La Lugubre Gondola.

In December 1882, Liszt was staying in Venice with his daughter Cosima and his son-in-law, Richard Wagner. The funeral processions of the gondolas fascinated Liszt. He began to have premonitions of Wagner’s death and had visions that soon his son-in-law and dearest friend would be one of the corpses floating down the canals. Two months later, Wagner died in Venice.

This episode of Liszt’s life inspired a piece called La Lugubre Gondola (the lugubrious [funeral] gondola) which went through various iterations. The version most popular today is called La Lugubre Gondola II, and was rewritten and published in 1885, and later arranged for strings. This version is written in a more tonal, accessible language than other music in Liszt’s late period; probably influenced by its publication (as I mentioned in my post about Nuages Gris, Liszt was not interested in publishing the bulk of what is now considered his most interesting output from this period.) After Liszt’s death, an earlier,  much darker and  starker version of La Lugubre Gondola was discovered and published in 1927. This is now referred to as La Lugubre Gondola I.

As in Nuages Gris, the augmented triad has a very important role in the harmony of the piece. Liszt’s love affair with the augmented triad is a crucial aspect of his compositional techniques and is central in his evolution towards a quasi-atonal harmony. Even though the piece is written in the key signature of F minor, there is no sense of traditional tonality; the whole funereal barcarolle unfolds as a series of augmented triads descending in a whole tone scale:

In the very last chord, Liszt omits the C in the augmented chord, leaving just a ghostly E-Ab interval. Alone, it’s enharmonically a minor sixth, but in this context it sounds completely disturbing. This kind of harmonic treatment is more typical of french impressionism and wholly alien to mainstream nineteenth century romanticism.

Left hand tremolos and open arpeggios as a way of representing water are a recurring element in the music of Franz Liszt. By mixing this kind of writing with the otherworldly harmonies in his late works, he evokes a ghastly image of a funeral procession on the water, all dark colors and despair at the decease of his lifelong friend and son-in-law and his own approaching death. This is an honest, unromanticized representation of death and sadness, which makes this music all the more compelling.

The need for music on the border.

In the last few years, any talk about Mexico in the media necessarily has to include the issue of drug trafficking and organized crime. I personally live near the border in what is now regarded as the most violent non-war  zone on the planet. We had a brief respite from that last summer, when Mexico was equated with swine flu in the eyes of the world –which at least allowed my wife and I to get dirt-cheap tickets for an amazing week in Cancun.

Between the H1N1 virus, the drug-related violence on the border and the numerous diplomatic gaffes our former president made on the world stage, Mexico has had an increasingly terrible  image in the last decade. The numerous countries that have issued warnings to their citizens about traveling to Mexico corroborate this. Our country is seen as unsafe, practically unlivable. We are so frequently compared to Colombia or to Iraq (the first due to the power held by the drug cartels, the second because of the drug-related executions which, after 2008, surpassed those in the conflict in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities) that, according to the media, Mexico is quickly becoming a failed state. To a country that depends economically so much on tourism and foreign investment in the industry centers on the US border, this negative image is catastrophic.

While I find insulting to our situation many of president Calderon’s remarks regarding the violence on the border, downplaying it almost to the point of pretending that it is not happening, I agree with his instructions to the various Mexican embassies and consulates to promote a positive image of our country. The situation has reached a point where it is important to our economic growth to take steps to try to balance out Mexico’s negative image with positive cultural, artistic, scientific and athletic achievements. It is in our best interest to make sure that other countries see that, despite the problems we are currently facing, there are Mexican people working every day for a better future for our families and that everyday life goes on as normal.

As a Mexican musician living near the border, that gives a new dimension to my work. Each concert we play helps, in a tiny way, offset the negativity associated with our culture; by playing concerts we are, in a way, doing public relations work. For those of us immersed in the environment of fear and negativity that is being lived on the border, each concert we give is a much-needed rest from our daily lives, as much for our audience as for ourselves. Almost every musician in our community has seen the extent to which this fear has permeated our daily life, especially those of us that work with kids.

I’m usually the first to admit that pianists have one of the most useless professions in the world; if I were stranded on a desert island, I’d much rather have pretty much any other profession. Even so, in this particular part of the world and in this moment of time, we have the ability to do good with our craft. As demonstrated by Rostropovich playing on the Berlin wall and Smajlović among the bombs in Sarajevo, music is a powerful force for hope.

Grey Clouds.

Franz Liszt was 70 years old when he wrote Nuages Gris (Grey Clouds.) His music of this period was not discussed among his friends and acquaintances, mainly because it was creepy and strange. The late works of Franz Liszt deal with despair, death and retrospection; by comparison with his earlier works and the output of most romantic composers, they seem very deconstructivist. Gone are virtuoso passages thick with notes, now every note and rest are carefully weighted in a direct, stark language. Thirty years before Schoenberg’s attempts at harmony in fourths, tone rows and atonality were being hailed as “new”, Liszt was using all of these techniques. Nuages Gris and pieces like Les Jeux d’Eaux à la Villa d’Este also foreshadowed the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.

Nuages Gris is based on a single melodic line, which is formed out of a G minor chord with a jarring C# which never acquires any traditional harmonic logic (such as being part of a viiº/V) or is resolved as a melodic ornament. Although this melody is integral to the piece, this does not mean that there is any development or variation; it is simply repeated as a kind of ostinato. Then follow tremolos in A and Bb in the lowest register which Liszt specifically blends together into a single minor second using the pedal. In the right hand we have an augmented chord which descends chromatically (the first of these with a harmonic suspension in the highest voice. This descending passage also has no development or variation. When it dies out, we come back to an idea similar to the first melody, always containing the same C# within the G minor chord. The first melody is now used as an accompaniment to a naked, poignant phrase in the right hand after which we arrive at a passage with three levels. In the lowest register we are back to the Bb-A repeating ostinato and in the middle we have augmented chords moving chromatically. In the highest register we have a slowly rising chromatic scale in octaves, floating ever higher. The piece ends abruptly with two mysterious arpeggiated chords which offer no harmonic resolution.

According to those that knew him (and the letters of Liszt himself,) Liszt was in a state of profound depression. He had seen his best friends and acquaintances (including two of his children) pass away one by one. He was nearly blind and fell down a flight of stairs on the year he wrote Nuages Gris, which led to a quick deterioration of his usual good health. He was always troubled with insecurity about his music –yes, Liszt was insecure, something which is usually overlooked when talking about him– always obsessed with the shadow of Beethoven and Wagner. By the accounts of many that knew him, he was drinking much more than usual. As Liszt told one of his biographers: “I carry with me a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.” This is evidenced by the fact that he didn’t seek to publish most of the music he composed in this period. He wrote for himself.

Nuages Gris is a strange little piece that, to me, expresses profound sadness. Not the kind of romanticized sadness of much of his earlier music, but a more honest, darker side to his personality. The fear of death, sickness, a yearning for the past, an uncertainty for the future both in his life and in music, these are unsettling subjects which are all at the heart of a very uncomfortable piece of music.

Happy birthday to me!

I was born this day, 28 years ago. How am I celebrating? I’m out-of-town for a week, sorely missing my very pregnant wife. It’s seven in the morning and I’m in a hotel lobby, waiting for my ride to rehearsal. I’ll spend the day practicing  repertoire I haven’t played before because I’ll be accompanying some recitals with singers this weekend. It sounds kind of bleak but would I rather do something else with my life?

