Not long ago I heard a fascinating rendition of the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony on the radio. If you're not familiar with the original, here's a passable version from Youtube:
Obviously it's an intense piece, and very intricately constructed. It's in A-Minor (the 7th Symphony as a whole is in A-Major), and it heavily relies upon the tonic to dominant and back movement that starts the piece. More than the harmony, however, what makes this piece so effective is its rhythm. The whole 7th Symphony feels like dance,* from the celebratory and springy first movement to the hectic races of the 3rd and 4th movements, dance rhythms are pervasive. This movement is no different, and while it is certainly sedate and may even come across - especially on first listening - as profoundly sad, if it is a lamentation it's a dancing one. The repeated rhythmic meme of One-Two-and-Three-Four gives it a measured, dancing feel, a driving force that pushes the movement onward.
* Indeed, Wagner called it "the apotheosis of the dance."
I could go on about the 7th Symphony, but that's not my object. Rather, I want to introduce the fascinating rendition I heard on the radio. Give it a listen:
Now some classical music people are not fond of this kind of pirating of a famous piece. I, however, think that's a bit stuffy and closed-minded. Beethoven would maybe be offended by a re-rendition of his work, but, then again, he also re-rendered some of Mozart's themes in his own variations. If nothing else, Beethoven would appreciate the choice of lyrics Libera leader Robert Prizeman elected to set against Beethoven's work.
You see, the 2nd Movement of the 7th Symphony is easy to understand as a dour, overwhelmingly depressing display of emotion. I don't believe, however, that such was Beethoven's intent. Indeed, this movement strikes me as just as joyful as the remainder of the symphony. If anything, the difference is that this movement is more reverential - or at least reverential in a different way. Where the other movements are like whirling dervishes, showing their devotion to life, love, and happiness by swinging about wildly, this movement is a wiser, quieter, more intense and personal display.
What perhaps the Libera version loses most is the build-up. Beethoven's version starts with just chords, and piece by piece introduces further harmonies and a wonderful contrapuntal (and highly chromatic) melody. He then moves that melody up through the instruments until it reaches the violins, singing above the rest of the orchestra's pounding harmonic and rhythmic core. Libera can't and doesn't try to recreate that effect, choosing rather to focus on the simple interplay of melody and harmony that a novice might lose sight of in Beethoven's work.
Adding in a percussion part and an original "bridge" in the middle of the piece only further brings out the power of Beethoven's harmonies and rhythms. The added bits feel, to me anyway, very natural, especially because they are so-well situated in the piece. They help the listener forget that the Beethoven original contains more themes and development that would be unwieldy - if not downright ugly - performed by voice. Those orchestral developments become unnecessary against the dynamic crescendo employed by Prizeman in his rendition.
But the lyrics. This is what fascinates me most. Prizeman chooses a hymn - Sacris Solemnis - as his text. Now, Beethoven is ironically famous for introducing lyrics to orchestral music in his 9th Symphony, but the recognition of Beethoven as an innovator for the voice comes despite his disinterest in writing for the voice throughout his life as a composer. In a time when opera was still very much the rage, Beethoven composed one, better-known for its preludes and overtures than its arias. It seems to me that Beethoven was concerned, generally, with matters to weighty for lyrics. Or, rather, his work was always singing in a language more expressive than German or Latin or Italian already, so why spoil it with words? In some sense, his 9th Symphony seems to me to be an effort to teach we listeners his language of joy, present throughout his musical oeuvre.
So what lyrics did Prizeman select for his setting of the 7th Symphony? The Latin goes like this:*
Sacris solemnis, Juncta sint gaudia
Corda, et voces, et opera.
Recedant vitera, nova sint omnia.
Sacris solemnis, gaudia.
Te trina Deitas unique Poscimus:
Sacris solemnis, gaudia.
* The bridge is: "Lucem, lucem ad inhabitas," which translates as "The light wherein You dwell."
I'm no Latin scholar, so I have to rely on the translations of others and a little bit of guesswork, but roughly this means something like:
At this our solemn feast, let holy joys abound
In every heart, and voice, and act.
Let ancient rites depart,* and all be new around.
At this our solemn feast, let there be joy.
We implore Thee, God, the Trinity:
At this our solemn feast, let there be joy.
* Reminds me of the opening lyrics of the 9th: "Oh fruende, nicht diese tone."
Even if the translation isn't perfect, could there be a better set of lyrics? They capture the solemnity and reverence of the piece, but also understand that the occasion is fundamentally a joyful one.
