Download Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Hamburger Sonata

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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Hamburger Sonata for Flute and Basso
Continuo in G major wq. 133 (1735)!
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C.P.E. Bach, born in 1714, was the second surviving son of the proverbial father of the
Baroque, Johann Sebastian Bach. After his father’s death in 1750, he became the most
important composer in Protestant Germany, as well as a celebrated keyboardist and
pedagogue. In 1717, J.S. Bach was appointed Kappellmeister at Cöthen, and the family
relocated. Emanuel’s mother died shortly after in 1720, and the family moved to Leipzig in 1723.
J.S. Bach accepted the post of Kantor at the Thomasschule there because he believed that
Emanuel’s promise and potential would be vastly improved by formal academic training at a
university. Emanuel received keyboard and organ training from his father, and took part in
musical performances with Johann Sebastian from around age 15."
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Emanuel Bach began service in the Prussian court sometime around 1740, though
musicologists are unsure as to exactly when and what the circumstances were, just that it was
some time around the succession of Frederick II to the throne. Frederick II, a music lover
himself, allegedly invited Bach to accompany him on harpsichord while he played flute early
around the time of his succession to the throne. Bach is not mentioned in the court budget until
the following year in 1741, and so it is assumed that he was paid out of the prince’s pocket."
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On Easter Sunday in 1768, Emanuel Bach became the director of sacred music in
Hamburg. Much like his father’s duties while in Leipzig, Emanuel was a teacher on the staff of
the Hamburg Lateinschule (today known as the Johanneum). In addition to this, he organized
the music in the five main churches of Hamburg: the Michaeliskirche, Jakobikirche, St.
Katharinen, Nikolaikirche, and Petrikirche."
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In addition to his work as a teacher and the director or music at the Hamburg churches,
Emanuel Bach maintained a highly active concert life, announcing a season of 20 subscription
concerts from 1768 to 1769 alone. Over the next few years, the numbers would remain similar
and only decline slightly until he stopped giving public concerts as a keyboard player by his 65th
birthday. He did remain otherwise musically active until his death in 1788, despite some illness
in the summer of that year. His compositional career spanned close to 60 years, in which he
wrote over 1000 separate works of music. According to his Nachlass-Verzeichnis, or his
catalogue of music, he wrote works such as: songs, oratorios, keyboard dance movements,
orchestral symphonies, and everything in between. There is no widely-agreed-upon information
regarding Emanuel Bach’s composition methods. A few sketches remain, existing in the blank
spaces of other manuscripts. Most of these date from the 1740’s, either implying that he only
began sketching compositions in this way at that time, or that he’d been doing it all along and
got tired of getting out of the chair to find a different piece of paper. Vocal works are sketched in
two systems, one for the voice and one for the bass, and with not much text indicated.
Instrumental pieces are only written on one system with few hints at harmony or important nonmelodic parts to be realized later."
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In the mid-1700’s, the number of non-professional musicians was reaching an extremely
high level. Because of this, instruction and performance practice books were in demand; this
was especially the case in Berlin, as King Frederick II was a flute player himself and supported
music in its many forms. From this came many important writings, such as Leopold Mozart’s
violin instruction writings in 1756, Quantz’s flute instructional in 1752, The 1750 Die Kunst das
Clavier zu spieled by Marpurg, J.F. Agricola’s vocal instruction manual in 1757, and Emanuel
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Bach’s Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. His proved to be the most
influential in the late 18th century and beyond."
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The Hamburger Sonate für Flöte und Basso continuo was composed in 1735 in
Frankfurt. It is unclear as to for whom the sonata was written, but it is possible that it may have
been written for the King Frederick II, who was a flute player himself. It has 2 movements with
little or no pause between. The first movement, Allegretto, is a simple repeated binary form with
a standard tonic-dominant relationship. The second movement is a Rondo, and is marked as
Presto. It follows the standard form of a rondo, always returning to the initial theme. "
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At the time it was written, it would have been played on a Baroque Flute, and not the
Flauti Traversi or Concert Flutes used today. Baroque flutes throughout most of the 18th century
were played in a system of tuning relative to the bass note, in which flats and sharps were
handled differently: for example, Gb and F# were two completely different pitches, where F#
would in fact be lower than Gb. This was as J.J. Quantz wrote in his aforementioned 1752
Essay. Also, the tuning, overall, was lower than the tuning system in use today. Baroque flutes,
made out of wood, had minimal actual key mechanisms. They were either three or four pieces
to assemble, and usually with only one actual key to press. On Quantz’s flute model, there were
two small keys at the right-hand pinky: one for Eb and another for D#."