No, I would not.

Embraceable You

Embraceable You is one of my favorite Gershwin standards. It’s a beautiful song, simple in its structure but very finely crafted. At first glance, there are many things about Embraceable You that don’t immediately click. Take the lyrics for example:

Embrace me,

My sweet embraceable you.

Embrace me,

You irreplaceable you.

Just one look at you — my heart grew tipsy in me;

You and you alone bring out the gipsy in me.

I love all

The many charms about you;

Above all

I want my arms about you.

Don’t be a naughty baby,

Come to papa — come to papa — do!

My sweet embraceable you.

It’s not so much a consonant rhyme as it is just ending each verse with the same word. The great thing is that the whole accentuation is set up so that the biggest accent falls four syllables before the end of the verse, which is quite uncommon. The rhyming scheme is arranged so that not only the last syllable matches up but, almost every time, the last four syllables rhyme.

The melodic line is also pretty unconventional. Almost every time, it’s a small scale that rises, followed by a big (even dissonant) downward leap; first it’s a fifth and before the repeat, it’s an octave leap. This strange downward leap at the end of every verse keeps delaying the resolution, which makes the rising half step in the final two notes all the sweeter. The upward scale starts on the sixth, something that gives it a very jazzy feel and later became usual in many jazz standards. Three notes ascending scalewise over a I-vii7/V7-V7 (GM7-C#dim7-D7) progression. The melody is also a bit lopsided, in every verse the last word (“you” and “me”) get’s its own beautiful, very long note.

Harmonically it has a very basic structure: I-V-I (GM7-D7-GM7) with a short section (just one look at you my heart grew tipsy in me) with the vi (Em) which repeats to the beginning. We get a big sub-dominant (CM7) before the ending (Don’t be naughty…) which, as usual for the IV, is pretty well suited for a fermata, and at the very end we get the sequence I7(V7/IV)-iv-V7-I (G7-Cm7-D7-GM7). What I love about these last four chords is the way they build up on the sub-dominant from before, taking that CM7 and instead of resolving giving it its own dominant and turning it into a minor IV right on the accent of the last verse (on “embraceable”), which adds a bit of wistfulness and sadness to the very end.

The beauty of this tune, and its curse for many amateur performers, is that Gershwin fills it with embellishing chords. The very basic I-V-I is very highly ornamented and in some cases, some of the chords are substituted for others.

This:

GM7 – D7 – GM7

turns into this:

GM7 - C#dim7 – D7 – Am7 – F7 – D7 – GM7

The D7 is preceded by its own dominant (which is why usually an A chord is also added before the C#dim7, to make a sort of A7b9) and then the D7 is spread out into four chords to match the melodic rising line in the third verse (Embrace me, you irreplaceable…)

Because of the very basic harmonic structure and the lopsided way the melodic line is built, this piece is very suited for long freestyle improvisations and rearrangements. In some cases, like in the version by the Bill Evans Trio or by Wynton Marsalis, it’s nothing but one huge improvisation.

One of my favorite versions of Embraceable You is the piano etude by Earl Wild. What’s great about playing it is the way the technique matches up with the  music. He adds a ton of arpeggios all around the melody, so all those circular movements with very little finger action almost make it feel as if you are embracing the piano.

Accompanying a guitar.

At the school where I work, four guitarists are graduating this year. That means that they’ll be playing four graduation recital-exams, which means four different guitar concertos that I’ll be accompanying. We just had the first one a couple of days ago; I played the piano reduction of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo, probably the most famous guitar concerto out there apart from the Vivaldi concertos for mandolin.

My previous experience accompanying a guitar was limited to the electric guitar, playing jazz and works by Steve Reich. Playing an orchestral reduction, already overloaded with notes from an inept arranger just taking the whole orchestra and smooshing it into the piano part, alongside a guitar –which is not the loudest of instruments– is damn near impossible to get right. Also consider that when Rodrigo wrote the Concierto de Aranjuez he wasn’t as skilled at orchestrating with a guitar soloist as he was when he wrote his later works for guitar and orchestra.

One would think that the guitar and the piano are at least similar in that they are both instruments very suited for polyphonic writing, but the kinds of things that are very idiomatic for the guitar (open chords, fast repeated notes, parallel-moving harmonies and motives, fast repeated chords, a detached articulation on fast passages) are the things that are most difficult to do technically on the piano –this goes both ways, just ask a guitarist to play a fast scale (especially in legato) or a quick passage in octaves. That means that there are all sorts of passages in these concertos which the guitar can play with no problem at all while the pianist gets screwed –not to mention the obvious problem of having to do it in super-pianissimo. A typical example of this is the very beginning of the Concierto de Aranjuez. That’s a passage that every single guitarist can play –and usually does play, all day, much to the annoyance of guitar teachers everywhere (the piano equivalent is the first section of the third Rachmaninoff concerto.) After the guitar finishes, the pianist gets to repeat the whole thing, except that it is on a whole different level of difficulty for the piano.

Accompanying a guitar has all sorts of little idiosyncrasies that you don’t normally encounter as an accompanist. The very mechanic of playing the instrument means you have to get used to the slight delay that comes with plucking the string; any pianist that has played with bowed instruments has experienced the annoyance of trying to be together with the soloist in a passage in pizzicato, imagine that for every single note on the guitar. There’s the issue of volume, which is just a matter of stepping down on the una corda and playing at a level in which you can clearly hear the guitar at all times (or amplifying the guitar.) The problem here is being able to hear the guitar at all, not because of it being too soft (we encounter that all the time with instruments like the double-bass and the flute) but because of all the noise it makes. You have to get used to the twang from the slapping strings and the zipping noises the wrapping on the low strings makes every time there’s a change of position, and the little clicks and plunks the strings make on the frets whenever they let go or press down on a string. I’ve seen that most guitarists are so used to all this noise that they don’t seem to hear it themselves (I must admit, after a few rehearsals I kind of got used to it), but when you sit up close to a guitarist for the first time it’s hard to keep your ear on the actual music coming out.

There is some classical music out there for guitar and piano, but not a lot of it. I can understand why, in my view they’re two instruments that do not compliment each other at all. Instead of shoring up each others’ weaknesses, they’re amplified. When put together, the guitar sounds softer and weaker than it really is and the piano sounds louder and harsher. Both instruments’ lack of a real legato is exposed and everything sounds much clunkier than it normally would. Even the tuning differs slightly, sounding uneven throughout the register. When played together, the guitar’s range appears severely limited, while the differences in sound quality in the piano’s different registers are very noticeable.

I enjoy accompanying the guitarists as a personal challenge to my skills as a pianist and as an opportunity to grow, although I’m usually left disappointed at the way our two instruments sound together. Perhaps there’s a composer out there that can make the combination work, I’m always happy to listen to and to try out new music.

Parangaricutirimícuaro

Parangaricutirimícuaro is the name of the last piece in Carteles, by Miguel Bernal Jiménez. The word parangaricutirimícuaro is used in Mexican culture as a tongue-twister:

“El rey de Parangaricutirimícuaro se quiere desparangaricutirimicuarizar, aquel que lo desparangararicutirimicuarize buen desparangaricutirimicuarizador será.”