I think, with Beethoven in particular, but also with Chopin and Wagner and a great many other composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, it's easy to get lost in the emotional force of the music. The Romantic era, in particular, earns its name for its desirous, pining melodies and its adventures far from the tonic, through streams of dominants, making us positively lust after some resolution. But, even though we might call such music childish - or, worse, adolescent - it is not. I believe it cheapens those musicians to call their music "angry" or "sad" when, in reality, the story is much more complicated than that, the emotional investment much more nuanced.
Beethoven's music is joyful, not because he was always joyful, but because the act of writing music was, to him, a divine one, and one which brought him joy. Even his most tempestuous works have a streak of the kind of melancholic joy that comes with understanding one's sadness and frustration to be only a part - and a vital one - of the emotional canvass of a joyful life. I would argue that Chopin's "sad" music, for example, may come from the heart of a depressed invalid, but that depressed invalid was truly joyful in his heart when he composed music.
The 7th Symphony - and in particular the 2nd movement - is more, however, than just melancholy written with joy, but expressing melancholy. No, it's exactly how Prizeman describes, a solemn plea and prayer for joy. That may seem paradoxical, but I don't think it has to be. I think joy and solemnity often exist side-by-side, and, what's more, that joy is sometimes its most poignant in a minor key. Listen again and see if you can hear it.
Showing posts with label Romantic Era. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romantic Era. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Bizet's "Farandole"
The embedded youtube videos don't show up in Buzz, so those of you who normally read there, just click over to the actual blog for the rest of the content.
The opening of this piece is, for lack of a better word, epic. The counterpoint is superb, the melody compelling, the harmony flawless. But beyond that, it simply yells "listen to me!" It's loud, it's aggressive, it's passionate, and it combines the dark undertones of minor tonality with an unabashed excitement that is anything but languid.
Georges Bizet is probably best known for his opera Carmen. You know it, whether you think you do or not, thanks to its two most famous bits.
Farandole, on the other hand, comes originally from the incidental music to the play L'Arlésienne, about which I know next to nothing, and about which Wikipedia says little except that it's a classic Romantic Era silly love-suicide story. Wikipedia doesn't use those exact words, mind you, but it's close enough. One wonders, given the fairly tepid plot description on The Great Free Encyclopedia, where exactly this particular piece fits in the action.
Not surprisingly, given the quality of the music, Bizet took the incidental music he wrote for the play and reworked it into a suite of the same title (another composer did the same with Bizet's work, which is why there are two suites if you go looking). The Farandole you have just heard is, then, one of the movements of that suite.
Like so many Romantic composers - and artists more generally - Bizet died young. A heart attack at 36, precipitated by ill health, claimed his life before Carmen took off. The tragedy of his death fits neatly into the era, to be sure, but nevertheless robbed the world of years of excellent music. In his last four years, from the ages of 32 to 36, Bizet wrote both L'Arlésienne and Carmen. Who knows what he could have written in another ten, twenty, or thirty.
To my mind, while Carmen is the better known of Bizet's late works, I find L'Arlésienne, and Farandole in particular, much more compelling. It leaves that itch, like much Romantic music, for just a little bit more refinement, but it delivers so much on the side of raw emotion that its rawness is forgivable.
I'm not satisfied, however, with high-level talk about what is compelling and what isn't, so let's dig into the actual music a bit, too. Hey, I never promised this blog would be all vague similes and philosophical ramblings.
In this piano reduction (click to enlarge; I think it redirects, so right-click and open in a new tab), we can see the opening of the piece all on one manageable line. We're missing out on some of the awesome counterpoint at, say, the end of the first phrase (where the horns ascend against the descending string melody), but the overall chord structure is accurate.
What is striking here is the lack of a dominant. Where many romantic composers loved to overemphasize the dominant - Wagner, I'm looking at you - to the exclusion of the tonic, Bizet here is mostly playing with subdominants and substitutions. We don't get a big A7 until the very end of the phrase, at which point we're just turning around and starting down the subdominant path all over again. The second time through the opening melody is essentially the same as the first, with a Bb and A7 (a VI-V-i) replacing the strange Fsus thing that's going on the first time through.
Diving into the opening melodic and harmonic phrase, it's worth remembering that this all happens so fast that we barely register the particular movements of the chords. The whole things feels like one big, fat, subdominant - that is, moving away from the rest of the key, but hardly establishing a new home or particularly dragging us back to the tonic - as well it should given the chords involved.
Bizet emphasizes, at the outset, the Bb Major triad, a substitution for the tonic of D-. I think this is why, despite the minor tonality of the piece, it doesn't feel minor. We're emphasizing the Major tonalities within the D minor scale. Moreover, replacing A Major - the usual dominant, with A minor lets that Bb Major feel more intentional. Rather than being a substitution for the dominant in the purest sense - that is rather than acting as a resolution of a dominant chord - the Bb is simply part of a progression exploring and defining the key of the piece.
