The glamorous life and thoughts of a concert pianist.

For those of you complainers and whiners out there, you can just stop! I have achieved the mindblowing technological and organizational feat of posting my concert schedule online, on a dedicated Denksite. I know, I know; be dazzled by my internetitude at jeremydenk.net. This is a temporary, bare-bones site, before I really get jiggy with it. For my target audience of hardcore readers who couldn’t really give a crap about coming to any of my concerts, ever, I’m sorry; this had to happen; this boulder of practicality will only temporarily disrupt the stream of my arcane, obscure, intensely unmarketable musings.

Well, well, you never know what will be in the dreaded INBOX. One private email suggests, on the basis of my recent posts, that my mind must be a “quite fun but cynical place.” Another private email deduces from blog “evidence” that my Beethoven preparations are “agonies.”

I was surprised and depressed by both. No, no, I wrote back to one: my current practicing is intense, but never agony: for kicks, let’s call it an “arduous ecstasy.” And to the other, who suggests I am cynical, I don’t know what to say… A cup of coffee sips by while I mull.

Before consulting my INBOX, I had just performed, rather dramatically, but for myself, a raw groan of disgust at politicans and pundits of all stripes grandstanding on talk shows and C-SPAN, and it seemed only coffee and Beethoven would soften my irritation with them, and their emptiness. But here I was, passing vocal judgment on their awful cynicism, and the charge came sneakily back at me, through pixels and packets, karmically. It is not the first time the c-word has been levelled at me, but it seemed odd in this case… to receive it when my motives had seemed so “ideal.”

I guess my motivation in the last post had been idealistic in the sense of being impossible: to “explain” the beauty of the coda of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Op. 10 #1. This coda has always made me feel something very unusual. I wanted to translate a vague sense of my feeling into words other people could understand. To do this, I ignored a cynical voice, and personified the theme (A), (what if A were a person?) and by this metaphoric extension attempted to explain its transformation in the coda as a kind of epiphany, an emotional turning-point and completion. Some people may find this distasteful–too personal, too intrusive, too specific, too Oprah–and I completely sympathize with their qualms; some people prefer to refer to themes as “generative cells,” or “gestalts,” or whatever… I prefer to shift as the situation suggests. To me the abstract voice saying “It’s just a variation on the theme,” though appropriate in some cases, does not satisfy here. Often when I hear pianists I admire I feel what I can only describe as “animation,” phrases imbued with a kind of momentary personality; there may be hundreds or thousands of these in a piece … or only a few … and when you see certain pianists perform, you also see some of these mini-possessions take hold, you see a schizophrenic flitting across their face, a nanosecond glint in their eye, reflecting a clear harmonic shift or even some unheard cadential possibility, which molds the music into people you know, you once knew, or wish you knew. And this metaphoric cast of characters, this invisible infinite operatic company, is part of much of the language of our “Western art music.” Sometimes pianists prefer visually to remain impassive, to look on and not let their faces register the changes of the music; in this case, though, I think there is another personification going on: pianist-as-God. Many people prefer this impassive approach (which I have never been able to manage), but I am not sure it is not the more “arrogant” solution: why must the musician always be “above” the music? Can’t we get down in the muck also? Or do some audience members prefer not to be reminded of the (necessarily imperfect) humanity of music?

Back to my point. I guess it seemed so clear to me that the whole gist of my last post was a certain emotional fulfillment laid bare, that I was shocked by the “cynical” characterization. Also, it expressed a certain (perhaps foolish) confidence in the idea, against all odds, that even very elusive things can be shared. True, I began with the bit about being a jerk: but the point of that was somehow partly hyperbole, partly that I regretted it, that I wished I could/would communicate more clearly certain emotional, personal things about music at all times; and the post and the blog as a whole are often kind of an outlet for these confessions/communications. Perhaps though, I should think like a pianist practicing and try to hear “outside myself,” outside my own desires and intentions to what is actually communicated. Did it communicate a cynical message? I sure hope not.

