Boo! A Halloween Special

With Halloween approaching, it seems only relevant that we shed light on some of the spookier aspects of classical music. Though no well-known composers or performers had superstitions around Halloween day itself, many had obsessions and superstitions surrounding curses, death, and other macabre topics.

Arnold Schoenberg was well-known for his superstitions, suffering from triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number thirteen. He famously developed the twelve-tone technique, which manipulated the chromatic scale to prevent establishing a key and to give each note equal importance, though it is unclear whether he produced this technique due to his phobia. Schoenberg did religiously avoid the number thirteen, however, labeling the thirteenth measures or pages of his works as “12a” in place of the dreaded digits, and shortening the name “Aaron” to “Aron” in his opera, Moses und Aron, to avoid a thirteen-letter title. Ironically, he was born on September 13^th and died July 13^th, when he was 76 (7+6=13). Some hypothesize that this coincidental death was triggered by his fear of the number – a fear exasperated by the astrologer who helpfully wrote him that he should be wary in his 76^th year for its unlucky sum.

Gustav Mahler was thought to have feared the Curse of the Ninth – the curse that a composer will die after completing their ninth symphony, or die before completing their tenth. Similarly, Verdi is thought to have been afflicted with the curse of the Evil Eye while in Naples. Though Verdi himself did not hold this superstition, the people of Naples did. Verdi’s opera, Alzira, failed while in Naples, and his few fans thought that his opera had been cursed by fellow musician Vincenzo Capecelatro, who had greeted Verdi before Alzira and was thought to have the Evil Eye. Four years later, when Verdi returned to Naples to perform his new piece, Luisa Miller, he barely missed being crushed by a large piece of set that had fallen. At the last moment, he had been pushed out of the way by Capecelatro. Though Capecelatro was technically the one who had saved Verdi, the superstitious people of Naples took Capecelatro’s appearances before both inauspicious events as proof of Verdi’s curse.

Franz Liszt was quite obsessed with death and other dark subjects. Liszt’s fascination appears to have developed following a massive cholera outbreak in Paris in 1832. In the confusion of the streets, coffins would often overturn and burst open, bringing to mind what poet Heinrich Heine called “a riot of the dead”. Liszt famously composed many works around this topic, including Totentanz (“Dance of Death”), Funérailles, La lugubre gondola, and Pensée des morts, and frequently went to hospitals, asylums, and prison dungeons to see those condemned to die. Interestingly, Liszt participated in one of the first recorded cases of musical therapy on one of these visits, to the Salpêtrière hospital for the insane. A sixty-year-old patient there, incapable of speaking or taking care of herself, was mesmerized by Liszt’s playing and would sing back the melodies played for her, becoming calm and transfixed as long as he played.

Though modern times have inherited many of the superstitions that plagued composers hundreds of years ago, it appears that few modern composers suffer publicly from these afflictions. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, much of the eerier elements of classical music have become concentrated in shows and movies, and in musicals like The Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd. Films about serial-killers, zombie outbreaks, alien invasions, and other premises that did not exist in previous centuries produce creepy new scores to match their suspenseful plots. In some cases, classical music has been taken past its original setting and has partnered with films to heighten violence and fear (as shown in movies like A Clockwork Orange, where Beethoven’s ninth plays over violent scenes).

Classical music has always had a relationship with curses, superstitions, and general spookiness, be it through the Curse of the Ninth, ghoulish violin screeching, or creepy film scores. So, those lovers of horror – fret not! Dark and eerie music will continue to strike fear in our hearts for many years to come.

Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt. New York: Knopf, 1983. Print.

Lebrecht, Norman. 1985. The Book of Musical Anecdotes. New York: Simon & Schuster; London: Sphere Books. ISBN 978-0-02-918710-4.

“Verdi’s Curse Of The Evil Eye.” Web log post. Classic FM. N.p., n.d. Web.

The Bach Cello Suites: A 300 Year History, A 300 Year Mystery

The Bach Cello Suites are some of the most recognizable and well-loved pieces of music in both classical and popular circles. They have been featured in concerts and commercials alike, transcribed for a diverse array of instruments, and interpreted by every style of music imaginable, from swing to electronic. However, little is known about the history of the suites, or even how they were originally meant to be played. An in-depth analysis of the Bach Cello Suites often comes up with more questions than answers. Confirmed knowledge of the suites, or their composer, is rare, and experts in the field must often make peace with assumptions and educated guesses. So, how does one go about unpacking the suites’ mystery? To begin, we must start by examining the first step of the suites’ inception, with the life and history of the composer who first put them to page.

