Get your own Free Home PageWhen I was sixteen, I sang in the chorus in our high school production of "South Pacific". I marveled at how the whole thing was put together, and after reading the autobiography of composer Richard Rogers, I decided that this was what I wanted to do: Write musicals. I began to make my first halting attempts at musical notation, but realized quickly I was deficient in many areas of expertise, including orchestration. I had heard that this guy Beethoven was good at writing for orchestras, so when I saw a recording of his Fifth Symphony for sale in the discount bin at Skaggs, I bought my first classical record ever. By the time I was eighteen, my collection would swell to over a hundred recordings.
This was the start of a magnificent obsession. My original intent was merely to study the work on an intellectual level, thereby learning what I needed to know in order to write music. I never dreamed how much I had to learn! With the help of a book on music appreciation, which analyzed the symphony theme-by-theme, I learned about the sonata-allegro form and other symphonic structures. The work suddenly took on new dimensions for me as I began to fully comprehend its awesome complexity. I would go to sleep every night with Beethoven's music going through my head. I listened to the symphony every day for weeks on end, cranked as loud as my parents and siblings would allow. When school started again, I could not concentrate on my work; all I wanted to do was to go home and listen to music.
Looking back on it today, I could not have picked a better piece of music to introduce myself to symphonic structure. The Fifth Symphony is unique in it's concise divisions between sections, at least in the first movement. In that movement, there is a marked difference between the first and second themes, a distinct break between the end of the exposition and the beginning of the development, and the recapitulation and coda are clear-cut. Most importantly, the entire piece is based on an easily recognizable four-note motif that brings the four movements together in a way that even the musical novice could understand. Had I listened to just about any other symphony in the classical repertoire, I probably would have been lost. As it was, my choice was quite fortuitous. Beethoven's Fifth was an ideal choice to inaugurate my untrained ear to the classical music world.
Beethoven's Fifth also marked the dawn of my understanding of absolute music. When I first heard of this concept, it was difficult for me to understand. The definition I read said, among other things, that absolute music is not intended to convey any kind of emotion. This seemed to contradict all that I had learned about classical music, but I would eventually learn that it is a sound concept. There is an apocryphal story that when Beethoven was asked the meaning of the Fifth Symphony, he replied, "Fate knocks at the door!" I don't think so. To me, the meaning of the symphony is purely musical. The four-note motif, with the emphasis on the fourth note, is a microcosm for the work as a whole...four movements with the emphasis on the fourth, not the first as with most symphonies in the Viennese Classical style. To me, this is all the "meaning" it needs.
Until a fateful moment in my junior year in high school, Beethoven was my favorite composer and the one I considered the greatest of all time. His position in my heart was soon to be usurped, however, by Johann Sebastian Bach. This time it was not a recording, but a piece we rehearsed in choir that got my attention. A somewhat watered-down arrangement of the first movement of Cantata #80, "Gott, der Herr, is Sonn' und Schild", was presented to my high school choir by the director, Richard Watkins. This was a quite ambitious piece for a high school choir to perform, with its high tessetura and numerous contrapuntal difficulties, but we were up to the challenge. Mr. Watkins introduced us to the piece by having the accompanist play the opening soprano melody. My love affair with the music of Bach began at that very moment. Without hearing what the rest of the piece sounded like, I was absolutely transported by this mere two or three bars of melody. Instantly, I recognized that this was a level of music far above the standard fare that we normally sung.
When we sang the piece in concert, the accompaniment was played on the harpsichord. This may have seemed to Mr. Watkins to be an ideal arrangement, since it was a Baroque piece, but I had by this time purchased a recording of the complete cantata sung by the South German Madrigal Choir. In its original orchestration, the opening chorus took on a completely different tone. With its pervasive tympani rhythms and its martial horn calls, the opening instrumental section (which was greatly truncated in the arrangement we sang) displayed a level of energy and vitality that was impossible to convey with a solo harpsichord, or even a piano. In addition, we as a choir never had the opportunity to hear the rest of the cantata. The alto solo (sung in my recording by the incomparable Janet Baker) was heavenly, and the soprano-bass duet near the end stirred the heart (not to mention stimulate the musical intellect with Bach's fine melodic construction). I also had a revelation while listening to the cantata: The chorale, "Nun Danket Alle Gott", which utilized the same instrumental themes as the opening movement, was none other than the familiar hymn, "Now Thank We All Our God". Even more startling, as I listened to the recording again and again, was the realization that the first movement must have been based on the chorale. In other words, this magnificent piece I had sung in the high school choir was, unbeknowest to me, based on a hymn-tune I had known all my life!
Although he has been dead for over two hundred years, I consider Bach to be one of my greatest teachers. His music has everything a composer needs to know to express himself eloquently through music. To me, Bach represents the almost limitless possibilities music can offer us all.