This word takes us back to the home state of Miguel Bernal Jiménez, Michoacán, where there is a very small town called San Juan Parangaricutiro –made famous by the eruption of the volcano Paricutin. This town is affectionately known as Parangaricutirimícuaro (the ending “cuaro” is  of purepecha origin and is very common in place names from Michoacán.)

At the beginning of the piece there is an expression mark that, as far as I know, isn’t present in any other work for the piano: forte populachero. The word populachero is difficult to translate because its meaning depends very much on its context. Populacho literally means a mob of people; it implies common, simple people (as in “the common man”.) Populachero in music refers to popular, not very high-brow music. With the festive, noisy character of this piece, the title referring to a very small farming town and the indication populachero, this piece makes me think of a small-town celebration of some sort, maybe a parade, a fair or a dance.

The piece is in an A-B-A form, as the first piece in Carteles, Volantin. The “A” is made up of a fast, swirling run on top of a constant tremolo of fourths in the bass –this passage makes me think of the parangaricutirimícuaro tongue twister. It reminds me a bit of some passages from Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Not literally, but in the character; they’re both setting the scene for a popular celebration and the music expresses a sense of expectation and of a lot of things happening at once.

The “B” has elements of music that you would normally hear at a small-town fair in Mexico. A fast corrido (which has a rhythm very much like a march), a bass that mimics a tuba, and a section that is very reminiscent of Mexican marches (some of which are very similar to the John Phillip Sousa marches) which are very common in Michoacán because of the traditional town bands –I talked more in-depth about these in my post about the fourth piece in Carteles, Huarache. Just as in Huarache, the accompaniment and the melody are almost always in different tonalities –most of the time a minor second apart– to give the illusion of the bands being extremely out of tune (which is pretty normal in a Michoacán town band.)

So you can hear for yourself how this sounds in real life, here is the band from Galeana, Michoacán. Galeana is about the same size as San Juan Parangaricutiro so this is probably what you would find in any small town in Michoacán. They’re playing the Marcha de Zacatecas, one of the most popular marches in Mexico.

The “B” section from Parangaricutirimícuaro contains quotes from the middle section of this march; also note the tuba line, very similar to the way the left hand plays in all of section “B”. Here is something with a tempo more approaching the work by Miguel Bernal Jimenez (quarter=144), La Basurita:

Note the repeated notes in the melody, these are very common in this genre. In Parangaricutirimícuaro, at the beginning of the “B” section, the repeated notes have tenuto markings to stress their importance and to make the dissonance really stand out.

One of the things I love most about Carteles is the way it evokes popular music from Mexican everyday life. The pieces are very well crafted and carefully constructed but they have an element that is very populachero. This makes them a lot of fun to play and very easy on an audience (despite being quite dissonant at times.) Even though Miguel Bernal Jiménez is best known for Tata Vasco, his Concertino, and several masses, I think that his best compositions are his small-scale secular works, such as Carteles, which I highly recommend both to listen and to play.

Erin go bragh!

In the United States, St. Patrick’s  is a day where everyone finds a little Irish in themselves, wears green, and then gets completely drunk. One would think that we don’t have cause to celebrate St. Patrick’s day here in Mexico, but we have our own Irish heroes: El Batallón de San Patricio (Saint Patrick’s Battalion) also nicknamed Los Colorados Valientes (The Courageous Redheads.) This battalion of Irish soldiers was not happy shooting their fellow Catholics in the Mexican-American war, so they deserted the United States’ army and fought for the Mexicans.

You can find a street named after their leader Major John Patrick O’Riley in practically any Mexican city (which looks very out-of-place beside the hundreds of Juarez, Aldama, Allende, Villa, Zapata and Hidalgo streets.) Their story is quite an interesting one, read all about it:

Wikipedia page for the battalion.

Wikipedia page for John Patrick O’Riley.

Batallón de San Patricio, the Irish heroes of Mexico.

Musical tribute by folk singer David Rovics:

Hechicería

Hechicería (Sorcery) is the seventh piece in Carteles, a group of eight short pieces for the piano by Miguel Bernal Jiménez. This piece is divided into three distinct sections: Ostinato, Piú mosso, and Largo. Throughout the whole piece the main melodic line is in a very clear E Phrygian mode; in each section of Hechicería Bernal Jiménez treats the E Phrygian modal scale with a different harmonization.

The Ostinato is made up of four phrases and four measures of introduction. These introductory measures set up a 6/8 rhythmic motif that, combined with the naked fifth in the bass and the constant repetition, gives the music a ritualistic, ceremonial character.

The first phrase of the Ostinato is formed by a single motif which is basically an ornamented E-B fifth. The peculiar thing about this motif is its rhythm; by subdividing the first dotted quarter note in four, the rhythm is more like a 2/4 with an accelerated, bouncy second beat. We saw something similar happen with the rhythm in Huarache, except that in that case, the time signature was 2/4 subdivided to give the illusion of a clumsy 6/8 time. That bouncy repeated note on the second beat is very typical of Mexican melodies in binary time signatures. An example of this type of melody is in the dance Los Matlachines:

Note how the rhythm of the melody is virtually identical to the rhythm in Hechicería. Most music in this genre and from this part of Mexico is in 6/8 time, so something very interesting and unique happens when a melody in binary rhythm is shoehorned into 6/8 time, which is what happens in Hechicería –this kind of polyrhythm is quite common in Mexican music, mostly dating from the adaptation of Spanish melodies into indigenous dance rhythms and vice versa.

With the time signature being so ambiguous, the second phrase of the Ostinato, which is in a very clear, unmistakable 6/8, has a much more powerful effect. Here there is a whole-tone scale superimposed on the pseudo-dominant chord of the E Phrygian mode.

The third phrase of the Ostinato is a repetition of the first, with the left hand accompaniment changing registers and playing with various possible subdominant chords for E Phrygian (mainly the IV  and II with several different alterations) but always returning to the E-B fifth drone.

The last phrase of this section moves the main motif to the left hand, with the right hand descending in long notes spanning two measures. The right hand rhythm forces the left hand into two measure groups. This gives insight into the intended phrasing and grouping for the Ostinato. This whole section forms an arc that starts in mf, steadily rises to forte sonoro and then gradually fades out into a pianissimo fermata. The closing sets up the very dissonant subito fortissimo that initiates the Piú mosso section of Hechicería.

The Piú mosso preserves the original ceremonial character of the piece, now with repeating, dramatic descending E Phrygian scales which mirror the repeating motif from the previous section. These lead into a four measure phrase that mirrors the forte sonoro from the first part of this work. Then, we repeat the descending scales and, once again, fade out into a pianissimo fermata.

All of the Piú mosso is accompanied by a hammering, explicitly accentuated G# right in the middle of the melody in the left hand. This kind of accompaniment is very percussive, particularly because of the constant minor seconds it forms with the melodic line. The final Largo retakes the forte sonoro phrase from the first section, but adds a short glissando between the notes and fades out into a subito forte E in octaves. The melody is now harmonized in a bizarre chorale, in which all the voices form dissonances with the theme, all moving with it in the same direction.