The next couple of measures, which include much quicker rhythms, end up in a F Major triad. Bizet emphasizes the D minor triads leading up to this. Even these Ds are hurried, and the F is the focal point here, which is unusual. It seems to me that Bizet is using the F as a half-way point between the dominant A and the tonic D, as a kind of odd subdominant that, rather than serving as a departure from the tonic and a move towards the dominant, heightens the tension of the piece without moving particularly away from the tonic. That F is the dominant of the Bb which has already been emphasized is not insignificant either. We're being pulled back towards the Major tonality, here.
The resounding C Major that starts the next bit of the phrase reinforces this, serving as it does as a II of Bb, and as nothing relative to D minor. Indeed, we could almost claim to have modulated here, especially because of the A diminished (A*) in the next measure. That A* unambiguously points towards Bb, and not at all towards D minor. That it resolves to a G minor instead of the Bb Major only goes to show, since G minor is Bb Major's vi (six), and therefore a tonic substitution.
The rest of the phrase is a subdominant holding pattern, which, in the end, leads us back to D- and restarts the phrase. Of course the counterpoint is more engaging here than the harmony, but they are inextricably linked: the counterpoint is responsible for the harmonic work. Nevertheless, the kind of harmonic analysis that would be easy with Beethoven or Mozart is somewhat confounded here, not because it is ignored, but because it is intentionally being manipulated towards a whole different set of musical goals.
I would be satisfied with this fascinating opening to the piece, but the real fireworks come in the next few measures, starting on the third line down. I've provided no analysis here, because this is pure counterpoint. Bizet shows that, despite the harmonic complexity implied by his melody, he can also set it against itself - only half a measure offset - and produce music nonetheless. He doesn't pursue this, turning it into a fugue as Beethoven often did when using similar devices. Rather, Bizet simply lets the counterpoint resolve itself before launching into yet another and even more frantic new melody which - not surprisingly - ultimately ends up being a counterpoint to the original melody.
To me, however, there is something unsatisfying about the second half and the ending of this piece. It is certainly exciting, but it feels much like the Overture to Carmen: fast, frantic, brilliant, and without development. The rich melody that begins the piece should yield itself to so much more than simply being played against itself and against other melodies. Instead it is repeated and repeated, and while context is changed rhythmically and harmonically, the melody is never transformed within those bounds in the way that, say, Brahms does in his Variations on a Theme by Haydn.* Granted, Brahms is doing variations, which deal by definition with transforming melodies within a harmonic structure, but that doesn't change the fundamental model: hold the one bit of the music constant while you transform the other.
* Yes, I just linked to myself. I've also become aware that the Brahms videos I link to in that article have been taken down. With a modicum of digging, you can find an alternative, though I haven't found a recording online of the same quality as that to which I originally linked. If I do find something, I'll set up new links - or embed those - in the old post.
Regardless, I find Farandole a truly joyful piece. It almost doesn't matter that it feels unfulfilled. What is there is so perfect, so epic, so hilarious, so fun that it doesn't matter. Look closely at some of the musicians and, when you can see them, the audience in the video at the top of this post. People love this music, and not in some kind of reserved, elitist way. No, this is just the raw, naked joy of Romantic expressiveness at its best.
The opening of this piece is, for lack of a better word, epic. The counterpoint is superb, the melody compelling, the harmony flawless. But beyond that, it simply yells "listen to me!" It's loud, it's aggressive, it's passionate, and it combines the dark undertones of minor tonality with an unabashed excitement that is anything but languid.
Georges Bizet is probably best known for his opera Carmen. You know it, whether you think you do or not, thanks to its two most famous bits.
Farandole, on the other hand, comes originally from the incidental music to the play L'Arlésienne, about which I know next to nothing, and about which Wikipedia says little except that it's a classic Romantic Era silly love-suicide story. Wikipedia doesn't use those exact words, mind you, but it's close enough. One wonders, given the fairly tepid plot description on The Great Free Encyclopedia, where exactly this particular piece fits in the action.
Not surprisingly, given the quality of the music, Bizet took the incidental music he wrote for the play and reworked it into a suite of the same title (another composer did the same with Bizet's work, which is why there are two suites if you go looking). The Farandole you have just heard is, then, one of the movements of that suite.
Like so many Romantic composers - and artists more generally - Bizet died young. A heart attack at 36, precipitated by ill health, claimed his life before Carmen took off. The tragedy of his death fits neatly into the era, to be sure, but nevertheless robbed the world of years of excellent music. In his last four years, from the ages of 32 to 36, Bizet wrote both L'Arlésienne and Carmen. Who knows what he could have written in another ten, twenty, or thirty.
