Mark Walsen - Parallel Intervals for Piano

[mgj32]

Hi Mark,
Seems to me you have met the challenge you set yourself very well. You've also made a strong case for not only rhythm, melody and harmony (even as intervals) as basics of music, but also texture and form. I was most struck by the fourths and the sevenths, which comes across as charming. Did you slap your forehead and say "of course," when you came up with the idea for the finale?

I was getting some static in some of the sections, mostly the later ones, for some reason.

all best,
mgj

[Mark W]

Hello MG,

Did you slap your forehead and say "of course," when you came up with the idea for the finale?

Lots of times over the years it occurred to me to write a final piece using just (or mostly only) octaves. But, yes, when it hit me that I should reuse the themes of all of the intervals, it was exactly like you suggested: "Duh".

I suspect that for many ears, these Parallel Interval pieces will sound somewhat mechanistic. Indeed, they do exhibit sort of a software developer's structural way of thinking about composition. However, if the pieces feel "cold", then I've failed.

My composition teacher, Robert Ward, told me when I was in my early 20s, and he was about my age now, that my composing tended to indulge in lots of ideas but needed craftsmanship to reign them into coherency. He promised me that if I continued working on the craftsmanship, then by the time I arrived at his age, I might find myself having fewer musical ideas jumping out of nowhere, but with those fewer ideas I had, there would be more craftsmanship to shape them together.

Alas, now I'm at that age (56) where indeed there do seem to be fewer spontaneous musical ideas. This also seems to be true in my software development work. In the case of software development, I do have 35 years of experience to better evaluate which of the fewer ideas are worth exploring-- and to not spend as much time rashly going down unproductive paths without first considering them calmly beforehand. I wonder whether if I had spent 35 years writing music instead of developing software, whether I would have far better judgment about which musical ideas to pursue, rather than just indulge in them in my usual improvisational method of exploring ideas.

Yes, there's distortion in the recording of the Parallel Intervals when things get loud. I'll have to re-record (and also practice more playing the pieces.)

Cheers
-- Mark

[adrianallan]

Hi Mark

I listened to all of these pieces and enjoyed parallel 5ths the best. I could imagine it being in a collection of modern piano studies.

Second favourite was perhaps the exercise in sevenths, which evoked a totally different atmosphere.

I hope you consider making these pieces into printed scores, as there is a market for good quality modern studies.

cheers
adrian

[Mark W]

Hello Adrian,

I could imagine it being in a collection of modern piano studies.

It did occur to me that these pieces might have some value as piano technique exercises. But I have almost no good training in piano technique to know whether these would be good exercises. (I studied the piano between ages of 8 and 18, but my teacher taught the love of music, not piano technique.) I do know this about these pieces: They are not finger exercises! Pretty much, you leave you fingers forked in a fix position, any hit them around on the keyboard at different places. These pieces are exercises in wrist and arm control. For that, they might actually be well designed. It takes a lot of wrist and arm control to play with frequently changing accents, loudness, and degree of legato.

I hope you consider making these pieces into printed scores...

It is ironic that I would work on sound recordings for these pieces before the notated scores.

Cheers
-- Mark

[mgj32]

Hi Adrian, Mark,
Now you've got me thinking about etudes. When I listened to "Parallel Intervals..." first, I had just read your description of the composition process, so I expected a piece of music organized around the idea of intervals, and I heard a piece so organized, but I forgot about all that fairly quickly and was hearing some music that I liked. One might consider it a pianistic study or a compositional study. But so could almost anything else.

Chopin has some wonderful pieces that he called etudes. But give them names that seem to fit the sound, and would they be considered etudes any more than one of his waltzes or sonatas? For instance, call the "Revolutionary Etude," "The Spirit of Revolution." Or call the Db Waltz "Etude in Db," rather than the "Minute Waltz." What would change? I can't really think of anything other than perhaps a general audience might be more inclined to choose the titles that didn't suggest the pieces were studies to listen to first, if given a list.