The constant repetition in this piece, the violent G# in the second section and the droning E-B perfect fifth throughout give me cause to identify this piece with music more typical of the northern regions of the country, such as the indigenous music of the Apaches and the Tarahumaras or the more popular Matlachines. This music uses mostly percussion instruments, various drums, scrapers and rattles. In the case of the Matlachines, sometimes it also incorporates a melodic line. In this example, the melodic line is also very similar rhythmically to the original motif from Hechicería:

More important is what the dances of the Matlachines convey. They are ceremonial, intended for religious events honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe, holy processions during Easter or reenacting the story of Moctezuma. They are divided into various fast and slow sections, each with its own repeating motif, much the same as the structure of Hechicería. The E-B drone reminds me of the chapareque, a musical instrument that is specific to the Tarahumaras. It is only capable of playing a fifth which, much like a jaw harp, is altered by using the mouth as a resonance chamber.

Witchcraft and magic are all a central part of Mexican folklore. It is impossible to go to a market without a stall selling limpias (to cleanse you of the evil eye, hexes or curses that may be on you.) The catholic religion, full of ritual and ceremony, and the unique blend of Catholicism and indigenous religions that is practiced in Mexico, is also central to our culture. I see Hechicería as a work that is quite a bit darker than the rest of Carteles but that is not so much about witchcraft as it is about rite and ceremony; a sort of ritual that casts a spell on the listener.

As most of the music from Carteles, Hechicería is somewhat lighthearted and not really technically difficult. It has elements which are unmistakably Mexican without specifically quoting Mexican music. The use of Mexican folklore and the internal logic of the music are of a very high level; the composer is mostly known for his sacred works, but the craftsmanship present in these little pieces makes me think that his best work is in his, sadly underplayed, secular music.

Success in life through musical education.

A couple of years ago I wrote a short snippet on how playing the piano can positively affect brain development. There are many scientific studies that show that musical education is linked with a better academic performance, higher IQ and increased memory. The piano can also be a catalyst that ignites in a child a curiosity for the fine arts and culture.

While all that is very good, I find that a musical education has a deeper effect on each person. Playing a musical instrument teaches children lessons that are essential for a successful career and emotional maturity.

The most important of these skills is learning how to learn. The learning strategies acquired in the practice of a musical instrument are very different from the ones typically learned in school. In the classroom, a student is expected to receive information from his teachers and then to repeat it during examination; most of the learning is done using this same linear approach: a source gives the student information, the student memorizes this information, and then the student repeats this information for testing. Learning to play a musical instrument is anything but linear, particularly the piano which deals more in learning to coordinate a myriad of very simple concepts and actions.

I wrote before about teaching concepts in webs as opposed to chains. Musical education is especially suited for this, since it forces a student to use several different kinds of memory simultaneously while engaging in a physically demanding task to produce a result that communicates at an emotional level. That is another important insight that musical education teaches: progress is not always linear.

The way we achieve results when practicing a musical instrument can differ wildly from one case to the next. Sometimes we advance steadily, building on a piece every day. At other times, we try repeatedly with no results for a very long time before we achieve a breakthrough. Other times, we can play something with hardly any practice at all for no perceivable reason. Understanding that progress can occur in many ways gives students emotional maturity; it is part of learning how to learn and finding creative ways to get over obstacles in their path.

Learning a piece of music teaches kids to pursue long-term goals. Performing a piece of music in public is all about achievement. At the beginning you start without the ability to play a particular piece. A student has to sit down with his instrument and make the conscious decision to learn that piece of music and perform it. As we all find out sooner or later, there is a point where the repertoire gets too big and too complicated to do this right away,  it requires time, planning and discipline. A good music teachers shows his students how to set goals, break them down into bite-size steps and organize a schedule; most importantly, he teaches them to stick to it. These kinds of project management skills easily translate into academic life and business.

Even the most inspired musician has days when practicing is a chore, but learning to work even if you don’t feel like it is an important lesson that most parents strive to teach their children and that all musicians must learn at one time or another. The reason it is so effective within the framework or musical education is because it is not explicitly said to the students. It is something everyone learns eventually; almost every musician has had the embarrassing experience of the disastrous public performance due to insufficient practice –not being able to finish a piece, followed by pity applause and general self-loathing (and the resolution to never let it happen again.)

Performing in public can be very stressful. Learning a musical instrument and preparing for lessons puts pressure on students. Coping with pressure is part of a musician’s daily routine. Not only coping with it but having grace under pressure is an important part of playing for an audience. A person that has learned to relax in public, or at least give the illusion of confidence, has obvious career and social advantages over people who have never done this.

Even with sufficient practice, you can’t always play at your best. There are just too many factors in play to be able to control. Anyone can have a bad day but it is important to get back on the horse and try again. Giving a great performance after a bad experience on stage is an amazing feeling that almost every musician has experienced; musical education gives children the tools to more easily recover from their mistakes and to not give up.

The process of learning a musical work is built on criticism. Acquiring the maturity to deal with criticism, both external and from within, is a basic part of a musical education. Practice time is mostly spent listening and criticizing yourself and it’s easy to go overboard. As I wrote in the post about Richter’s pink plastic lobster, even the most accomplished and famous musicians get nervous and feel like they can’t play. Once a music student learns to accept that everyone feels like this sometimes, and that it’s temporary and just in our minds, the ripple effect it has in their lives is a beautiful thing to behold. A music lesson is also largely based on criticism; you practice and present your work to a teacher, that will mostly criticize it and attempt to show you how to make it better. Music students learn to accept criticism as feedback that helps them evolve. Realizing that criticism is what helps you grow helps students excel in every area of their lives.

Learning a musical instrument is about so much more than learning to play a particular tune. Even if only for a short while, a musical education gives children a framework in which they can acquire and practice all the skills that are the mark of a mature individual with relatively few consequences. Even if the child does not have an especially good ear or musical talent, the learning process is as important for his development and growth into an adult as the actual level of skill acquired.

Pordioseros

Pordioseros is the sixth piece in the set of short piano works Carteles by Miguel Bernal Jimenez. A pordiosero is a beggar. The word comes from the expression “por Dios” or “por el amor de Dios” which means “by God” or “by the love of God”, a common phrase used by beggars asking for charity on the streets.

In the 40′s and early 50′s there was a realist movement in Mexican cinema which tried to show the plight of lower-class Mexico in the aftermath of the Revolución (the Mexican civil war) almost in the way of a documentary. One of the most outstanding films of this era is Los Olvidados (it was released in the United States as “The young and the damned”) directed by Luis Buñuel. The style of music in Pordioseros is very evocative of the scenes and soundtracks from these kinds of movies.

This music also owes a lot to Claude Debussy. There are many elements here that remind me of his sixth Prelude:  Des pas sur la neige (Footsteps in the snow), the most outstanding of which is the ostinato in the left hand, alternating the same motif in one tonality and a minor second higher. Both works express a sense of profound sadness, exhaustion or loneliness. The use of the whole tone scale in the melodic line and the Dorian mode in the main theme is also very much in the style of Debussy.

The piece is in a simple two-part form. The second part is a variation and development of the first, with an additional line accompanying the main theme and ending in D minor instead of G minor. Each section ends with a very unique bell-like effect, in which the left hand plays an open minor chord in the bass –this piece requires the pianist to be able to stretch the minor 10th while playing the chord’s fifth to get the right effect– while the right hand plays the chord’s major third  in the very highest octave of the piano. The rhythm of this section is very open to interpretation. I’ve heard it played mechanically, trying to reproduce the exact proportion: sixteenths-triplets-eights-fourths; I think that is the wrong approach. Bernal Jimenez writes molto ritenuto and ppp in this section. When I play it, I interpret this rhythmic motif as a gradual slowing down effect and not as three distinct rhythmic groupings (4-3-2). A mental image that helps me here is that of an actual pordiosero saying “Una limosna por el amor de Dios…” The rhythm, the harmony, the ghostlike effect of the register and the descending minor seconds all make me think that this phrase should give the effect of weakness and supplication.