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Karel Husa, Three Studies for Solo Clarinet (2007)!
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Born in Prague in 1921, Husa is known today as one of the most important composers
from the post-World War II period in American music. He is equally renowned as a composer,
conductor, and teacher. He has conducted many of the great orchestras around the globe, and
from 1954 until his retirement in 1992, Husa was a professor at Cornell University and Ithaca
College in Ithaca, NY. In 1946, he began studying in Paris at the École Normale de Musique:
composition with under Arthur Honegger and conducting with Jean Fournet. He then continued
his conducting studies at the Paris Conservatoire with Eugène Bigot, in addition to private
composition lessons with Nadia Boulanger. He became an American citizen in 1959, 5 years
after beginning his professorships in Ithaca."
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Husa composed his Three Studies for Solo Clarinet for the 2008 for the 60th annual
Prague Spring International Music Competition. The three-movement work was written for and
dedicated to the Czech clarinetist and saxophonist Jiří Hlaváč, who recently retired from a
position as Dean at his alma mater - the Prague Academy of Performing Arts - for his 60th
birthday. Hlaváč is the chairman of the Competition, and had performed other works for clarinet
by Husa, including Evocations of Slovakia and Sonata a Tre."
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Husa writes (in a personal letter to the performer):"
“When I visited Prague - my native city in the Czech Republic - in the spring of 1992 for "
a festival of my music and to accept the honorary doctorate of music from the Academy "
of Musical Arts, I met … Prof. Jiří Hlaváč. … Few years later, Prof. Hlaváč wrote to me
and asked, if I could compose a piece for clarinet (solo or with piano) for the competition
… Unfortunately, at that time I had some serious health problems, and as much as I
would have liked to write such a piece, I simply could not. [In 2007] another invitation
came in the mail and I felt, I could not disappoint my friend. … At my age of 86,
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composing does not get any easier. As a matter of fact, I always felt, that every new start
was hard and that I have not learned much from any previous experiences: each new
work meant starting from “nothing”. I thought, just a solo instrument may be easier to
handle, however when I started to compose, I realized it was not the case. With the
piano, one has always the feeling of building from the foundation, such as either figured
bass, or harmonic background, but writing for solo instrument (keyboards excepted) one
has the impression of not feeling in the ground, but rather “flying” in the air, so to speak.
Not that I do not like flying, in [sic] the contrary, I admire birds, planes, I even signed up
in the late 1970ties [sic] at the Chicago airport for a “future” flight to the moon for approx.
[$25,000] (which I did not have, but the arrangement was not definite and payment was
not required at the time).”"
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This admiration of flight is present in much of the composer’s work, and the symbolic
representation of birds is a common musical theme of his. The first movement of Three
Studies, entitled Mountain Bird, is similar in color and melodic shape to Olivier Messiaen’s
Abyss of the Birds from his Quatuor pour la fin du temps, and evokes much of the same
emotion and sentiment. Perhaps his most well-known musical “birds” can be heard in the
piccolo part of Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 at the very beginning of the first movement, and
throughout the work."
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“Composing for solo clarinet was an unexpected chalenge [sic]. Writing music is in many
ways an architecture and we think to build construction from the ground. My friend, Prof.
Hlaváč suggested a piece [lasting about] 10 minutes, exploring many facets of clarinet
playing. I always liked this instrument as a boy and had I not studied the violin and later
piano, clarinet or trumpet might have been instruments I would have learned, like many
boys in then Czechoslovakia (girls studied more piano and singing)…The ensembles:.
