and begins at the odd little sign in the second measure.


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These are often “intellectual feats” and can be amazing that they work at all – they’re not meant to be sung around a camp fire after a few beers, anyway.

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Another “variant” of this texture is called “imitative” (or “imitative counterpoint”) where the individual lines are similar to the others, at least to begin, but are not authentically as complex as a canon or fugue. This just means the lines sound almost alike and then, at some point, go off on their own. This is “imitation,” not completely independent but not the same, either.

(In fact, it strikes people as odd that a complex procedure like a fugue would be the ultimate example of counterpoint and yet, since the lines are so closely related, they’re no longer technically “independent.” But yet, that’s one of the hall-marks of counterpoint, isn’t it? Yeah, well… everything that has terminology is unfortunately never all that consistent, anyway…)

Here’s an example of something that sounds like it could start off becoming a fugue, but doesn’t. Each voice enters playing the same phrase – or at least what turns out to be the start of the phrase.

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This is the end of a concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach – one of six called “The Brandenburg Concertos” because they were written for a German nobleman, the Margrave of Brandenburg – and starts off with some “imitative” counterpoint – focusing on the horizontal. Notice, though, at 0:20, it lightens up a little bit and becomes more vertical before referring to the opening motive but without becoming as complex as it was initially. Then, at 0:35-1:07, this opening section repeats. Then, it starts playing around with this theme – then, by 1:14, it’s primarily one line with a simple accompaniment for a while… Then at 1:20, back to the opening imitation; at 1:40, the vertical bit… and so on. So even though it starts off kind of “fugue-like” it’s not really going to become a fugue – and in fact has bits of other kinds of texture (even if only momentarily) to offer a little variety. But all the while that scurrying motive that starts the piece is almost ever present.

One of the most famous pieces by George Frederic Handel is his oratorio Messiah which is a large-score choral work with singers, vocal soloists and an orchestra. Oratorios usually tell stories – religious stories, specifically, taking their texts directly or indirectly from the Bible.

The most famous excerpt from the Messiah is the “Hallelujah Chorus.” To give you a demonstration, a tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek rendering by a chorus of monks who have taken a vow of silence… By following their performance, I think you’ll be able to ‘see’ how Handel uses texture to create variety as well as unity in this short example: You can ignore the introduction and begin at 0:48.

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Now, the cuecards are one thing and their placement will help you visualize where these lines “go” – upper voice, lower voice, whatever – but also notice the texture. At the opening, it’s like a march and very basic – getting the point across “simply” somewhat like a hymn that would be sung by the congregation. But it becomes a little more “complex” later on – particularly at 1:39 or so where a theme is heard (and seen) in the upper voices (with the Hallelujah “motive” in the background). This line (theme) then moves to other voices but not in a strict “fugue” way (or “fugal” as the adjective should be). At 2:08, a new line of text, a new theme – simple and direct and also a bit of a contrast to volume, not as march-like or celebratory, at least at first. Then, at 2:28, something happens: we hear the lower voices start by themselves and then the next higher voice joins in starting on a different pitch level and so on up to the highest voice – this is actually a “fugal passage” – which continues until 2:53, “the King of Kings” which suddenly is just sustained notes and the Hallelujah fanfare-like motive underneath. This continues for a while and then alternates with a fugue-like passage before becoming straight-forward simple chords, easily perceived and building up to a climax that is still, essentially, very simple.

So Handel uses various textures – including fugal and fugue-like textures – to gain variety even within a piece that is basically joyous and celebratory from beginning to end. The “Hallelujah Chorus” is NOT a fugue, but it does make use of the procedures of a fugue, even if only briefly. It’s just another option a composer in the Baroque Era had.

So, we have different terms and different levels of “saturation” with these terms:

In addition to
Monophony (one voice – like Gregorian Chant)
Polyphony (several voices, vocal or instrumental)
Homophony (perhaps several voices but moving in similar rhythms and patterns, usually with a melodic foreground accompanied in the other voices in the background)

we also have

Counterpoint (“contrapuntal”) (with several voices often moving independently in melodic and rhythmic patterns)
Imitation (voices moving more or less independently but similar to others, perhaps starting off the same but moving off on their own)
Fugue (a specific procedure in which voices enter on different pitch levels and follow with extended passages of free or flexible counterpoint but returning to the subject (or theme) as it moves through the various voices in turn).
and Canon (one voice following another strictly – “exact imitation,” a higher form of imitation)

All fugues are imitative but not all imitative passages are fugues. And fugues aren't the same as canons because the idea is to create some contrast in a fugue with flexible or free material and a canon is supposed to be constantly exact, note for note.