In the end, I believe that is the most important element of this work. Finding something in our lives that allows us to relate to the suffering and pain that is being expressed. Pordioseros is the emotional center of Carteles and one of my favorite Mexican works for the piano.

Happy 200th Birthday, Chopin!

Chopin didn’t write any symphonies or operas; he also barely wrote any chamber music. He gave few public performances. In an age where composers were expected to write huge symphonic works and pianists were expected to tour and display their virtuosity in piano duels and transcriptions to be taken seriously, Chopin was widely regarded as a genius without doing any of those things. His treatment of the piano was revolutionary as was his harmonic technique. Rubinstein said it best:

Chopin was a genius of universal appeal. His music conquers the most diverse audiences. When the first notes of Chopin sound through the concert hall there is a happy sigh of recognition. All over the world men and women know his music. They love it. They are moved by it. Yet it is not “Romantic music” in the Byronic sense. It does not tell stories or paint pictures. It is expressive and personal, but still a pure art. Even in this abstract atomic age, where emotion is not fashionable, Chopin endures. His music is the universal language of human communication. When I play Chopin I know I speak directly to the hearts of people!

His creative output was almost exclusively limited to a single instrument, the piano. He was musically daring and explored many musical genres and forms, both pure and programmatic. The symphonic poem, the operatic aria, the string quartet, the program symphony and the mass, there are elements of all of these in his works for the piano. In the romantic sense, he also expressed all dimensions of human emotion, sometimes all contained in a single Mazurka. He changed the way the piano would be played forever; he took music from his native Poland and turned it into works of high art. He made music of intellectual depth and great expression while maintaining an almost universal appeal. His music also has the gift of sounding spontaneous and almost effortless although he painstakingly crafted every single measure, rewriting it over and over until it was perfect.

For us pianists, Chopin is one of the Gods, he is the essence of our instrument. He gave the piano a voice, and he had a gift for creating unique, interesting and expressive melodies that speak to the heart. We pianists are lucky that he chose the piano, he is ours alone. Happy 200th birthday, Chopin!

Chopin was a genius of universal appeal. His music conquers the most diverse audiences. When the first notes of Chopin sound through the concert hall there is a happy sigh of recognition. All over the world men and women know his music. They love it. They are moved by it. Yet it is not “Romantic music” in the Byronic sense. It does not tell stories or paint pictures. It is expressive and personal, but still a pure art. Even in this abstract atomic age, where emotion is not fashionable, Chopin endures. His music is the universal language of human communication. When I play Chopin I know I speak directly to the hearts of people!

What I love most about Beethoven.

Almost all of the great composers had to pay the bills; in many of their works we can find concessions to the guy who was actually paying their salary. We find compositions that are in reality thinly veiled first drafts of things to come, or quick reworkings of a previous work. Whatever the cause, great composers –such as Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Chopin– wrote works that are, frankly, pretty bad. Not every single one of the more than 800 works in the Beethoven catalog is the Ninth Symphony, not every one of the 1300 works by Franz Liszt is the B minor Sonata. How could it be? Regardless of this, so many musicians go out of their way to seek out these unheard works, to play them and record them; they want to share with the world music that is flawed in so many different ways. And by extension, some people dedicate their lives to research and bring to life the works of all the other musicians that shared their period in time with the great composers, all those unremembered saps who at some point were probably as well-known (and in most cases much better liked.)

Imperfect art, then. So why the interest, specially with so many sublime works in the repertoire? Because it’s still Beethoven, and Liszt, and Bach, and Mozart. These were complex people, who lived complex lives. So much of their genius stems from the depth and richness of their perception of the world.  And so there was much of life in their lives, life good and bad, wise and unwise, happy and unhappy. Bringing their music to life is as much about finding something out about the world and ourselves as it is about sitting down and enjoying the pretty sounds. This search that we undertake into all the unpopular, unheard and unappreciated repertoire is worth it to find those little moments where the genius shines through, where a common piece of pretty tinkling –indistinguishable from a myriad of similar mediocre compositions of its time– suddenly becomes Bach, or Schubert, or Prokofiev.

That is what I love most about Beethoven, his imperfect life, his character. The way his work, no matter so insignificant, always carries the most amazing individuality that, at the same time, speaks to us all on some level. The fact that his compositions reflect the many facets of his personality while at the same time attempting to transcend his many flaws. How, his personal relationships were complicated to the extreme by his horrible temper and ego –particularly his relationship with his nephew– tear a kid from his mother after his father dies, call her a whore in public, force the kid into music even though he has neither the desire or the talent for it and then write letter after letter where you wonder why he doesn’t like you? Really, Beethoven?

His music has moments of such sweetness and ecstasy and –sometimes in the same work– of banality or violence. That is what makes Beethoven so prone to becoming myth, every generation sees something in Beethoven with which they identify and imprints into his image their ideals and flaws. The life of the man permeates every note he created, no matter how insignificant; and by extension, the humanity of every one of us is in his music. Thus the interest of his music, because of its extraordinary existential breadth. If the earth could gather itself up, could bring together everything upon it, all men, women and children, every plant and animal, every mountain and valley, every plain and ocean, and sing, it would sound like Beethoven. Beethoven, like Shakespeare, like Michelangelo, like Bach, like all great artists, is life itself speaking.

Sandunga.

Sandunga is the fifth piece in Carteles, by Miguel Bernal Jimenez.

A sandunga is a musical form native to the isthmus of Tehuantepec region. This part of Mexico represents the shortest distance between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico and is formed by the states of Oaxaca, Tabasco and Chiapas. The word sandunga is thought to be a nahuatl (the language spoken by most indigenous cultures in central Mexico) derivation  of the Spanish word fandango. “Saa” means music and “ndu” means deep; sandungas usually have a nostalgic or sad mood. The two most famous sandungas are “La Sandunga” and “La Llorona”.

A typical sandunga is a somewhat slow dance in a minor mode, usually in the key of A minor. The beginning is a common 32 bar melody, usually repeated several times with heavy ornamentation and variation. In a traditional sandunga it is followed by a 62 bar section in a major key, usually in 3/4 time, which is known as the paseo. If the sandunga is being played as part of a dance, what would usually follow is a return to the main theme, but in a much more rhythmical character called the zapateado (which is very characteristic of this dance’s precursor, the Spanish fandango.) The instrumentation of a sandunga depends on the location; in Oaxaca it would probably be played by a typical town band like the ones I described in this post and would sound something like this:

In Tabasco, a sandunga would probably be played with harps and guitars and in Chiapas it would probably be played with marimbas and would sound something like this:

In Sandunga by Miguel Bernal Jiménez, the melody receives a treatment with some virtuosistic elements of the romantic period; a left hand that constantly plays chromatic scales coupled with tremolo passages, an A minor scale in ascending octaves and some hand crossing– although it is by no means a technically difficult piece. The main melody is mainly in A minor, although it has some chromatic inflections that are quite a bit more modern, as well as sections based on the whole tone scale. The central section in A major starts very traditionally, but it quickly changes keys into F major with a chromatic accompaniment, giving it a bitonal color very characteristic of Miguel Bernal Jiménez. This central section also contains a few playful minor seconds, like the ones seen in the first piece of Carteles, Volantín. After going back to the first theme, there is a short coda which clearly ends in A minor, with a few more of those minor seconds right before the long ascending scale in octaves.