[sic] clarinet in band has the same position violin has in the orchestra. Already in France,
in 1951 I wrote the Evocations of Slovakia for clarinet, viola, and violoncello, as a
souvenir to my native country, remembering the musicians in mountain villages (Tatras
mountains were on my mind). Later I wrote a flute, clarinet, and bassoon trio (Two
Preludes) and Sonata a Tre for violin, clarinet, and piano. From the mountaneers
sheperds [sic] via Stamitz, Mozart, Brahms, Debussy, Nielsen, Janacek, Berg, Bartok,
Gershwin to jazz [players’] new techniques, new ways and possibilities came up to make
clarinet an incredibly agile, virtuosic instrument with always new sounds, expressions
and naturally range [sic] (when I was in Prague Conservatory we were told not to write
higher than written E flat). In the Three Studies I decided to feature expressiveness in
the first, legato playing in the second and staccato in the last. … And concerning the
titles of the movements - Mountain bird, Poignant song and Relentless machine - they
came as I was writing. I hope they are, together with the new techniques, expressions of
today’s life, with its beauty of nature, emotions and meditations, as well as the enginelike energy and inevitability of our time. It was a great pleasure to compose the Three
Studies for this colorful, virtuosic and multifaceted instrument…”"
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Nico Muhly, It Goes Without Saying (2006)"
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Born in 1981, Nico Muhly is a contemporary classical composer and arranger, residing in
New York City. Muhly belongs to the Icelandic music collective/recording label Bedroom
Community and has worked and recorded with musicians across the classical and pop/rock
mediums. He has written for many different types of ensembles, including the American Ballet
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Theater, American Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony, as
well as designer/illustrator Maira Kalman, choreographer Benjamin Millepied, Music-Theatre
Group, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Paris
Opéra Ballet, soprano Jessica Rivera, The Royal Ballet, Saint Thomas Church in New York City,
Seattle Symphony, and artist Conrad Shawcross. Muhly has also performed, arranged, and
conducted artists like Antony and the Johnsons, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Doveman, Grizzly Bear,
Jónsi of the band Sigur Rós, and Usher. In 2004, Muhly collaborated with Björk on the DVD
single “Oceania", and has worked with Philip Glass as a keyboardist, conductor, and editor.
According to journalist Rebecca Milzoff of New York Magazine, “His life is an odd fairy tale in
which he inhabits several characters at all times. There is, first and foremost, Nico the
Composer, who has since age 18 assisted Glass, conducting and editing his film scores, and
has also emerged as a star in his own right, with an album of his own work, Speaks Volumes;
Nico the Helper to Famous Singers, who “enables” the likes of Björk, Antony, and Rufus
Wainwright; and Nico Himself, the sweet, gleeful downtown kid, the 26-year-old Columbia and
Juilliard graduate in perpetual motion.”"
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Muhly’s style is sophisticated and studied, but his appreciation for pop music shows in
the shape and duration of some of his works. He himself says, “You know, in the classical-music
world, to even admit that you want people to like what you do is this really vile taboo. There’s,
like, a Molotov cocktail coming through the window right now!…I kinda don’t want to be involved
in [the young composer community]… The way I think about style is, you’re basically acting on
things that are not under your control. But there are people who don’t acknowledge they have
this crazy-ass life story, and then there are people who all they want to talk about is their
diversity of experience, and it’s like, Can you just live in the moment for a second?! Style is a lot
like ethnicity. You really don’t have a choice, so you’d better rock it out!”"
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It Goes Without Saying is from Muhly’s 2006 album Speaks Volumes. It is a 9 minute
work for Bb clarinet and electronics, which are supposedly his own musique concrète made
predominantly of sounds created by things in Muhly’s kitchen, as well as pre-recorded clarinets
and other instruments. It falls easily under the umbrella of minimalism in that it is built of layers
of rhythmic textures. The base layer is low synthesized clarinet sounds pulsating repetitive
rhythms. The second layer is made up of clicking, clapping, ticking, and other tinkering noises
which play rhythms that complement the first layer. The third layer is the pre-recorded clarinets,
which often blur the line between which sound is live and which is on the tape. Each of these
layers, in combination with the performer, phase in and out of focus, from background to
foreground and back again. The melodic structure is simple and horizontal, drawing attention to
the tone clusters which are created, and how they change as the music shifts."
