A Swim Out of My Musical Depth

This morning J. left for Barcelona (or Barça; this, as Uncle Pu informed us during his visit yesterday, is the popular shortcut) to potter about that sunny city for a week, in the company of his class and of a Spanish class with whom they have been corresponding. T. accompanied him to Tegel Airport, whilst his other sister slept heavily after being imprudent again (went to sleep after 6-ish), though I did have the decency to mumble something inarticulate to J. when he bade me goodbye. It was sunny today for a while, though still cold, so it was a good day to go travelling. One reason why J. was happy to go to Spain is that he expects the weather to be considerably warmer there. Therefore my sadness at perceiving the void in the apartment which is usually filled by him, gazing at his computer or ambling cheerfully into the kitchen at odd times or perambulating zombie-esquely about the halls in his nocturnal attire, earnestly "discussing" (i.e. dignifiedly squabbling about) stupid and unimportant questions with Ge. or sitting on the red sofa in the corner room surrounded by his homework, is intensified by jealousy! In all seriousness, we do miss him. )c:

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In the meantime I've been working on a blog post, roaming over the internet (my first, unremarkable comment has appeared on Gawker), and playing the piano. One present project is Bach's French Suite No. 5, which presents a difficulty insofar as I tend to play it on autopilot, and haven't found an original interpretation yet. But I could go worse than trying to imitate Glenn Gould's rendition, which is really charming and lighthearted (uncharacteristically of Bach, but, if stereotypes are to be trusted, characteristically of the French). Then there were Mozart variations; I play themes and variations here and there, and consistently play through the Variations on a Menuett by Duport (KV 573). I like these especially after listening to them so often in Canada, as recorded by Clara Haskil, but similarly like the variations (KV 352) on a march in A.E.M. Grétry's Les mariages samnites. After that I attempted the piano part of Beethoven's "Archduke" Piano Trio (B flat major, Op. 97), and made my way through all of the Andante cantabile ma però moto, quite frankly very well. At the same time it should be said that the 32nd notes were pathetically slow, though I tried to play them regularly at least, and my sightreading was not so prodigious if one considers that I heard this trio frequently during my first year at university.

It is probably quite terrible and presuming, but I am often awfully critical of Beethoven's composing. Evidently he had immense genius, but not much of the taste (or common sense?) that could have restrained and guided him most beneficially. That he loves repeating a phrase three times when twice would do, is a tiny manifestation of a greater problem. When he goes for beautiful simplicity in his later piano sonatas, the melodies are often trite, boring and generic, second-rate folk melodies, whose sweetness verges on the saccharine (I'm thinking of the sonatina especially here). At times he has a great and promising melody, too. But the repetitions, transpositions into the minor key, etc. of these melodies, tend to be dispersed uneventfully over the piece, as the music on the whole tends to peter out into endless scales and finger exercises. The great pianists tend to play these scales and finger exercises so quickly that they are a blur, which brings out their meaning in the greater context or at least displays the performer's virtuosity, but to me it's cheating and not endearing and I don't see the point.

Anyway, what I liked in the Archduke trio was that it felt as if there is a genuine development, and so much depth and variety. When playing a piece, what I greatly enjoy is if there is a strange new motif that emerges out of nowhere, a few pages in, but that happily integrates itself into the rest of the music. It's like hiking a long time through a forest, to be unexpectedly rewarded by reaching a hilltop that offers a completely fresh view of the landscape, or by spotting an impressive castle on a nearby crag (to be very clichéd), or a picturesque village. I don't know the notes well enough to quote an example in it, off-hand, but it definitely does occur in the trio. One example in another work is when the chords emerge after the arpeggiated flow of the first pages of the Waldstein Sonata, Mvt. III. There is a recording by Rudolf Serkin, evidently excerpted from a Japanese documentary, which begins where he plays these chords, and in me the passage inspires both awe and anticipation. It is an unusually fine example of development, varying and building up the tension excellently.

So, when all is said and done, I am merely an amateur who could not accurately write a chromatic scale if asked, and whose composing has thus far limited itself to rare and brief efforts reminiscent of Mozart in his infancy. But these are opinions that have been pondered over for many hours and for many years, under the soothing (vide hypnotic) influence of the abovementioned endless scales and finger exercises, so I'm not being as rashly or frivolously iconoclastic here as it may seem.