Positif Inspiration

Positif Inspiration

(And Continuous Improvement through Thorough Continuo Improvisation)

 

 

I certainly could resist inessential wordplay for titles, but choose not to. The cover of The American Organist magazine for this month, and a recent video of Sietze de Vries improvising made me think about the meaning behind the instrument as well as its future.

 

The picture on the cover was of this organ:

 

 

An unassuming image like this one has ignited a great deal of controversy online because of the fact that this instrument is digital rather than 'authentic'. Its sounds come from speaker stacks instead of pipes. As far as I know, this is the first occasion that The American Organist has permitted an all-digital instrument to grace their cover. Of course, the cover is basically ad space for organ builders but it shows at least a tacit approval on the part of the magazine.

 

Perhaps you can imagine the uproar that can come from advocates of a 2000 year tradition of organ building and playing. Verbal assaults approached levels found in YouTube comment sections. I don't remember reading any comments claiming digital as being superior, but it seemed to be arguing between those who had nothing but contempt for synthetic instruments and those that view them as having a useful niche to fill.

 

I don't see my opinion being very important in the debate but it did make me think about what is so important about having builders constructing pipes by their hands, and I think that it has to do with the unregulated nature of the instrument. Most every organ is different, ideally built to best take advantage of the space in which they will reside. Have a listen to this space in Rouen...

 

 

They also differ based on the artistic sensibilities of the builder. E.M. Skinner had certain orchestral sound colors he wanted to represent in his organs, colors that I'm ignoring and attempting to twist into a Bach plenum here:

 

 



 

 

It's not entirely unpleasant, but this is not what that organ was designed to do, and with a little more age and knowledge I've come to realize that this is not a unique offense. Sietze de Vries has talked for some time now about how organists prepare repertoire for a recital and then use it on whatever instrument they happen to be traveling to, regardless of whether the instrument will present it well. I briefly considered playing Dupre's Way of the Cross at my wife's local church but decided that the instrument was just not suited to present the piece, having only two manuals instead of three, a mostly inoperative combination action, and not enough variety of sound to present the many different moods. Additionally, I don't think the building is resonant enough to support the weight of the music.

 

Now, that is a pretty clear case of the wrong piece for the wrong instrument, but the more common offense is to try to play grand French Vierne symphonies on smaller German Baroque instruments, ones that just don't have a colorful palette of sound that Vierne's instruments had. My playing of German Baroque Bach on an orchestrally designed American instrument, created by a man purposely distancing himself from the Neo-Baroque movement of the time, is an example of this problem.

 

Sietze's solution is found often enough by proper preparation in knowing the instrument that he will be playing, and what music is most appropriate for it. He's actually approaching it from a different angle:  This instrument is a work of art, and here is some music that shows this organ for the work of art that it is. He's shifting the focus from the performer (Look at me! Look at what I can play!) to the instrument (Look at this organ! Look at what it can play!). I know of no other instrument that can be treated this way. Pianists will tell you that pianos differ greatly from each other in touch and sound, but it's much more rare to find a piano that can't present a certain genre of composition unless it's broken or an antique.

 

This brings me to the second way that Sietze uses the full unique resources of the instrument he happens to be playing: Improvisation.

 

 

 

The video above is one of my favorites, showing quite a few forms and styles (within a Baroque setting) this organ presents well. On an instrument like this, one can find many many ways to play it effectively. What I think is more impressive in a way is this video that popped up with Sietze improvising a Partita on a Lutheran hymn tune:

 

 



 

 

He's playing a tiny continuo organ, using only one single flute stop. There are no pedals, so the hands have to handle everything in the texture. This is the best example I know to demonstrate the usefulness of improvisation. Just imagine you are trying to find a piece of repertoire to play on this little instrument. "I want something Baroque, maybe a set of variations; since the timbre won't change, a partita would have the needed variety. It has to be a set that doesn't use the pedals. Also, I'm really looking for one based on 'Jesu, meine freude' since it's just the perfect tune for the occasion." Perhaps after some digging, you actually find something that fits the bill (I doubt you will find one with a l.h. cantus firmus in octaves as Sietze provides here) and you discover that it's not a particularly good work; the variations don't flow well and don't have enough rhythmic variety to sustain your interest. Also, it goes on for too long so some will have to be cut.... et cetera. It can quickly become a frustratingly lengthy process of trying to find something that may not even exist.