In this work, there are several elements that are very idiomatic of Mexican music. One of the most important is in the rhythm. The whole piece is written in 6/8, but the melody is full of little syncopations on the third eight note. These shouldn’t feel as upbeats or misplaced accents, but are sections where the actual meter changes to 3/4. In a sandunga, the accompaniment usually follows a waltz like pattern, dividing the 6/8  into two 3/8 groups (the original Spanish fandango is usually written in 3/8 time), the Mexican element that marks the difference is the way the melody sometimes follows the 6/8 accentuation and other times it changes to 3/4, forming a hemiola with the two pseudo 3/8 measures. This is more noticeable in the central part of the work, where it changes into major (which is related to the paseo from the original sandunga form.)

Another element in the music that is very Mexican is the way many of the phrases end in a descending second or third on a strong beat. This downward inflection is very characteristic of the way people in southern and central Mexico speak and is very present in many melodies of the region. The third very Mexican element in Sandunga are the parallel sixths in the central section, which reflect the way that melody would be harmonized if played on marimbas in Chiapas, for example.

Activity vs. Energy.

To my last post (on the need to come to terms with the reality of the work required for any worthwhile cause), I’d like to add one more thing: Being busy all the time is useless without focus. It is easy to mistake mere activity for energy, supposing that by always being busy one is certain to advance towards a goal. You can’t forget that misdirected labor is just a waste of activity. It can happen in all sorts of ways, but it usually boils down to a lack of organization, discipline and most of all: focus.

Uninspired practice will always lead to uninspired playing, touting around a magic number of hours practiced per day is no guarantee of actually getting any work done. It took me a long time to learn this; there was a period in my life where I would spend up to twelve hours per day locked up in a practice room– not out of necessity, but out of a strange compulsion to always push myself to work harder than the rest. I would take pride in the number of hours I practiced instead of in the quality of my playing.

Eventually I grew out of it; now I find that the best kind of practice comes out of a need to play in a certain way, from a need to reach an ideal in our minds of the way a work must be. The truth is that it is much easier to “practice” aimlessly because mere routine requires less involvement and “feeling busy” gives us a certain reassurance. Energy is focused and goes straight for the result, mere activity is just running around in circles to make ourselves feel better. In the end, when you’re up on the stage, nobody cares if you practiced five hours, or five hundred.

Sticker Shock.

There’s a term that is widely used in the United States: “sticker shock”. It describes that feeling that you get when you go into the store for the first time set on buying something only to find the price is much more expensive than you expected. This feeling is so familiar to us piano teachers that I’m surprised it doesn’t have its own name yet– I’m not talking about money, although there is no lack of underpayed musicians out there; I’m talking about the actual work required to learn a musical instrument.

Students have a vague idea of the effort that it should take to play the piano in a certain way but it’s comical how far off the mark this idea is. So they give up. And it feels so unfair, so unjust, that it leads to bitterness. “This amount of effort should result in me playing the piano like Vladimir Horowitz. I can’t do it so it must be someone’s fault (my teacher, the other students, those awful judges at that competition, the uneducated audience, the government, the Asians, the Russians…)”

It applies to so many things in life; for some reason, people in the western world have massively skewed expectations. This is a relatively recent phenomenon. I don’t think kids born in 1200 had this fantasy idea of what it would take to become a successful peasant.

It’s the Karate Kid’s fault, or any movie with a training montage for that matter. A character is awful at anything (karate, boxing, schoolwork, playing the guitar, football, being attractive), cue a five-minute clip of him practicing (set to 80′s power rock) in the middle of the film. When it’s done, he’s an expert. It’s not hard to think that our pop culture, full of stories of success due to a sudden burst of practice (like every single underdog sports movie out there) has given everyone the idea that accomplishing great things is hard, but it’s the kind of hard that you can do in a single weekend. Meanwhile, research has shown that to become an expert at any given field, one has to study for at least 10,000 hours. That’s four hours a day for more than seven years! (which should sound familiar to professional musicians out there.)

In real life, the winner of the All-Valley Karate Championship would have been one of those guys that had been practicing karate since elementary school, spending hours training every evening while Daniel-san was goofing off. Wax on, wax off a couple of hours and suddenly you’ve mastered the art of defending yourself from a flying punch to the face?

It’s a recent trend that music educators have had to deal with, the American Idol effect. Kids that believe that becoming a star means putting in a bit of work and all of a sudden having everyone at their feet. The thing about American Idol and all the other “everyday people come on and try to get a free trip to stardom” reality show is that they heavily neglect to show the amount of practice the “everyday people” who make it through the selection round have done in their life.

They are never people who walked in off the street, decided they can sing/dance/cook/design and surprised both themselves and the judges by showing what a natural talent they are. Those people who are singing classical opera, or juggling flaming bowling pins, or doing complex and dangerous dance routines didn’t get that ability through some sort of magical aura that being on TV gives you, they got it through hours and hours of excruciating practice, without any sort of promise they’d get somewhere.

But they never show this on TV. They make it look like these people were just people who woke up one day, turned on the TV and saw a rerun of American Idol and thought “wow, I bet anyone can do that!”, auditioned and all of a sudden became superstars.

So, when these kids start taking music lessons and realize that after months of daily practice they are nowhere near what they are seeing people do on TV, they get discouraged and quit. It’s easy to become a pessimist when you see that every one of your expectations gets shattered over and over again. The reason it happens is not because the world is against you, but because those expectations were so inaccurate in the first place. Relationships, managing your debt, building a successful career in any field, learning a skill or a craft– it all takes work. A lot of it.

The point isn’t that you should give up because the world is one impenetrable brick wall. There are successful pianists everywhere. It’s just that at some point you have to come to terms with the amount of work it involves. It’s a necessary step towards maturity, being honest with yourself; part of growing up. What amazes me is the number of people out there that never take that step. Back to the analogy with “sticker shock”: instead of saying “I should buy something a bit cheaper or save up some more”, they’ll just stand there saying “This can’t be right!” over and over, forever thinking that the world screwed them over. “Why can’t I have it easy, you know, like other people do?” Of course, those “other people” exist only in their imagination.

Huarache.

A huarache is a kind of sandal typically worn in Mexico. It’s usually just a flat piece of wood or leather tied to the feet. Mover el huarache (literally: to move the huarache) means to go out and dance something lively. Many of the folk dances of southern Mexico involve stamping the feet on the ground and making a slapping noise with the huarache.

Huarache is the name of the fourth piece in Carteles, by Miguel Bernal Jiménez, which I introduced in this post. I’ve been recording the pieces on my laptop’s horrible integrated web-cam as a bit of preparation for a couple of recital programs I’ve been practicing, since this year marks 100 years of his birth (and since it is also the 200th anniversary of our independence from Spain, many musical programs will feature Mexican music.) I’ve been uploading those here.

