Jeremy Denk

12/14/2012

4 Comments

 
Hi guys!  I'm sort of stupidly excited about this.  I think the only thing I love more than music is talking about music.   I just want to kick things of by talking a little bit about Jeremy Denk, and why I think he's so cool. 

I had never heard of Denk until about a year ago when I read this essay on the Goldberg Variations in NPR's Deceptive Cadence blog.  I read it and thought, this is the best music writing I've ever read. 

Then, as I have a way of doing when something gets me excited, I went on to find out everything I could about this guy.  For instance, he has a blog that isn't updated terribly often, but, you know, quality over quantity.  The writing style is a little flowery, but I find it utterly engrossing.

Also this.

So basically, Denk became this guy that I was following online that I kind of wish I could have a beer with and talk about Bach.

When the Ligeti/Beethoven album came out, I gave it a listen while cooking dinner one evening.  I'm interested to hear what you guys think about how he relates the Beethoven sonata to Ligeti's atonal (polytonal?) counterpoint.  Is it brilliant or gimmicky?

Ciao!

4 Comments
Michael link
12/21/2012 06:13:47 am

As someone who knows Beethoven way better than I know Ligeti, I'll at least start my comments dealing with just the Beethoven.

Follow along in the score with me: http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg/7/7e/IMSLP51811-PMLP01489-Beethoven_Werke_Breitkopf_Serie_16_No_155_Op_111.pdf

It's interesting how, due to the nature of a piano sonata, this piece is so much simpler than most of the works in Beethoven's rep that were written near this. I just took a class on Beethoven's Bagatelles (short solo piano pieces) and Brahms' Intermezzi, Rhapsodies, etc. The bagatelles were much more exploratory, especially in form, but they were shorter pieces that could more easily focus on just one compositional idea. As a sonata, this needs to be more fleshed out.

This is full of Beethoven's signatures, though - for example, the use of motivic material. After 19 measures of intro, we get the pickup to a three quarter-note theme... and he never lets it go. Funny, though - normally Beethoven would break this down to a smaller unit at some point. I'm surprised he didn't do that.

Many composers employ counterpoint much more toward the end of their lives. There are signs of this here, too: toward the top of page 6 on this score.

One thing Beethoven is excellent at: he always has a recap of the expository material - it's one of the rules he never really broke - but he was one of the best at hiding that recap. You don't realize it's a recap until you're into the coda... Oh! the recap happened! I think it's disguised this time by how much he hammers the theme in the development, so that we kind of lose track of where we are and are wondering if this is the recap or just more development.

The next movement is marked "Arietta." Another thing Beethoven does typically: write voice-like titles, markings, etc. for instrumental pieces. Beethoven was kind of obsessed with the idea of writing a great opera - he knew the young Rossini and was jealous of his success, even though Rossini seemed to not work very hard or create much that was highly sophisticated. Beethoven re-wrote Fidelio over and over, and was never really happy with it... and was even more disappointed that it didn't achieve the same fame as a Rossini opera. He seemed so preoccupied with this idea that he kept on working operatic gestures into his other works, like this Arietta. Honestly, though - this movement leaves me kind of flat. It's so much fluff all over the place, and I'm not struck by any particular genius here.

I lied: in the trill section he does something really cool. He switches from a natural trill to a flat trill, which changes the tonality to minor, but then harmonizes that same flat trill in such a way that it becomes major again. That was pretty cool. (Page 16, third system, about 11:23 in the Denk recording.)

Well, that's my two cents on the Beethoven... I'll give the Ligeti another listen and comment some other time.

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Michael link
12/25/2012 11:53:04 am

Ok, I'm home in Ohio, it's Christmas, and my parents are passed out. I have some time to re-listen to the Ligeti.

From Oxford Music Online: "Etude (Fr.). The French equivalent of ‘STUDY’, widely adopted for fairly short pieces whose principal aim is the development or exploitation of a particular aspect of performing technique, such as Chopin’s Etudes op.25. The term étude was also used as a title by some 20th-century composers, usually to indicate a piece exploring a specific aspect of the composer’s craft (e.g. Stravinsky’s Four Etudes for Orchestra, 1928–9).

With that in mind, I thought it was interesting to think about what Ligeti was "studying" or intending the student/performer to be practicing.

Since these tracks don't have titles, I'll refer to them by their track number.

1.) On first listening before, I definitely did not notice the theme. Then I noticed that it's actually everywhere... and sort of fugue-like. It starts off in the right hand, then it's in the left, then it's in both in canon. Pretty cool. It disappears then - maybe this is a development section? Recap at 1:23? It seems that the "study" here is to bring out the theme clearly over the running notes in the harmony (which Denk does brilliantly).

2.) This is a nice change of pace from the frenetic first track. I like the quartal and quintal sections of this. This might be more of a study of a compositional idea than for the performer, focusing on the quartal/quintal harmony.