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In the liner notes to Speaks Volumes, Daniel Johnson describes the piece:"
“Valgeir’s [the creator of the tape music] electronics are “organic” in two senses of the
word: first, for all their precision, they’re still designed to sound like the noises of
something alive much more than they sound like music made with machines; second,
they seem to share a certain sonic DNA with the other instruments in the piece. While
there are chillier, metallic noises on the palette – samples ranging from a unique set of
tiny bells to an ordinary kitchen whisk – most prominent are the woody clicks sampled
from the keys of the clarinet and the pedals of the harmonium – the “silent” mechanisms
usually concealed beneath the music. The piece develops according to these same, dual
organic principles. Among the acoustic instruments, the harmonium wheezes, and the
clarinets beep and tootle, with a woody, pneumatic corporeality, so that the timbre is both
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entirely human and entirely of a piece. From the initial drone, the clarinets and
electronics enter furtively, building the material of the piece from small, replicating cells
into a lively and elaborate texture. The minutely wrought surface is stretched over the
simplest possible formal contour, the drone undergirding the piece progressing from C to
F and back again. The second section begins when the harmonium collapses under its
own sweaty dissonances, and the harmonic crisis precipitates a timbral one: a shocking
burst of industrial noise, dominating rather than complementing its acoustic
surroundings; the cello gives an icy, ominous tremolo on that low F. Finally, when the
machine noises die away and we return to the tonal center, the mellow, woody clicking
returns, and the gentle chiming of the celeste lets the clarinets know that they’re free
once more to gambol in the sunny and spacious key of C.”"
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Ingolf Dahl, Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble (1949, rev.
1953)!
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Ingolf Dahl wrote his Concerto for Alto Saxophone for the famous saxophonist Sigurd
Rascher. Rascher was an American of German birth who made his debut in 1939 with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic Orchestra - the first saxophonist to
perform as a featured soloist with either orchestra - before going on to perform with over 250
more orchestras. He was known for having a virtuosic command of saxophone altissimo, up to a
full octave above the ‘highest’ note, written F above the treble staff. Dahl exploited Rascher’s
range through feats of altissimo athletics throughout the work, mainly in the second and third
movements."
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Ingolf Dahl, born Walter Ingolf Marcus, was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1912. (He
took “Dahl” from his mother’s maiden name. “Ingolf” is decidedly more distinguished-sounding
than “Walter” is, for sure.) Despite his German and Swedish parentage, he is generally
considered to be one of the foremost American composers for winds, as well as a conductor
and pianist. He moved to Los Angeles in 1938 after studying in Germany at the Cologne
Hochschule für Musik and then in Switzerland at the Zürich Conservatory and the University of
Zürich. Once in Los Angeles, he began studies with Nadia Boulanger, who had come to America
via New York City in 1940. In 1945, Dahl became a professor at the University of Southern
California, where he taught composition, conducting, music history, and directed the university’s
symphony orchestra, where he programmed a great deal of contemporary music. He also led
the school’s collegium musicum, or ensemble specializing in early music performance practices.
(19) During his time, he was responsible for bringing a great influx of different types of music to
the West Coast; he promoted many prominent American composers (such as Copland and
Ives), as well as the new music of the great contemporary Europeans (such as Berg,
Schoenberg, Milhaud, Hindemith, and Stravinsky). Dahl closely collaborated with Igor
Stravinsky, which led to many lectures and performances, as well as a translation of
Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music (Cambridge, MA, 1947) that Dahl completed in tandem with
musicologist Arnold Knodel. "
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In 1952, Dahl became the director of the Tanglewood Study Group at the Berkshire
Music Center, a position he held for five years. On a grant from the United States State
Department, he was awarded scholarship to perform concerts across Europe from 1961-62, and
was the artistic director and conductor of the Ojai Festival from 1964-66. Among his list of
accolades are a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (in 1954), two Guggenheim
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Fellowships (one in 1954, and then again in 1958), and the Alice M. Ditson Award which he was
awarded in 1964. In 1981 (after his death in 1970), USC began holding a series of Ingolf Dahl
lectures on music history and theory as it was shaped by his time working there."
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In Dahl’s entire career as a composer, his output was not particularly expansive. He
worked slowly and was very thorough in his compositional techniques and applications; In
combination with little room in his multi-faceted schedule, this led to a canon of works totaling
somewhere around 35. Earlier works of his, such as his Concerto a Tre for violin, cello, and
clarinet, have the obvious affect of German Expressionism of the first two decades of the 20th
century. Stravinsky’s impact on Dahl’s music is apparent, especially in his neo-Baroque writing
in Sinfonietta for Concert Band, as is some of the advancements of music theory and
composition he was exposed to while in America. He dove into textures and timbres of
instruments and instrument combinations as a way to create a sound world all his own."