 

So improvise one. Is the world looking for a baroque partita on an  ancient tune that doesn't require registration changes or pedals? Not likely; perhaps in an 'Easy Organ' collection, though Sietze includes variants that use playing techniques too advanced for the 'Easy Organ' library. It's a piece that has no broad appeal, and so no reason to exist in an easily accessible book. However, it happens to be the perfect piece for this ONE occasion. That is more than enough to justify its existence; so it is brought into existence to be used for its one purpose, and then it is laid aside and never heard from again.

 

I suppose my point in all of this is that improvisation is something that, aside from its many virtues, takes advantage of and even justifies the many breeds and makes of organs and their stops. Digital or authentic, ancient or modern, spontaneous creation of music fills the void in the repertoire created by the lack of rigorous standardization in the making of organs. I was already enamored with the unique individuality of these instruments, but the addition of improvisation completes that relationship.

 

Anyway, back to studying. The AGO Fellowship exam is a few weeks away. I currently put my odds of passing around 50%.







A Musical Disposition... or five

A Musical Disposition... or five

You know, in addition to my musical aspirations I do hope that one day I can produce titles half as clever (and cringe-worthy) as Michael Barone's. Until that day however, I can only work with what little originality I already have.

After having investigated open score C-clef reading for many moons, we've seen that it broadens and orders the mind when practiced and can reveal the true nature of contrapuntal music in a way not available by other means. After all, the music we know is made of intertwining lines of melodic force which, when assembled together, create a unique and harmonious whole. I can think of no better way to accurately represent this on paper than by assigning each voice its own staff and clef and binding them together. 

But... is that the only way? What if you have music written on the now conventional two staves? Is there something that can be done with this conventional notation that can break through the divide separating the true nature of the music's composition from its shallow surface?

Let's look at hymns. 

The priority of my daily practice nowadays is to make some inroads on the subject of improvisation. I consider myself fairly familiar with the subject, but unpracticed. The first step towards easy and successful improvisation is through the study of harmonization. I'm using Sol Berkowitz's book Improvisation through Keyboard Harmony at home so that I can use headphones and save myself the embarrassment of having someone hear me working on Camptown Races and one of my favorites: Grandma Grunts.  At the church, I am working with Dupre's treatise on improvisation and am currently ironing out my harmonic treads and creating smooth bass lines with the use of inversions. But that's a different discussion.

I've also set aside time to play from an old Presbyterian hymnal. I don't mean to talk on how to play a hymn with creativity, variety, and sensitivity to the text, but I should say that a couple of techniques for sprucing up your hymn playing involve in how you distribute the notes on the keyboards:

The first way we play these four part hymns is to play all four parts on the manuals, since we all started as pianists once. Then we learned to play the bass line in the pedals and play the remaining three parts on a manual. Finally, we may or may not have learned to play the soprano melody in the right hand on a manual with a solo registration, the bass in the pedals, and the alto and tenor parts in the left hand on an accompanying manual. You can call this the 'solo style'. It uses the organ's capabilities well without very much effort. This arrangement of playing is called a disposition, and there are others. I make use of 5 in my daily practice:

• Melody in the Soprano:  R.H. plays soprano on solo manual, L.H. plays alto and tenor on accompanying manual, Pedals play the bass line.
• Melody in the Bass: Pedal plays the melody, the hands play the alto tenor and bass on accompanying manual.
• Melody in the Tenor: L.H. plays the melody on a solo manual an octave lower than written, the R.H. plays the alto and tenor on accompanying manual, Pedals play the bass line.