To my mind, while Carmen is the better known of Bizet's late works, I find L'Arlésienne, and Farandole in particular, much more compelling. It leaves that itch, like much Romantic music, for just a little bit more refinement, but it delivers so much on the side of raw emotion that its rawness is forgivable.
I'm not satisfied, however, with high-level talk about what is compelling and what isn't, so let's dig into the actual music a bit, too. Hey, I never promised this blog would be all vague similes and philosophical ramblings.
In this piano reduction (click to enlarge; I think it redirects, so right-click and open in a new tab), we can see the opening of the piece all on one manageable line. We're missing out on some of the awesome counterpoint at, say, the end of the first phrase (where the horns ascend against the descending string melody), but the overall chord structure is accurate.
What is striking here is the lack of a dominant. Where many romantic composers loved to overemphasize the dominant - Wagner, I'm looking at you - to the exclusion of the tonic, Bizet here is mostly playing with subdominants and substitutions. We don't get a big A7 until the very end of the phrase, at which point we're just turning around and starting down the subdominant path all over again. The second time through the opening melody is essentially the same as the first, with a Bb and A7 (a VI-V-i) replacing the strange Fsus thing that's going on the first time through.
Diving into the opening melodic and harmonic phrase, it's worth remembering that this all happens so fast that we barely register the particular movements of the chords. The whole things feels like one big, fat, subdominant - that is, moving away from the rest of the key, but hardly establishing a new home or particularly dragging us back to the tonic - as well it should given the chords involved.
Bizet emphasizes, at the outset, the Bb Major triad, a substitution for the tonic of D-. I think this is why, despite the minor tonality of the piece, it doesn't feel minor. We're emphasizing the Major tonalities within the D minor scale. Moreover, replacing A Major - the usual dominant, with A minor lets that Bb Major feel more intentional. Rather than being a substitution for the dominant in the purest sense - that is rather than acting as a resolution of a dominant chord - the Bb is simply part of a progression exploring and defining the key of the piece.
The next couple of measures, which include much quicker rhythms, end up in a F Major triad. Bizet emphasizes the D minor triads leading up to this. Even these Ds are hurried, and the F is the focal point here, which is unusual. It seems to me that Bizet is using the F as a half-way point between the dominant A and the tonic D, as a kind of odd subdominant that, rather than serving as a departure from the tonic and a move towards the dominant, heightens the tension of the piece without moving particularly away from the tonic. That F is the dominant of the Bb which has already been emphasized is not insignificant either. We're being pulled back towards the Major tonality, here.
The resounding C Major that starts the next bit of the phrase reinforces this, serving as it does as a II of Bb, and as nothing relative to D minor. Indeed, we could almost claim to have modulated here, especially because of the A diminished (A*) in the next measure. That A* unambiguously points towards Bb, and not at all towards D minor. That it resolves to a G minor instead of the Bb Major only goes to show, since G minor is Bb Major's vi (six), and therefore a tonic substitution.
The rest of the phrase is a subdominant holding pattern, which, in the end, leads us back to D- and restarts the phrase. Of course the counterpoint is more engaging here than the harmony, but they are inextricably linked: the counterpoint is responsible for the harmonic work. Nevertheless, the kind of harmonic analysis that would be easy with Beethoven or Mozart is somewhat confounded here, not because it is ignored, but because it is intentionally being manipulated towards a whole different set of musical goals.
I would be satisfied with this fascinating opening to the piece, but the real fireworks come in the next few measures, starting on the third line down. I've provided no analysis here, because this is pure counterpoint. Bizet shows that, despite the harmonic complexity implied by his melody, he can also set it against itself - only half a measure offset - and produce music nonetheless. He doesn't pursue this, turning it into a fugue as Beethoven often did when using similar devices. Rather, Bizet simply lets the counterpoint resolve itself before launching into yet another and even more frantic new melody which - not surprisingly - ultimately ends up being a counterpoint to the original melody.
To me, however, there is something unsatisfying about the second half and the ending of this piece. It is certainly exciting, but it feels much like the Overture to Carmen: fast, frantic, brilliant, and without development. The rich melody that begins the piece should yield itself to so much more than simply being played against itself and against other melodies. Instead it is repeated and repeated, and while context is changed rhythmically and harmonically, the melody is never transformed within those bounds in the way that, say, Brahms does in his Variations on a Theme by Haydn.* Granted, Brahms is doing variations, which deal by definition with transforming melodies within a harmonic structure, but that doesn't change the fundamental model: hold the one bit of the music constant while you transform the other.