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He first wrote the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Concert Band in 1949, later revising it to the
edition most commonly played today, the 1953 Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind
Ensemble. Though this concerto is one of the most popular in the saxophone repertoire, there is
surprisingly little scholarly writing about the piece itself. The first movement, Recitative, is a
powerhouse of emotion and drama, requiring the saxophonist to serve as almost a Wagnerian
soprano (but perhaps more of a Wagnerian Mezzo-Soprano, in this case) and project the
different musical characters and colors over the roaring wind ensemble. With a piano, as the
piece is often performed for recital purposes, the task at hand is only slightly less daunting. But
nonetheless, the material is very cadenza-like and pseudo-improvisational. The most lyrical and
delicate melodic writing comes in the second movement, the Passacaglia. It is in this
movement that the most difficult altissimo playing exists. It is indicated in Harvey Pittel’s edition
where many of these sections are only optional up the octave, or that it may be played on a
sopranino saxophone, but the inner-jock of any saxophonist scoffs at the idea of playing
anything written there below four ledger lines or cheating with a smaller horn. And thus, the
assumed Golden Mean of the work occurs at the full-voiced, soaring Largamente half-way
through the movement. The range of those eight bars reaches from written Eb 6 (three ledger
lines above the treble staff) to Eb 7, an octave above that."
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The third movement, Rondo alla marcia, is very literal. The form is a slightly modified rondo:
introduction, A, B, A’, C, A”, coda. The march tempo and character of the music pervades
throughout the movement."
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One of the things revised in the later version of the concerto was that it was shortened
quite a bit, which left Dahl with pre-composed material to be used later. Many musicologists
believe that the deleted material became the basis for parts of the second and third movement
of his Sinfonietta."
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Paul Hindemith, Sonata for Flute and Piano (1936)!
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Paul Hindemith, theorist, pedagogue, violist and violinist, conductor, and perhaps the primary
German composer of his generation, was born in Hanau, Germany in 1895. Hindemith’s Sonata for
Flute was among the 26 sonatas that Hindemith wrote for winds, strings, piano, organ, and harp
between 1935 and 1955. He was very interested in (and was rather successful, actually) learning to
play all of the instruments for which he wrote, and wrote each of these sonatas to be
Gebrauchsmusik, or ‘Music for Use,’ meant to be readily digested by audiences and played by
amateurs and professionals alike. In a 1939 note to his publisher, Willy Strecker, he explained his
rationale for writing these sonatas: "
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“…You will be surprised that I am writing sonatas for all the wind instruments. I already
wanted to write a whole series of these pieces. First of all, there's nothing decent for these
instruments except for a few classical things; although not from the present business
perspective, it is meritorious over the long term to enrich this literature. And secondly, since I
myself have been so interested in playing wind instruments, I have great pleasure in these
pieces. Finally, they are serving me as a technical exercise…”"
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Each of these sonatas, written in neo-Classical style, has its own character and musical
elements that are decidedly in Hindemith’s voice. The writing for each of the instruments is very
idiomatic, despite the fact that Hindemith was not classically trained on the instruments for which he
was writing."
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The Sonata for Flute is written in four movements, wherein the third and fourth movement
are played attacca. The first movement, marked Heiter bewegt, or ‘clearly flowing’, includes
consistently conversation between the piano and flute voices, in some cases even finishing each
other’s sentences, of sorts. There are two main characters, the first of which is a bright, almost
march-like melody that covers a large range of tessitura. The second theme, labeled Ein wenig
ruhiger, or ‘a little calmer’, is sort of evocative of Gregorian Chant in its pensiveness and low, quiet
quality. The Second movement, marked Sehr langsam, or ‘very slow’, starts off very quiet.
Throughout, it retains a feeling of fragility, and is constantly haunted by an off-kilter heartbeat in the
piano part. The very diatonic and major resolution to the phrases creates a feeling of melancholy
resolution. The expressive marking Sehr lebhaft, or ‘very lively’, is the third movement and is the
most boisterous and jolly of the whole sonata. The piano and the flute work in tandem the most in
this movement, sharing dynamic swells and phrase shapes. The language is most chromatic in this
movement. The third movement goes directly into the Marsch, which is a brief, whirlwind coda to the
work. The piece was premiered on April 10, 1937 in Washington, D.C. by flutist Georges Barrère and
pianist Jesús Maria Sanromá."