Well, that’s it in a very large introductory nutshell…

- Dick Strawser

The 55th Annual Classical Grammy Winners

...and the Grammys go to...

Best Orchestral Performance

Adams: Harmonielehre & Short Ride In A Fast Machine
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (San Francisco Symphony)
[SFS Media]








Best Opera Recording

Wagner: Der Ring Des Nibelungen
James Levine & Fabio Luisi, conductors; Hans-Peter König, Jay Hunter Morris, Bryn Terfel & Deborah Voigt; Jay David Saks, producer (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; The Metropolitan Opera Chorus)
[Deutsche Grammophon]




Best Choral Performance

Life & Breath - Choral Works By René Clausen
Charles Bruffy, conductor (Matthew Gladden, Lindsey Lang, Rebecca Lloyd, Sarah Tannehill & Pamela Williamson; Kansas City Chorale)
[Chandos]






Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance

Meanwhile
Eighth Blackbird
[Cedille Records]









Best Classical Instrumental Solo

Kurtág & Ligeti: Music For Viola
Kim Kashkashian
[ECM New Series]










Best Classical Vocal Solo

Poèmes
Renée Fleming (Alan Gilbert & Seiji Ozawa; Orchestre National De France & Orchestre Philharmonique De Radio France)
[Decca Records]







Best Classical Compendium

Penderecki: Fonogrammi; Horn Concerto; Partita; The Awakening Of Jacob; Anaklasis
Antoni Wit, conductor; Aleksandra Nagórko & Andrzej Sasin, producers
[Naxos]






Best Contemporary Classical Composition

Hartke, Stephen: Meanwhile - Incidental Music To Imaginary Puppet Plays
Stephen Hartke, composer (Eighth Blackbird)
Track from: Meanwhile
[Cedille Records]






Best Engineered Album:
Tom Caulfield & John Newton, engineers; Mark Donahue, mastering engineer for
Life & Breath - Choral Works By René Clausen
Charles Bruffy, conductor (Matthew Gladden, Lindsey Lang, Rebecca Lloyd, Sarah Tannehill & Pamela Williamson; Kansas City Chorale)
[Chandos]


Producer of the Year, Classical:
Blanton Alspaugh -- Chamber Symphonies (Gregory Wolynec & Gateway Chamber Orchestra); Davis: Río De Sangre (Joseph Rescigno, Vale Rideout, Ava Pine, John Duykers, Kerry Walsh, Guido LeBron, The Florentine Opera Company & Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra); Gjeilo: Northern Lights (Charles Bruffy & Phoenix Chorale); In Paradisum (Brian A. Schmidt & South Dakota Chorale); Life & Breath - Choral Works By René Clausen (Charles Bruffy & Kansas City Chorale); Music For A Time Of War (Carlos Kalmar & The Oregon Symphony); Musto: The Inspector (Glen Cortese & Wolf Trap Opera Company).

Congratulations to the winners and to all those artists, composers and recordings that were nominated.

- Dick Strawser

Tales of Scheherazade: Rimsky-Korsakoff in His Own Words

Thinking of the Harrisburg Symphony’s performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff’s popular “Scheherazade” this weekend – part of a concert entitled “Tantalizing Tales” which Stuart Malina conducts this Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm at the Forum – who better to tell you how the piece came about than the composer himself?

This is an extensive quote from my 1935 edition of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s autobiography, My Musical Life, translated by Judah A. Joffe and published by Tudor Publishing Company, originally published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. I first read this book when I was in 4th grade, considering the first time I had heard the music – or at least themes from it as the background music for a children’s recording telling the story of Sinbad the Sailor – when I was 3.

“Why do you keep playing that record over and over,” my mother asked out of curiosity. “Because I like the music,” I said and continued listening to it for probably the hundredth time. My father asked a friend of his who also played in the Harrisburg Symphony then what exactly this music was and bought me a recording of the piece and eventually this book about its composer.