All of this doesn't lead anywhere, really. But it brought back faint memories of a time so long ago that it must have been in a previous incarnation when I was assigned Schumann's "Album for the Young," if that's the title--anyhow the one that "The Happy Farmer" is in. I was working on Rachmaninoff preludes, for heaven's sake, so why was I being made to regress? I think I was really working on a set of what my teacher decided were, for me, etudes by Schumann, and the he was trying to make me hear that I was playing the pieces as if I were a music box, and I eventually learned things such as a little rubato can go a long way.

So isn't every piece of music an etude?

all best,
mgj

[Mark W]

Hello MG,

Yours is a delightful post that ponders the role of etudes. I quite agree that Chopin's Etudes could have a different title, and hardly influence at all how the listener perceives them. I do find, myself, appreciating the "etudeness", the pianistic regularity, of Chopin's Etudes.

Hannon's piano exercises might be regarded differently by the listener. Only a piano teacher might enjoy them; but I suspect she probably hates hearing them every lesson ;-)

So, these Parallel Interval pieces could perhaps be named something differently; but I think something would be lost there. Although I want, like most composers, for the performer and listener to "feel" the music, I do also intend for the parallel interval property of each piece to be perceived in and of itself, in addition to whatever feeling is expressed with the parallel interval gadgetry being the vehicle of its delivery. Said another way, I do intend for there to be an intellectual listening element in the music. I hope that the listener will follow the progression through the pieces of parallel seconds, then parallel thirds, etc. and take some combination of intellectual and aesthetic delight in that.

However, I also have no problem with the listener just getting into the feeling of the music, without any regard to the parallel interval gadgetry. If the listener were to focus on only one or the other, I'd much prefer the listener to get into the feeling of the music.

The above is all presumptuous, though, that there would be many listeners who would get into the feeling of the music. I honestly have hardly a clue whether any but a few friends would get into these pieces as much as I got into them. It was the closest parallel between composing and programming that I had ever explored.

Cheers
-- Mark

[mgj32]

Hi Mark,
I nearly mentioned Hannon's Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises last night, as an example of pure etudes. I don't think anyone would call this music, and I agree that there are probably few teachers who don't at least inwardly wince when they say, "let's hear what you've done with Hannon this week." I enjoyed them as much as I hated the sounds after a while. The enjoyment came from the gradual ability to relax the wrists and forearms and feel speed increasing through the use of of the fingers. But as music--blah.

Perhaps a clear difference should be made between exercises that build technical ability and etudes, which assume that ability and are more interested in problems with interpretation? This idea leads me back to my suggestion that all music (as distinct from exercises) presents the aspiring performer, ensemble or conductor with an etude, which at some point becomes a coherently interpreted performance, or performance that remains in the etude stage. (Hmmm, might make a nice catch phrase for critics writing unhappy reviews.)

Chopin's A Major Prelude comes to mind. No reason to call something so utterly simple to play an etude. Right? I am sure I never "got" it," never was able zero in on an essence I felt was there and translate it into sound. For me, it always remained an etude. I don't think I've ever heard it out of the etude stage, or I probably would have imitated that performance.

I wasn't saying that an intellectual component is unimportant in either composing or listening--listening as opposed to hearing. It can be simple as an immediate appreciation of Rimsky-Korsakov's use of the orchestra or more complex, as in what was meant by someone who said to me more than a half century ago, that you hear something new every time you listen to a composition. I think she meant that each time you become aware of what you may have heard many times and the new "information" contributes to your feeling for the music. It might be getting your mind wrapped around the overall structure of a movement, or realizing how the movement relates to the whole. Or it might be knowing that what you will hear deals with harmony through the use of intervals and hearing how the idea works out. But I do maintain that any piece probably won't get sufficient listening unless the listener develops a feeling for it.

There is a further point about what we hear and why. But with apologies to St. George, Sinding, and a host of others, I'm going to bed.

all best,
mgj