Musical Apothecary (June 27, 2010)

Though I come from a family of classically trained musicians, no one was ever inclined to teach me much about music.  And though I was very curious about these names I heard around the house from the time I was born – Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, and so on – I was too shy to ask more about them.  It was really only about five years ago that I decided to take matters into my own hands by listening to classical music and teaching myself more about it.  As for piano, I only took it up seriously about a year ago. (And by “seriously,” I mean only for my own enjoyment, if that’s the word.)  In all the arts, I’ve always been a snob.  That is, from the time I was a child I was more fascinated with the things that stood the test of time than with the things that happen to be popular at the moment.  With film I do tend to look to both the past and present; but with stage works, literature, and music – though I’m aware of what’s popular in the moment – I look steadfastly to the past.  Part of it may be that I share a more natural affinity with the sensibilities of works produced pre-20th century, including the greater structure and predictability that we’ve discussed in this theory course.  For someone who’s a constant storm inside, it can be mighty comforting to know that there’s the harbor of a cadence ahead.  It makes it easier to enjoy the beauty of the dissonances. 

Some months ago I told a friend that I had learned to play a few of the easier Chopin preludes, and he asked me which ones (i.e. wanted me to name the keys).  Embarrassingly, I had to admit I didn’t know.  So after this course, frankly it’s nice just to be able to say what key a piece is in.  Many years ago I used to know how to identify a key signature, along with a lot of the other basic knowledge in the first half of this course.  But over the years I lost it all, and recently there was a large disconnect between the level of difficulty of pieces I was able to work on and my ability to actually discuss them using the basic language of music.

But now I am able to say that the two Chopin preludes I can play are Opus 28 No. 4 in E minor, and Opus 28 No. 7 in A Major.  My piano is digital and is factory programmed to play certain pieces, and Prelude 28-7 is one of them.  When I first started working on the piece, I listened to the piano’s “version” so that I could get the gist of what it was supposed to sound like.  But a computer playing Chopin (of all people!) is comedy waiting to happen. In the hands of a machine, the rhythmic motive of this piece is, for lack of a better word, dorky.  A machine is not capable of interpreting and expressing a rhythm – it is only capable of replicating the rhythm with absolute exactness.  The dynamic marking at the start of 28-7 is piano and the expression mark is dolce.  Well, a machine can’t play “sweetly.” It can only play a mechanical approximation of “sweetness.”  It can’t feel “sweetness,” and therefore it can’t convey it.  

And so, when my piano plays 28-7 with its comical mechanical exactness, I sit there and listen and feel nothing.  But if I hear a skilled musician play the very same piece, I’m moved to tears, or if I play it myself, I’m moved to tears.  Not that I’m a terribly good musician, but I’m moved by my interaction with the piece; one is moved by a piece in very different and equally rich ways by either playing it or listening to it.  But both of those experiences depend on an understanding of the interpretation of music – an emotional and intellectual comprehension of what dolce means, and that piano doesn’t mean that one plays at a mechanical level of softness without variation (as the computer inside my piano believes), but that subtle variations in dynamics and expression can and should take place.  Playing 28-7 myself, and interpreting what it means to me on a personal level, it becomes an entirely different piece.  The reason for this is that, though my piano can play pieces at terrifyingly rapid tempos with absolution precision and zero wrong notes, it doesn’t understand theory; an understanding of theory enables the emotional expression of music.  Composers whisper their intent in the music through many details in combination on the staff paper – pitch, rhythm, dynamic markings, and so forth.  Through this, you get a sense of how much exactness the composer wants in one measure, and how much give and take there is with another.  A computer just can’t pick up on the subtlety of these cues. 

It strikes me that I’m being awfully mean to my piano.  I’m really not downplaying the technological miracle that at the touch of a button my piano will play a piece for me – and it’s a very handy tool to get a general idea of a piece. But in the same sense that my piano fails to understand the rhythmic motive in 28-7, it also shows a complete disregard of the piece’s form.  The piece is very short and is in parallel period form.  A person with an understanding of theory might, for example, decide to “lean” on the differences in the consequent stretch of the piece (as in measure 13 with the unexpected F# Major-Minor 7th chord that follows the A Major tonic chord).  But the piano shows no sensitivity at all to any of the changes, nor to the end of the piece.  It reveals not the slightest awareness of the two chords that end the 14th measure and the chord that starts the 15th measure, which I think of as the “chords of loss,” and which are the poignant heart of the piece for me.  I play only for myself, but there I usually choose to make the slightest ritard and dwell just a fraction longer on the chord that starts the 15th measure, because as a human being with reason and emotions (unlike the computer inside my piano), it’s my right to use my knowledge and experience to interpret the piece in a way that makes it have meaning for me.  In other words, theory provides choices.  But my piano doesn’t perceive those choices.  As it blithely finishes out the last few measures of the prelude, it merely replicates the pedaling marked in the book that came with it; namely, it pedals at the start of the second to last measure, then again on the second beat of that measure.  But I choose to pedal only at the start of that measure (and later noticed that other editions by different editors indicate this pedaling), which makes more sense to me because it leaves the tones at the start of the measure dying away – a kind of fading memory of the earlier sweetness, especially following the poignant chords of measures 14 and 15. 

