After reading through my last post about how one professor got me interested in music history, I started feeling nostalgic.
We had two music history professors in the music department.
One was the female professor that I have mentioned quite a bit in my previous
post. However, there was a second, a male professor, with whom I took a course.
Easily swayed by peer opinion, I took only one course with him. And unlike
with the female professor, I was completely lost in his class. To this day, I
don’t really remember much from his course, which is unfortunate because the
way the basic-level music history courses were divided, he was the one to teach
the Baroque era (his time period of responsibility included Medieval, Renaissance,
and Baroque eras, while the other professor (the good one)’s responsibility
included the Classical, Romantic, and 20th century eras). I say it
was unfortunate, because one of the eras I’m currently interested in learning
more about is the Baroque era. That was when all the modern instruments and
ensembles related to all things Classical were being formed.
There was one golden nugget I received from an older student
who’d had both professors regarding each of their approaches. It was simply
this: the male professor responsible for teaching the Medieval, Renaissance,
and Baroque eras focused on the history first, and then put the music in context;
the female professor responsible for teaching the Classical, Romantic, and 20th
century eras focused on the music first, and then put the history in context. In
retrospect, I think I would have loved to have been able to appreciate each
professor for their different approaches to the music.
That’s the problem with having gone to college when I did: I
didn’t have the maturity (on any level) to understand the significance of what
I was learning. My attitude toward school was to put my head down, do the work
the best I can (not that I didn’t suffer from laziness in certain areas), and
live with the results. I rarely asked other students – let alone any of my
professors – for help.
One of the only reasons I grew as a student in music history
at all with the female professor was because she required us to
meet with her to talk about our term papers (first for putting together our
first drafts, and then again regarding revising our drafts). She made sure each
student knew what needed improvement on their work, and she was excellent at 1.
communicating what she wanted in each of our papers, and 2. parsing out where
the improvement was needed and exactly what. I had no choice but to learn to
receive the help from her! And wouldn’t you know, over time, I got better.
Papers no longer became a chore of “auugghh! I gotta write 8 to 10 pages!?”
and instead became “aha! I now see why the papers need to be 8 to 10 pages! It’s
because that’s how much is required to be able to put in everything that she
wants in a term paper! Wow, she’s really smart!” I started looking at the
paper as, “am I meeting all the criteria for a term paper?” instead of, “how
the heck am I gonna fill 8 to 10 pages?” (That was the attitude I had regarding
every paper for English and history classes dating back to high school, and
perhaps even before.)
As a composer now, something I’ve been gravitating toward writing
is sonata form. Prior to her classes, I had no concept of it. I knew what sonatas
were because I learned a few of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas. I realized
from performing them that it changed keys in the middle, and that the opening
material returned at some point and didn’t change key the second time. But as
far as what the music did and why, I was completely clueless. I remember at my
continuance meeting for composition (I think this was junior year), one of my
favorite professors (he taught music theory) asked me regarding one of my
compositions: “what’s the form?” I replied that I didn’t know. They passed me
onto continuance anyway. But that question stuck with me for a long time after.
Form really wasn’t something I had really thought about when I wrote music. My idea
of form was to write the piece of music in a through-composed manner (meaning
every next section was completely new material), and if or when I felt like bringing
back some earlier thematic material, I did. But the fact that the professor
that asked me that question asked me that question, it made me stop and think.
Interestingly, Beethoven, who is one of my inspirational
sources, pushed the envelope in his day. He had studied with Franz Josef Haydn,
who was very much a conservative Classical composer. And Beethoven’s early
works certainly reflected the conservative style as well, specifically it would
always adhere closely to the form. But as they parted ways and Beethoven struck
out for himself, he started not only experimenting but also changing the convention.
He would modulate to different keys than what Haydn or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
had done. He would often add codas at the end, which was basically the main (or
first) theme of that movement but sped up. One other change that I’ve noticed is
the difference between how Mozart and Beethoven ended sections. In a Mozart
piano sonata, it was clear when the end of a section was reached, by the sound
of a clear rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic cadence. By comparison, Beethoven’s
section-ending cadences weren’t as clear. There would still be that familiar harmonic
progression, but the music, rhythmically and melodically speaking, wouldn’t
stop in the same way. It would instead continue, almost like stream-of-consciousness.
