Week of September 27, 2009

G-minor Scale
Kreutzer No. 7
B-minor Partita:  Corrente

I have been reading Julie Powell's book, Julie and Julia, in which she chronicles her year of cooking and blogging about all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  The  book is not as good as the movie, unfortunately, nor is it as good as the blog itself.  It must be hard to turn a blog into a book.  The ideas were fresh in the blog, and they probably just aren't as good the second time around.

Julie Powell seems like a more likeable person in the movie.  In the book, she is often quite caustic, and that turns me off.  I'm not giving up on her yet, though. 

Her cooking/blogging endeavor inspired this blog.  I'm not spending nearly as much time on the Bach Season as Julie Powell did on the Julie/Julia Project.  But I'm not giving up.  If I hadn't practiced today, I might have given up.  But I did practice. 

One thing I've learned about Julie Powell from reading her book is that she went to New York hoping to become not a writer, as the movie implies, but an actress.  The movie and the back cover of the book imply that Julie Powell is living happily ever after as a writer.  But will she?  What will she write next?  Will it be as popular as her first book? 

I am an aspiring writer, at the moment, but I also aspire to be well-rounded and do lots of different things that I love.  I say that I want to play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and the Ciaccona from the Bach D-minor Partita in my lifetime.  Those are two of the hardest pieces in the violin repertoire.  So I know I have to practice.  Even for someone who does practice, those are lofty goals.  For someone who took years away from the violin, they border on delusional!  So I am writing this blog in order to get back to practicing and to try to accomplish something with my violin playing.

Plus, if I have children, my practice time will all but disappear.  Though life is long, it's not as full of free time as I might imagine it to be.  I think I should get in my practicing while I can.   

Scales

The last few days, I have been skipping scales and exercises.  Instead, I've been playing the notes to the first Double using the same sorts of rhythms and bowings I would use for a scale.  It allows me to warm up and work on intonation in the Bach at the same time.  I practice each line with a metronome the way  would practice a scale:  first one note per bow, then two, then three, then four...  It has improved my Bach.

On the other hand, I heard a beautiful concert tonight featuring the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.  It's the first time I've seen that concerto performed live.  Watching the soloist's good technique reminded me that scales do come in handy in repertoire.  Scales may seem just in the way of me playing Bach in my limited practice time, but au contraire, they are central to all music!  One can't wait/"doesn't have to" wait till one is learning the Tchaikovsky to start practicing the scales and arpeggios in that concerto...

I would like to learn that concerto in my lifetime.  I'm hoping for a long life in which to progress to the Tchaikovsky, but I'm practicing now, rather than later, since the only time you can really count on is the present.  Who knows how many years I'll have to achieve my goal? 

Week of September 20, 2009

This week, I am visiting my parents in Kentucky. I brought my Kreutzer and Bach and metronome but decided to play my dad's violin, rather than bring my own, and to leave the scale book in Somerville.

Any scale I can remember (the fingerings for, that is - I think I can remember the order of notes!)
Kreutzer Number 6
Bach B-Minor Partita: First Double

Last week, I practiced about twice, and the movement I was trying to learn was quite difficult. It's filled with chords that are hard to set up. In some cases, you have to move a finger from one string to another to go to a chord from its preceding note, that or use the free fingers in an unnatural way. If I had my druthers, I'd take about 10 seconds' pause before every chord. Unfortunately, when a chord is supposed to be climactic, the pause ruins the effect.

This week, I'm practicing the Double and reviewing the Allemanda. I am particularly determined to get somewhere with my practicng this week because my parents, who haven't heard me play violin in a long time, are listening to me practice. I don't want them to think I've "lost it."

Week of September 13, 2009: Starting off in tune

B-flat Major Scale

Kreutzer Number 5

Bach Partita Number 1 in B-minor: Allemanda

My violin was particularly in tune today. That is, I did a good job tuning it before I started playing. That, in turn, improved my intonation.

I try not to obsess over tuning my violin because sometimes, when my intonation is bad, I try to blame it on my violin being out of tune and waste a lot of time fiddling with the tuning.