You see after a little practice that we're dividing the four voices we see on the page into three groups: the Melody, the Bass, and the Middle Voices. The three above dispositions take turns putting the melody into our three main appendages, counting our feet as a single appendage. Additionally, we can play a little further with the four voices:

• Melody in the Alto (Soprano and alto switched): R.H. plays soprano and alto with the alto an octave higher than written, the L.H. plays the tenor line on the same manual, Pedals play the bass line.
• Melody in the Tenor (Soprano and tenor switched): L.H. plays the melody an octave lower than written, R.H. plays the alto and tenor lines with the tenor an octave higher than written, Pedals play the bass line. 

We could go further (and probably will in the future), but this is a good set to get started with. These dispositions will change the color of the hymn without actually changing the notes, so it's good for practical purposes to become familiar at least with the first three. Those last two deliver you already-written descants for your melody so are useful as well. What about this disposition, though?

• Melody in Soprano: R.H. plays melody in soprano, L.H. plays bass on accompanying manual with 8' and 16' stops, Pedals play 8' stops double pedaling alto and tenor lines.

Well, it requires some coordination, but it likely won't sound any different from our first disposition of Melody in the Soprano. So why on earth would we practice it? Also, the tricky maneuver of placing the melody in the left hand an octave lower could easily be substituted with playing our first disposition again with our right hand soloing out the melody, only an octave lower. The aural effect is identical. Why would we choose to play something in a way that's more difficult to play even though it sounds the same as the easier way?

If your scalp tingles while studying these dispositions, that means it's working!

The Point:

The point of these dispositions (at least, the reason I'm practicing them) is not to provide different sounds so much as it's to build my flexibility. While not all of these dispositions are very practical for use in playing hymns, we are preparing for the days when we will be creating our own music ex tempore, out of the moment. To quote from Michele Johns book, Hymn Improvisation:

"The object is to expand your options. When creating music it is likely that you will only use the techniques which are familiar to you. If your style is a simple one of playing the melody in the right hand, chords in the left hand, and long notes in the pedal, then that is the way your improvisations will sound."

In addition to this important goal, it also helps to break down the connection between notes on the page and the physical realization of those notes. The melody could be played by any appendage, not just the last three fingers of your right hand. No part of the music is attached to a particular part of your body. When you are at the point where you can play any part of the piece with any one of your hands or feet, you are a significant step closer to that mythical musical perfection, not in an aural and idealistic way, but in a real physical and tangible way. This flexibility is of great importance in successful improvisation and for a clear and ordered mind. This clarity and order gives fertile ground for freedom and creativity. 

Happy practicing!

Beginning Composition

Beginning Composition

This topic has little directly to do with the organ, but is still an important part of the Associate and Fellow exams for the AGO. This is another skill that takes a great deal of time to cultivate, and a lifetime to master, so it's best to get started as soon as possible. I've done some composition from time to time, mostly in connection with my church employment, but always at the last minute and quite rushed. A deadline makes for great motivation to write something even though it may not be exactly what you had in mind. If forces ideas to come out. However, I can sense the lack of a good fundamental understanding of writing music, so I'm trying to work from the ground up.

There are those that say that you cannot learn composition or improvisation, that it is something you are born with; either you have it or you don't. I want to assert my opinion that those assumptions are simply not true. The concept of originality, on the other hand is up to debate. It seems that Chopin was the only one who could have written Chopin's music because it is so individual and unlike anything else. It bears his stamp of originality in a way that very few have equaled. Perhaps you've noticed how some composers write music that is striking in its originality regardless of the medium in which they compose. There are other composers that write music of the highest quality, but lack the quality of originality. This is the first lesson for today:

We cannot learn how to be original, how to be a rare and unique snowflake. If you can learn this quality of originality, then I know of no method to increase it. What we can learn is the craft of composition, and constantly improve our ability to present our ideas (original or not) in whatever medium is desired. The skilled invention of well crafted music based on mediocre ideas sounds much better than a great idea which is expressed in a very poor and unskilled way. Just imagine what Schubert could have done if he had taken counterpoint lessons...

A final example is that of the Spanish language hymnal we use at our services (I won't mention the name of the collection). I have seen a great many examples of poor presentation in this hymnal. So many good ideas are presented in very rough fashion, so much so that the original idea gets lost in the poor presentation. Uncertainty of harmonization, accidentally irregular phrasing... there are a lot of problems. Even one at my skill level can see that these musical 'rules' are being broken through accident and omission rather than expressive purpose. 