You could say we have a long history, Rimsky and I…

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In the middle of the winter [of 1887-88], engrossed as I was in my work on Prince Igor [an opera his friend Alexander Borodin left unfinished when he died suddenly in 1887 and which Rimsky edited and completed] and other things, I conceived the idea of writing an orchestral composition on the subject of certain episodes from Shekherazada [to use the Russian spelling], as well as an overture on themes of the obikhod [the official collection of liturgical chants for the Russian Orthodox Church]. With these intentions and suitable music sketches, I moved with my entire family, early in the summer, to the estate of Glinka-Mavriny [called] Nyezhgovitsy, some twelve miles beyond Luga [a town about 90 miles south of St. Petersburg], on the Cheryemenyétskoye Lake. My family was increased in January: a daughter, Masha, was born to us.

During the summer of 1888, at Neyzhgovitsy [sic], I finished Shekherazada (in four movements) and The Bright Holiday [the popular name for Easter in Russian], an Easter Overture on themes of the obikhod [this is the work we know as the Russian Easter Overture]. In addition, I wrote for violin and a small orchestra a mazurka on the Polish themes sung by my mother and heard in the Thirties and remembered by her from the time when her father was Governor of Volynia [an area straddling present-day boundaries of Poland and Ukraine]. These themes were familiar to me from infancy and the idea of basing some composition on them had long interested me.

The program I had been guided by in composing Shekherazada consisted of separate, unconnected episodes and pictures from The Arabian Nights, scattered through all four movements of my suite: the sea and Sinbad’s ship, the fantastic narrative of the Prince Kalender, the Prince and the Princess, the Bagdad Festival and the ship dashing against the rock with the bronze rider upon it. The unifying thread consisted of the brief introduction to Movements I, II and IV and the intermezzo in Movement III, written for violin solo and delineating Shekherazada herself as telling her wondrous tales to the stern sultan. The final conclusion of Movement IV serves the same artistic purpose.

[Note: I have often read in program notes where this was not the composer’s intent at all, but in fact merely the idea of a “bard” telling a story accompanied by a harp. Well... uhm... maybe it was?]

In vain do people seek in my suite leading motives linked unbrokenly with ever the same poetic ideas and conceptions. On the contrary, in the majority of cases, all these seeming leitmotivs are nothing but purely musical material or the given motives for symphonic development. These given motives thread and spread over all the movements of the suite, alternating and intertwining each with the other. Appearing as they do each time under different illumination, depicting each time different traits and expressing different modes, the self-same given motives and themes correspond each time to different images, actions and pictures. Thus, for instance, the sharply outlined fanfare motive of the muted trombone and trumpet, which first appears in the Kalender’s Narrative (Movement II) appears afresh in Movement IV, in the delineation of the wrecking ship, though this episode has no connection with the Kalender’s Narrative. The principal theme of the Kalender’s Narrative (B Minor, ¾) and the theme of the Princess in Movement III (B-flat Major, 6/8 clarinet) in altered guise and quick tempo appear as the secondary themes of the Baghdad festival; yet nothing is said in The Arabian Nights about these persons taking part in the festivities. The unison phrase, as though depicting Shekherazada’s stern spouse, at the beginning of the suite appears as a datum, in the Kalender’s Narrative where there cannot, however, be any mention of Sultan Shakhriar. In this manner, developing quite freely the musical data taken as a basis of the composition, I had in view the creation of an orchestral suite in four movements, closely knit by the community of its themes and motives, yet presenting, as it were, a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images and designs of oriental character – a method that I had to a certain degree made use of in my Skazka (Fairy Tale), the musical data of which are as little distinguishable from the poetic as they are in Shekherazada.

[Russians love their fairy tales: their famous lacquered boxes are full of rich story-telling detail.]

Originally, I had even intended to label Movement I of Shekherazada – Prelude; II – Ballade; III – Adagio; and IV – Finale; but on the advice of Lyadoff and others I had not done so. My aversion for the seeking of a too definite program in my composition led me subsequently (in the new edition) to do away with even those hints of it which had lain in the headings of each movement, like: The Sea; Sinbad’s Ship; the Kalender’s Narrative, etc.

In composing Shekherazada I mean these hints to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy on the path which my own fancy had travelled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of each. All I had desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, would carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders and not merely four pieces played one after the other and composed on the basis of themes common to all the four movements. Why then, if that be the case, does my suite bear the name, precisely, of Shekherazada? Because this name and the title The Arabian Nights connote in everybody’s mind the East and fairy-tale wonders; besides, certain details of the music exposition hint at the fact that all of these are various tales of some one person (which happens to be Shekherazada) entertaining her stern husband.

