Something quite strange seems to be happening to me. I thought it was a fluke when I was learning this song two days ago, but it happened again in the song following it. I'm actually learning these songs faster than I'd ever expected. The time I mentally allotted myself to play this song was 3-5 days. I was leaning toward the lower limit (3) because it is considerably shorter than The Skaters. I'd learned that one in three (which was also a surprise) with just an extended practice session on the first day. But I actually practised the whole of Watchman's Song in that one practice session for the day—even with time to spare for working on my other songs! I think it must be that my reading's truly getting better, so that it allows me to actually play a song in such a way that it sounds recognisable while I'm reading it. That used to definitely not be the case. Reading used to be so laborious that I'd have to stick to getting at most two bars at a time and then practising that for several minutes before even thinking of proceeding. Now, even if I forget a section of the bar, I can read it from the text quickly enough to refresh my memory and play it at a decent level for practice. (Now that I've said this, watch me crash and burn on the next song—Tchaikovsky!—and render all this celebration void...)
The text pictured here is the second of two very similar passages that required a lot of concentration to get right. Many of the notes are tied, and these ties cross bars in almost every case. This means that the dyads being played on the first note of the bar in every instance are broken across bars and across time. The effect is akin to one of playing broken chords, I guess. But it takes some concentration every time I get to a new bar because my fingers want to start afresh, and it's strange having to hold one note and then strike another one to join it when I really can't even hear that "sustained" note anymore. (No pedalling indicated.) I end up trying to re-strike the note because I forgot to hold it down, and then that spoils the song, since a right note being struck at the wrong time is a wrong note. So I have to start again... Another problem I had with this section was getting the timing right. I kept bringing that last sustained note (held over from the previous measure) into the time of the new measure. But that was not right. In the new one, the note is only the length of a quaver, but I tended to think the measure started on the crotchet that the first note once was. So I had to redraw my own erroneous mental bar lines, otherwise I'd get the feeling the bar had too many notes in it. Overall, this is a pleasant part of the song though, so I'll keep replaying it until get it right just so I can hear it.
This section seems to be one in which a ghost enters. Intermezzo means in between acts or movements, and both meanings apply here, since a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth inspired Grieg to compose the song. J.T. indicates this section should be played mysteriously and grow in intensity from pianissimo to forte. I mentioned these fast arpeggios in a previous post. I'd seen them a couple days before and tried them beforehand. The softness, velocity, and pedalling indicated makes for a truly lugubrious tone apropos of a "spirit of the night." The chords that follow were daunting, for not only does the text require that they be executed in triplets (i.e. three notes in the space of two), but this is to be done with both hands. Technically, hands share chords all the time, but I'd never had to do this with the hands so close together and moving at such a speed that they'd potentially be getting in each other's way. It seemed to make the possibility of playing these chord-triplets doubly difficult, and indeed it was difficult. I practised over and over and over... and of course it got better, but it's still shaky. And check out the fingering for the right hand triplets! That was one of the hardships, but I'm not complaining, because it helped me get my fingers doing new and interesting things. This same pattern (arpeggios in sevenths, two-hand chord in triplets, and the four chords that follow) is repeated once, but with an F-major emphasis. (The first was in E-minor, as indicated by the key-signature change above left. Too many pics, I know...)
After that, the song returns to a version of the opening. This tendency to review what has gone before certainly helps with my learning speed, I'm sure. All in all, this was a good song for reading and learning new technique. I really appreciate John Thompson's acuity in selecting songs at just the appropriate level to nudge my development forward, but not to overwhelm.
Thanks, J.T.
Alan Chan's rendition
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