The Plan

The process for practicing composition will be basically a three step process:

1. Copy
2. Imitate
3. Compose

In musical composition, as well as in painting, a time honored tradition is to study and emulate the works of the masters to learn about the process, adding to your mass of conscious and unconscious knowledge of creating. I've found that some people forget about the first step above, that of not just imitating a composer's work, but copying it directly.

Now, I agree that mindless copying of a piece, one note after the other, is a pretty fruitless exercise, although it will improve your penmanship. What I'm actually endorsing is attempting to co-compose a piece with Bach, or Mendelssohn, or Sorabji. Enter into apprenticeship with that composer and let him guide you to his successful realization of a musical thought. 

For instance, I'm beginning with the Bach Harmonized Chorales. Each one is a little study in harmonization and simple voice leading. I try to copy them out by hand in the manner that it was probably composed. We begin with a melody in the soprano and then we seek to harmonize it. We write in a complementary bass line, with the use of inversions to help us smooth it out, establishing cadences at the end of each phrase, and decorating the line a little more with non-chord tones of passing, neighboring, or suspension dissonance and consonance. Then we fill in the middle voices, filling out the background tread of chords and smoothing the leading with expressive lines. 

Of course, I doubt Bach had to take the trouble to compose each part completely before attempting another; I'm sure he could plan out and execute most of the chorale completely in his head before putting pen to paper. However, this is the basic process I am using since I am still a mere mortal. Along the way, I try to anticipate what he will do; what kind of motives will he juggle between voices? will there be an expressive voice crossing between inner parts to highlight the final cadence? will this tenor voice be so active that it will steal the activity of the alto? Often times I'm correct in my assumption; many times I'm wrong and his answer is much more artistic. 

The point is to try to comprehend all that you see while copying, and copy in the same way that you will later imitate and compose.

After copying enough that you feel somewhat secure in the basis of his style, then we try to write our own chorales in the style of Bach. Now we're on more uncertain ground and have to think, What would Bach do? 

...

These exercises will actually train us indirectly in our free compositions in our own style. We don't then compose our own style of chorales, because it's most likely that we have no reason to compose a chorale. We aren't of the Protestant Reformation generation and it serves no practical purpose, unless you just really like them. We will more likely be composing pieces to fit our own purposes, which are only faintly related to these old compositions. However, our study of style and our cultivated awareness of the elements of composition and how they work together means that when we require a section of music of a more harmonically balanced, rhythmically regular nature, we will be well prepared to execute our realization with good construction and presentation. 

Long story short, I'm copying Bach Chorales to see how they work. I've copied out 5. After 5 more, I'll try writing new chorales in his style. This is my first step in rigorous composition training. 

Good work!

Fundamentals Check: Time!

Time!

As time for the Colleague Exam slowly ticks away (5 months to go!), I've noticed one area that could use some work, personally. 

Rhythm.

Oh, I know how rhythm works and I know how to count. I chastise the choir for singing quarter note triplets as a pair of dotted eighths followed by an eighth. I know how to judge rhythm just fine... unless it's me that is playing it. 

When I was younger and strictly playing the piano as a casual hobby, I sight-read through all the books of music that I owned, and if the piece was too difficult to play all the notes correctly on the first try, then I would fake it as best as I could. I learned early that one shouldn't stop every time you make a mistake (Please don't take that as an endorsement; when you are practicing, YOU MUST STOP when you make a mistake so that you may correct it. If you make the same mistake twice then you've already built a habit, a habit as bad as parenthetical interruptions. It took me a long time to learn how to practice.) so I made sure to keep going no matter what happened. Despite my playing bearing only a superficial resemblance to what was on the page, in my mind it was much closer. It was always exciting to take this music that you had only heard and to actually produce it yourself. It's a kind of beautiful delusion. 

As I've gotten older and take things a bit more seriously, I endeavor to make sure my mental conception of the music matches the actual realization of that impression. Since the organ I play on has a handy MIDI recording feature, I use it occasionally to listen to myself to help me with balancing my registrations since the console is in a terrible place for judging volume or balance. 

