Sunday, January 18, 2015

16 (B). Evening Prayer

Evening Prayer opens in a pretty low register, and I remember sight reading it for the first time and wondering why so many ledger lines! Like Sarabande, this one's not a difficult one to play, so it was pretty useful for sight-reading practice. I like the measured pace of the text, and as a prayer, it's very quiet. Note it begins with pp and ends even more quietly with ppp--with some intensities along the way, of course. It gets up to mp at one point. 

The section that makes me love this song begins near the end. Throughout, each bar had been almost exclusively populated with even, semi-detatched crotchets. Here, the notes begin to shorten and lilt in to form a meandering chain, one that begins in bar 24 and continues for 5 bars until the final few measures pictured below. The melody descends from the height of that C (highest note in treble clef pictured above-right) and undulates to the bottom of the stave. It's almost like a handshake when, for two bars, both hands play the melody, and then left hand takes over complete control of that lilting rhythm and carries it (for the final couple measures) half way down the bass clef.  


Eventually near the very end, the gradient levels out, and the notes begin to repeat as they very slowly inch toward the final chords. Note the two minim groups in the second bar (left). I adore that shift from the first to the second. Flattening the A and adding that D bridges the gap between the F and C chords beautifully.  It's a progression I'd like to understand better so that someday I can make the transition from visceral to intellectual appreciation.

Alan Chan's rendition

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