The brief glimpses into Johann Sebastian Bach’s personal and professional life paint contrasting pictures of the composer. Some historical anecdotes point to Bach being somewhat of a hooligan. While working as an organist in Arnstadt, Germany, Bach engaged in a fistfight with a member of the orchestra after allegedly calling him a “nanny-goat bassoonist” (the insult, though colorful, has probably lost something in translation). Bach was also known to play truant, particularly while he held a teaching position, as was the case when he left on an unauthorized absence from Arnstadt in 1705, and when he neglected his duties as cantor in Leipzig in the latter half of his life. While Bach was reverential to royals, often to an excessive degree, it was only when it suited him. He was known to combat their orders aggressively when it conflicted with his professional pursuits, which in one case, led him to being jailed by his employer, the Duke of Weimar, after aggressively pushing his request for dismissal from his position as the Duke’s organist in 1717. And though Bach has the reputation of being a god-fearing, rather conservative man, he participated in his share of romantic trysts. While working in Arnstadt, he was scolded for allowing a “strange maiden” into the church loft, who many believe later became his first wife, Maria Barbara. While married to his second wife, Anna Magdalena, Bach was something of a romantic, gifting her with songbirds and yellow carnations. In addition to this, he was a devoted family man, incredibly proud of providing education for his sons and for the musical careers that many of them would pursue.

It seems only right that such an elusive and at times, contradictory, character would produce some of the most mysterious and lauded pieces of music known today – the Bach Cello Suites. Their story is much like their creator’s, plagued with a history of being mistaken for dull before a sudden and celebrated rediscovery.

To begin the story of the suites, one must begin in Cöthen, Germany, with an older, more confident Bach as Capellmeister for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. Leopold’s court was nestled in the countryside, but boasted a rather cosmopolitan collection of virtuoso musicians and a very capable Capellmeister in Bach. The Suites are believed to have begun following Bach’s composition of the Brandenburg Concertos, with each concerto featuring solos of a different instrument. One was a concerto for the viola da gamba, a bowed string instrument popular at the time, and is thought to have been written for Prince Leopold, who favored the instrument. The viola da gamba part of this concerto is simple, while the accompanying instruments play intricate and captivating parts that capture the listener’s attention – believed to be a move by Bach to include Prince Leopold in the music-making without embarrassing the prince and exposing his rather modest talent in the face of his virtuoso accompaniers. Bach Scholars believe that this was the first time Bach experimented with solo performance for instruments like cello, which many believed were best suited to play in the background, supporting the melody of more dazzling instruments.

Following the Brandenburg Concertos is the period of time around 1720 that scholars believe Bach composed the cello suites, while he still worked as Capellmeister in Cöthen. The year, though a confident and educated guess, has never been confirmed, as the original manuscript of the cello suites has never been located. Bach later relocated to Leipzig, Germany, to work as cantor and to provide an education for his sons in the nearby university. Though he hoped his relocation would advance his career and bring him recognition, he was disappointed and began looking for new work soon after. Ultimately, this proved unsuccessful and Bach remained in Leipzig for the remainder of his life. Despite these disappointments, Bach experienced a period of creativity in Leipzig and produced many of the compositions that, after his death, propelled his long overdue fame.

Bach did not experience fame during his lifetime; however, he did experience minor recognition as a talented harpsichordist, a teacher, and a rather stale technical expert – never as a composer. This is most likely because Bach never lived in a musical hub, like Vienna or Paris, spending most of his life in towns and minor cities like Cöthen and Leipzig, and never composed operas, which were the catalyst to classical music fame at the time. More than a century after the alleged composition of the Bach suites, Felix Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, effectively pulling Bach from his spot on the shelf as a great, but rather uncelebrated, technical expert, and dusting him off to reveal a formidable composer in his own right. This performance initiated what would soon be called the Bach Revival – a period of time where Bach’s masterpieces were reexamined and reintroduced to the world.

Pablo Casals

The Bach Revival had begun, but the cello suites still languished without recognition. It was another fifty years before the inquisitive eyes of a thirteen-year-old cellist by the name of Pablo Casals found a battered copy of the suites, thought of then as a collection of humdrum studies for the aspiring cellist, in a second-hand music store in Barcelona. He would practice the suites for thirteen years before performing them publicly. When he did, near the turn of the century, the suites experienced a meteoritic rise in popularity and transformed from bland studies to one of the most celebrated collections of music today.