So anyway, last week I recorded some of the hymns for the upcoming weekend celebration and was shocked to hear an apparent lack of a steady beat to my congregational playing. A steady beat is a fundamental requirement for all music, and I wasn't convinced that the organist I was listening to understood that. I was instantly embarrassed and so downloaded a couple of metronomes onto my phone and am incorporating metronome practice into my daily routine. 

I think my beat has slipped lately indirectly because of my daily habit of reading open score C clef repertoire: Bach 4 part chorales, Frescobaldi's Fiori Musicali, and Bach's Art of Fugue. I'm treating them as exercises in sight-reading and am not carefully studying them as repertoire, so I end up playing through a set number of them everyday. I see in retrospect that I've not been maintaining a steady tempo the whole time, rather concerning myself instead with the task of reading the notes on the 4 different clefs and devising how they will lay under the fingers while I read. My tempo is affected by the independence and density of the scores. This lack of a steady rhythm has made its way into my other repertoire and I'm now using the metronome to correct this.

I've been often surprised as well at how a tempo that seems correct while I'm playing it sounds most often too fast when I listen to it on a recording. To help with this, before I play something, I try to hear it in my head at the proper listening tempo, then I tap that beat into the metronome (nice little feature), and then I follow the metronome through my practice of the piece. I'm often surprised at the disparity between my mentally conceived tempo and the physical sensation of playing it at that speed. 

There are many mental illusions that can be swept out of the way by the use of the metronome, as long as you remember that the metronome is only a tool for achieving this basic beat and ensuring the proper proportions between all the different rhythms in the piece. As soon as this surety of rhythm has been achieved, the metronome should be discarded so that the piece can breathe. Now we can incorporate breathing room at the ends of phrases, expressive and logical tempo changes to reflect the flow of the music, and rubato when permissible. 

As we work on more high level tasks, don't neglect the basics. Keep checking those fundamentals!

What is the opposite of Analysis?

Posing an unsolved question as a title reflects negatively on a blog that should be devoted to answering questions, but as it leads directly to the subject of discussion we'll permit it this time...

What is the opposite of Analysis?

Maybe we can discover the opposite if we know what analysis is, first off:

Analysis - detailed examination of the elements or structure of something.

               the process of separating something into its constituent elements.

Coming from old greek roots meaning loosening up, we take analysis to be the 'taking apart' of something so that we may examine how its constituent elements work, alone and together. This is what we do in school, working with our music theory and harmonic analyses. What we failed to do in school, however, was to rigorously do the opposite and put it back together into a cohesive whole. I hate to indulge in analogies (though I secretly love them), but we might be temped to think of musicians as medical students, learning about anatomy and physiology through dissection of other, until recently, living things. 

The Fourth Species of Counterpoint concerns ligatures (suspensions). I'm not sure what species concerns gizzards...

The analogy breaks down, of course, because we as musicians don't just dissect, but create our own life in music. You will 'not learn little' from cutting into Frescobaldi's Bergamasca to see how it works, but you learn even more through copying it, and then imitating it: creating your own Bergamasca in his style. 

This is how all great musicians get their start: analysis, copying, imitation, creation. And that is what I wanted to talk about today, the creative phase of work. 

Creativity is a tricky subject, but there a few small things to be said about it. First, no creation comes from nothing. Your taste in music has evolved from a lifetime of experience, and that lifetime of experience shapes the music that you in turn create. Glenn Gould pondered this role of experience with a hypothetical scenario in which children are raised in an environment that has no tonal music whatsoever and is instead filled with only serialistic tone rows and atonal tunes (Hindemith says there's no such thing as 'atonal' music but we'll accept the term for tradition's sake). Here's some Schoenberg as an example:

Gould theorized that children raised in such an environment wouldn't have the instant distrust and confusion this music evokes among those uninitiated in its rules and structures, but would rather sing all their nursery rhymes in tone rows rather than diatonic scales. I personally believe that the story is a little more complicated but we can accept on a simplified view that Gould is correct; we like what we know, and we know what is around us everyday. 

