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Re: GG: and the Romantics
even if chopin was fond of bach, i dont think we can say that his use of
sixteenth notes reflect any link between their music. indeed, their music
is structually as different as possible.
my rough study just now of chps op 10 no 4 revealed not an impressive
amount of counterpoint. just because one uses sixteenth notes does not
meen one is polyphonic!
but its funny u mention "flight of the bumble bee". gould said once (in
connection with "so u want to write a fugue?") that "every fugue conceals
a secret flight". but the "bumble"s flight is not very secret (subtle?!),
and not so very fugueish (fugue means flight) in a polyfonic sense, so
from now on i think the bumble should be more humble...
to mr baldwin:
i think u misdefine texture when u say that "coloristic" traits gives
something to the texture in chps music; in music there are only two
elements making texture: harmony and melody. it is therefore also wrong to
say that harmony and melody constitutes two different textures.
my view is that bachs music is more emotional than chopins, because what
is "emotional" in his music is not abstracted from the music itself,
i.o.w. the musical structure. i think that as "a thinking preformer" gould
had very good reasons to loath chopins music; and i believe it made him a
*more* emotional musician.
andre
On Sun, 21 Nov 1999, Bertram Cruikshank wrote:
> I think Chopin was demonstrating his fondness for the
> WTC in some of his concert etudes. Several of them
> contain sixteenth notes from beginning to end,
> creating a kind of contrapuntal texture, similar to
> that of the counterpoint Bach employed in several
> fugues of the WTC. (Bach loved his sixteenth
> notes!!!) Opus 10, number 4 "Bumble Bee" I think, is
> an example, where the sixteenth notes create a kind of
> chromatic counterpoint evoking the image of a bee in
> flight, like Rimsky Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumble
> Bee" and lend a unique polyphonic quality to the
> piece.
>
> Bud
>
> --- "Baldwin, Daniel" <baldwin@baermarks.com> wrote:
> > Lately, I have been listening intensively to
> > Cortot's recordings of
> > Chopin, and this has provoked me to think about GG's
> > antitpathy to the great
> > 19th century works for the piano by Chopin, Schumann
> > and Lizst, among
> > others. His professed reason for finding this music
> > so distasteful is that
> > it lacks contrapuntal content. This is true, but
> > only in a limited respect.
> > Thus, taking as an example Chopin's Etudes, these
> > are homophonic
> > compositions in the sense that there is a single
> > prominent melodic thread
> > which generally remains in one voice. However, as
> > Charles Rosen has noted,
> > there is definitely a contrapuntal texture, which he
> > has described as
> > "coloristic counterpoint," as distinct from the
> > Bachian counterpoint, which
> > is exclusively structural. In the Etudes, dynamic
> > and rhythmic contrasts and
> > other characteristics derived directly from
> > exploitation of the unique sound
> > world of the piano contribute significantly to the
> > texture, and support a
> > musical structure which in its own way is as rich as
> > that of the Bach fugues
> > in the WTC, but which is more sensuously oriented..
> >
> > We know that GG spoke about Bach's indifference to
> > instrumental coloration;
> > it was a mark of Bach's appeal to GG that Bach's
> > music could be enjoyed as
> > much (if not more than) on the printed page as
> > aurally.This appeal to GG is,
> > in turn, probably attributable to his deep
> > sensitivity to vertical and
> > horizontal structures in the music. Nevertheless, I
> > think that, even taking
> > into account the far greater importance of the
> > instrumental coloration in
> > pieces such as Chopin's Etudes, there is more than
> > enough purely musical
> > interest in these pieces to appeal to someone with
> > GG's sensibility, and
> > that his resistance to this music is really
> > attributable to his aversion to
> > its overtly emotional content. What we may have hear
> > is a case of the "tail"
> > of GG's aesthetic theory wagging the "dog" of his
> > gut level emotional
> > reactions.
> >
> > By the way --the Cortot recordings are fantastic. If
> > you haven't heard them,
> > you owe it to yourself to give thme a try.
> >
> > Daniel Baldwin
> > BAER MARKS & UPHAM LLP
> > 805 Third Avenue
> > New York, NY 10022
> > Tel: (212) 702-5700
> > Fax: (212) 702-5941
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