* Yes, I just linked to myself. I've also become aware that the Brahms videos I link to in that article have been taken down. With a modicum of digging, you can find an alternative, though I haven't found a recording online of the same quality as that to which I originally linked. If I do find something, I'll set up new links - or embed those - in the old post.
Regardless, I find Farandole a truly joyful piece. It almost doesn't matter that it feels unfulfilled. What is there is so perfect, so epic, so hilarious, so fun that it doesn't matter. Look closely at some of the musicians and, when you can see them, the audience in the video at the top of this post. People love this music, and not in some kind of reserved, elitist way. No, this is just the raw, naked joy of Romantic expressiveness at its best.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Listening to the "Variations on a Theme By Haydn"
Because he is so different than other composers of his era, Johannes Brahms is a difficult composer to classify. He is certainly a Romantic - expanding beyond the formal limitations that the Classical Era (Mozart being the chief practitioner) placed upon composition. But he is also very much rooted in a classical - perhaps even a baroque, at times - sensibility. Despite the wild harmonic (Wagner) and melodic (Chopin) inventions of his contemporaries, Brahms remains stuck somewhere in between. His music is a testament to the kind of melody and harmony, to be sure, that encompasses the newer, "dissonant" forms that characterize the Romantic Era, but it is also reflective and moving, subdued and inoffensive.
Perhaps the defining characteristic of Romantic music is not the way that harmony, melody, or even presentation changed. Rather, the Romantics - beginning with Beethoven - were emotional, charged, urgent. Their music was not meant to be beautiful above all, or divine. It was human, and painful, and moving. Chopin is perhaps the epitome of this; his music so often strikes us as sad unto utter depression. But the Romantics compose with the same Joy that signaled - in Beethoven's 9th - the end of an era. Perhaps that joy is present, too, in Mozart and Bach and their contemporaries, but it is not the point in the way that it is with the Romantics.*
*Ok, ok, we'll do the Jupiter Symphony at some point, and the Bradenburg Concerti, and blow that sentence out of the water, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.
What sets Brahms apart from the other Romantics is not that joyful sensibility, or the subtlety with which his melodies move through the harmonic aether so prominent in his time. No, Brahms is different because, while doing all of those things, he nearly convinces us that he's not really doing them at all. His music feels older, more structured than it is. His Variations on a Theme by Haydn feel almost as if they could have been written by Haydn himself, until you listen more closely, and you realize that it would have been impossible for Haydn to be so bold, so daring, so offensive.
I suppose what I'm saying is that Brahms is a paradox. He is the least offensive and least intense of Romantic composers, but only because he is so good at being offensive and intense. In the Variations it's all too easy to forget where you started, and where you've gone, and to realize how strong a grip Brahms has gotten on your soul using only the bare scaffold provided by some old master - Haydn - who never could have imagined such power. Trying to explain how that happens is probably impossible, but I want to walk through the piece anyway, to try to understand the subtle motions a little better.
There are a couple versions on youtube that are passable, but I'd recommend a CD if you can find one. I'll link to the movements from one of those youtube versions as I talk about them. Unfortunately, a few of the movements I'm linking to here cut off early.
Introduction
The opening of the piece is a fairly straightforward statement of Haydn's theme. It's a pleasant enough starting point, with an unintimidating chord progression and a simple structure. While hardly an amazing starting point, it is more than adequate. In many ways it conforms perfectly to what we might call the Classical Composer's Handbook: open with a theme that is not too complicated or emotional, because then you won't have anywhere to go. This is a theme with plenty of potential - if only because the chords are so, well, basic - and so Brahms can reasonably play with it in any number of ways.
First Variation
Brahms wastes no time in taking off. While his first variation retains both the harmony of the initial movement and many of the melodic and contrapuntal devices, it also changes the attitude substantially. The backdrop of quarter notes played by various wind instruments gives the variation an urgentness not present in the theme itself. There is also a hint of dissonance from time to time - though hardly enough to disturb or surprise us - that Brahms mixes in with the rapid, flighty counterpoint that highlights the variation. This variation, in itself, is not so different from Haydn, and could possibly be something Haydn himself would write if he was feeling antsy enough.
Second Variation
The urgency of the first variation leads us into this, an all together more intense variation than either of the first two. Brahms particularly emphasizes the dominant chords when they appear (setting us on edge, because of the need for resolution this creates). The tempo has been picked up once again, a technique that further sets us on edge. While chords - more than melody - are an emphasis of the theme itself (fitting for a classical theme, indeed), this variation is even more chordal than the opening. Melody is used primarily to bridge the gap between one forte expression of a chord (usually dominant) to another, further increasing the urgency of the variation.
