14. Scarf Dance

Cecile Chaminade is the first female composer I've encountered while working on this blog and playing from John Thompson's Third and Fourth grade books. So far, too, Scarf Dance one of my favourites. I was looking forward to it because of this acerbic quality it seems to have. I think it's a combination of the quasi-chromatic nature of the passages and a bit of flirting with dissonance. The chromatic aspects begin right away, as you can tell from the opening. These were a bit of a technical challenge because I wasn't used to switching fingers in 1-3 and 2-4 groups. My fingers get tied up sometimes. After this, the leap to B-F gave me a bit of trouble, too. Getting it accurately took some doing. And then I had to practice it again with a leap of a slightly different size. Major interference! I'm still better at the first than the second.

Here is a variation on that alternating chromatic, which is really a kind of dyadic trill. This, too, required some practice to coordinate. This time the fingers weren't themselves alternate, but even this felt a little weird too. I wasn't at all used to playing 2-5 against the thumb like that (see left hand). Same with the right hand. Awkward as hell trying to play 1-2 alternately with 3. It wasn't hard to do, but it just felt so... almost creepy.

This part is a little fun and a little hard at the same time. Actually, lots of passages in this song are like that. The leaps are small but they were new to me, so I had to practice them. It's sweet when your hand finally gets to know them well enough to make it to the right spot on the first try. I'm almost there with this passage. The later ones are in worse shape than the earlier ones, as can be expected. The chords have a kind of familiar feel to them, and I hold most of them with 1-2-4. The first bar is a case in point, and it's pretty surprising that it gives me the trouble that it does. I either forget the G (less so now), or miss the leap from GBE to FAD. Getting better though. The left hand has some truly wide leaps, of several octaves sometimes.

I recall playing this over and over until my shoulders ached. Apart from figuring out an appropriate fingering and getting the leaps just right, the difficulty with this passage is learning to play the right hand staccato while holding the left hand for only the duration of a quaver without its sounding staccato too. I remember being a little irritated when I realised no pedal was indicated. I thought it would have been so much easier to play delicatamente if I used a pedal. Anyway, I stuck to the letter of the text and tried to execute its spirit. I think I found a way, but I'm still working on getting the left hand to balance the timing just right. A passage with some chromatic elements follows. Pictured left is the second of two and requires some delicate threading of the fingers. Good thing I was already used to that from playing Elfin Dance. Note the leaps in the left hand.

This pictures an extremely melodic passage that follows the above. It accentuates the leaps in the left hand and breaks chords in the right. Throw in an appoggiatura and you've got a sweet, lyrical passage. The variation that the second full bar provides on the melody of the first made learning it slightly more difficult. Also, the left hand chords were difficult to find accurately at first. Required some hand independence. In fact, the very first notes pictured are the result of a leap of different sizes in each hand, so even getting to this passage was tough. But worth it. I'm really starting to put some feeling into its execution now that I can take my mind somewhat off the technical aspects of playing it.

Above the key changes for two bars. A♭ to E Major. I remember wondering, "Why go through all the trouble of change the key for two measly bars?" Then I saw another version of this score in which the notes were individually modulated to desired key. I think J. T. must have made that change to simplify the score, and boy did he do me a favour! The difference is like night and day, as you can see from the picture on the right.

The song pretty much repeats after this, but with a variation near the end. You'll recognise the first two bars of this passage, as it is also quoted above. But the single-note quaver is now replaced with two- to three-note chords, which (needless to say) required a lot of work to get right, especially as the text indicates some jumping back and forth. Again, the effort's worth it because it produces a very beautiful harmony.

It ends with two-handed four-note chords, much like those that end Il Penseroso. The hands splay over each other like eagles' wings again--at least in the first variation. The second has the hands very far apart, separated by three or four octaves.

Alan Chan's rendition