When we try to create something, we utilize the elements and techniques that surround us. This may be why we're seeing so many 3D street chalk tableaus and photorealistic paintings on the Facebook. These techniques may be 'jaw-dropping' and they may 'blow you away' the first time you see them, but being surrounded by them every day destroys their novelty and they become merely tools for artistic expression. This is as it should be. Novelty alone is not originality, or else the greatest composers and artists would be those who did the silliest things with their materials. 

Who did what with the what, now? --Jackson Pollock

True, often art's value is influenced by its story; that's why a scribble by an elephant or a Chopin Etude played by a 6 year old garner attention, but let's not get sidetracked with caveats, exceptions, and redundancies. I have a book... which I can't find, that describes the differences between originality and invention much better than I can so I won't attempt to do so here. We can continue the conversation with the fact that creativity is not the true act of creation that intuition tells us it is; it is rather the synthesizing of what we already know into something new, or unique. 

All of this preamble was meant to mention this point: the practical application of creativity. Say you want to create a piece of music. Since we're all organists, we have two ways to do it:

1. Compose a piece on paper, working at the desk. 

2. Improvise a piece at the keyboard. 

Each approach has its own virtues, but require a common approach to the work that is the opposite of analysis. Let's take a simple example:

You are given a chorale melody and you seek to harmonize it in four voices. The way we were taught to do it in our first Music Theory course was to: 

1. Analyze each note in turn, writing down all of the possible chords that could harmonize that note.
2. Examine the what is likely 50 or so chords that you've written down and draw lines connecting from one chord to the next so that it forms a reasonable harmonic progression. 
3. Using this progression, write in a complementary bass line that fits the chosen chords.
4. Now just fill in the inner voices making sure to avoid parallel or hidden octaves and fifths. 
5. Voila! Hand it in to your professor. 

This rigorous process assures you of success! 

An academic success.

A success of limited value.

Ok, it's technically correct but will likely be lacking in the musicality department. 

Which one of these expressions defines your success?

We could take a similar approach to harmonizing at the keyboard to ensure a probably technical success as well, by either writing in a similar analysis under the notes, or practicing each stage in turn if we have the time. Our results will be similarly successful and similarly lacking in living musicality. 

Now, I'm not one who believes in a certain undefinable something, what the French call a certain I don't know what. Je ne sais pas exactly how all of the minutiae would appear in list form, but I do know that all these musical elements are real and can be accessed through the proper approach. The failing of the above approaches is that it treats the act of creation like it does analysis. Treat each element separately, in turn, moving from one note to the other, filling in blanks as we go. My experience at the keyboard and in reading tells me that this is the wrong approach. That's why I want to know what the perfect antonym of analysis is. Synthesis? Simultaneity? A bit of both?

In either case, the correct process is to, as much as possible, perform the many smaller tasks of creation simultaneously, rather than one at a time. If you are studying counterpoint, most books continually remind you to try to imagine the entirety of the counterpoint to be set against the cantus firmus before touching pen to paper. Never proceed one note or one voice at a time. 

Contrapunctus V (excerpt) from Die Kunst der Fuge by J.S. Bach 

Bach wrote many fugues over his lifetime, and when you study some of them, you come to realize that he couldn't have composed them one voice at a time. So great is their textural and structural unity, the multiple voices could only have come to exist simultaneously. This is one of the secrets to great music making:

Though we study music through taking it apart and examining each element and melody on its own merits, we cannot create good music through the separate creation of each element and melody on its own. They must be created, as much as possible, simultaneously. 

Knowing this gives us further guidance in our studies. Practicing our harmonization skills, we know that there are several things that need to be done, such as creating a complementary bass line, choosing good harmonies to create a coherent and intelligible progression from the beginning of the phrase to the end, and perhaps using knowledge of ornamentation to add to the original melody. We can practice each of these on their own, but our training is incomplete unless we acquire the skill to do all of these simultaneously. 