The piece has a pretty simple form. There’s a short introduction in G major and then the dance starts. It consists of two simple phrases which repeat several times, which most Mexicans would recognize as the last part of a playground song: La Vibora de la Mar– integrating Mexican popular music into his compositions is typical of the music from Miguel Bernal Jiménez’ nationalist period (all over the world at around this same time period many composers, notably Bartok and Kodaly, went out to record real folk music from their respective countries as a source of inspiration for their compositions.) After repeating a few times, we end the piece with a return to the introduction. The whole time the right hand is in G major, the left hand is in F sharp major, which makes the work sound out of tune.

Miguel Bernal Jiménez was from Michoacán, in southwest Mexico. This part of Mexico has a very strong band tradition. Most small towns in Michoacán tend to have a band for parties, parades and religious processions. These bands are mostly made up of whatever wind instruments people have lying around, violins, a bass drum, cymbals and a tuba or a tololoche (a Mexican kind of string bass). The bass consists mostly of descending fourths non-stop, like a Sousa march. The trombones and clarinets play repeated notes with the harmony that give the music it’s unique forward momentum. The melody is made of up of trumpets and violins blaring away as loud as possible. Most folk dances from Michoacán involve the men stamping their feet in rhythm, making a big racket with their huaraches, while the girls sway to the music and wave their big skirts. The rhythm of this music is very catchy, usually it is constantly changing from 6/8 to 3/4; this hemiola is a fundamental metric in most music from Mexico, it’s easy to follow if you pay attention to the bass line. Here is what a traditional dance and band from Michoacán looks like: (it starts around 0:40)

Most of the time, these bands were extremely out of tune and rhythm. In Huarache, the composer uses a lot of minor seconds to replicate the out of tune trombones and clarinets, and the melody in G major tends to clash with the occasional F sharp major accompaniment so as to sound really out of tune. He also doesn’t use the normal 6/8-3/4 rhythm found in this music. Instead, he writes it in 2/4, but the right hand tends to play in syncopation which kind of replicates the effect of the whole band getting out of sync all the time. In some parts I like to play some of these upbeats a bit later than what is written to get the effect of the original 3/4 time and I also like to give the bass line a bit of a swing, because these dances have to jump around a bit; I specially mark the lower notes of each figure in the bass, as a separate voice, since it’s the characteristic tuba line found in this music. Everything is written and should be played in fortissimo, which is also pretty normal for a Michoacán town band and a lot of fun.

Bach’s expressive technique.

That’s Glenn Gould playing the C minor prelude from the first volume of the Well Tempered Clavier. Most of this prelude is in sixteenth notes, playing the same eight note pattern, but it is definitely not Czerny; they are expressing a musical idea. In this case, I would describe it as dramatic, in a theatrical kind of way. The first half of the prelude is a chorale that gradually builds up dramatic tension until it reaches the more improvisatory passages of the presto. The musical line ebbs and flows, with several returns to a more placid character (in a short modulation to E flat major), but when the dissonances start to accumulate over the long pedal note, the suspense builds until it finally explodes into a series of cadenzas which gradually fade away into C major.

That’s Sviatoslav Richter playing the prelude in C sharp major. While almost everything is also in sixteenth notes, the character of both works cannot be more different. In this case, the sixteenths should be airy, flighty. The music itself expresses joy and happiness; it demands a light touch and a special balancing of all voices in the chorale that underlies all the little notes.

That is Angela Hewitt playing the G sharp minor prelude from the second book. This work is very monophonic, for Bach; the parts constantly shift from an accompaniment figure to a more melodic character. Despite its minor tonality, it isn’t particularly sad or melodramatic — only a few bars into the piece we see a descending sequence that gives the piece a brief major color. It is a bit melancholy but rhythmic and somewhat dance-like always traveling (in that sense very much like a sonata movement, in that it embodies a musical journey or drama.)

That’s Andras Schiff playing the E major prelude from the second book of the Well Tempered Clavier. The best adjective that I can think of for this piece of music is “serene”. It is peaceful and in a way pastoral (although I hesitate to describe music as pastoral because many people tend to understand it as farmers dancing in big clunky boots, which is quite the opposite of what I mean by it.)

Rosalyn Tureck playing the B flat prelude from book two. The music here is light and definitely dancing, very polyphonic but never heavy. The main motive is a simple scale, which tells us of a lively tempo, and coupled with the ternary figures, it is reminiscent of a gigue. The writing is mostly in three parts, although in some sections one of the voices has extended periods of silence. The nature of the main subject gives this piece a natural swing in which one voice always leads into the next. It is easy to get lost in all the possible imitations and contrapunctal devices within a very transparent and apparently simple framework.

All five of the above musicians have very different ways of playing Bach in many aspects (pedaling, dynamics, tempi, rubato, balance) but they all share a quality that makes their interpretation masterful: what they do is all in the service of a musical idea, of the character that underlies each particular piece. In my last post, about Bach’s flute sonata in E flat major, I described a short little canon that pops up in the third movement. Bach is quite clever, and these kinds of passages are everywhere in his music (this site , which I highly recommend, gives a very complete description and analysis of every prelude and fugue in the Well Tempered Clavier) and his music is extremely interesting to analyze, but the main concern of any interpretation should be to reach and express the essence of what each work is about.

Bach initially wrote many of the preludes in the Well Tempered Clavier as exercises to help develop his pupils’ technique, some are built on a repetitive pattern or musical idea that includes a technical difficulty. The genius of Bach lies in the fact that the technique is decided by the musicianship. Contrary to something like Czerny, in which you can have five volumes of piano etudes all expressing the same primitive musical idea: I-ii6-V7-I, the mood of the piece  determines the way the performer’s technique has to work (not to bash too much on Czerny, many of his works are quite beautiful and a huge departure from his “School of Velocity” that has tormented piano students for 200 years — not being as good as Bach is not an insult, it is a fact of life that applies to almost every single musician born since his death.)

Bach decided to use the technique to express musical ideas: joy, sadness, peace, pathos, violence — every technical difficulty has a different sound, a particular mood that it communicates and how do you get that mood except by musically having that inspiration? That is why the Czerny approach doesn’t work very well with Bach, the first step is trying to reach the mood of each particular piece. One of the most crucial aspects of interpretation in the Well Tempered Clavier is choosing the tempi and articulation, and it all stems from understanding the mood of each prelude.

Bach had the right idea, technique must be used to express musical ideas. A Bach interpretation cannot be reduced to making the piano sound as closely to a clavichord as possible (or the dry lifeless version of the clavichord that seems to exist in so many pianists’ imagination) while maintaining a metronomic tempo, a non-existent pedal and playing thematic material forte and everything else piano. That’s not the Well Tempered Clavier, that’s an exercise.

Bach BWV 1031

One of the aspects that I love about playing Bach’s music is the way it expands your mind and the way you listen to musical structures. How the music sounds has an immediate emotional impact, and in most cases the  melodies are very catchy tunes — which is  more impressive if we consider that most of his music was not monophonic. One interesting aspect of his music is that after analyzing and practicing it, your ears open and you start to listening to things in the musical structure that most people could not consciously perceive listening to it for the first time. It’s amazing how his music can speak  in such a meaningful way on so many levels.

Examples are everywhere, but this one came up in the middle of a chamber music lesson a few days ago. Here is the third movement of the Bach sonata for flute and harpsichord, in E flat major:

Now go back and listen to the little episode right after the main theme, around ten seconds into the video. There’s a little eight measure bridge that starts to lead us away from E flat major. The harmonic writing and the texture are quite different, which is pretty usual in this kind of form. The passage repeats with both instruments switching places.