Third Variation
At about half the tempo as the second variation, this variation is a return to a melodic and more sensual music. The presence of sixteenth notes in the counterpoint - forming arpeggios - in the early part of the movement prevents the variation from feeling properly "slow," but there remains a sense of relaxation that we didn't have in the previous variations. It as if we were rushing to get here, and now we are content. Only, there is something unsettled about this place we have arrived, and the variation - at least to my ear - feels less and less satisfying as a resting place as it moves along. Perhaps this is because those sixteenth notes become more and more prominent, or perhaps it's because of the instrumentation or the harmony. It's hard for me to say, but I am decidedly ready to move on by the end of the movement.
Fourth Variation
This is the first movement to make the move to a melancholic minor, and it is decidedly romantic. While the harmony remains fundamentally similar to what it has been, there are few traces of the original theme in the melody, with the emphasis being on a desirous, longing melodic construction that leads us, invariably, to dominant chords with weak resolutions. That those resolutions are minor is further unsettling, not because minor keys cannot be tonics, but because the original theme - the context we're hearing this in - is so major. Where did this melancholy come from?
Fifth Variation
In stark contrast to the preceding variation, this one is the fastest yet, and returns to a major key. That said, it is far from jubilant. While there are certainly bright passages, it also has sinister moments. On the whole, though it is a kind of frantic search for where to go next, since we have been thwarted in our search for resolution in the previous few movements. This is a hopeful variation, no doubt, but it is also far from a resting point itself.
Sixth Variation
Where the fifth variation leads us is a more plodding, and wholey more satisfying and playful sixth variation. The forte chords that invade about a third of the way through are not sinister, even though they are minor. They give the sense that something momentous is about to happen, that we're getting somewhere, at last. We undoubtedly have to push further - just a little bit - but we're on the cusp. If we choose to look, back, too, we see how incredibly far we have come from the opening. This movement is pure romantic era; mixing in chords based on sentiment rather than harmonic theory, and emphasizing a galumphing, rhythmic melody that serves a distinctly cheerful emotional purpose.
Seventh Variation
This variation is not where we're going; it feels more reflective than the movements before it. Brahms dulls the edges of some of the particular places in the harmony that he has heretofore emphasized, taking the volume down and exploring a more romantic (in both senses, this time) direction. This variation strikes me as a kind of swooning, a "so there" to the haughty and academic sound of the opening theme. It turns out the same harmonic framework can lead to romance and desire and fields of poppies (if you will), just as well as it can more formal concerns of orchestra, progression, and composition. Here we have music starting to extract itself from theory, becoming music as it truly is.
Eighth Variation
With something of a chuckle, Brahms leads us back into a more sinister melody. We are absorbed, thanks largely to the seduction of the previous movement, in the emotion of the music. And here we are not disappointed, though perhaps a little surprised, to find that something clever and dramatic is afoot. We feel close to the end, now, because the searching of the previous movements is no longer present. Rather, we are here, but Brahms has not yet shown us what the hullabaloo is about.* Instead he's poking fun, a little, and giving us a little more buildup to better set off his fireworks.
*Of course, the circular journey of the piece is really what the hullabaloo is about, but that's kind of the point. There's nowhere to stop in the whole piece, except for the end (which we're getting to), but the end wouldn't stand on its own either. While I might argue that most pieces cannot be taken apart (shame on you to classical stations that only play single movements of symphonies), there is no way you would even consider doing so to this piece. No single bit of it is particularly brilliant alone - though all are certainly excellent - but the whole, as a whole, is incredible.
Final Variation (Return of Theme)
From the outset we can tell that the original theme is back, but in a non-distinct way. We are, truly, hearing a Romantic version of what was a Classical notion at the opening. It is a music triumph and a celebration folded into a simple recapitulation. Brahms revels in the drama of the opening of this movement because he knows where it is going, but also because it shows the continuity of music so well. The history of music folds always into its present, and a great composer is always indebted to the harmonies and melodies that came before. We may prefer a particular era - and history seems to prefer the romantic era - but that's silly. Great music is great music, if only you can unlock it's potential.
Brahms, in this final variation - if it is a variation - somehow manages to let Haydn rewrite his own theme. There is no lording over an age gone past, an age insufficiently aware of what music is capable of. Rather, this piece is a reminder that those predecessors feed into the power of more contemporary music, and that music is, ultimately, more a dialogue than a speech. Perhaps not all composers feel that way, and not all music is capable of conversation, but Brahms straddles so many theories of music and composition that he cannot help but be a conduit for conversation between seemingly disparate methods.
Brahms is the most classical of the composers of his time, to be sure, but he is also the most modern. Perhaps Brahms is simply more musical than his contemporaries. There are many excellent composers from the late romantic era, each with their own emotional and spiritual mission (or baggage). Brahms is not separate from that, but he is somehow above it. We may listen to him today and find his music too similar to what we now here in movies, but that is no accident. Movie composers copied Brahms because his was the most relevant music, the easiest to connect to, the least dependent upon understanding theory and history. His is a timeless music, dramatic, beautiful, and human.