[After a description of the composition of the Russian Easter Overture, he continues,] The Capriccio [Espagnole] [completed the previous summer], Shekherazada and the Easter Overture close this period of my activity, at the end of which my orchestration had reached a considerable degree of virtuosity and bright sonority without Wagner’s influence [he would hear Wagner’s Ring during the 1888-1889 Season], within the limits of the usual make-up of Glinka’s orchestra. These three compositions also show a considerable falling off in the use of contrapuntal devices which is noticeable after Snyegúrochka [“The Snow Maiden”]. The place of the disappearing counterpoint [considered a particularly German academic stylistic feature by the Russian nationalists] is taken by a strong and virtuoso development of every kind of figuration which sustains the technical interest of my compositions. This trend lasted with me for several years longer; but in the orchestration, after [these] works…, there is noticeable a change which I shall speak of in my further narrative.
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There is little doubt Rimsky-Korsakoff is a better composer than he is a writer – Carl van Vechten’s 1922 introduction begins “Obviously, this book is artlessly, even badly, written in the original, a fact that has made its translation bristle with almost insurmountable difficulties.” Don’t forget, basically, while Rimsky-Korsakoff may have been an amateur writer, initially he was also an amateur composer.

Still, looking back on it when he wrote his autobiography some 18 years later, it gives us an idea of the composer’s own thoughts, not necessarily those of well-meaning people's better written program notes wondering what they hear in the music.

The Thousand and One Arabian Nights - in Arabic

Whatever "The Thousand and One Arabian Nights" may be, it has entertained and inspired people of various cultures ever since it first appeared. A loose collection of tales gathered between the 9th and 14th Centuries from different locations (Baghdad, Cairo, Persia and Syria), curiously the original Arabic versions do not include what we Westerners consider some of its most famous tales, like "Aladdin's Lamp" and "Ali-baba and the 40 Thieves," added into the first European translations starting with the French in the early-1700s. I can find no reference to any "Kalender Prince" that does not begin with Rimsky-Korsakoff's musical setting, yet in some notes about the music, there are apparently three tales concerning such a prince (perhaps that was in a Russian edition of the stories).

Not that it makes any difference, does it?

Dick Strawser

Hello, Orchestra...

If you've ever listened to an orchestra and wondered what instruments you're listening to, here is a great piece to introduce the different members of the orchestra to you - or at least the instruments they're playing.

It's a work by a 20th Century English composer Benjamin Britten called The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra which originally had a narrator pointing out which instruments were playing at the time. It's basically a set of Variations on a Theme by Henry Purcell (an English composer who died in 1695) - and then Britten adds a big Fugue with each instrument taking a turn playing his Fugue Theme as the texture gets thicker and thicker. Near the very end, then, Britten brings back Purcell's stately Theme.

Here's a video of a complete performance of it (without narrator) performed by the You-Tube Symphony (the members auditioned through You-Tube and then gathered in a bricks-and-mortar concert hall for the performance...) with Michael Tilson Thomas, conducting.

Britten starts by stating the Theme in slightly different ways, first with full orchestra, then highlighting each of the different sections:

Theme (from Henry Purcell) – @00:10 by the full orchestra - @00:32 = played by the woodwinds - @00:56 = played by the brass - @01:17 = played by the strings - @01:35 = spotlighting the percussion section - @01:52 = again by the full orchestra

Then the Variations begin (scroll down to continue):
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The Variations
@02:10 = for the flutes and piccolo - @02:44 = for the oboes - @03:38 = for the clarinets - @04:15 = for the  bassoons - @05:07 = for the violins - @05:40 = for the violas - @06:42 = for the cellos - @07:43 = for the basses (or double basses) - @08:45 = for the harp - @09:34 = for the horns (or French horns) - @10:21 = for the trumpets - @10:52 = for the trombones (@11:33 you can see & hear the tuba, also) - @12:07 = for the percussion, starting with the timpani (or kettledrums) then introducing @12:22 = cymbals and bass drum; @12:33 = tambourine; @11:43 = snare drum; @12:52 = xylophone; @13:04 = castanets and @13:20 = the whip (oh no, not the whip!)

The Fugue
@13:52 = Fugue theme begins in the piccolo then continues in the flutes, then oboes, clarinets, bassoons -- @14:34 = Fugue continues in the strings: violins, then violas, then cellos and basses -- @15:05 = Fugue theme in the harp -- @15:18 = Fugue theme starts in the brass: horns, trumpets, then trombones and tuba -- @15:37 = add the percussion -- @15:47 = while the Fugue Theme continues hurrying around through most of the orchestra, the brass sections begins playing Henry Purcell’s stately original Theme as it was heard at the opening. Note how they seem to be going at different speeds and in conflicting pulses -- @16:16 = wrapping it up with a big full-orchestra finale.