Today I really got my violin in tune, and it made such a difference. My A string had been a little sharp before. I have learned to listen for the beats you hear when you play the out-of-tune A string against the metronome's A440 and can adjust the tuning until the beats slow and go away. I think I also know what harmonics I'm listening for when I tune the other strings. I certainly got it right today, anyway. As I played, I kept thinking I heard my cell phone ringing. That means my notes really were ringing!

Now that I've bragged about my in-tune playing, I'll be out of tune tomorrow...

Farewell Sonata Number 1

I am saying goodbye to the Sonata Number 1 in G-minor. The final G-minor chord, GDB-flatG, brought me back to the beginning of the sonata. It's a revolution.

Partita Number 1, coming up tomorrow, is also in a minor key: B-minor. It has eight movements, four different dances and four doubles, one per dance. It will be a two-month sonata, in that case. I like the way it makes dissonant chords, such as EF#, sound beautiful (provided they are in tune). More tomorrow...

Rhythm in the Presto

Bach manages to create interesting rhythm in a movement containing nothing but sixteenth notes, a perpetual motion. I just want to point out one of these here (and practice referring to uploaded photos of my sheet music).

In the excerpt above, in the section section of the Presto, I think it is ambiguous if the music is meant to be counted as two beats of triplets or three beats of sixteenth-note pairs. In favor of two-beat measures, the first and fourth beats of every other measure (beginning with the second measure shown) repeat the same note. For example, measure 2 counted as two triplets is B23B23. But in favor of three-beat measures, the fifth sixteenth note (beat three) is part of a descending scale, which emphasizes it. Counting measure 2 as three pairs of sixteenths highlights a descending scale: 1D34C6.

This scale is marked lightly in pencil in the music above. Starting in the second measure pictured, the scale goes from D to A and moves from one note to the next on the second and fifth sixteenth notes of every other measures.

For example, in measures 2 through 5, the scale is: 1D34C6;123456;1Bflat34A6;123456.

It's interesting that the scale moves on the second sixteenth note. Emphasizing that note doesn't make sense in three-beat measures or in two-beat measures. Emphasizing the fifth sixteenth note, on the other hand, would emphasize beat three in three-beat measures.

There is a second scale moving at the same time, going from the high B-flat in the second measure shown all the way down to a G on the D-string on the downbeat of the last measure shown.

For example, the second and third measures shown have the following scale: Bflat23Bflat56A23456, G23G23F23456.

This scale occurs on the first and fourth sixteenth notes of measures 2, 4, and 6, and the first sixteenth notes of measures 3, 5, and 7. In measure 8, the first and third sixteenth notes continue the scale. The fifth sixteenth note of measure 8 is an F-sharp instead of the predictable A. That note comes, instead, as the sixth sixteenth note. That in itself creates an interesting little accent. Then the downbeat of measure 9, which one might expect to be a G, is a D instead.

Bach just can't be pegged. That's why his music is so much fun to play and study. Trite but true.

Listen to 1:59 to 2:04 (wow, all that writing about 5 seconds of music!) of Grumiaux's recording to hear the section I am referring to.

Presto, Détaché Bowing, and Bernstein

I have been enjoying playing the Presto. I've been playing it a little faster than I'm comfortable in order to get the feeling of breathless incessant notes.

When I watched Hilary Hahn play this movement, I was amazed at how she kept her bow glued to the string during the passages with sixteenths and no slurs. It just put my wimpy slow practicing and light bow stroke to shame! I realized how nice my playing can sound if I really play out. It's the same bowstroke I use to practice Kreutzer No. 2, ah yes, détaché. (Though Haslop seems to be lifting his bow off the string more than I do.)

I think Bach's rhythms are interesting. At several times during this movement, the rhythm in one measure changes from a "triplet-triplet" feel to a "1+2+3" feel. It's like something out of West-Side story! I'm referring to 0:27 in the Bach. "Triplet triplet 1+2+3+"

See about 0:56 to skip the introduction.

Pat on the bach

I have , at times, felt sheepish reading this Lester book, because its so deep in music theory. But I went through the Siciliano and identified the chords. I even got the seventh chords. Nice. To my satisfaction, my analysis matches Lester's, at least in the example I'm looking at now, and I CAN understand what he's saying. Pat on the Bach.