It is worth noting that, while I was talking about the orchestral version of this piece, there is also an excellent version for two pianos (also by Brahms; it's not a reduction made by someone else). The piece takes on some different characteristics when played on piano, of course, and he expertly plays the two instruments against each other (letting one take the melody for a time and switching). Perhaps even more than the orchestral version, the piano version is truly a dialogue.
Perhaps the defining characteristic of Romantic music is not the way that harmony, melody, or even presentation changed. Rather, the Romantics - beginning with Beethoven - were emotional, charged, urgent. Their music was not meant to be beautiful above all, or divine. It was human, and painful, and moving. Chopin is perhaps the epitome of this; his music so often strikes us as sad unto utter depression. But the Romantics compose with the same Joy that signaled - in Beethoven's 9th - the end of an era. Perhaps that joy is present, too, in Mozart and Bach and their contemporaries, but it is not the point in the way that it is with the Romantics.*
*Ok, ok, we'll do the Jupiter Symphony at some point, and the Bradenburg Concerti, and blow that sentence out of the water, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.
What sets Brahms apart from the other Romantics is not that joyful sensibility, or the subtlety with which his melodies move through the harmonic aether so prominent in his time. No, Brahms is different because, while doing all of those things, he nearly convinces us that he's not really doing them at all. His music feels older, more structured than it is. His Variations on a Theme by Haydn feel almost as if they could have been written by Haydn himself, until you listen more closely, and you realize that it would have been impossible for Haydn to be so bold, so daring, so offensive.
I suppose what I'm saying is that Brahms is a paradox. He is the least offensive and least intense of Romantic composers, but only because he is so good at being offensive and intense. In the Variations it's all too easy to forget where you started, and where you've gone, and to realize how strong a grip Brahms has gotten on your soul using only the bare scaffold provided by some old master - Haydn - who never could have imagined such power. Trying to explain how that happens is probably impossible, but I want to walk through the piece anyway, to try to understand the subtle motions a little better.
There are a couple versions on youtube that are passable, but I'd recommend a CD if you can find one. I'll link to the movements from one of those youtube versions as I talk about them. Unfortunately, a few of the movements I'm linking to here cut off early.
Introduction
The opening of the piece is a fairly straightforward statement of Haydn's theme. It's a pleasant enough starting point, with an unintimidating chord progression and a simple structure. While hardly an amazing starting point, it is more than adequate. In many ways it conforms perfectly to what we might call the Classical Composer's Handbook: open with a theme that is not too complicated or emotional, because then you won't have anywhere to go. This is a theme with plenty of potential - if only because the chords are so, well, basic - and so Brahms can reasonably play with it in any number of ways.
First Variation
Brahms wastes no time in taking off. While his first variation retains both the harmony of the initial movement and many of the melodic and contrapuntal devices, it also changes the attitude substantially. The backdrop of quarter notes played by various wind instruments gives the variation an urgentness not present in the theme itself. There is also a hint of dissonance from time to time - though hardly enough to disturb or surprise us - that Brahms mixes in with the rapid, flighty counterpoint that highlights the variation. This variation, in itself, is not so different from Haydn, and could possibly be something Haydn himself would write if he was feeling antsy enough.
Second Variation
The urgency of the first variation leads us into this, an all together more intense variation than either of the first two. Brahms particularly emphasizes the dominant chords when they appear (setting us on edge, because of the need for resolution this creates). The tempo has been picked up once again, a technique that further sets us on edge. While chords - more than melody - are an emphasis of the theme itself (fitting for a classical theme, indeed), this variation is even more chordal than the opening. Melody is used primarily to bridge the gap between one forte expression of a chord (usually dominant) to another, further increasing the urgency of the variation.
Third Variation
At about half the tempo as the second variation, this variation is a return to a melodic and more sensual music. The presence of sixteenth notes in the counterpoint - forming arpeggios - in the early part of the movement prevents the variation from feeling properly "slow," but there remains a sense of relaxation that we didn't have in the previous variations. It as if we were rushing to get here, and now we are content. Only, there is something unsettled about this place we have arrived, and the variation - at least to my ear - feels less and less satisfying as a resting place as it moves along. Perhaps this is because those sixteenth notes become more and more prominent, or perhaps it's because of the instrumentation or the harmony. It's hard for me to say, but I am decidedly ready to move on by the end of the movement.