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Hindemith grew up in a very different circumstance than most musicians: his father, Robert
Rudolf Emil Hindemith, was determined for his three children to become musicians, and was known
to be forcefully disciplinary. From early childhood, Paul and his two siblings were enrolled in rather
rigorous musical study. By the time he was a preteen, Hindemith was studying violin with the famous
Adolf Rebner. Rebner was the leader of the Frankfurt Opera orchestra and professor at the Hoch
Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main. Rebner was impressed by the young Hindemith’s talent and
potential, and, in 1908, arranged for him a free acceptance to the Conservatory upon his completion
of elementary school. At the Conservatory, Hindemith continued his academic violin studies, which
he concentrated on exclusively. In the next few years, he obtained grants from wealthy patrons to
add composition to his academics, and in 1914 joined the first violin section of the Frankfurt Opera
orchestra, being quickly promoted twice in the ranks of the ensemble, as well as the second violinist
in Rebner’s string quartet. By 1923, he gave up playing the violin publicly and turned to his real
instrumental love, the viola."
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Upon completing his studies in 1917, Hindemith was called to serve in the German military
during World War I, where he was the bass drum player in the regimental band stationed near
Alsace in the small village of Tagolsheim. This village was not a directly conflicted war zone, and so
he was able to continue composing. (14) In the last few months of the war, he was reassigned to be
a sentry guard in the trenches near Flanders, where he saw actual fighting for the first time. As he
notes in his diary from the war, only by luck did he avoid injury. "
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After the war, Hindemith returned to Frankfurt, and re-entered his positions, but now as a
violist and a composer. He began writing individual parts not as a combination of vehicles for
harmony, but as independent musical lines. This, among other contemporary compositional
elements, was the beginnings of the Neue Sachlichkeit, or ‘New Objectivity.’ This was a major trend
among the arts in the 1920’s, typically referring to the visual arts, and came out of the post-war
change of social and artistic paradigm. 1933 brought with it the National Socialists and the Third
Reich, and the art community (Hindemith included) began questioning the interaction between art
and society as it pertained to the post-World War I and pre-World War II hold that the governmental
structures had on society. Within just a few months of the Third Reich being in power, over half of
Hindemith’s work was banned in Germany, labeled as ‘cultural Bolshevism’; this did not initially
concern him in the way that it eventually would, as he believed the National Socialist movement to
be something that would be short-lived. As a composer, however, he was rather concerned. He
wrote a large number of short pieces that were set to dark and brooding texts, rather boldly
indicating his resolute withdrawal."
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In the spring of 1935, Hindemith moved to Anakra, Turkey, at the request of the Turkish
government to act as an advisor in the goings-on of the country's musical arts. He went back again
in 1936 and 1937 to implement his musical developments in composition and theory, but for the sake
of free travel and his own safety, he posed his trips as representative of German culture and the arts. "
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He used these trips to also help his Jewish musician friends to escape to Turkey. It was
during this time, when his music was banned and teaching was completely halted, that he began his
groundbreaking work in music theory. He wrote the beginnings of his Unterweisung im Tonsatz, or
‘The Craft of Musical Composition,’ in 1935; it was finished and published in 1937 with a revision
published in 1940. In the Unterweisung im Tonsatz, Hindemith explores the concept of consonance
and dissonance by creating his famed Series 1 and Series 2, pictured below:"
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In his Series 1, he explores the degree to which the 12 notes in the chromatic scale are related to
the starting pitch. In his Series 2, he instead explores the degree to which combinations of pitches
with the starting pitch are dissonant, starting from most consonant and moving to most dissonant.
Essentially, he created both a horizontal and a vertical way of re-toggling the use of a musical
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system of application, like the Circle of Fifths, and appropriated it to meet the demands of a musical
paradigm seeped in the post second-Viennese chromatic vocabulary used by composers like
Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern."
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In 1940, Hindemith moved from his then home in Switzerland to America to escape the
recent outbreak of the second War. In 1941, he was invited by Yale University in New Haven, CT to
join the faculty of their music school as a professor of music theory, composition, and history and
development of music theory."