One of the great beauties of the cello suites has also been one of their greatest vexations for scholars and musicians alike: their lack of musical markings or notes. The earliest manuscripts, copies penned by Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, bear no indication of how Bach thought the pieces should be played, and thus are completely up to the interpretation of the performer. It is for this reason that the cello suites are so versatile, that they can be articulations of distress in one moment, and absolute giddiness in the next. Yet, this aspect of the suites gives them their transcendental quality. The necessity of the performer’s interpretation makes them some of the most personal pieces to performers and listeners alike. Pablo Casals, for one, would hold the suites dear for his entire life – making a routine of playing a suite each day of the week (the sixth he would play on both Saturday and Sunday). The suites were the background music for some of the worst moments of social and political strife for Casals. While Francisco Franco’s forces attacked his homeland of Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War, Casals was in the midst of recording the cello suites for the first time. Following this period, Casals boycotted performing in any country that recognized Franco’s regime, with one exception for President John F. Kennedy. Even then, he refused to play the cello suites. In addition to Casals, Mstislav Rostropovich, a Russian cellist and human rights activist, played the suites at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as a way to welcome East Berliners who were crossing the wall. At the tenth anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks, Yo-Yo Ma performed the Sarabande from the first cello suite to honor the victims.

If anything, the mystery of Bach and his cello suites only amplifies their intrigue. While many have obsessed over the missing manuscript of the suites and the life of the mysterious man who wrote it, often there is only one choice that remains – to accept the little that is known of both, and to listen to the story grounded in the notes, approaching its three-hundredth birthday and just as fresh as the day it was first penned.

Works Cited

“Report: Johann Sebastian Bach and His Sons Kenyon College, 1-4 May 2014.” Bach Notes 21 (2014): n. pag. Print.

Siblin, Eric. The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly, 2009. Print.

Matt Haimovitz plays “Overtures to Bach”

Cellist Matt Haimovitz, who started his career nearly 30 years ago on the DG label, recording the standard cello repertoire, soon broke out of that corner of classical music to seek a more personal journey. I recall, in the 1990s, interviewing Matt as he was about to head out across the country, with CDs in the trunk of his car, to perform a wide variety of styles in a wide variety of venues. This was his period of performing in bars, coffee houses and other unusual venues, as a way to reach out to people who otherwise wouldn’t consider classical music to be worth their time. Last year, Mr. Haimovitz returned to his roots. Really, the roots of all cellists, the 6 suites for unaccompanied cello by Bach. Using the handwritten copy made by Bach’s second wife, the Anna Magdalena Bach Book is the closest we have to an authentic score. Matt told me last year that he learned a great deal through that exploration, and was inspired to have contemporary composers react to the music with original, commissioned works.

The result is OVERTURES to Bach (on the Pentatone label), and in my recorded conversation posted on this page, Mr. Haimovitz tells the stories of how these pieces came about, including asking Philip Glass to “respond” to the G Major suite’s prelude. There’s “Lilli’uokalani” by Matt’s wife, Luna Pearl Woolf, partly inspired by the last queen of Hawaii, and of Hawaiian chant; and, a work by Chinese composer Du Yun (b. 1977), expanding on the sarabande from the second suite, and in so doing shares a personal story tied to this music. The pieces challenged the cellist to interpret and solve nearly as many mysteries in these new pieces, as he says he had to with the original Bach suites. The new pieces act as responses across the centuries to Bach and his ground-breaking works.

Overtures to Bach
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Joshua Bell plays “For the Love of Brahms”

Joshua Bell’s newest CD is about friendship. Friendship between Mr. Bell and his fellow musicians, who include British cellist Steven Isserlis, and American pianist Jeremy Denk, with whom Bell has performed and recorded many times; and friendship between the composers featured on the disc, Johannes Brahms and Joseph Joachim. Completing the circle of friends are Robert and Clara Schumann, who took the young Brahms into their home and their lives, and greatly admired one another. This is Bell’s first recording of the “Double Concerto”, and does so with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (Bell is the orchestra’s director); and the Piano Trio in B is the original 1854 version, considered more personal in its expression of love for Clara. Thanks to Mr. Isserlis, Bell is able to record a favorite piece by Schumann: the slow movement of the Violin Concerto in D minor. Joshua Bell has performed many times here in Portland with the Oregon Symphony, and has been my guest in interviews since some of his earliest appearances in the late 1980s (when he was just out of his teens). It was great to be able to catch up with this wonderful musician, and talk about this fantastic, lovely music of Brahms.