In the movie "Amadeus", one of the characters claimed that German was "too brutal for singing". I would have agreed at one time, having been brought up on newsreels of Hitler's maniacal public speaking and war movies with the evil Nazis spitting out their percussive German syllables. My prejudices toward this language melted away, however, when I became acquainted with the vocal music of Bach and Schubert. I had read about Schubert's songs, how they had paved the way toward the Romantic movement with their bold, sometimes experimental fusion of melody, harmony, and drama. In addition, I was familiar with at least one Schubert song: Wohin?, often sung in the annual high school Solo and Ensemble contests in Texas. Typically, this song was belted out like a Wagnerian opera, with the singer punctuating the German words like a young, enthusiastic version of Hitler. Since I didn't know any better, I liked the song this way, and looked for a recording of it to add to my collection. I finally found it when I was a senior in high school. As it turned out, Wohin? was part of a song cycle, "Die Schoene Muellerin". In my recording the cycle was sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
My discovery of "Die Schoene Muellerin" was on par with that of the Beethoven Fifth Symphony. I was fortunate to have found one of the most famous recordings of the work (as I found out much later), and soon found that Wohin? was by no means the only great song in the cycle. In fact, Wohin? was not at all the song I had always thought it was. Sung smoothly and lightly by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, it made a completely different impression on me than it had when sung by high school students with no understanding of its relevence to the larger work. Instead of evoking thoughts of old Hitler speeches, it told the tale of a gently babbling brook, with the enchanting voice of nixies tempting a wanderer to follow. Never again would I look on Wohin? the same way.
When I first acquired this recording, I listened to different songs in fits and starts, skipping from one to the other. A more serious listening later, while reading the translation, would reveal to me a story of unrequited love that struck a powerful chord within me. As a shy, withdrawn teenager who had never been on a date, I identified strongly with the sensitive, naive wanderer who fell in love with the miller's beautiful daughter. I recognized instantly the mental gymnastics the protagonist went through to convince himself that his fantasy world was in harmony with the real world. I recognized as well the inevitable, crushing disappointment he suffered when Reality reared its ugly head. For years after I discovered it, this song cycle would hold a fascination for me both as a psychological drama and a great musical work.
Musically, "Die Schoene Muellerin" is absolutely brilliant. Each song shines with the radiant light of inspiration. The pathos Schubert wrings out of Wilhelm Mueller's original text is wondrous, and the emotional ups and downs of the work are wrenching. Technically, Schubert was as innovative as ever in his accompaniment, creating images of running water, huge paddle-wheels, thundering millstones, falling rain, and flowers swaying in the breeze. In addition, he recreates the sound of the lute and the call of the hunting horn. All of this is accomplished in the piano part alone, freeing the voice to concentrate on such melodies as only Schubert could write.
Schubert is not considered to be on par with such composers as Beethoven or Bach, and "Die Schoene Muellerin" is not even considered his best song cycle, that distinction going to "Wintereise". However, it is one of my favorite works, by one of my favorite composers. Schubert may have lacked the technical skills of others, but his sensitivity and vision were unequaled. The music of Schubert has always been near and dear to me, comforting me in the darkest moments of my life. At such times, I listen to his music and think, "That's Schubert. He understands."
J.S. Bach: Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor
The music of Bach presents an interesting conundrum. There seems to be little difference in style between his instrumental and his vocal music. Both employ ingenious melodic construction and counterpoint, both display the highest technical skill and are equally demanding of the performer. Yet, while his instrumental works are the epitomy of absolute music, his vocal works are often just the opposite. Whenever possible, Bach used his music to convey the meaning of the words, even in works such as the chorale prelude where the words were merely implied (see Albert Schweitzer's two-volume treatise on Bach for a thorough examination of this practice). This technique of Bach's is so seamlessly interwoven into his vocal works that it is ubiquitous, and went unnoticed by me until I read Schweitzer's work. I then began to see it everwhere, particularly the depiction of the cat chasing the mouse in the last movement of the "Coffee Cantata". This musical imagery is far more subtle than that of Schubert, and is easily missed by the inattentive listener.
All of which got me thinking: Was it possible that Bach interwove similar meaning into his instrumental works? Could it be that many of the works that seem to be absolute music are really program music, representing a non-musical idea? For years, I have been intrigued by the possibility that this is the case with one of Bach's most famous works, the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. When I listen to this work, I am reminded of the Bible verse, "In the beginning was the Word,...and the Word was made flesh..." The repeating theme on which Bach based the Passacaglia and Fugue, it seemed to me, could represent the word of God. In the mind of John the Evangelist, the Word was something that existed from the very beginning of time, and runs through history as a common, unifying thread. The Word can never be changed, but our perceptions of it can, as more and more of it is revealed to us through the ages. Bach's theme seems to have a similar significance in this work. It repeats itself over and over, sometimes embellished, sometimes flipped to a new octave, always played against a different background. It's true nature, however, its essence, never changes at all. It continues through the passacaglia, like the Word through time, never changing significantly until the fugue frees it from its "theoretical" aspect and brings it to life. Now it can modulate to new keys or even drop out temporarily while a fugal sequence takes over. All of this is very proper and to be expected of a Baroque fugue, but here it seems to take on a greater significance. In the fugue, I see the subject as being the "Word made flesh", in other words, Christ. He has existed from the very beginning, but the fullness of time takes him out of the pages of a book and gives him a face and a name. He is free to move among us and spread the Word.
Is this what Bach was trying to convey with the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor? We will never know, but in my opinion it does not diminish the piece in the slightest to believe so. Because of this, and because of the perfection with which it was composed, I always mention this among my favorite compositions. Like the music of Schubert, I find it consoling in dark moments. Even more significant, my wife has said the same thing about it. Whatever he was trying to say, he managed to get that much across. Bach's music is truly a universal language.
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