I also mentioned that one of the classes I had taken with the
female professor involved a key question that persisted throughout the course: “what
does this music connote?” which helped pique my interest in how the music worked.
She was also the same professor that often answered that question by saying
that the music was about sexual desire. As a bible-believing Christian now, I’m
less interested in that, but at the time I certainly was, along with other topics
that the professor would name. For this reason, though, I’ve been less inclined
to listen to Mozart on the whole. Some of his piano sonatas are still indeed
interesting. But much of what he wrote was opera, a genre I’ll honestly admit I
have very little interest in. But this same professor’s comment about Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony in C (note that it does not say C major or C minor) was that it
reflected Beethoven’s inner struggle with life and death. He struggles with
wanting to end his life, but ultimately chooses to continue to live. According
to my professor, she says that this is reflected in this particular symphony,
in that it begins in C minor, but ends in C major.
I find I can relate to it. While intellectually, I resonate more
with Ben Folds’ comment that the idea of major being happy and minor being sad
is not necessarily true, I at the same time am finding that I myself cannot end
a suite or sonata in minor (only rarely will I end a movement that way). My
recent composition of “Piano Sonata in B minor” (yes, “minor” is in the title)
has the third movement starting in B minor and ending in (“on”) B major, and
the fourth movement, in a sort of chorale style, exclusively written in B major.
Two other movements I wrote, for a completely different suite, start in a minor
key and end in the parallel major key. So, while I intellectually claim no
relation between mode and emotion, I’m also realizing that I cannot end in
minor, which would seem to indicate that perhaps I do believe in such a
relation. If I had to presuppose what that may be about, I would say my faith
not only in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, but also that this hope of
freedom and victory that is found only in Him is available to anyone. And I therefore
presuppose that, because of this freedom and victory and hope that I have found,
what would it say if I ended a sonata or a suite or a symphony in the minor
key? That hope is lost? (Happily, the short answer is “no.”)
In spite of my interest in studying and writing in Classical
sonata form, I too find myself wanting to deviate from it. In my two piano
sonatas/suites written over the past year, I would consider that only about four
out of the eight movements are in proper sonata form. I find I love the modulations
of the keys that accompany it, but I also find that I don’t love repeating the
material in the exact same way. (“Doesn’t it get boring to listen to the
same material all over again in the same way?”)
To wrap up this post, I have a brief story about just that: in
my job playing piano in different nursing homes, I once played a Mozart piano
sonata (to be precise, it was his Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major, K.332, first
movement). Interestingly, I learned it in piano lessons after hearing it in the
first week of my very first music history class with the female music history professor
and asked my piano lesson instructor if I could learn that piece the same semester.
He of course obliged.
I picked it up again as an adult (for this piano-playing
job) and tried it on the nursing home audience. Just for context, my listeners came
from a time before TVs shortened attention spans, and from a time when people
would still wait until the end of a piece to clap. And remember, Mozart
typically had clearly defined sections such that you would know when a section
was over, simply by the clear cadences he wrote. This particular movement from
his Piano Sonata in F major (No. 12, K.332) was no exception. Further, it also
had repeats at the end of each clearly defined section (I should also mention
that these sections were long.) Anyway, the point is, after I finished
the first repeat of the first section of this Mozart piano sonata, everyone applauded.
They thought the piece was over. I don’t remember if I was planning to repeat
that section like the composer had written, but I decided to abort that plan. I
continued to the next section, and believe me, I only played it once. The crowd
(the older-generation crowd that certainly knew to wait until a piece was
over!) then clapped a second time.
By contrast, I never had that problem with any of the Beethoven
pieces I played in nursing homes. Maybe it was because of the continuity and
relative ambiguity of ends of sections that helped? I also realized that this
same generation grew up on music from the Great American songbook and from
American musicals and were in their 30s and 40s when rock-and-roll first began.
They may not have had the attention issues that younger generations have, but they’re
used to songs which are much shorter than Mozart sonatas!
Perhaps this is the key to keeping music interesting: one
the one hand, make sure it sounds good (meaning having the melodies and
harmonies follow some kind of pattern established back in the Baroque and Classical
eras), but having some form variety may also be the key. I’m still exploring
this thought process, both verbally and in composition, but so far it seems
that a balance of tonality and variance is what will keep the music interesting,
to me at least, and hopefully, to the listener as well.
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