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The sonatas exist as somewhat reflective of Hindemith’s own circumstances during the time
surrounding the second World War. The Sonata for Flute was written a few years after the Third
Reich came to power, and contains elements of the writing that indicate inner turmoil. The climax of
the second movement is some of the most heart wrenching music in the whole sonata (it occurs too
early to be the definitive Golden Mean, but is at least worth considering as a candidate)."
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Hindemith’s music is something of an anomaly in many ways; the most prominent dichotomy
is the way his music is written and the way it sounds when it is played the way it should be. It is very
neo-Classical in the structures and forms he tends to write in, the melodies and harmonies are often
quartal, and he plays upon rhythmic syncopations in a way that is basically from the Classical canon.
The guts of the music, for lack of a better word, are most effective when the player treats the lines
horizontally as if it were lush, sweeping Romantic music."
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Astor Piazzolla, Histoire du Tango (1989)!
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Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla was born in 1921 into an Italian family living in Argentina;
Extreme poverty had led Piazzolla’s ancestors to immigrate to Mar del Plata, Argentina for more
financial stability. In 1925, his immediate family moved to New York City, where they stayed for
the next twelve years before moving back to Mar del Plata. As Piazzolla said about his youth in
New York, “It was at the time of prohibition and the mafia… I hung around the streets more than
I went to school… my musical world gradually grew up round jazz, Duke Ellington and Cab
Calloway who I managed to hear at the door of the Cotton Club, although I was both too young
and too poor to go in. My father used to play the old nostalgic tangos by Carlos Gardel on the
gramophone. For my ninth birthday he gave me a bandoneon (button accordion), and I had
lessons with a teacher who introduced me to classical music.”"
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When the Piazzolla family returned to Mar del Plata in 1937, sixteen-year-old Astor was
more interested in what the capital, Buenos Aires, had in store for him. He became the
bandoneon player in a band led by the famous tango musician Aníbal Carmelo Troilo. Troilo,
also a bandoneon player, was the arranger, composer, and bandleader for his Orquesta Típica.
That “típica" was one of the most popular ensembles during the ‘golden age of tango’ in
Argentina from 1940-55. At the same time Piazzolla was playing with Troilo’s típica, he began
classical orchestration studies with the young Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (who
would go on to become quite famous), as well as classical piano studies with Argentinian pianist
Raúl Spivak. It was with Ginastera that he began really studying European art music, delving
into the works of Stravinsky, Bartok, and members of the French impressionist school. From
1944 to 1946, Piazzolla lead the orchestra for the famous tango singer and bandoneonist,
Francisco Fiorentino. "
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In 1946, Piazzolla formed his own Orquesta Típica based out of Buenos Aires; this was
the first project of which he was the director. His ensemble played nothing but tangos (as was
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the case with most típicas). Piazzolla wrote: “I played my own arrangements, and started using
triple rhythms in what had been a very four-square rhythmic pattern up to then, and
experimenting with bold harmonies.” What he describes here is how he began to develop the
concept of Tango Nuevo, or a rejuvenation and evolution of Argentinian tango. Piazzolla is
credited as the mastermind of Tango Nuevo, having introduced new instruments, such as
saxophones and electric guitars, as well as new forms of melodic and harmonic structures to the
pre-existing Argentinian tango idiom. This concept was not particularly well-received at first, and
his típica was disbanded in 1949."
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In 1953, Ginastera told Piazzolla of a competition for young composers [the Fabien
Sevitzky competition], which he was reluctant to enter, feeling inadequate as a bandoneonplaying tango musician among the “great” young composers of the time. He finally entered an
early work of his, entitled Buenos Aires, which was accepted in the competition and won first
prize. Critics prized it as the best work of the year from a new young composer, and the French
government gave him a scholarship to study in Paris the next year. It was there, in 1954, that he
took up study in conducting with Hermann Scherchen, as well as composition with the famed
pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Piazzolla said, “When I met her, I showed her my kilos of
symphonies and sonatas. She started to read them and suddenly came out with a horrible
sentence: ‘It’s very well written.’ And stopped, with a big period, round like a soccer ball. After a
long while, she said: ‘Here you are like Stravinsky, like Bartok, like Ravel, but you know what
happens? I can’t find Piazzolla in this.’… She kept asking: — ‘you say that you are not a pianist.