A New Week

This week, I did not practice very much. I did spend quite a bit of time reading Joel Lester's Bach's Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, Performance. I realized that I needed to brush up on my music theory in order to understand his comments. On the other hand, I have had some music theory, and it will be good for me to think about the chord structures of the movements as I play them. Besides, the writing isn't too opaque; compared to literary criticism, Lester's book is crystal clear.

I did not finish practicing the Siciliano, or even finish reading about it. I'm sure that will be the case many weeks. That's the nature of my project. The movement for this week is much is easier than the others, since there are hardly any double stops. I may be able to spend some time reviewing the entire Sonata in addition to practicing its last movement.

Week of September 6, 2009

D-minor scale

Kreutzer Number 4

Sonata No. 1 in G-minor: Presto

I love the way this movement flows from the Siciliano. When I practice the end of the Siciliano, I usually keep going to the first few measures of the Presto. The last note of the Siciliano is a D-B-flat doublestop, an inversion of the movement's tonic chord, B-flat major. Those two notes, D and B-flat also happen to belong to a G-minor chord, which is the tonic chord of the Presto. I think that's why it is satisfying to segue into the Presto. When I continue from one movement to the next, I like to linger a bit on the open G at the bottom of the arpeggio, more than either of the artists I referenced here did. I think the beginning of the Presto is a good end to the Siciliano.

The Adagio doesn't particularly lead to the Fuga, in my opinion, even though the two movements are in the same key, and the Fuga doesn't particularly lead to the Siciliano. For some reason, there's a special connection between the Siciliano and the Presto. Music's mysteries again.

For another version of the Presto, watch Hilary Hahn play it as an encore in this YouTube video. She played Bach as an encore to Mozart's 4th Violin Concerto, the concerto featured in my favorite book, the Mozart Season.

Recordings

I posted some recordings by Yehudi Menuhin because I wanted to quickly add recordings to my posts. But in fact, I think Menuhin uses too much vibrato and is too mellow, at least during the first movement. A recording by Milstein suited me better, so I replaced Menuhin with Milstein for the G-minor Adagio.

On YouTube, I found a recording of Joseph Joachim playing the G-minor Adagio in 1903. His was the first recording of solo Bach for violin. He didn't record all 6 sonatas and partitas, just two movements. I'm happy and amazed that in 2009 we are still listening to his 1903 recording and that it has found its way to the internet.

What I would like best is to record myself playing Bach and post that. How better to illustrate what I think about Bach than by playing it myself? I could play examples of things I'm discussing even if I don't record entire movements. The Bach Season moves so quickly! By the time I get all the components of this blog together (recordings, photos of the sheet music to illustrate points I'm making), I'll be quite far into the work.

The thing about blogs is that, though previous posts stay in the archives, people generally don't go back to see if you have changed or edited a previous post. People read posts once, soon after they are published. So it would not be a great use of time for me to go back and add lots of annotations and recordings to previous posts. Better to work on making the next posts as thorough and interesting as possible

Solo Bach on Guitar

I went to Providence for an overnight visit with a friend yesterday, violin in hand and my guide to the sonatas and partitas in my backpack. A guitarist I recognized from the Park Street Station was near the tracks with a nametag, a guitar, CD's, and an open case. I remembered that I'd heard somebody - probably him - playing great solo Bach on guitar. I asked him if he played solo Bach, and he responded by playing the Fuga from the G-minor Sonata. What makes so much of Bach's music nice is the way individual notes resonate together after they're played. That effect certainly comes out on the guitar.

I looked at some YouTube videos of classical guitarist playing Bach, but none matched my memory of the subway musician. Probably no recording, at least not on YouTube, can equal the sound you get standing right next to the guitarist. If you ever see a subway guitarist, ask him to play Bach!

Uh...Wrong Tuning?

Now I am playing the Siciliano; Andante from the G-minor Sonata.

According to Joel Lester, author of Bach's Works For Solo Violin: Style, Structure, and Performance, some of Bach's violin works with awkward double stops were actually meant to be played in a different tuning of the instrument. I think this may be one of those pieces....