I will be controversial: I think there are certain aspects of the meaning of that coda that can only be expressed in words. Music is not “above everything.” Reaching into music for “mundane” words can be a redemptive act–a humanization of music, a connection back to ourselves–so that music is not a circular, isolated ritual in concert halls but a part of the language of life.

When people ask me about “how exciting” being a pianist is, I tend to be a jerk. I reply with stupid things, the mere accessories of the trade: the monotony of hotel rooms and airport lounges; the Sisyphean accumulation of frequent flyer miles; the little voice inside that whispers in your brain that you could always practice more, more, more.

Sometimes I’m a jerk for virtuous reasons: someone has just shared with me how boring their job is, how much they hate it, and they ask me, with a weird light in their eyes, what it’s like being a pianist. This happens on dates. And I try to reasonably downplay the pleasures of a musical career, with the hope that I don’t sound false. Probably other times I’m a jerk for jerk’s sake, because I’m impatient, or because I’m lazy. Maybe I’m in one of those moods where I imagine that that which I truly love cannot be shared. Anyway–do people really want to hear?

Yesterday I came back from a late, lonesome lunch at the ubiquitous Saigon Grill; I did not take off my coat; but sat down at the piano with a plain lust for the following measures:

I played them several times; wrote in fingerings (soon to be corrected, changed); tried to connect my brain more definitely to the tips of my fingers; contemplated the shaping and timing of the turn; and then–shamelessly–skipped to the coda. I am only human! I admit sometimes I just want to skip to the “good parts.” As much as I wish I could, I do not always enjoy every piece equally at every moment; I have weaknesses for certain moments and I build my conceptions around them, toward them. But, I tell myself, Beethoven must have built his conception towards this coda too. How could he not? I often enjoy thinking about the pride composers must have felt at having written certain passages; even they were pleased, even their impossible standards were met.

As I played the coda, I felt guilty. Not for skipping to it; but because I needed to accomplish “something useful” before I gave myself this searing pleasure. In a flash, I recalled my former teacher, Gyorgy Sebok, impeccably dressed–having parked, as always, illegally in the loading zone–walking into a lesson I had with him, saying that he had just vacuumed the house, and that it made him “feel useful.” He smiled his European, utterly cultured smile, which commented ironically all at once on the vacuum, on himself vacuuming, and on the very idea of usefulness. The incomparable guru finding himself useless, sucking up dust.

So, I tore myself away from the piano and I hauled the Hoover out of the closet and cursed its non-retractable cord and cursed the astonishingly outdated electrical systems of my building, and cursed the red carpet I put in the piano room, which seems to put an exclamation point on every morsel of dirt it collects…. and thus cursing, I did a serviceable job. With the unpleasant Hoover smell lingering in my nostrils, making me want to cough, I removed my coat and sat down at the piano, calmed by the carpet’s clarity. Now I took on the coda in earnest. This slow movement is a difficult, painstaking narrative, in that we have to follow (Beethoven unravels) the same long thread twice: he makes us re-experience the same sequence of events with only a small modification the second go-around. It tests our patience, or at least it tests mine.

I hate formal diagrams, but sometimes I succumb to them. Here’s what I’m talking about:

A … transition … B …

A … transition … B …

And by this point most of the movement is over. So you had better like A and B. I’m fond of A and B (though I prefer to refer to them by their “real names”), but I have to admit they’re “not enough” for me. As beautiful as they are, they are kind of naked; they are sparely scored; Beethoven is testing the limits of how few notes he can get away with, how little material he can use to fill out a large space. This is not a weakness! I remind myself as I play and try to find lots to love in A and B, but even as I am adoring these materials I heed the craving they create. What’s missing? When will I not feel I am filling in the spaces left by the composer? To be fair, I think A and B are not “missing anything;” they are trying to express something-like-this; they are a symbol of spareness; their existence defines a void which must be filled.