For the Love of Brahms – Denk, Bell, Isserlis, ASMF
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Chiara Quartet play Bartok “By Heart”

Chiara in Italian means “clear”, “pure” or “light”. These are apt words to describe the group’s sound, as well as their approach to string quartet repertoire. The four have been together since their Juilliard days (more likely longer than that), and have several recordings under their belts already. By now, you’ve probably wondered what “by heart” means: Yes, they play the 6 Bartok quartets from memory. For those of us who have listened to the works, and especially for those of you who have experience performing or at least reading through them, the Bartok quartets are definitely challenging works to perform. Let’s not beat around the bush: they’re about the furthest thing from “easy listening” as you can get. However, as I told my guests in the accompanying interview, Bartok has his own language, and once you give him enough time to communicate with you, you start to “get” him. Whether it’s the big orchestral showpieces like Concerto for Orchestra, or these 6 quartets, Bartok becomes more comprehensible with each hearing. Taking that journey with Chiara quartet, which made the decision to perform “without a net”, is a great way to go. In this audio interview Hyeyung Julie Yoon (2nd violin), Jonah Sirota (viola), and Gregory Beaver (cello) describe the experience, and the advantages, of playing without a score in front of them.

Bartok by Heart, Chiara String Quartet
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Less Respite, More Ruckus: Re-examining Classical Concerts, Past and Present

It’s a Friday night, and I’ve found myself in a dimly lit room packed wall-to-wall with people, some tapping away on their cell phones, others chatting, all eager for the set-up to complete so the featured musicians can come onstage and start the show. I notice that the man in front of me sips from a plastic cup filled with a foaming beverage, probably beer, and I recall that on my way in, I passed by a table with alcohol and snacks for sale. Considering I’m twenty-two years old, it’s easy to assume that I’m at some local club or bar, or even a rock concert; there is no shortage of these in Portland. However, the sea of white hair and the occasional magnifying glass that pops out of a purse and hovers over the program notes immediately identify the scene as otherwise. This is a concert with Chamber Music Northwest (CMNW), an annual summer festival of classical music. The woman next to me gently taps my arm and asks if I can show her how to turn off her cell phone. Yes, I definitely won’t need earplugs at tonight’s show.

Statistically, most college students aren’t spending their evenings at classical concerts. I guess I’m in the minority among my generation’s musical preferences, but I don’t mind. I eagerly jumped on board with All Classical: the “we” in “we love this music” applies to everyone, including the summer intern. Yet just because I’m a classical fanatic doesn’t mean that my concert outings are limited to ones featuring Poulenc and Vivaldi. I recently attended a concert that, by a few simple scene transformations, may appear to have little distance from the CMNW performance at Lincoln Hall. Just subtract a couple decades from the average audience age, scatter around a few more cups of beer, take away the chairs, and there you have it: a folk concert by Gregory Alan Isakov at the Crystal Ballroom.

But if we’re to be perfectly honest, many more than a few degrees of separation distinguish these concerts; in reality, the small transformations create two completely different atmospheres. For example, the string quartet of CMNW would be stunned if the audience jumped from their seats to dance along. And Mr. Isakov would be quite confused if audience members hushed each other as he walked out on stage. At Lincoln, a friend and I lowered our voices to a whisper if we wanted to speak briefly during the music. At the Crystal Ballroom, we had to shout. The only raised voices I hear at the classical performance are the calls of “bravo!” that follow a particularly well-played Beethoven quartet. I try to imagine this audience, which normally cringes nervously at the sound of a crinkling candy wrapper, instead imbued with the palpable energy of the folk concert fans, perhaps screaming out “we love you!” or waving their arms in hopes of catching a guitar pick tossed to the crowd. I almost start laughing at the thought. But then I remember a lecture from a recent music class on classical performance history. We may find this imagined scenario ridiculous, but a little over 200 years ago, it was the expected norm.

Consider the opera in 18^th-century Italy. It was the place to go to check out the latest fashions, gossip, catch up with friends, and maybe hear a bit of music. “Listening to the music was only one of the things the audience was there to do,” explains Richard Taruskin, author of the comprehensive Oxford History of Western Music. The audience, “a mixture of aristocracy and urban middle class (what we would now call “professionals”—doctors, lawyers, clergy, civil servants, and military officers), was famed throughout Europe for its sublime inattention,” as well as its capacity for volume. The chatter often drowned out the music, and there was a constant stream of traffic from box to box. Only when a favorite singer or aria appeared front and center in the show would conversations momentarily pause. The now attentive audience was perhaps even more lively, “egging [the singer] on with applause and spontaneous shouts of encouragement at each vocal feat.” If cell phones had existed back then, I wouldn’t be surprised if there had been flurries of Snapchats, Tweets about who wore what, and clumps of giggling friends squeezing behind one outstretched arm to catch a selfie with the onstage prima donna.