 Marcel Dupre's first volume of his treatise on the Art of Improvisation provides practical exercises with harmonizing scales in various dispositions but I never really understood why they were there or exactly what we were practicing. I see now that the first exercise was to grow comfortable with the modest task of harmonizing a scale in the soprano voice with set harmonies. The question of the bass line was dispensed with at this stage to give the player a minimum of tasks to perform simultaneously. The next exercise uses inversions of the triad to allow the player to create a well-shaped bass line moving in contrary motion to the soprano scale. The next, harmonizing the scale in the pedals, the role of the soprano now is to act as a countermelody, moving in contrary motion to that of the bass; now the roles are flipped. The next exercise, harmonizing the scale in the tenor, adds another complication, like building a watch. In addition to fitting harmony to each note of the scale and creating a complementary bass line, we now consider the soprano as a sort of rudimentary countermelody to the tenor.

After these, we begin harmonizing short phrases, using our own discriminating taste to pick our harmonies and how to move from one to the other. Following this, we harmonize complete 'chorales' which involve some small modulations (or tonicizations, technically) and some differing cadences, giving us more problems to solve simultaneously with those we already know. 

Gerre Hancock steers us in a similar direction in a larger scale in his method of studying musical forms, using written outlines. We start with a musical outline of the entire form writing in all the important moments and leaving most of it blank with some basic directions of which key we will proceed to and what techniques will be used. We practice first writing in the blank spots and performing our written work. Then we practice further by leaving the spots blank and practicing those spots at the keyboard, arriving at a satisfactory passage of music. Over time, we discard the musical outline in favor of an outline that has no musical notation, but rather just a verbal plan for the improvisation. Over time, even this outline is discarded as we grow accustomed to handling all of these details entirely mentally. 

Over enough time, and careful study and practice, we can see the entire scope of a composition or improvisation at a glance of creativity. The only thing remaining then is to fill in the details, either on paper, or at the keyboard. What a wonderful tool to have, this spontaneous, simultaneous, synthesis. 

Transposition as Ear Training

The Other Kind of Transposition

 

After all this talk of transposition using substitution of clefs, imaginary key signatures, and courtesy pseudo-accidentals, I wanted to say what this kind of transposition is meant to do, and how else you can use transposition for your musical health.

 

First of all, this transposition I've been studying recently with all the clef substituting is meant for a special kind of situation: playing music that you have never seen before in a different key than written. It is transposition at first sight. It technically requires no knowledge of the sound to be produced in order to perform it, though an inner sense of how the music will sound can only help. As sterile as this process can be, it guarantees sure knowledge of what note will follow another, and that is what is required from transposing at sight.

 

Contrary to this typographical approach, there is another approach to transposition with a different goal entirely, that of cultivating your inner musical ear and strengthening the association between the inner sound and how it is expressed on the keyboard. The common term for this skill is: playing by ear.

 

You could also just get a pair of these.

 

The method for training is pretty simple, but quite different from our clef transpositions. The method calls for one to play exercises in many different keys. These exercises can be melodies, chord progressions, or phrases from larger musical works. If you allow the memorized sound to guide you instead of the interval relationship from the old key to the new one, you will get a lot of good practice in reproducing the sound at the keyboard.

 

I have a book which is chock full (how full is a chock anyway?) of exercises that can be used in this way: A New Approach to Keyboard Harmony by Leo Kraft and others.

 

Remember that transposition is just one musical subject that can be used in different ways to strengthen both practical skills as well as fundamental musicianship. Always look for how these subjects can help you in more than one way. 

Transposition Update

Clef Substitution in Transposition - Update

 

After a few chaotic weeks, I have a new practice schedule incorporating Ear Training, Sight Singing, Keyboard Harmony, Improvisation, 16th Century Counterpoint, Open Score C-Clef sight reading, Accompaniment from Thorough-Bass, and Transposition. Today I'll just mention what I've been doing with transposition.

 

Since I've been starting the day with C-Clef Open Score reading every morning for months now, I'm getting pretty comfortable with the clefs, and have started using them to learn my transpositions.