- Dick Strawser

The Virtue of Dissonance

Some time ago, I caught a bit of an interview on the radio. Who was talking to whom about what is not important here, since their current-events topic is not what got me thinking. There was a reference made to a word that had, over the years (since the interviewee was a historian, this could also mean generations or centuries), completely changed its meaning: like the word “virtue,” he explained, which started out as a man's courage (from the Latin, vir = man, virtus = courage, fortitude, power and strength as well as moral perfection and rectitude) but which now refers more to a woman’s innocence and virginity ("she is a woman of virtue"), especially in the Victorian Era and its aftermath.

We would never think of describing a powerful man facing some problem with courage and strength as “a man of virtue” or “a virtuous man.” Likewise, if we tried to describe a woman facing a similar problem with similar characteristics, calling her “a virtuous woman” may send a different picture entirely. The original use of the word is now largely forgotten and probably an issue only for word geeks.

Still, this got me thinking when my old friend Buzz Blogster asked me about dissonance.

Buzz – Mozart wrote a string quartet called “The Dissonant.” I never thought that Mozart wrote ugly music. It just doesn’t sound dissonant to me.

Dr. Dick – And so you just keep waiting for the nasty bits to show up? They’re actually in the introduction...

Buzz – But there isn’t anything strident about that at all!

Dr. Dick – First of all, the nickname was associated with the quartet in Mozart’s own day, and the concept of dissonance has changed over the years – well, centuries. A listener from 1786, say, plunked down in modern day New York City – aside from dealing with things like enormous buildings and cars and stuff like that – would not know what to make of the music we hear in our everyday contexts. I’m not talking about “modern music” which some people automatically associate with dissonance. Even music for movie or television soundtracks is a lot more dissonant than anything Mozart would have written.

Buzz – Not to mention just the sheer volume of our pop culture today. That’d curl anybody’s powdered wig! So what is dissonance?

Dr. Dick – Music moves in certain expected ways: a melody should do this, the harmony should do that. When it doesn’t, that creates a kind of tension – that’s not what I expected! What’s going on, here? But dissonance was something that was always a part of music.

Buzz – I thought that modern guy named Schoenberg invented dissonance...

Dr. Dick – The careful handling of dissonance was something composers were concerned about even back in the 12th Century. By the way, what is the opposite of dissonance?

Buzz – Consonance, I suppose. Which I guess means something that sounds pleasant...

Dr. Dick – If you’re defining “dissonance” as unpleasant, sure. But once musicians started adding another line to the single strand of Gregorian Chant to create two-part music, they became aware that some intervals – the distance between notes in one line and the other – sounded stable and some sounded unstable.

Buzz – So something that is stable would be consonant. And something unstable would be... unpleasant?

Dr. Dick – Forget about “unpleasant” for a while. But unstable, yes – in the sense that you expect something more, something complete... something that resolves.

Buzz – Oh, I get it. Like a cadence – okay, a final cadence, when two chords at the conclusion of a phrase create a satisfying ending.

Dr. Dick – A final cadence, you’re right, because a half-cadence would end on some chord that isn’t as satisfying by itself as a final one. And that “by itself” is very important, too – this is very subjective and while an abstract interval or chord could sound consonant, in context it could be dissonant – and I mean in the sense of unstable or needing to resolve.

(Remember, a cadence is like punctuation in written language: a half cadence is like a comma and a full cadence is like a period. It's a reasonable place where you might catch your breath.)

Now, that’s probably a better definition of “dissonance,” anyway – something that still needs to resolve.

Buzz – How does that work?

Dr. Dick – There are certain intervals we consider “consonant” and you put intervals together to create chords and these can sound consonant. You put together the pitches C, E and G and you have a C Major chord. That would sound consonant. But in the key of F Major, a cadence ending with a C Major chord would sound different because in the context of F Major, this C Major chord sounds like it would need something more to resolve: it becomes unstable – creates a sense of incompleteness, because you’ve set up the expectation it should resolve to an F Major chord and it hasn’t, yet.