Solo performers entertained similarly rowdy audiences. Franz Liszt is perhaps the best example of a historical “superstar” from the 19^th century. The BBC recently published an article that compares Liszt to the Beatles, at least in terms of their audience reception. The article notes that Liszt’s contemporary, the 19^th-century German poet Heinrich Heine, coined the term “Lisztomania” to describe the frenzy of the composer’s fanatic fans that swooned, screamed, and threw themselves at his very feet. For good reason, too: Liszt was “indubitably the real deal.” His musical compositions were top notch and his technique unparalleled. He also had a dazzling stage presence, the kind we might expect today from a rock drummer or lead guitarist. The piano company Bösendorfer even crafted an instrument in his name, as I discovered on a recent visit to Classic Pianos, located on SE Milwaukie Ave. in Portland. The “Liszt Piano” is so named because as he was “wrecking nearly every piano made available to him” in Vienna, the Bösendorfer withstood the young virtuoso’s playing. If his status as celebrity musician weren’t enough, Liszt was also a rather handsome dude. As modern stars like Justin Bieber and the Beatles can attest, the flowing hair is really a hit with the ladies.

Gregory Alan Isakov wears a cowboy hat for the duration of the concert, so there’s really no telling what kind of hair he has, at least not from where I stand at the back of the Crystal Ballroom. Flowing or not, I presume that it’s his music and not his hair that is the main focus tonight. The musicians onstage make up an unusual ensemble for a typical folk concert. Mr. Isakov is performing with more than his usual band, including musicians on violin, viola, cello, and French horn. It’s him and what he’s termed “The Ghost Orchestra,” a collection of players from the Colorado Symphony. This travel-size group is on tour to promote his most recent album, Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony, a collaboration with the eponymous full symphonic orchestra. Given the likeness shared between modern pop and historic classical music audiences, it’s not too much of a leap to picture this project as a distant but nevertheless connected, new-forming branch of classical music.

Musical boundaries are ever in flux, and I always looking forward to seeing (and of course hearing) how classical music evolves over time. It will be interesting to observe how audiences evolve, too, in both composition and behavior. Not to worry, the recent movie “Florence Foster Jenkins” exaggerates a scenario of extremes in which young navy soldiers and the elderly upper crust cross paths at a recital in Carnegie Hall. Yet harmony prevails, if not in Ms. Jenkins’ singing, then at least among audience members old and young alike. Will CMNW entertain drunken, screaming fans at future seasons? I would guess not. Is it likely that folk audiences will sit still with their cell phones on silent? Again, probably not. But it is eye-opening to know that over the course of history, we haven’t isolated the two extremes. As for the future of classical concerts, we’ll just have to keep listening to find out.

***

Over the course of my summer in Portland, I attended many concerts that were each spectacular showcases of incredible musical skill. Many thanks to Chamber Music Northwest, Gregory Alan Isakov and the Ghost Orchestra, the Portland Opera, the Portland Wind Symphony, and the many performers at All Classical’s weekly live broadcast, Thursdays @ Three for making live performance a frequent feature during my stay in Portland. I’ll experience one last classical treat this evening, September 1^st, when the Oregon Symphony presents a Waterfront concert to kick off their 2016-17 season. Join us down by the river for free live music and fireworks, or tune into All Classical at 89.9 or streaming at www.allclassical.org for the live broadcast.

***

Bibliography

Jennifer Koh: Tchaikovsky’s complete works for violin and orchestra

Jennifer Koh is a name – and face, and sound – that should be familiar to many Oregon Symphony fans. One of her earliest appearances was in 2008, playing the Brahms concerto with the orchestra, and she’s since returned to perform the Dvorak and Bartok concertos. I had the pleasure of hearing her perform more than once, and was impressed by her expressivity and technical prowess.

And no wonder. Ms. Koh won the Tchaikovsky competition in1994 where she played, naturally, the Tchaikovsky and Brahms concertos. Now here we are, twenty years on, and she has come back to a composer she says she’s always felt a great affinity for. As I mention in my recorded conversation, Jennifer Koh plays this music not only with technical proficiency, but feels very “comfortable” in this music. That makes listening to her interpretation of the Russian romantic’s works all the more enjoyable. I really appreciated that she arranged the music chronologically, rather than “top-down”: by hearing the earliest work, the Sérénade mélancolique, followed by the Valse-Scherzo and then the Violin Concerto, we hear the composer’s “autobiography”, as it were, as he expresses himself and works his way toward one of the greatest, most challenging, and exhilarating concertos in the repertoire. While some performances may not make a lasting impression, I believe that Jennifer Koh’s, does.