When I had to grade students’ papers at Indiana University, I would anticipate with horror the concluding paragraphs, which would inevitably begin “In conclusion,” or “Summing up,” or etc. It’s true, the student had usually made all the points he/she had to make by that point, and there was no escape except through redundancy. Some sense of finality was necessary; how else could the paper be over? And don’t get me wrong; I was as glad as the student that the paper was over. But how do you say again what has been said, while not just saying it again? I would ponder this imponderable while gleefully crossing out their final paragraphs: “said that already,” I would helpfully inscribe.

Let’s be boring for another moment and establish that theme A has a certain pattern to it:

Short. Short. Long.

OR

a a b

OR

Idea. (Responding) Idea. Arc.

In this pattern, the third time’s the charm. Though the first two segments (short, short) establish the crucial “grammar” of the theme–a dialectical rhythm–the third segment (long) provides a paradox: it simultaneously functions as a symmetrical, rounding idea (being exactly as long as the preceding two segments combined), as conforming filler, and on the other hand functions as a force for the unexpected and new: it sends the whole musical paragraph in search of some meaning or goal.

Let’s say, then, that the very structure of A–its one-two-three punch, which we have now analyzed so heartlessly– has some serious semantic baggage. I might even say it has a personality, a way-of-being.

At first glance, Beethoven’s coda falls into the “said that already” trap, because: here comes A again, for a third time. But it is a bit different:

The melody is now supported by a web of other voices, which fill out the slow rhythmic spaces, which make the theme more fluid, make it seem to float above a current of rhythm. In this he fills a void in A, he gives it a continuity it had longed for. (Or we had longed for?) But Beethoven is not just dealing with A-as-theme… in which case this coda could be written off as a fleshed-out variation, with added notes. Earlier in the movement we have had these kind of added-note variations, which are lovely but do not add, somehow, to the “meaning” of A; they merely help to beautify its stasis. So, added notes are not enough themselves to do what the coda does. I think Beethoven is dealing below the level of the theme, delving towards A-as-personality, towards A’s “reason for being,” which is its giving over of itself to its third part. Because Beethoven has put more voices in play … when the pattern of A heads into its third (searching) phase, the dangers and beauties of these extra voices can be unleashed. While the melody simply descends from the fifth scale degree down to the tonic, in the most predictable way–

–the other voices do unpredictable and extraordinary things, creating momentary breathtaking dissonances that become a part of the total feeling (the total image) of the phrase, which make the “simple” descent of the top line more deeply felt, which color the relinquishing of the movement’s slow energies with a tremendous intensity and regret. (To put it all analytically: the tenor line moves from A-flat to G, and this G clashes against the C in the top line, and then just after that, the alto line moves from E-flat to F through an amazing passing tone E-natural, and the moment of that E-natural, perched “between chords,” coloring the A-flat major tonic with its wrong-right-noteness, is the most memorable sonority of the passage for me, though it is the briefest.) While our “original A,” in its third phase, reached up melodically, to try to “escape” the registral space in which it was inscribed–

–the intensities of this last A are within, quite literally and music-theoretically: in the play of the inner voices. Whatever A is looking for, it finds in a different space, in a different solution; it searches, now, inside itself. (Is A a person? And how has A found this solution?) And this is it, my big why, the transformation of meaning that the coda does to me, the place where a streak of amazement clouds my brain’s connection to my hands and I find fulfillment in my ears, hanging on to those dissonances, my body buzzing … and knowing that “something has changed.” I would not be happy calling it by any music-theoretical name but I can trace how the music-theoretical names wind themselves into this changed moment.

Without ego, Beethoven adores his own moment; he winds us back up to E-flat in the top voice, and repeats the falling, fantastic gesture; now the structure and therefore the balance of power in A has changed: a struggle against the structure of A transforms itself into a prolonged farewell. And because he has now injected the falling five-line (E-flat down to A-flat) with such meaning, he then is able to repeat it, and call up the meaning without the meaning; we keep hearing those descending notes as the movement falls away, and though they are relatively plain, they are full: they symbolize the alteration we have just witnessed.

