When the chest is hurting

Something you might need to relieve it.

I thought it was time for a rant. A good rant does you good, doesn’t it? It gets some thoughts off your chest, without having to put them through the mill of your mind, which will inevitably try to talk you out of your ill-conceived purpose, and gives you a false sense of achievement. What it does for your auditors is an entirely ‘nother matter. Do they walk aways in disgust? Do they listen intently thinking to themselves, he’s normally a quite well thought out chap, there must be something in what he is saying worth listening to? Who would be such a fool as to believe that that is how his rant is being taken, but we are talking about men here, and there are many more idiots on the road than I, at least one of them will believe that everyone is listening intently to what the irrefragible ranter is saying. And who knows if someone is listening, it is just possible that someone will understand what the ranter has said and then convey it in incontrovertible elegance in an essay of the utmost pulchritude and penitence, in the proper sense of course, to the world which is waiting with bated, but not halitolic, breath for structure, form and beauty to be applied to these words of ranted wisdom.

So without further ado, and much less thought in case the mind pensively intervenes, hindering and preventing me from pursuing my careless design, I shall begin, not quite with once upon a time, but it seems now to me that once upon a time may have been a better way of starting than the original choice. And a better way of starting is perhaps always the right choice if a better way of starting can be found. But if this is to be a proper rant, then the original form must be retained however painful it may seem to the mind already traumatised by even the shadow of a thought that this may somehow, just somehow escape the darkness and find its way into the broad light, and open inspection of a waiting, wondering world.

One day at school a better one of my peers asked me: Why do some people rush the easy bits when they are practising? Sarah₁ was referring to her sibling who when practising piano slowed down for the difficult bits and rushed the easy bits. I had a pretty good idea why this happened, as often the aspiring musician fails to remember that the less technically challenging passages are most often the most difficult to get right musically; the subtle dynamics, the isochronicity of the notes of a chord, the failure of these things are much easier to spot in the less brilliant passages where broken chords may not be unexpected, and rapid note changes make dynamic variation easier to produce – and disguise if it goes wrong.

Why say this? Well it is all to do with musicianship and musicians. You know them; choir masters who made you sing a capella just to show you that you constantly drifted away from A=440 to C=256; conductors who silenced the metronome for a few minutes and let you run freely, only to embarrass you by showing that you were now a whole 3 beats ahead; teachers who made you calculate how long the piece should be before you played 126 bars at ?=128 in 6/8. And then asks, how long did it actually take? So why did you start at 128 and finish at 156? Did you give no thought to your dancers, or was this really a macabre, sabre dance where the last man standing wins?

Does it matter if the music is played a tempo? Yes, of course it does. If you are given an indication of speed, and do not follow it, how can that be overlooked any more than the failure to regard an indication of pitch can be overlooked? But, I hear you saying, there are many examples of incorrect metronome marks by composers. Really? Is it not more likely that the performers have not yet discovered how it really should be played? I love the work dearly, but have yet to hear a correct performance of the Brahms opus 120 no 2.

And so I come to the₂ point, there are many technicians around, but few musicians. They know how to play the notes. They can take any piece written and play every note in exactly the right order even at twice the pace required by the composer. They have forgotten that when Bach said it is easy to play an instrument he stipulated two conditions for the instrument to play itself, the correct key must be pressed at the correct time. But it must be confessed, they are brilliant showmen. They attract a following. People talk of what wonderful musicians they are. Their fingers dance on the fingerboard with ease, whilst with as much ease the bow scrapes unadmirably across the tethered gut. Their admirers are but the long ears of Mozartian disdain.

So again, there are some musicians who may play well, but they forget why they are there. Are they playing with others, or themselves alone? If for themselves alone, let them please themselves. There are no auditors, but if for others, do well and remember why. Yet others seem to forget that they are playing a pianoforte. Just because we leave the forte out of its name and frequently call it a piano does not mean that we should always put the forte back into the sound it produces.

But this is the very reason why Lieder and chanson are a failed art form. It is why Strauss (the musician not any of the dance masters) failed when he wrote his four last songs, or Wagner when he wrote for Frau Wesendonck. Lieder and chanson only require the modesty of a piano to accompany them, but Strauss and Wagner used enormous forces in their orchestras. There was no doubt at all that when you spoke as the Valkyrie approached you would neither hear yourself nor even the hunting horn of Til Eulenspiegel. The voice is no match for a fortepiano, let alone the combined might of the forces of the Rhein; the idea that we have is that they are, shall we say, rather loud. It is little wonder that the singers have packed their bags and gone home.