Tchaikovsky: Complete Works for Violin & Orchestra / Koh, Vedernikov, Odense Symphony
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Piano. Push. Play. transforms Portland with music, art, and a bit of magic

The piano on the sidewalk doesn’t make any attempt to blend in with the bustling city surroundings. Its bright pink exterior bristles with wild fur that surpasses many of the hip and trending hairstyles in both eccentricity and brilliance of color. Above its dense mane bobbles a cluster of orbs resembling eyeballs and from underneath grins a slightly alien face that bears eighty-eight black and white keys for teeth. Please play me, a sign on its back pleads. Heads turn as people walk by and ask, what is that? The instrument is located outside the Portland Art Museum; it’s probably one of those weird modern sculptures. Only when someone is curious enough to sit down and fulfill the polite request by testing the keys do people realize: oh… it’s a piano.

, as this pink furry instrument is affectionately named, is only one of many pianos that Piano. Push. Play. has placed around Portland. The project, founded by Megan McGeorge in 2012, is focused on building community and challenging perspectives through music, specifically through accessibility to public pianos. With the help of local piano companies, visual art designers, musicians, and the greater Portland community, the project team members “rescue pianos and put them on the street for everybody to enjoy.” Piano. Push. Play. breaks musical boundaries by freeing the instruments from their traditional residences in living rooms, concert halls, and practice rooms to “give pianists more opportunities to play for the public.” And the term “pianist” leaves ample room for interpretation. Whether day or night, weekday or weekend, these pianos are for Portland and anyone – everyone – who wants to play. Even the project’s name emphasizes the simplicity of their mission: Here is a piano. Push a key. Yes, you too can play the instrument!

The pianos themselves are works of art, inside and out. Once they rescue instruments that are in disrepair but still playable, visual artists transform their surfaces with swirls of paint and other materials to invent a uniquely charming character for each one. Amy, who sits outside the visitor center at Powell Butte Park, is elegantly dressed in “bright gold rococo-inspired details on a dark, dusty blue to shine like stars in the midnight sky.” Katy Towell Design’s passion for fairy tales and antiques inspired this theme, which fittingly mirrors the starry night skies that twinkle and glimmer above the park. Dorothea graces the center of Lownsdale Square with depictions of Ancient Greece. The wooden, splintering construction is painted with an illusion of marble, which looks so realistic that we are surprised when it is not cool to the touch. Artist Charlie White completed the look with depictions of historic female figures: “the caryatids from ancient Greek pillars that support the structure of the massive buildings; the amphora — vessels of all variations used throughout Europe in that period of antiquity and meant to hold, serve, store and ship liquid or dry goods,” and a water naiad whose dainty feet emerge as pedals at the base of the instrument. Each instrument is named after a female musician: Amy Beach composed large-scale works and was an acclaimed pianist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Dorothea Banner was a composer of electronic and computer-generated music and served as an esteemed professor; and Mary Lou Williams (pictured above), the multi-talented jazz pianist, vocalist, and composer, mentored and taught many jazz stars including Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. These examples are only the beginning; each of the project’s twenty pianos is an artistic gem with a history and namesake of its very own.

Though each piano sports a one-of-a-kind exterior, their request called out to passers-by is always the same: Please play me! They do not differentiate between professional musician and novice, dexterous and bungling fingers, perfectly pitched and tone deaf ears. In fact, by extending the same invitation without discrimination, Piano. Push. Play. demands that we reconsider who musicians can be. Megan recalls a moment of reevaluating her own preconceptions: “I remember that no sooner had we placed a piano on the bus mall last fall, a group of young boys went skateboarding down the street and one of them stopped, walked over, sat down and started playing Für Elise. In a short three seconds my perspective on who this kid was flipped 180 degrees, and I try to remember that same feeling whenever I interact with people as I go about my everyday life in Portland. I remember that you never know what’s lying underneath a person.”