This is what we call "function" in harmony - how chords work together. By itself, the chord is consonant. But in this particular context, the same chord can sound "unstable," "incomplete" or, consequently, "dissonant" because it doesn't resolve our expectations.

Technically, in the key of G Major, setting up the expectation of a C Major chord moving first to a D Major chord and then to a G Major chord, you create something that would be totally incomplete: you have two chords, now, that are missing, so technically it could be even more “dissonant” if you wanted to use it in the original sense of stability and instability.

Buzz – Huh... and yet it’s the same three pitches... the same chord...

Dr. Dick – Right, but each time in a different environment.

Now, if you took another interval of a third, like C-to-E and E-to-G and added a G-to-B-flat to that C Major chord, it now has an entirely different purpose in life: it will not sound at all stable, and that B-flat pulls you toward a resolution to an F Major chord. Now, rather than just one complete chord, we expect another chord – and that becomes a harmonic progression. That stable C Major chord has now become active and needs to move somewhere.

Buzz – So what exactly is harmony? I thought that meant something that sounds nice – something harmonious.

Dr. Dick – In that sense of the word, yes, but “harmony” is also the way these chords work together, how they move or progress from one to another. In the 19th Century sense of what creates the tonality (or key) of C Major, certain chords which by themselves may sound “consonant” will have degrees of separation from that C Major chord which now becomes the “tonic.” Anything that is not “tonic” is therefore unresolved: it requires one or more chords to get to the tonic chord in order to sound “complete.” Because this is the basis for most of the music we’re familiar with, anything that gets away from that concept can be a challenge to a listener.

Buzz – So you have expectations built into... the system, I guess you could call it, and then there are expectations the composer sets up. And dissonance adds to the variety.

Dr. Dick – Without dissonance, the musical language would be pretty bland. It’s like spice in food: you might like pepper, but too much pepper can ruin the flavor, and yet without it, you might think it has no flavor at all.

Buzz – Yeah, I’ve eaten there before... So you’re saying that all music – well, most classical music – has a sense of stability and instability but that would really be an expectation we sense without needing to understand all these terms or how chords are built or used?

Dr. Dick – You can’t describe the rules of baseball or tell someone what’s going on in a game (if they’re not watching it) without using specific terms. Let’s face it, the inner language of something is meant for those with various levels of expertise: you wouldn’t want to go to a doctor if he didn’t understand the terms and functions of his profession, would you? Yet you don’t need to understand everything about how your body works when he tells you to take this medication so you’ll get better.

Buzz – True...

Dr. Dick – The whole thing is basically this: music (at least Western Classical Music) is made up of varying degrees of tension and release – and basically, dissonance is the tension you’re probably only aware of it if it doesn’t resolve. That’s why I prefer to think of dissonance as “unresolved tension.”

Buzz – But what about modern music with all those dissonant chords? It just sounds ugly.

Dr. Dick – Does it sound ugly because it never resolves or does it sound ugly because these are sounds you’re not familiar with? The interval of a Major 7th – let’s say C up to B – sounds dissonant because in the context of the 19th Century style, we expect that to resolve to an octave C. By itself, if it’s played loudly on the piano, it can sound unpleasant.

If it’s played softly by the strings of an orchestra as part of a chord, it can be quite different: Samuel Barber’s "Adagio for Strings" (see the clip below - or rather "hear" this clip, below) has lots of chords with major 7ths in them, but they create the tension leading up to the chord’s resolution (listen to the first few chords, below: two of the first six chords have major 7ths in them). Without them, the piece wouldn’t be nearly as emotional: it’s what pulls you along as it pushes the harmony forward.

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 Listen to how you feel when you reach those punctuation marks, the cadences where the music takes a breath at 0:22 and 0:50. But try pausing the music at 0:29 - does it sound "stable" or "unstable"? No, it has to resolve - it's unstable - and eventually the phrase winds out until it resolves at 0:50.

Buzz – Yeah, okay, Samuel Barber, consonant-sounding big lush Romantic composer, yeah... But what about, you know... those Atonal Guys.

Dr. Dick – Well, here you’re dealing with a system of organizing pitches – or maybe a lack of a system – which is different from the system you’re used to from the 19th Century. It's like a different language. Let’s say I write this wild-sounding chord – reading from the lowest notes to the highest: F-A-C-sharp-E-G-B-flat – with two major 7ths (F and E; B-flat and A), and two other dissonant intervals, C-sharp to G and E to B-flat (these are "tritones" which were once called "the devil in music"). At least it would sound wild if it showed up in the middle of a Beethoven symphony.

