34. Hymn to the Sun

Dissonance as melody is the hallmark of Rimsky-Korsakov's Hymn to the Sun. This isn't my first time playing chromatic passages, but this is definitely the first text in which it was the focus instead of a mere path connecting two harmonic passages. Memorisation? Not likely, though I think it would be possible. I tried memorizing this first section on my first real day of playing it, and it was working out almost as well as any other session, albeit with my having to deal with unintuitive relationships between successive pitches and not really being able to use that as a mnemonic device. I bet it's a good song for developing aural skills: intervals and such.

A friend telephoned while I sight-read (for the second or third time) an especially atonal portion of this text, much like the one pictured right. I was never so happy to be interrupted in my life. (Actually, I'm overstating it. I was actually thinking: please, let me just get through this phrase...) But I wasn't very motivated to return to it. At the end of the call, I thought, Tomorrow.... I'm still waiting for tomorrow, 48 hrs later. This section is indeed dissonant, but I was exaggerating when I called it atonal. It's actually quite harmonic in a weirdly dissonant way. The harmonies are themselves climbing by semitones, so its got a strange slithery feel to it, like the creepy / creeping motion of a serpent.

The text pictured left occurs at the point at which the chromatic section of the song's opening leads into a harmonic section. Notice how the melodic voice splits in two halfway through the bar. That split occurs at the moment of transition between introduction and harmonic development. I think. The song develops a key signature somewhere around here, too. It begins in C, though as a chromatic passage, C was just convenient for the sake of notation. It was in all keys or no key at all, which amounts to the same thing. It switches to A major at the beginning of the fifth bar. Below (left) is an excerpt of the harmonic section. Looks normal, don't it?

I didn't really try to play those sextets to the right as fast as they should be played, but I noted them, and it's cool that they're there. Below that is a return to chromaticism, but these come as grace notes: 12 of them shared between the hands. I'd just seen a passage like this in Hungarian Rhapsodie 2 in which there were 14 notes shared between hands, so this wasn't too surprising. Liszt's beats this in length; this beats Liszt's in sheer weirdness. I guess you can't have it all...

The song ends harmonically: with two A major chords executed an octave apart. It's a pretty satisfying conclusion, and unexpected, considering how the song started out. Finishing this song meant I'd finished the book! I was pretty excited and noted the time: 14:01 PDT on Friday, 13th of March 2015. I was pretty pumped. Of course, I still needed to play it a few more times, as I noted above, but all in all, I'd played my way through Rimsky-Korsakov and made history for myself all in an afternoon. Pretty cool!

Alan Chan's rendition

33. Curious Story

This piece is an etude by Stephen Heller, and J. T. says its purpose is to help students work on velocity. In keeping with this, the song isn't very hard to learn or to execute. I have problems with a couple sections, but in general the whole is designed to be easy enough to play so that one can focus on the speed of the fingers. (Coming up in the Fourth Grade Book is Il Penderoso, which also provides a velocity workout using modified arpeggios, so I think J. T. finds Heller's studies in general to be useful.) I'm thinking of learning Curious Story really well and keeping it in my repertoire precisely for practising speed. I know I need to work on my arpeggios, and there is a section of this text (we'll see) that contains them and would give me that needed practice.

I notice that J.T.'s own composition Tarantella is similar in sound to this piece, and I think it helped prepare me in such a way that learning this song seemed a lot easier. This opening (right) shows the triplets that are characteristic of the text, and Tarantella was similarly based on triplets. Here, however, the triplets give way far more frequently to quaver-semiquaver beams. This (for me) always begs the question of the difference between the triplet with the missing middle note and those (semi)quaver complexes. I believe I raised this question in Serenade as well. Every time I think I have it figured out, something comes along to make the distinction murky again. The math makes the difference clear, of course: one's divided into thirds, the other into fourths. But that difference of 1/12 is so elusive! [da-(u)-di vs da~ah-(u)-di?] Anyway, this is the main theme of the song and it's got some variations, which I will presently discuss.