Portland is a city of people as well as physical spaces, and Megan sees the project as an opportunity to transform our interpretations of both: “That street corner is no longer just a street corner. It is a living room where you’re enjoying/experiencing the creation of music right in front of you and seeing a side to someone you wouldn’t be able to experience otherwise.” It’s a moment worthy of a little fairy dust, as fantastic as the metamorphosis from decrepit piano to interactive sculpture. In fact, Megan describes the music with a similar sense of awe: “We believe that by exposing people to the visual and auditory experience of the piano, we are reminded of how magical and vital music is.”

The magic doesn’t vanish at the end of the summer. The pianos will be relocated once again, finding new homes in community centers and schools. The perpetual rain of Portland is not exactly nourishing for these mechanically intricate creations, but this does not hinder them from year-long music making. They will continue to play and be seen and heard indoors, brought to life by the community. It’s music of the people, by the people, for the people, sustained by these unconventional contraptions of wood, paint, keys, hammers, strings, and sometimes, a touch of pink fur. Magic, indeed.

***

All quotes from Megan McGeorge and Piano. Push. Play. are directly from their website, www.pianopushplay.com.

Piano. Push. Play. places instruments all around the city, indoors and outdoors, from parks to rooftops to high school cafes. You can find the pianos’ current locations by downloading and checking this handy app. Their Facebook and Twitter pages are also frequently updated with videos, photos, news about locations, and even upcoming events. But hurry! The pianos will be out for only a couple more days, wrapping up with a farewell concert this Friday, August 26th at 7 PM outside the Portland Art Museum. What are you waiting for? Go play.

Eugene Drucker and Emerson Quartet’s 40th anniversary Limited Edition Set

One of the greatest quartets in the world today, Emerson String Quartet has been making great music together for 40 years. They’ve been celebrating this year with concerts around Europe and the United States, and were here in Portland with the summertime Chamber Music Northwest Festival, and their old friend, artistic director and clarinetist, David Shifrin (who appears in this set playing Mozart and Brahms).

Violinist Eugene Drucker is my guest in this conversation about the quartet’s origins, their Juilliard training (with, naturally, the Juilliard Quartet), Mr. Drucker’s own personal association with the Busch Quartet (regarded by many musicians as possibly the greatest string quartet of all time), as well as the group’s decision early on to share first violin duties (hint: it’s not about sharing the spotlight). The 52-CD set is a gem: from their earliest (1987) recordings, to a collaboration with soprano Renée Fleming, the multiple-Grammy winning Emerson String Quartet continues to delight and inspire people around the world, and clearly have much more to say, and to share.

Emerson String Quartet: Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon
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A Darwinian Take on Musicology

Evolution. It’s not just about Darwin’s finches and paleontology. Music history can be considered an evolutionary study of sorts: a tracing of where, when, why, and how music was played, written, discussed, or heard, and who was involved in the process. We can study these changes of musical sound over time by examining one branch of this massive evolutionary tree: musical instruments. The “ideal” musical sound is a concept that has shifted dramatically over the years, and the instruments we play reflect these new ideals, which in turn reflect broader social changes in history. Here, we’ll analyze a (relatively) small evolutionary window of two instruments, the flute and the violin, from baroque to modern styles. We’ll see how their physical bodies affect their sonic capabilities, and why they have developed into their familiar forms today.

The flute has one of the longest known histories of all human-crafted musical instruments. Scientists discovered bone flutes in a European cave; these instruments date back to 40,000 years ago. Since technologies have come a long, long way since then, let’s fast-forward to the 1600s when humans and musical performance have migrated from caves into courts and churches. Flutes in the baroque style during this time are made of wood in a conical shape that tapers slightly at the foot, or the open end of the instrument. All the finger holes are uncovered, with the exception of a single metal key located toward the foot of the instrument. The instrument produces a soft, subdued sound with a unique timbre, or tone quality, for each note due to the open holes that create inconsistencies in airflow patterns.

Left: Baroque flute, modeled after flutes by J. W. Oberlender (1681-1745). Right: Boehm flute, 1877.

The flute underwent a serious make-over in the mid-1800s when Theobald Boehm, in search of a “better quality, a purer intonation” and a “greater compass of tones,” revamped the flute. His intense study of physics and acoustics eventually resulted in a sleek new instrument that is the basis for the modern, 21st-century flute that we see (and hear) today. Its metal body, enlarged tone holes, and reverse conical shape (that widens instead of narrows toward the foot) all contribute to an increased volume power for the instrument. The addition of keys to cover some of the holes and a coupling mechanism that uncomplicates fingerings also homogenizes the timbre of the instrument: Boehm boasts, “a player is in a condition to play in all keys with equal purity, certainty, and ease… As compared with the old flute,” and here he refers to the baroque model discussed above, “this one was unquestionably much more perfect.”