Fourth Variation
This is the first movement to make the move to a melancholic minor, and it is decidedly romantic. While the harmony remains fundamentally similar to what it has been, there are few traces of the original theme in the melody, with the emphasis being on a desirous, longing melodic construction that leads us, invariably, to dominant chords with weak resolutions. That those resolutions are minor is further unsettling, not because minor keys cannot be tonics, but because the original theme - the context we're hearing this in - is so major. Where did this melancholy come from?
Fifth Variation
In stark contrast to the preceding variation, this one is the fastest yet, and returns to a major key. That said, it is far from jubilant. While there are certainly bright passages, it also has sinister moments. On the whole, though it is a kind of frantic search for where to go next, since we have been thwarted in our search for resolution in the previous few movements. This is a hopeful variation, no doubt, but it is also far from a resting point itself.
Sixth Variation
Where the fifth variation leads us is a more plodding, and wholey more satisfying and playful sixth variation. The forte chords that invade about a third of the way through are not sinister, even though they are minor. They give the sense that something momentous is about to happen, that we're getting somewhere, at last. We undoubtedly have to push further - just a little bit - but we're on the cusp. If we choose to look, back, too, we see how incredibly far we have come from the opening. This movement is pure romantic era; mixing in chords based on sentiment rather than harmonic theory, and emphasizing a galumphing, rhythmic melody that serves a distinctly cheerful emotional purpose.
Seventh Variation
This variation is not where we're going; it feels more reflective than the movements before it. Brahms dulls the edges of some of the particular places in the harmony that he has heretofore emphasized, taking the volume down and exploring a more romantic (in both senses, this time) direction. This variation strikes me as a kind of swooning, a "so there" to the haughty and academic sound of the opening theme. It turns out the same harmonic framework can lead to romance and desire and fields of poppies (if you will), just as well as it can more formal concerns of orchestra, progression, and composition. Here we have music starting to extract itself from theory, becoming music as it truly is.
Eighth Variation
With something of a chuckle, Brahms leads us back into a more sinister melody. We are absorbed, thanks largely to the seduction of the previous movement, in the emotion of the music. And here we are not disappointed, though perhaps a little surprised, to find that something clever and dramatic is afoot. We feel close to the end, now, because the searching of the previous movements is no longer present. Rather, we are here, but Brahms has not yet shown us what the hullabaloo is about.* Instead he's poking fun, a little, and giving us a little more buildup to better set off his fireworks.
*Of course, the circular journey of the piece is really what the hullabaloo is about, but that's kind of the point. There's nowhere to stop in the whole piece, except for the end (which we're getting to), but the end wouldn't stand on its own either. While I might argue that most pieces cannot be taken apart (shame on you to classical stations that only play single movements of symphonies), there is no way you would even consider doing so to this piece. No single bit of it is particularly brilliant alone - though all are certainly excellent - but the whole, as a whole, is incredible.
Final Variation (Return of Theme)
From the outset we can tell that the original theme is back, but in a non-distinct way. We are, truly, hearing a Romantic version of what was a Classical notion at the opening. It is a music triumph and a celebration folded into a simple recapitulation. Brahms revels in the drama of the opening of this movement because he knows where it is going, but also because it shows the continuity of music so well. The history of music folds always into its present, and a great composer is always indebted to the harmonies and melodies that came before. We may prefer a particular era - and history seems to prefer the romantic era - but that's silly. Great music is great music, if only you can unlock it's potential.
Brahms, in this final variation - if it is a variation - somehow manages to let Haydn rewrite his own theme. There is no lording over an age gone past, an age insufficiently aware of what music is capable of. Rather, this piece is a reminder that those predecessors feed into the power of more contemporary music, and that music is, ultimately, more a dialogue than a speech. Perhaps not all composers feel that way, and not all music is capable of conversation, but Brahms straddles so many theories of music and composition that he cannot help but be a conduit for conversation between seemingly disparate methods.
Brahms is the most classical of the composers of his time, to be sure, but he is also the most modern. Perhaps Brahms is simply more musical than his contemporaries. There are many excellent composers from the late romantic era, each with their own emotional and spiritual mission (or baggage). Brahms is not separate from that, but he is somehow above it. We may listen to him today and find his music too similar to what we now here in movies, but that is no accident. Movie composers copied Brahms because his was the most relevant music, the easiest to connect to, the least dependent upon understanding theory and history. His is a timeless music, dramatic, beautiful, and human.
It is worth noting that, while I was talking about the orchestral version of this piece, there is also an excellent version for two pianos (also by Brahms; it's not a reduction made by someone else). The piece takes on some different characteristics when played on piano, of course, and he expertly plays the two instruments against each other (letting one take the melody for a time and switching). Perhaps even more than the orchestral version, the piano version is truly a dialogue.
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