I go to different composers as old friends, or as a kind of metaphysical apothecary – sort of a medicine cabinet for the soul (at least for one who needs it as badly as I do).  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they’re a pantheon of gods with different but equal strengths and realms, and one appeals to each of them for help in different situations.  Beethoven is for inspiration, for reminding me why it matters that I never give up on writing, though the world seems determined to squash it out of me.  Beethoven is a rallying of the troops against impossible odds, as he’s been for a long time for a lot of people.  In the case of Bach, I tend to neglect him for long periods and then crawl back to him guiltily in my very darkest hours; it’s like when one doesn’t give a second thought to God for many months when things are going well, but then starts praying fervently to him as soon as something goes wrong.  Bach is faith and strength personified. Schumann is my kindred spirit; he’s for gentle, ephemeral hopes and fantasies.  In many ways, I feel more simpatico with Schumann than any other composer, so I go to him for understanding.  I’m a fantasist, and playing or listening to Schumann is curiously like regarding my own writing mirrored in musical form; we seem to share the same sensibility.  And Mozart…well, Mozart holds a special and entirely separate place in my heart.  Mozart is my aphrodisiac, my clever and wise comedian, the constant friend, companion, and teacher of my artistic heart (which is my only true heart), my affirmation of life, my one most convincing reason to continue to have faith and go through the absurdities of life day after day.  (Yes, I’m a little intense about Mozart, but hey, he’s always there for me, which is a lot more than I can say about anyone in corporeal form.  Anyway, leave it to me to fall in love with the brilliant Trickster god of the pantheon. Happens every time.) 

But Chopin has a very, shall we say, specialized place in my apothecary/pantheon.  I go to Chopin when I’ve fallen so low I can’t feel anything at all anymore.  Chopin is a guarantee of feeling; he’s the AED shock to the heart.  If Chopin fails to get things pumping again, then I could almost certainly be pronounced dead.  I once strained a muscle in my face sobbing so hard while listening to Ballade No. 1 in G minor (not to mention, that piece and I have a long, star-crossed history going back to some of the stormiest periods of my life).  To me, Chopin is like the famous scene in Spinal Tap with the guitar amp – “This one goes to 11.”  Chopin goes to 11.  But the thing is, I go to 11, too.  I’m intense enough as is.  I’m not sure the world intended for two 11’s to be put together.  I know Chopin has been called the “poet” of composers, and it certainly seems apt; he has so much emotional particularity and immediacy.  His pieces are intense distillations of emotions, almost cruel they’re so sharp and sparkling and visceral.  I approach Chopin with awe and fear, because I know he won’t be gentle.  He’s never gentle.  I suppose this is partly just telling of my own past, but for me Chopin is always ultimately about the death or loss of passion – the incompatibility of passion with this world.  And I suppose precisely because of the intensity of the music, it can never help but be about the difference between that intensity and the shocking indifference of the world around it; the air deigns to carry those freighted sound waves, but afterwards turns immediately back to silence.

Actually, I’ve focused on the prelude in A Major and neglected the prelude in E minor because I really don’t feel I’m up to facing it in too much detail today.  The prelude in A major moves me greatly – but was there ever a purer distillation of death than the prelude in E minor?  The chords losing ground and losing ground, and the sadness of measures 8-9, and the fury and fight of measures 16-18, and the weak final surge in measures 20-21 before succumbing, and the ultimate failure to resolve in measure 23, despite those final three resolving chords – resignation instead of resolution.  The death of what doesn’t matter.  The prelude in E minor is a metaphor for the death of anything.  But it’s unmistakably death.  For my own part, I rarely need to be reminded what it feels like to die inside.  I “go to 11,” and dying inside is pretty much just everyday life for me.  I suppose one could use the word “cathartic” in relation to Chopin, but I’ve come to really dislike that word.  It labels a sacred part of us that has no business being labeled.  What Chopin does is sacred and very important – and yet that doesn’t mean one needs to experience it all the time.  To balance myself out, I have to stick with my funny Trickster god most days.