3.) For some reason, this makes me think of popcorn popping. I can't tell any real "melody" in this, but the shape of the pseudo melodic material is easy enough to follow. I'm really not sure what the study is here, though.

4.) This is the one I liked the most on the first listening. The scales running up are pretty captivating. There seems to be more of a melody to this than others, too. The study here is like the the same as #1: bring out the melody while keeping the running harmony steady.

5.) This one is downright pretty compared to the previous one. It almost has a simple French song-like quality to it, like Duparc or something. Maybe the study is in tenderness?

6.) This one is harder for me to wrap my head around... I think the focus is the duple melody vs. the triple harmony. I'm not sure what else is going on, though - and I'm sure there's a lot. It's interesting that this one is longer, and seems to have a bigger finish.

7+8.) I already talked about the Beethoven in the other comment.

9.) The fluttering here almost sounds like something out of Puccini. The specific notes, not so much.

10.) I think the phrase lengths here are fun. Most are 9 beats long, but there's the occasional 10 thrown in there just to make it a bit more quirky. This one's cute and fun. The contrasting coda/B section was unexpected.

11.) I love the scale passages in this one, just like in 4. The key is probably to keep them extremely steady while still having some feeling in the melody.

12.) Trills - my favorite part of the second Beethoven movement. Other than that, though, most of this just sounds like a succession of gestures, not really that musical. There's one cool part where a scale passage shrinks back to the trill, but that happened so quickly and I wanted more of it.

13.) En suspens - A title! I think this means "outstanding." I'm trying to find what is standing out here, or what is particularly awesome about this - but it does seem to have a melody to it, and I feel more emotion in this than I do many of the others.

14.) Entrelacs - between the lakes? Maybe? My French-speaking friend wasn't sure. I'm having a hard time hearing "between" or "lakes" in this. I do hear water, I guess.

15.) L'escalier du diable - The devil's stair - It does sound like something infernal rising slowly. That's pretty cool. When the climbing stops: Shit's goin' down. I guess this still climbs slowly - maybe something bigger is coming up this time. Like, the Beast from Revelation or something. Hah, left hand octave tritones in the bass at the end. Diablos en musica!

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Molly
12/27/2012 10:54:56 pm

Michael, thanks for the track-by-track breakdown of the album. I've now listened again with your analysis in mind, and now I'd like to (to use an annoyingly cliche metaphor) use your study of the trees to talk about the forest.

After you brought it up, I was thinking about the term "etude" that Maestro Ligeti has used to title each of these incrediblly difficult (so I've heard) piano pieces. Are these compositional studies or technical studies? Perhaps both? Can a composer/pedagogue create a technical study for an instrumentalist without it becoming a compositional study for himself?

Visual artist use "studies" to zero in on a particular aspect of a larger work, for example, a painter might do a drawing of a baby before inserting it into a larger scene of a mother holding him.

As performing, rather than creative, artists, musicians have to find ways to insert their creative intellect into their work. Choosing and programming pieces to put on an album or or recital is (I think) an often overlooked way of doing that. Denk does it in a brilliant and unexpected way on Ligeti/Beethoven.

What I found after a couple mindless listens and a couple very focused ones is that each Ligeti Etude is a study of a particular compositional (and thus technical) texture. The most obvious one being the trills of the twelfth track*. Another example would be the tremolo figures at the top of page 13 in the Beethoven and the track-6 etude.

Then there's the way that Denk inserts that very structured classical sonata right smack in the middle of all these (superficially at least) shapeless atonal pieces. And if you're not paying attention, it sneaks up at you. You've got it in your headphones while your out on your morning jog, and you're one or two minutes in when you go, "Wait a second! Is that functional harmony I'm hearing?"

I suggest going back and listening to just the etude preceeding the Beethoven, then the Beethoven, then the etude immideately afterward.

The sixth track has these tumbling, falling figures that seem to fall and fall and fall and then land right smack on the declamatory opening statement of the sonata: ta-dum. BAH-DAH!

Then, as the Beethoven ends, with all those trills and fast scalar passagework, or to use a word that you did, "fluttering," it blends quite seamlessly into the next etude, and again the listener hardly realises that the sonata has ended.

And finally, after one last listen to the album, it occurred to me that perhaps the idea that Denk is presenting, is that by mastering the techniques required for each of these modern etudes, one has also mastered Beethoven's 32nd piano sonata in C minor. Perhaps others as well.

*Am I the only one that got a whiff of this(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKUBTX9kKEo) during the 12th track etude?

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Molly
12/27/2012 11:12:06 pm

ALSO! As an aside. "Entrelac" is a term used in knitting to refer to a technique that creates a knit fabric that appears to be woven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrelac

Perhaps that title refers to melodic lines being woven together?

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