Top left we have a denser harmonic accompaniment added to the main melody, but this does more than just add harmonies. It also modifies the text by raising some of the pitches along the way. B-flat is naturalized and G is sharpened, for instance. I'm not sure if these and other changes add up to an expression of D-minor in one of its forms. Melodic, probably. Looks more like an implied E major or G#m. But it could also be some exotic scale that I haven't learned yet, like Dorian or Phrygian (or some other term that sounds like it belongs in Aristotle's Poetics.) Below that is a neat thirds section that I've already begun to be able to play pretty fast. Oh for the day my speed on the rest of the sections finally catch up!

The text pictured right is a strange, slowing and dissonant section, which provides another good velocity workout because the semiquaver thirds double the already significant speed. It also provides a good exercise in finger control, because the second and third fingers, used to playing trills or fully consecutive passages in both directions, tend to want to play another C after that final B-flat (right hand). I have to force my fingers not to do that, and it's good for them. The C actually does get played, but not for another two beats, and the B is held for the duration.

Pictured top left is a slightly chromatic section that begins with the right hand leaping over an octave and then ends with both hands playing a dissonant melody in unison. This repeats again in C. The second is another triplet section that requires some fast hopping down the keyboard. These triplet groups are consecutive, but the next two following have a larger gap between the groups as this pattern simply repeats in a lower octave. A similar thing happens at the end of the song (bottom right pic), where two arpeggios (in F and C) are played in a specific pattern and then repeated twice in lower octaves. I've been working to get that part especially even and fluid, and its been improving so far. This is a song I'd definitely like to keep working on until I can play all the sections as fast as J. T. and Heller intended.

Alan Chan's rendition

32. Minuet in G

Simplicity is the name of the game for Beethoven, it seems. I'm about to play another song by him that's also all about the simplicity of the theme. However, there's nothing simple about the fingering for the theme of this minuet. The alternation between finger groups 3-5, 2-4 and 1-5 is a little unorthodox and awkward, at least at first, and especially because of the way the second and fourth fingers have to sort of climb over the third and fifth to reach the A# and C#. And it is a little weird curving the hand inward to play B and D with 1-5, since the fingers are so far apart and the two notes so close together. But it works, and the hand has to fit itself to the music, right?

The section that follows has a very similar rhythm (not surprisingly), but with wider dyads that share the thumb between them. It's less awkward to execute than the opening and this is where we find an interesting chord progression in the left hand that sounds pretty awesome. See that F-natural octave in the middle of the second bar? It's the dominant 7th and leads from the tonic G to the C chord that follows. It was a familiar sound, and I was glad to see it in practice in a classical piece.

Next comes the polyphonic section that reminded me of Bach. It's interesting how closely Beethoven's era followed upon Bach's and yet how far apart they were in style. He's considered Romantic, like Liszt and Chopin, yet he's pretty close to Mozart in age and era. Mozart was born six years after J.S. Bach died and was about 14 when Beethoven was born. Give them a couple decades or so to grow and develop and in about 50 years we go through two periods. Still, the influences are apparent. This section provides a bit more work on hand independence... kind of. Actually, it was perhaps better as reading material since the notes actually follow the same path in each hand. You could say their derivatives are the same in every direction, so they pretty much work together. But there were other bars with other opportunities for hand and finger work.

Here's a perplexing bit. I can't quite figure out the difference (in sound) between these two passage. There is none really; the difference concerns the song's overall configuration. The first iteration leads directly back into some earlier passage that started on an upbeat of quaver length, so that's why there's no need to fill in the missing rest to complete the bar. The second one leads into the song's beginning passage that starts with an upbeat of crotchet length, and it has to wait out bar before moving on to that. So the difference is pretty simple to explain, but I do remember being initially perplexed and having to think about it. 

Alan Chan's rendition

31. Prelude in C Minor

The difficulty of this song hit me when I tried to hold the first two chords. Never had my fingers stretched so much, especially in the right hand. The stretching of the notes across the staves is symbolic of the effect of the music on your hands: extended lines translate directly to stressed ligaments. The first bar was indeed difficult, though after having played through the whole song and been through its rigours, its difficult for me to recall what was so bad about it. However, I do remember having to step away from the song for a day or so just to let my hands recuperate. And this was while I was on only the third beat of the bar! Okay... to be precise, I had been previewing the song ahead of time, so "stepping away" might just really have meant I was happy to revert to my real piece and leave this song for another day.