I have allowed myself to get carried away from the haven of identifiable notes to the scary world of interpretation and meaning, to suggest even that the movement interprets itself. Do you think, on a date, over a glass of white wine, in a noisy New York restaurant, I could manage to get this across? Because sometimes I think I need to go at least this deep to express why piano playing makes me happy. I really don’t want to be a jerk when people ask me about being a pianist, but sometimes I am anyway. Wait. I said that already.

Like millions of other Americans, I find myself celebrating Christmas morning by immersing myself in the form and analysis musings of students at DePauw University. Only an insane man with a Venti drip in his hand (please, people: not “VENTAY,” “VENTEE”!) could possibly survive these multiple, deeply redundant analyses: except that the students seem to try to put a little bit of themselves in there, to be Cheeky with their Theory. I suppose there is no other defense.

To be fair, I don’t think this blog was meant to be read “for pleasure.”

For you non-music types: Form & Analysis is a REQUIRED COURSE for all “serious” music students at the Conservatory, something like Anatomy for medical students, except for the fact that the skeletons of music theory have almost no basis in any kind of observable reality. (I said “almost”! But I “almost” deleted it.) So while it may be useful for a doctor, say, to know the heart has a certain number of ventricles, musicians find themselves wondering why they need to know whether a section of a particular Chopin Mazurka is “terminative” or “developmental.” I am sounding terribly cynical on this Christmas morning; it is hard, I admit, to think of the baby Jesus as a music theorist, promising perfect authentic cadences in exchange for our sins (although in a way that is exactly what happens). And as you know I am actually a HUGE FAN of musical analysis, and I wouldn’t have brought up this mean-spirited topic at all except for one student’s little acts of revolution, which made me smile so very, very much.

Self-named “Snoop,” presumably one of the students, analyzes the Chopin Mazurka in e minor, Op. 17 #2. He begins in the traditional manner, carving up the pie heartlessly into pieces:

The piece is ternary – mm. 1-24 are the first A section, mm. 25-52 are the B section and the second A section is mm. 53 to the end.

Yawn. I was at the point of scrolling to the next analysis (why, oh why, on Christmas morning was I reading these at all?) But the beginning of the next paragraph arrested my scroll:

The first section is expository, like the beginning of most pieces.

I love these moments, when students bump themselves against the fairly obvious idiocies of music theoretical jargon; they bang their heads and wonder “is that all there is to say, other than putting it in fancier words?” Perhaps they don’t realize that at that very moment of pain and frustration they should scratch their bruised heads and look around; they are lost in the vicinity of truth. What tickles me about this little sentence is that I can’t quite tell whether the student is being sarcastic or not. I like to assume he/she is. You see, a great object of Form and Analysis is the reduction of vocabulary. Instead of whatever words the student comes up with, the textbook comes up with a limited set of words, which can be used “objectively,” so that the wishy-washy notions of the student can be measured. A great premium seems to be placed on making these words as heartless and scientific-sounding as possible, so that the student can experience the maximum disillusionment and pain in reducing his/her musical experience into them. Section B: is it “expository” or “developmental”? It’s gotta be one or the other. Choose, now!!! I can see this battle at work in the following passage from Snoop’s analysis:

In that sense, the B section could be considered to have developmental function – it starts off with previous motivic material, or at least a melody that is very similar. However, the second part of the B section (mm. 39-52) seems more like a transitional section, in that there’s a lot of agitation and harmonic activity. Basically, it’s a stretched-out, undulating passage that goes through lots of chords and eventually ends on the dominant, which leads into the return of the A section.

Snoop is trying to choose between “developmental” and “transitional” to describe this B section, both of which terms presumably are elucidated in the text. But between these generic terms, poor Snoop can’t help using more evocative ones: “agitation,” “stretched-out,” “undulating.” Danger, danger! Luckily, he is able to bring this veering ship to shore, with words like “dominant” and “A section.” A term like “harmonic activity” straddles this divide interestingly: it suggests something intriguing, some kind of unusual event; and yet it describes it in the most nonspecific possible manner …

Finally, Snoop delivers the coup-de-grâce:

The second A section has a terminative function – the extension to the final cadence reinforces the tonal center, which is the primary attribute of terminative sections, according to the text.