Actually, it does. Listen to the opening few seconds of the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, here:

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You see how the conductor's facial expression helps prep the orchestra to play this chord? Really, it’s just a series of superimposed intervals that to a D minor tonic chord at the opening of the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th – talk about unexpected. Wham! Listen a little further and see how he contrasts this crazy opening bluster with the long theme played by just the cellos and basses alone. Then - Wham! - back comes the dissonant bluster... and so on...

(One critic, when he first heard this piece, said this opening reminded him of the dropping of a bag of nails.)

But if you only heard that first chord by itself, it would be even more jarring. And if it were to move to another chord equally jarring, then the tension begins to increase: the problem is, for many listeners – and in too many composers – the idea of writing a good dissonance is often wasted because there’s never any release of the tension and it eventually becomes irritating – like any constantly building tension that would give anyone a headache. But if the composer and the performers understand the inner rules of the music’s context, the idea of a dissonant chord resolving to a... well, “less dissonant chord” creates a sense of release.

Buzz – If not relief. Well, I guess it’s all relative and very subjective.

Dr. Dick – There are lots of other things to consider, of course, and many things to listen for in something unfamiliar, but accepting that it’s not Mozart or Brahms and that there are varying degrees of “repose” (thinking again of that person from 18th Century Vienna plunked down in the middle of Manhattan), it can be a first step toward getting over the Ugly Music Syndrome and evaluating it on its own terms.

Buzz – Well, okay. So how is that Mozart quartet I mentioned “dissonant”?

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Dr. Dick – Well, speaking of tension, pause that chord at 0:07 - does it sound consonant (restful) or dissonant (active) to you? Probably because Mozart's listeners back in the 1780s had preconceived notions what music should do, he plays with their anticipations by avoiding the expected: instead of resolving as it should, one note veers off  to a note that doesn’t resolve the chord as they expected it - like a "deceptive" cadence - and so it keeps prolonging the tension and keeps postponing that anticipated release of tension.

It only resolves once the introduction ends (at 1:30) and the “movement proper” (the lively and far more expected “Allegro”) begins. You can't stop it at 1:30 and feel that it's fully resolved (this is one of those Dominant 7th chords I'd mentioned earlier) - but it sounds less active than any chord we've heard before so it seems relatively restful. But the real resolution happens at 1:32.

Here, Mozart’s first audience probably gave a collective “phew” when they landed on something they expected - finally! It’s like being lost and finally recognizing something familiar.

Buzz – OK, well... you’re the doctor. Hey, that’s right: I've been having this pain in my left side here and I was wondering if you could tell me...

Dr. Dick – Sure – take two Haydn symphonies and call me in the morning...

- Dick Strawser

An Introduction to my "Intro to Music Class" Posts

As part of an Introduction to Music course I’m offering through Delaware Valley College (held on the campus of Harrisburg Area Community College), I’ve been posting about various topics here on my blog for the students.

While these may be of interest to other “non-musicians” wanting to know more about classical music, this is not meant to be a self-contained course nor is it geared to be all-inclusive.These are merely more detailed presentations on class topics.

It was not my intent, given the nature of the course and the role of an adjunct professor, to write my own textbook for the class.

This particular page is a table of contents with links to the individual posts: I will continue to add to them as the course progresses over the semester.

It began with posting about Dissonance & Consonance which had more information I wanted them to have access to. Most people think "dissonance" is just "an ugly sound" but in reality it's anything that creates tension - melodic or harmonic - that requires resolution (to consonance).

An Introduction to the Orchestra with a video clip of Benjamin Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra."

Fugue, Imitation & Counterpoint with some more detailed explanation about the definition of a "fugue" and different types of fugue-like writing.

Terminology in any field can be so confusing - not just because there's so much of it but it can often sound contradictory partly because, in too many instances, it is...

Tonality is one of the most significant aspects of classical music from the Baroque Period to the present, the predominant organizational system of music between, say, 1700 and 1900. The general concept may have been in use before and after but often in slightly different ways.

Sonata Form is the driving force behind formal structure in music of the Classical and Romantic period.

Intro to Beethoven is only the briefest of introductions to the man and his music, the role of the composer in society and the time and a pivotal figure in the development of music from the Classical to the Romantic Era and beyond.

More to come...

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You can also follow the generic thread (scrolling down for the earlier posts) through this tag or label link.


- Dick Strawser