Here are the two melodic lines.

One of the melodic lines is in sixteenth notes, while the other one is in eights. The way it sounds is as if one is the main melody while the other is the accompaniment. This kind of passage presents a basic problem of interpretation: what is the correct phrasing? How should both voices be balanced? That is where musical analysis comes in; by observing the music and trying to understand it, we can come to meaningful conclusions about the way it is played (however different those conclusions are from one musician to the next.)

If we isolate the “real” notes from the passage in sixteenths, we realize that those sixteenths are actually ornamenting the same melody that is present in the passage in eights.

Here is the same passage without the scales and arpeggios connecting the melodic notes.

And if we substitute the sixteenth notes for longer values, we get this:

A unison canon, offset by an eighth.

Now, after listening to the examples, go back and listen to the original recording again, and pay attention to those same passages. Notice how your ear is now drawn to the way those two lines interact? It can’t be unheard once it’s been noticed because your knowledge of the piece just got a bit deeper.

You can choose to not bring it out in any way, or decide that it’s really something that isn’t important to show. You can go the opposite route and adjust your phrasing and balance in a way that will make both lines leap out a bit more at the listener. Regardless of the choices we make, by knowing that it’s there we are hearing the piece in a different way. That is a quality that is noticeable in a performance, and it is very good; it is an element that gives depth to a person’s playing.

Killing the tiger.

In Mexico we call it a hueso (bone, as in throw me a bone) in Spain it’s a bolo and in Venezuela it’s called “Killing the Tiger” (apparently, the Tiger Rag was so popular at one time that any musician on a gig was practically guaranteed to have to play it at least once.) Anywhere in the world, musicians can get short informal jobs that are usually not related directly with what they really want to do, but they do them anyways because the bills don’t pay themselves.

These kinds of gigs are a huge part of being a student. In many cases, they do more harm than good, which is why most teachers frown on them. Taken in moderation, though, they are part of a complete musical formation. The key to not suffering the negative effects of bolos is to manage your time so that you don’t neglect practicing your instrument, regardless of all the extra time you have to invest in them. It is also important to always be self-conscious about potential bad habits that you may pick up and to adjust your practice accordingly.

Some teachers believe that in an ideal world, a student should spend every minute of his time locked in a practice room, learning repertoire and working on his technique; nothing should take the student’s focus from practicing. Thanks to an amazing scholarship, I lived like this for a couple of years, during my graduate years. Now, a few years later, I realize that many of the skills I use every day were learned as a student struggling to pay the bills, when, out of necessity, I had to play every gig I could get. A well-rounded musical education not only takes place in the classroom and in the concert hall, one of the most important elements comes from life and how each student applies his musical knowledge to real situations.

When we were starting out at the conservatory, my wife and I were paying our way without any help from our families. That meant that apart from the normal routine each student has to have, we had a lot of extra work, most of which had little to do with our training as classical musicians. She would play pop and ambient music with a small trio at a café three times a week. Most weekends, she’d play at a wedding, graduation or party with a small combo. She had a few children and adults who would take private lessons from her and we would both play in church on Sundays. Apart from the piano I also played the trumpet. Sometimes I’d be called as an extra by one of the local symphony orchestras or bands. I would play the piano at a dance academy three times a week, where I had to accompany ballet and Spanish dance. I would play in a salsa band three nights a week and also had private students. I played with anyone who needed it, from singers to percussionists, mostly free of charge in exchange for one favor or another (considering that most other people who needed accompanying were also students in the same situation as we were.) At some point I played regularly at restaurants and bars and was also a member of a mariachi band.

Our formal education consisted of Chopin and Beethoven, but almost every night we were out playing arrangements of whatever pop song was popular at the time, wedding music, salsa music and just improvising when we needed to make a set last more or learn something at the very last moment. Many musicians thrive on this kind of work, but it’s not really what you learn to do at school. We thought what we were doing was wrong, and it was incredibly embarrassing to mention to our extremely serious and foreign teachers that the reason we didn’t practice was because we were out until three am playing salsa at a club or when they’d look at our sheet music and out of our book of Chopin etudes, the sheet music for Dust in the Wind or Besame Mucho would slip out. Everyone does it, and that includes whatever big-name musician you can imagine; it is not a bad thing at all, when done correctly.

In the same way that you can have students whose technique deteriorates because of lack of practice and careless playing, it is equally common to have students that cannot play anything beyond the score (and only after studying it extensively and getting every single measure explained to them by their teachers.) I’ve known piano students that can play a Rachmaninoff etude, or a four-part fugue but cannot sight-read, do basic improvisation or even play Happy Birthday with both hands when put on the spot. Playing these kinds of gigs gets us out of our comfort zone, builds a relationship with the public, helps you learn things faster and more intuitively and helps develop that important relationship between technique, practice and ultimately going out and actually playing for an audience.

Here are some things that you must remember so that going out to “kill the tiger” helps you and doesn’t become harmful to your development as a musician:

- Be professional. That means be on time and properly prepared. Study your material as best as you can and, regardless of the gig, give your playing the respect it deserves.

- There is no excuse for sloppy playing. Warm up and prepare in the same way as for any other concert, regardless of the music you are playing, your performance is completely under your control; take it seriously. If I show up to a hotel and find one of my students playing in the lobby, it’s not a big deal; there would be no reason to be upset. What would make me angry, would be to find one of my students at a hotel playing badly, not taking it seriously. When my wife showed up at a hueso, everyone would give her weird looks because she would warm up carefully with thirds and scales and would always sit with proper posture when she played. Any playing is good practice if it is done with the right attitude. It’s pretty common to see violinists on these kinds of presentations not taking their job seriously, with their instruments lying practically on their bellies, barely bothering to play in tune or with a proper sound. Playing extra gigs doesn’t deteriorate your playing, doing it badly does.

- Don’t lose your perspective. It’s easy to get depressed playing Pachelbel’s canon and the Wedding March if what you ultimately want is to play another kind of repertoire. It is also easy to lose track of your goals by the lure of quick money from playing the same ten pieces over and over. Whatever you do, try to focus on the long-term and don’t stop working to get there.

- All this extra playing is “in addition to” not “instead of”. Playing a lot of huesos is bound to make you tired and drain your energy from your actual schoolwork. Don’t take the easy route of replacing your academic progress with the extras. You have to make sure that you have enough time to continue advancing in your lessons with your teacher, and that is not easy. Going out and playing a couple of hours at a café is not a proper replacement for sitting down and practicing your scales and repertoire. There is a limited number of hours one has each day, and you have to remember that the time you invest moonlighting in a salsa band is time that you are taking away from your studies. In a strange way, that is a good thing because, by limiting the time you can practice each day, you force yourself to become more efficient. That is one of the most important things I learned in that period of my life, making sure that every second in the practice room counted. Even so, if you are not willing to sacrifice one or the other, be prepared to lose some sleep. I listed all the extra work my wife and I had to take in addition to our regular load of work from the conservatory. How did we manage? She would get up at six to do her theory work and complementary piano, I would practice daily until very late at night and we would pretty much work non-stop every single day.

I assure you that it does get better later but, if you want to be any good, being a music student is supposed to be difficult.