Left: baroque; right: modern. Visible here is the difference in fingerboard length and the presence (or absence) of the chin rest.

The violin also underwent similar changes from its baroque to its modern model. In the 17th- and 18th-centuries, baroque violins are strung with gut strings under low tension, creating a soft, mellow sound. Violin bows from this time vary in length, and are shorter and more loosely strung compared to bows today. The low tension of the horsehair makes it easier to manage quick dynamic changes and is “better suited for music created with a sound ideal of constantly shifting variations between strong and weak notes and passages,”* i.e. music in the baroque style. The balance of the bow construction also influences the player’s leverage over the strings. Under these specific physics, downbows on the baroque violin are naturally stronger and louder than upbows, which are weaker and quieter.

The evolution of the violin has been more gradual than that of the flute, but the new design strives for similar aesthetic goals. The violin bow lengthened and shifted its balance, tailored for the newer music styles: “The shift of balance in the modern bow makes it easier for the player to put almost equal pressure on the strings no matter what part of the bow he is using. The modern bow was developed for playing music composed for a sound ideal which called for longer lines and gradual changes in dynamics.”* String tension increased by slight alterations of the violin body: the neck angled lower, the bridge increased in height and curvature, and the standard tuning increased. Combined with a tightening of the bow hair and the outward arc of the bow itself, these characteristics allow a uniformly responsive and louder sound. The fingerboard lengthened, so violinists could play higher notes. The strings changed from gut to steel, which could play louder and withstand higher tensions. Perhaps the most noticeable difference from the baroque to the modern violin is the addition of the chin rest. With this feature, it is easier for a player to grip the instrument between their chin and shoulder, freeing their left hand to move with increasing speed between notes.

Why did musicians and instrument makers want louder, faster, more uniform instruments, anyway? Changes in acoustics, artistic styles, and collaboration practices were making new demands on musicians and their instruments. Performances relocated from royal courts to concert halls, which were much larger in physical size and attracted larger audiences. Projection was necessary to reach listeners in the farthest rows; thus, material changes in the instruments—gut to steel strings, and wooden to metal flutes—helped the instruments to meet the demands of the larger concert hall acoustics. The rise of the virtuoso musician in the 19th-century glamorized flashy, highly technical performance. Longer fingerboards reach higher notes, high-tension strings and bows quicken response time, and keyed flutes increase finger and pitch accuracy; musicians could now raise the bar on their virtuosic performance. In addition to changing performance standards for solo musicians, ensemble dynamics were changing as a result of wider-reaching, more accessible transportation. When playing in larger ensembles with musicians from different parts of the country or the world, a common baseline for sound was necessary. As a result, pitch was gradually standardized, fidelity to the written score grew in significance, and both the violin and flute, as we have seen, strove for a consistent, pure timbre. As our social demands change and our ideal sound qualities evolve, so do our instruments, which record historical, social, and musical trends in their physical forms.

Laurent Bernadac playing the 3dvarius, a 3D-printed instrument that he modeled after a Stradivarius violin.

Although gradual and barely discernible, evolution is never static. In 1994, Eva Kingma introduced a patent for her self-named Kingma system for the flute. This new design facilitates playing quarter-tones and multiphonics, extended techniques that are especially prevalent in 21st-century compositions. The 3dvarius is a minimalist, 3D-printed violin that can be played acoustically or electrically. And with the rise of computers, which can electronically manipulate flute or violin recording samples, our ideals for and the possibilities of sound are infinitely expanding. We are currently experiencing the newest, most modern branches of musical instruments and their social influences. We’re listening to evolution.

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*Source: Newman, Bach and the Baroque, p. 226

For a local example of Baroque string playing, check out the Portland Baroque Orchestra playing Vivaldi’s Spring from “The Four Seasons,” under Artistic Director Monica Huggett. Compare this sound to the Classical Chamber Orchestra’s stylistically similar version, but played on modern instruments.

Aside from the contrasting artistic interpretations (tempo, ornamentation, etc.), the difference between the sound of the baroque and modern flutes is easier to discern. Compare recordings of the first movement (Allemande) of J.S. Bach’s Partita in A minor BWV 1013, first on baroque and then modern flute.

Beyond external instrument technologies, our human bodies also influence how we play and the musical sounds we create. How do we shape our bodies to produce our perception of the “ideal” musical sound? Check out what Christina Kobb has to say about her historical investigation of 19th-century Viennese piano technique.

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