What instrument do you play, then?’ And I didn’t want to tell her that I was a bandoneon player…
Finally, I confessed and she asked me to play some bars of a tango of my own. She suddenly
opened her eyes, took my hand and told me: ‘You idiot, that’s Piazzolla!’… She taught me to
believe in Astor Piazzolla, to believe that my music wasn’t as bad as I thought. I thought that I
was something like a piece of shit because I played tangos in a cabaret, but I had something
called style. I felt a sort of liberation of the ashamed tango player I was. I suddenly got free and I
told myself: ‘Well, you’ll have to keep dealing with this music, then.’…” His voice would be,
though, influenced by the many flavor pallets of classical music from his academic study, and
jazz music from his extracurricular study."
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It was during his 18-month study in Paris that he was able to experience some of the
great jazz musicians of the day (who were often more well-received in Europe than in parts of
America), including baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s group. 1955, upon his return to
Buenos Aires, Piazzolla formed the ensemble that would become the pioneering group of Tango
Nuevo: His Octeto Buenos Aires. In his Octeto, he tried to capture as much of the spirit,
enthusiasm, and communicative improvisation as he had heard from the American jazz
musicians performing abroad. This uniquely-modern group was considered somewhat
controversial among the more traditional tango musicians at the time, and struggled to gain
immediate widespread popularity. He lived in America and worked as a famed tango-jazz
musician, and by the mid-1960’s, the concept of Tango Nuevo took off; Piazzolla’s music was
celebrated by both musicians and audiences at home and abroad."
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By the 1980’s, Piazzolla’s music became quite popular in circles of classical guitarists,
presumably as a reaction to popularity from a commission by Argentinian guitarist Roberto
Aussel. Among works written after this commission is his Histoire du Tango, originally for flute
and guitar, as well as his Double Concerto for guitar, bandoneon, and string orchestra."
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In July 1989, shortly before a stroke which lead to his death in 1992, Piazzolla was
interviewed in Chile by journalist Gonzalo Saavedra, who describes the interview as follows: “I
made one of the last interviews with Astor Piazzolla in his last visit to my country. He first
allowed me just ’15 minutes’, but one question led to another and we spent almost two hours at
his hotel room…” Piazzolla said that the tango ceased to exist in 1955, “when Buenos Aires was
a place where people wore tango, walked tango, where there was a smell of tango all over the
city. But not today. Today the smell is more likely to come from rock or punk. The current tango
is just a nostalgic and dull imitation of those times. The tango is… dying. … My tango does meet
the present.” He described his life as a single, sad tango. “Not because I’m sad. Not at all. I’m a
happy guy, I like to taste a good wine, I like to eat well, I like to live, so there wouldn’t be any
reason for my music to be sad. But my music is sad, because tango is sad. Tango is sad,
dramatic, but not pessimistic. Pessimistic were the old, absurd tango lyrics…. A critic from the
New York Times once said an absolute truth: all the ‘upper thing’ that Piazzolla makes is music;
but beneath you can feel the tango.”"
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In Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango, he presents four snapshots of the evolution and history
of tango music. In his own description of the work, he describes each of the four movements:"
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“Bordel, 1900: The tango originated in Buenos Aires in 1882. It was first played on the guitar
and flute. Arrangements then came to include the piano, and later, the concertina. This
music is full of grace and liveliness. It paints a picture of the good natured chatter of the
French, Italian, and Spanish women who peopled those bordellos as they teased the
policemen, thieves, sailors, and riffraff who came to see them. This is a high-spirited tango."
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Café, 1930: This is another age of the tango. People stopped dancing it as they did in 1900,
preferring instead simply to listen to it. It became more musical, and more romantic. This
tango has undergone total transformation: the movements are slower, with new and often
melancholy harmonies. Tango orchestras come to consist of two violins, two concertinas, a
piano, and a bass. The tango is sometimes sung as well."
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Night-club, 1960: This is a time of rapidly expanding international exchange, and the tango
evolves again as Brazil and Argentina come together in Buenos Aires. The bossa nova and
the new tango are moving to the same beat. Audiences rush to the night clubs to listen
earnestly to the new tango. This marks a revolution and a profound alteration in some of the
original tango forms."
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Concert d’aujourd’hui: Certain concepts in tango music become intertwined with modern
music. Bartok, Stravinsky, and other composers reminisce to the tune of tango music. This
[is] today’s tango, and the tango of the future as well.”"
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