I had no such excuse when it came time to really work on this piece. I averaged a bar a day, not just because of the difficulties holding the chords (though, as we will see, these were considerable), but also because each chord was in itself kind of a full bar's worth of work. It took so much of my cognition to memorize the placements of the fingers that I could only handle memorizing one bar at a time. 

Take a look at the third beat of the second bar (right). Unbelievable! Chopin wants us to hold both D-flat and E-flat with the thumb, jam the second finger between two black keys to hit G and then stretch over the rest of that group of blacks and into a nook to hit C, and finally cotch up the little finger (pinky) on E-flat. This is truly the most contorted my hands have ever been—and this is just Grade 3! My hand looks and feels like a crab whenever it reorganises itself to fit that very specific and unorthodox chord-shape (pictured below). The good news is, after holding that impossible chord, everything else becomes easy. I remember working on the third bar (above left) and thinking, wow this one's a lot easier. I christened it the "bar of reprieve." I honestly think Chopin front-loaded this song with difficult chords, because after bar two, everything's pretty sedate. This isn't to say your fingers don't get a good stretching, but never as in bar two, and once or twice, you even get to hold three-note chords in the right hand! Very nice. So much so, that while it took me four days to learn the first four bars, I learned the other four in just one sitting. And I really learned nine bars in that time because bars 5 to 8 repeat as bars 9 to 12. Bar 13 is unique, but contains only one chord that's held for 4 beats (see last pic below). Plus, since it's the eponymous C-Minor chord—and in root position, no less!—that made it even easier to remember.

Crab Hand!

End

Once I got to the second half of the song, I noticed something else, too. My reading had improved. I know this has been the case regarding other songs in the past. I mentioned experiencing better reading results as early as Berceuse, and especially in that stretch from Watchman's Song through Pathétique. But this most certainly didn't apply to the dense chords that comprise this piece. I was very surprised to catch myself reading through those measures with an unprecedented level of ease. Not complete ease by any means, but of the kind I certainly hadn't even experienced in the first three measures. So I think the work I did on those earlier bars actually propelled me into an even better reading position. It's always good to experience measurable progress (get it?).

So for many reasons, I'm happy to have played my first official Chopin piece! (Prelude in E Minor was unofficial.) I wonder how long until I can legitimately play my first Rachmaninoff...

Crab Hand Update April 29, 2016 (Over a year later)

Can't really see much of a difference, but my hand felt way more relaxed in that position this time.

Alan Chan's rendition

30. Hungarian Rhapsodie No. 2

I wrote myself a note a week or two before this song came up in the practice queue. It read, "It's not hard; it's only pretending to be hard." This proved to be so right, and not because I have any especial acumen or ability regarding playing, but because (again) John Thompson did such a good job collecting and ordering these pieces. Each one really does gradually increase in difficulty, bringing you to a level that places the succeeding ones within reach. The song required work, naturally, but of the type that could be accomplished in a week—at least at a basic level. (Polishing will take much longer, months at least.) 

The opening (pictured above) is filled with repetitions and acciaccaturas. It is to be played lento a capriccio, which I crudely translate as slowly and whimsically. The chords are pedalled, even though they are executed in staccato; this was strange and new to me. I'm still not sure if I can actually hear the staccato or if I should be able to. I haven't quite worked out the details of pedalling yet. 

Left is the trail of the opening. By this point, the phrase has already been foreshadowed at least twice by the many grace notes and trill-esque bits that opened the song. Now it peters out (pìu ritenuto) and leads into the first theme. Note the triplets. Their value, it seems, matters only for accounting purposes. Pìu ritenuto, which is a fusion of ritardando (gradually slowing) and diminuendo (gradually softening), grants the player some of freedom in determining how to execute, so the triplets don't actually have to be played that way at all. I've never heard anyone adhere to them in any version I've listened to... Hmm... I think I might try it! The notes pictured right pick up after the flourish of the opening. They introduce the song's first melodic theme (Lassan) and require a fast switching of second and third fingers before striking C in both hands. I've improved the execution quite a bit since first trying it. I used to have to hesitate a lot to prepare myself for playing it. Now I hesitate for a much shorter period and may even get it on the first try!

