This study piece
has taken me a few years to get down; I have the feeling that it still has a
few more years to go. I started reading this solo in order to practice reading
the bass clef. However, what struck me as the most problematic feature of the
piece, though not particular to it, is the issue of timing. When I first tried
to record it a year or so ago, whether I played strictly to the metronome or
played a free ‘interpretation’, the piece never sounded ‘right’. It is an
uneasy feeling I get with certain passages of classical music: where the time
is neither exact, nor is the playing without exact time. As such I have
presented a contrast between a version played in free time, another played to a
metronome (at 90bpm [beats per minute]), and finally one with a very basic accompaniment
to the last four bars (at 80bpm).
I cannot give the
piece any definition or situate it beyond this. Though the ‘event’ of the
recording, and interpretations of it, will forever be critiqued, the event itself
still has to take place and the music ‘brought into being’ for it to be so (although,
there is, of course, the possibility for endless interpretations of it).
According to the sheet music the piece is to be played at 100 bpm. While I can
play it at that speed, it sounds awful; too fast, and forced. Most recordings
by cellists play the piece freely, and several interpretations make drastic
changes in tempo. Yet even where there is a lack of strict tempo there is still
a relative value, the notes stand in negative relation to each other (what is
not played), and to silence. At best I feel that in the different recordings I
have posited it between structure and lack thereof.
It
is quite a segue but, nonetheless, this disparity in structure evoked some
wider thoughts and intrigues on musical approaches across the globe. Namely
that:
One of the
characteristic features of classical western music is its rigidity. Scales and
arpeggios ascend fully, then descend. Pitch is fixed to absolute degrees
(usually relative to ‘standard’ pitch at 440A)
and each pitch has a relational value to others in the system of an instrument,
orchestra, or within a score. Timing is
also fixed unless stated otherwise (Ritardando/Accelerando/Free time), and,
even then, divergence must be explicitly stated. I am reminded of Michel
Foucault’s ideas of ‘taxonomy’. In turn, this taxonomy of music has a history
of development. In earlier periods an exact measure (of bpm) could not be
given, just a feeling (Grave-very
slow, Andante -walking pace, Vivace- fast and lively, Presto-extremely fast, etc.) , though,
once started, the pace would have to be consistent. Scales (Ionian, Dorian,
Phrygian etc.), have been developed since the ancient Greeks and with the
ancient Greeks in mind. By the nineteenth century a whole terminology had been
developed, and is still dominantly used, to structure and outline works today
in the aim of true representation.
The rules are known and if someone breaks them, they do so knowing they are
doing so, and then become known for doing so. And if they do not realize they
are breaking the rules, one can argue that they are the product of society or a
wider cultural consciousness/development. This latter view was championed by
Theodor Adorno. Yet for all of Adorno’s snobbish insistence on music as
structure that generated specific meanings and fixed interpretative responses,
he was still thrown by Schoenberg, and outraged by popular music from the late
1930s until his death in 1969, albeit outraged from his declared ‘Marxist’
standpoint.
By contrast,
eastern traditional music demonstrates more freedom in variation of pitch and
time. Though I confess I know less than I would like to on the subject, I am
always intrigued by the rejection of these stabilisations. I recall coming
across a book on Indian sitar music in the British Library and being fascinated
both by the wave like fluency of the scale patterns used to practice the
instrument, and the author’s difficulty in converting the style onto western
manuscript; they had to use an absurd amount of flats, sharps, and double flats
and sharps in an attempt to correlate the divergence in pitch, and irregular
timings to accommodate the rhythms.
The two represent
extremes of interpretation that I enjoy debating: Impose structure and meaning
that is not intrinsic to ‘it’, take that structure away and see its meaning as multidimensional,
contingent, and chaotic. These positions themselves can be further critiqued,
as can the flaws and generalisations in my entire rambling (an obvious and good
starting point would be my dichotomy between east and west [occident and
orient], or that I have not discussed Bach’s
own theory of tempo, but I digress).
Oh, but finally:
There is also a
resemblance to the two scale approaches that I feel are the basis to learning any
melodic instrument (instrument specific techniques aside). If one learns the
major scale structures in all 12 keys off by heart to provide frameworks and, in
contrast, the chromatic scale, with a suitable amount of theory, listening, and
practice, a select combination of the two then create blues or jazz, or allow
the player to adapt to any other style.
All that and I
have not got onto the appropriation of classical music by non-traditional
instruments, the phenomenology of the ‘moment’, or the pressures effecting my ‘performance’
(For example could you tell I was looking at photographs of my grandparents and
remembering happy memories of them when I played the piece in free time? Do
such things even matter?).
*
I have, of course,
adapted the piece (included in a link) for the guitar. I never liked the
fingerpicking approach to the piece, of which other guitar players prefer and
have made recordings of elsewhere. These ‘fingerpickers’ also play an octave
higher. Nonetheless the pick sound does come across on the recording more than
is to my liking, as does the sound of my fingers sliding across the frets. This
was distressing until I noticed the same in Keith Richard’s interpretation of a
Robert Johnson piece. Now I see it as a natural atmospheric flourish.
(Thinkers passed over above:
Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida;
Theodor Adorno.)
https://soundcloud.com/samsmusicandmusings/sets/bach-cello-suite-no1-prelude
No comments:
Post a Comment