But wait a minute, I hear you say, that is a little harsh. Ah, indeed so it can be. Whoever heard of a Wagnerian orchestra playing pianissimo? It is surely a waste of such forces. But you can barely hear the orchestra when the words In der Kindheit frühen Tagen Hört ich oft von Engeln sagen float almost silently into the air.

It is the same in the congregation. In the congregation we are singing to each other, as we are enjoined to do, but if I cannot even hear my own voice, let alone the voice of any other congregant, why sing? What is the point? It is very difficult this business of playing for the congregation, that is why so few get it right.

Some accompanists seem to start like an express train. Honegger could not have written it better. They slowly move out of the station, gradually, lumberingly, they pick up speed during each verse. Even more annoyingly they seem to find molto ritenuto writ large at the end of every verse and we are pulled up slowly to halt. Or perhaps they have had the timer on – each verse should take 45 seconds: ooops, is the thought, I have five notes left and ten seconds to go. Can these pianists₃ not count regularly? Were they never taught to maintain a constant tempo?

Others are like my opening character, four part harmony is easy so it is rushed, or if it is not rushed it becomes all broken chords and – well, which note do you then follow?

Others reach the end of the verse and, just to make sure we know that we are at the end – let’s repeat the perfect cadence, shall we? I know Beethoven will repeat the cadence, and sometimes do it for five minutes before saying we really are finis…., we are, we, we, we really are, we are really, I shall say it again, no again, we are almost, are you ready, we are finished, finished now, no now, and again..now! Bach had much more skill. He did not need to repeat the cadence at all. He just kept you hanging on waiting for the cadence to come to an end until eventually and inevitably it did, exactly at the right time. But we already know we are at the end. The words tell us that, and the words are far better at telling us things our minds understand than the piano is. Musician, remember why you are there.

But we are talking about hymns, not symphonies, fugues and toccatas, why will they not learn? If the piano is heard above the congregation, it is too important. If the congregation are driven along, that says the music is more important than the words. If the music, however beautiful it may be, neither fits nor supports the words: how can you sing of death and judgement to Scott Joplin_1,5 or grace and mercy to ‘Ho sirrah, Jack Ho‘ or use a metre of four for eight metre lines? The examples are extreme, but even the jazz man will recognise the incongruence of the last, not to mention how silly it sounds (try reading the words of an eight metre poem in four₄ ). The sentimentality of Disney, or the pomposity of Dambusters (not to mention the vision of bombers over water), does no favour to the gospel message however pretty or memorable the music may be. That which is close to the truth is far more dangerous than that which is an obvious lie.

I rest my case. I have no doubt dear reader that you have seen the obvious logic that is without my rant and will be able to apply it yourselves in some favourable, opportune moment when you may remind your fellow beings that when it comes to listening to the voice of many waters, and musically speaking correctly expressing and supporting it, you need at least a quartet of tubas – trombones are not a substitute, they do not even touch it – and three French horns. Brückner would have no less. If the musicians cannot come up with the goods. Send them home and sing and make melody in your heart, canting to one another with the organ of sweet pleasure, groaning or delight which is hid at the back of your throat and use it for its intended purpose.

_{^{The first section was a four part fugue (a canon to the illiterate) and so quite easy to follow. The new voices entered as expected in a classical fugue, but the voices already singing abruptly changed key on the entrance of each subsequent voice, so at the end of the fugue each voice would be singing in a different key. There is no clear transition between the fugue and the middle modal section, utilising in the main a variant on the sub-mixolydian mode, but with other voices briefly changing the mood by touching the dorian and ionian modes. The four part fugue returned with fury for the recapitulation where thirty three voices competed in their service of one another, until in the final coda where one voice demonstrated superior service over all the other voices and unity was restored.}}

1. Name changed to protect the innocent
2. Euphemism for a, this is a rant not a structured folly
3. For pianist read whatever kind of musician takes your fancy – other than drummer. Drummers can only play at one speed and only in four
4. If you need help to start you off, I wandered lone, by Wordsworth is a good example of a four metre poem found here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/. Did I really say four? How silly of me.
5. Name changed to protect the guilty
6. John Cage for the illiteratti