Above are two similar passages for comparison. While their patterns are pretty much the same, the two groups of four semiquavers on the left are detached, while their counterparts on the right are attached. I'm not sure why that difference exists. Another difference is in the pedal use. I was acutely aware of the need to pedal all the way through the second after having pedalled only halfway through the first. Now I'm wondering if the two phenomena are related: that is, whether the beam connecting the two groups exists to reinforce the connection created by the pedal. Although the difference in the pedal marks doesn't cause any real execution problems, such details are important (and potentially problematic) for reasons concerning memorization. Consequently, I'm also acutely aware of another passage (not pictured) similar to both, but that has no pedalling indicated at all. I wonder what makes for these differences, and what makes the one on the right so special that its notes get that extra propulsion toward blending.

This interesting scalish passage is pretty much all grace notes. Recall that the song is in 2/4 time, so even though 14 notes are attached to those double beams, they fail to spend any of the measure's allotted beats. Pretty cool, huh? I worried about being able to play them fast enough, especially since I sort of thought they ought to hurry up, being grace notes and all. (I'd seen these in books sometimes, wondered why they were so small, and marveled when I realized they were just a crowd (cloud) of the same types of grace notes I'd regularly seen before as appoggiaturas and such. On those occasions, those notes had always been played pretty fast—as at the end of Chopin's Nocturne in E-Flat in which they descend like a waterfall.) But I soon came to realize that I should give them the time they request, as time sort of stands still for them here. And the execution's coming along okay. The hardest part is getting to those four B-flats fast enough to keep the timing steady with the preceding notes. They require a switching of hands, but even that part is working out okay, now that I've had a few days of practice. (Still needs a lot more work, of course.)

This section (left) is titled "Friska" and it feels a lot like a gambol. Check out that wide acciaccatura! It is crushed into a note four doors down. Luckily I'd had some practice with those octave-width ones in The Skaters, so I wasn't alarmed. (Actually, there's an octave-width one earlier in this song, too, but it's not pictured. It's in the Lassan section and goes from C to C. So I'm an old pro...) This section has the right hand jumping from first to fourth/fifth, then travelling up to the end of the octave and back down, pausing again in the middle. The cycle restarts every two measures, and while the right hand does these back-and-forth sweeps, the left hand supports with a lot of chord-repeating and -sustaining. (I'm pretty much just revealing my mnemonic devices. Naturally, my mistakes occur at every point at which this description fails.) Finally, there's the key change! C minor to F major (pictured right).

After the key change comes this Vivace section that restores the tempo and makes my fingers feel like a rubber band when playing. I've almost heard myself chanting "elas-tic band, elas-tic band..." along with the rhythm. (I frequently make up nonsense words that sound like the music as an interior accompaniment. It's weird...) The phrase repeats a bit higher with the first and third fingers doing the rubbery flicking section ("elas-") that was initially performed by the third and fourth in the section actually pictured. After this comes a bit that's even more staccato-ey, but retains a bit of the lilt, so that it forms an appropriate bridge between the previous section and the one pictured in the next paragraph. Now it is quite riddled with staccato, as you shall see.

Top right is the second of two similar 100% staccato sections. The first iteration (not shown) was like this one, but lacked the left-hand accompaniment. Instead, the left hand took care of the second and fourth group of quavers. Finally, this long staccato run, which began all the way back at Tempo giusto - Vivace, comes to an end with the array of chords pictured bottom right. So many! They actually truncate the progress of the true Hungarian Rhapsodie No. 2, though, and I remember finding this wrap-up a little abrupt when I first heard this adapted version. But I understand why J.T. ended it so: the rest of the song is just too fast and/or technically demanding for a third grade student, even if she's well on her way to fourth grade! So Liszt, au revoir: another time, another place. We'll definitely meet again, and I look forward to it :)

Alan Chan's rendition

29. Melody

This Melody by Massenet is pleasant to hear and tricky to replicate, at least initially. The left hand notes fill the gaps between those of the right hand, and because the latter is always behind (or ahead) by a semiquaver, it's a little weird translating the strange way this delay appears on the page into the syncopation it represents in the hands. But it's actually not all that tricky in practice if you can manage to decouple the rhythm in your brain from its representation on the page. The right hand just comes in a half beat later and then maintains that rhythm, so all you're really doing is alternating hands—beating out a delayed but regular accompaniment with the right hand. (Yes, the melody is mostly in the left for a change.) The complexity of the text's appearance is partially in answer to the question of how to breach the bar lines. The weird-looking tie between two semiquavers at the end/beginning of each measure could otherwise have been represented by two semiquavers connected by a beam and straddling the line. (I'm pretty sure I've seen that done before.) It's better—even easier—this way though because you do want to simplify reading by keeping the quavers in groups of four.