 

Just so you know, the method I'm using for transposing at sight is to substitute clefs and key signatures a reading the notes as they appear. For instance, if I want to transpose this piece in F major down a whole step, I add two flats to the signature (for Eb Major), and instead of Treble and Bass clefs, I use Tenor in the right hand, and Alto in the left. Additionally, I'm playing the notes as they appear in the new Tenor clef an octave higher than they would be literally, and the Alto notes I'm reading an octave lower. Once you get used to this, at first, dizzying procedure, it can be readily applied to any music that comes across your rack.

 

But how should this be practiced?

 

The way I've been doing it is this:

 

1. Find a hymnbook. A hymnbook with traditional hymns makes for great material because it's fairly simple, is consistently 4 parts (for the most part), and everything's pretty vertical, not much counterpoint. I chose the St. Gregory Choir Book that I found in a dusty corner of the church.

 

2. Choose either the right hand or the left, and read through the hymn book using the clef of choice for the chosen transposition. I started with the Step Down transposition so I began with the right hand using tenor clef an octave higher than written. I played my way through the hymn book at the pace of 25 hymns a day (most are pretty short).

 

3. After you get through the book or once you feel comfortable, start through the book again, this time practicing the other hand using the other complementary clef; in my case, this clef was the alto clef an octave lower than written.

 

4. After this has been done, start through the book one more time putting the hands (and clefs) together. My first day was quite a stumble when I tried this, but it's become almost second nature now.

 

5. After finishing the hymn book, start looking at more challenging repertoire to sight transpose. In my case, I've moved into the 371 Harmonized Chorales of Bach. After this I'll probably wander into the 2 part Inventions, 3 part Sinfonias, and then probably into the 48 Preludes and Fugues. That's my rough plan right now.

 

 

There are a total of 6 transpositions, each with a pair of clefs that will achieve them. I will attempt them in this order:

 

1. 2nd Down - Tenor over Alto

2. 2nd Up - Alto over Mezzo-Soprano

3. 3rd Down - Soprano over Treble

4. 3rd Up - Bass over Baritone

5. 4th Down - Baritone over Tenor

6. 4th Up - Mezzo-Soprano over Soprano

 

I've gotten a good start on the first transposition and I believe it is good enough already for anything I may find on the Colleague Examination. I've started working on the second transposition but I've had to do some extra work on that one. I'm having to learn the Mezzo-Soprano clef (middle C is on the second line).

 

Now, since I've learned three C clefs already, I find that I'm learning this one much faster than the others since I've done it before. To learn it, I'm just reading through the hymn-book with the left hand playing everything in Mezzo-Soprano clef with two sharps added (for a whole step up rather than a half step). Today I'm finishing the hymn-book and plan on combining this clef with the Alto in the right hand next week. If this is successful, then I will probably not have much trouble learning the final clef: the Baritone (middle C is on the top line; or F is on the middle line, depending on your point of view).

 

 

I am mostly concentrating on one transposition at a time, instead of trying to learn all of them at once. However, I'm not working to complete mastery individually before moving on. I think once I have some facility so that Bach Chorales are pretty easy, then I've reached the point where I can attempt the next transposition. I hope to have all 6 transpositions well in hand and sight reading fugues in any key by the time the Fellowship exam arrives.

 

The one thing that was a real bear to get used to was the accidentals. The meaning of the accidentals changes depending on the key you are transposing it into. Sharps can turn into naturals; naturals can turn into flats; flats can turn into double flats! With some time, it becomes apparent what is going on, but what really bothered me were courtesy accidentals. You know the fellows: an accidental sharpens a note and then a bar line occurs which cancels out the accidentals of the last bar, but they still put a natural sign next to the note just to remind you that it was cancelled. These will trick you into thinking you need to alter that note, but you have to learn to spot them and then summarily ignore them.

 

Anyhoo, it's exciting to me to see the end of learning clefs in sight. I'm doing well with the Mezzo-Soprano, so when I hit the Baritone clef with the 3rd Up transposition, I'll have learned all the clefs. There are no others except the French Violin clef (just like reading Bass clef two octaves higher) and Contrabass clef (just like reading Treble clef two octaves lower). I'll have comprehensive practical knowledge of a subject. Neat!