“According to the text”!!!!!! Fantastic, Snoop. Now that’s good stuff. What is this mysterious “text” to which the student refers? Presumably a book wherein “terminative sections” are defined. I’m sure all you readers, even the ones who are bored stiff by this whole post, can see how asinine it is to use a term like “terminative.” (Not just to use it, but to force it as a generic term for every analysis.) The connotations and associations are horrendous (termination, terminator, California, death, term papers, term limits, bringing to term, terminology, oy); and like expository it could be seen as just a fancier, uglier, meaner way of saying “ending.” And how tersely Snoop draws our attention to the reductive nature of this unspecified text! Reinforcing the tonal center is the “primary attribute” of terminative sections? Oh, REALLY? Magnificent, transcendent codas pile themselves into my mind one after the other; the endings of Beethoven Sonatas, the “Waldstein” Sonata, Op. 110, the final passage of the first movement of the Schumann Fantasy… and on and on. Life-changing conclusions which, while ending in the same old home key, leave everything else (connotation, meaning, affect) completely altered. But wait! this is not Music Theory.

“According to the text.” But not, perhaps, according to Snoop. Snoop delivers his skepticism in a little verbal pill, at once deferential and destructive, a bomb cleverly written in the very language of conformity (“According to Hoyle,” the gospel according to X, etc.) As I write this, I begin to wonder if Snoop intended this double meaning at all, whether I might be over-reaching. Haha. The muffled, affirmative snickers of blogreaders reach me even here. I have even gone so far as to muse on Snoop’s signature, “word out”: is it really a commentary on the nature of words, as applied to music? Really: kidding.

This post would seem to be an attack on Music Theory, but it most definitely isn’t. When I posted, a little bit ago, about the condescending tone of a particular concert review, I haplessly tapped into some deep-seated anti-critic sentiment, which I perused in the Comments section. Wow! Let me be clear: I disassociate myself from those comments (critics as frustrated performers, etc.) I feel sure that there will be some anti-theory people out there too, who may jump on my bitter bandwagon. But I want to preach a more positive Yuletide gospel. I do not feel that “talking about music is like dancing about architecture;” actually, I have always detested that quote, which I consider to be patently untrue. Moreover, I think dancing about architecture would be a very interesting thing to do. Let’s imagine the baby Jesus, analyzing the song of the Magi. I think he would love and tolerate talk of cadences, even Schenkerian diagrams. Why do I imagine him treating theorists as he did Mary Magdelene? This suggests a conception of theory as a particularly unsexy form of prostitution. No, wait, I can do better: the expectancy of the Christmas ritual, the presents wrapped under the tree, the smell of the tree, the candles, the late night, the early morning awakening, stumbling out to the family room in your pajamas, getting ready to convert the whole beautiful waiting thing into a storm of crumpled paper. Sometimes it seems Theory wants you to unwrap the gift, but not to see what’s inside. It is cold-hearted: it wants you to “understand” expectancy. But I assure you, Theory for all its jargon wants you to receive music’s gift too; to receive with gratitude the ingenuity of the composer, the generosity of invention, to appreciate the process of composition, a kind of wrapping and unwrapping of the human spirit. That is why, finally, we suffer through Form and Analysis. Mr. Spiegelberg’s students seem to be in good humor about the whole thing, interjecting irony, sarcasm, etc., which is a victory for both student and teacher.

I myself have caught the Christmas spirit lately too. I released something and allowed in myself the (imagined) possibility of light-heartedness (which I didn’t know I had forbidden), and somehow then the external world complied and “real” light-hearted things came into it, flooding my weird days. Yesterday (I am not kidding) I was thinking through the form of Op. 110 with a joyous spring to my step. Perhaps the danger is the conflation of Music Theory’s terms with the real. And is the music itself any more “real” than the Theory it has created, like a monster? Let’s toss reality and truth aside, and Merry Christmas.