This complicated section seems that way because of the difference in length of all the notes in it. It takes some practice to get the fingers to work independently like that. Notice the portamento indicated by the legato slur spread over the staccato notes. Paradox of all paradoxes! Well, not quite. It just means play the notes in a sustained but detached manner. (This was introduced in the opening of Schubert's Serenade.) The left hand seems to have it the worst, having to come in at the last possible moment of the note's lifetime (see E in the centre of the bar above-right). Furthermore, the several branches (leaves? petals?) of the demisemiquaver rests make the bar look even more complicated than it actually is. But since you gotta account for all the moments in a measure, there's no getting around it.

The song ends with an arpeggio that begins on E and extends for more than 2 octaves all the way up to B. Within that span, two broken E minor chords are played, anchored by the Es on both sides. The effect is to re-emphasises the song's E minor signature, apparent in the first two pictures shown, and to give the piece a sense of closure. I love the minor mode!

Alan Chan's rendition

28. Bublitchki

Bublitchki is a Russian folk song and is literally the word for pretzels. It's a very upbeat number, and I remember liking it immediately the first time I heard it played. J. T. points out that lots of great dance tunes are written in the minor mode. I found this bit of knowledge surprising, but cool. It's nice to know that minor keys aren't just for mourning. This opening is probably the most morose part of the song, and it presents its challenge in the need to switch fingers while repeating that first A. It's kinda cool though: the right hand shifts to the right on each stroke like the head of a typewriter (if we still remember how those things work) and gets in place just in time to strike out that dyad that begins the second bar. The seventh in the left hand is followed by the second in the right to create a slight dissonance that leads into the main theme. It's an interesting sort of bendy sound.

The main theme (if Bublitchki can be considered to have one) is this bit to the right, and I guess it's the rhythmic pattern it exemplifies that makes it "main," since that pattern's pretty much the backbone of each section. (So, yeah, no theme per se...) The two-note slurs in the left hand sort of suture the melodic gap in the right hand just after that accented dyad that breaks the line of staccato quavers. It is also fun to play. The whole thing has a sort of rag-ish flavour, and the rhythm is itself very similar to that of The Entertainer. It's noticeably not rag though, despite this similarity. The travelling sixths in the right hand required some practice to keep my fingers the right width and to travel consistently only one semi(tone) down in each (half) beat. (That'll get me ready for Bertini's Octave Study in the 4th Grade Book!) This sequence repeats before the text changes, so I also needed work on getting my fingers back in place after the trip.

To the left is a little flourish that follows the repeated sequence mentioned above. It's preceded by a variation on that repeated phrase (first bar), and then bam! this section in the second bar comes in. Note that the semiquavers in the left hand squeeze into the second half of that quaver I pointed out in the previous paragraph, so it seems that all the cool stuff happens right there in that portion of each bar. Okay, maybe other interesting things happen elsewhere...

One such is this complication of the left-hand accompaniment which has it handling far more than the two notes it started out with. Its part is spread evenly throughout the bar this time, but that final C that ends the flourish in the previous section is repeated here too, see? Playing that right hand staccato with the legato in the left requires some care. 

The portion below I recall well. It's quite a feat to recall any one section particularly well because each bar is so similar that I did have some trouble differentiating them while learning. It wasn't quite as bad as Will o' the Wisp, but there were moments of confusion. Still, this bar is conspicuous not only because of the gradual increase in pitch, but especially because of the fingering. The 1-4-3-1 terminates in a C# played with the second finger at the beginning of the next bar. This fingering reminds me of something I played back in Londonderry Air: I think that was a 3-1-2 fingering with the right hand. Wow... it seems so long ago. Was only a tiny bit over four months, though. So much has happened since, and I even have a few blogs in the pipeline. I'm sitting on Melody (Massenet), Prelude in E Minor (Chopin) and I just finished learning all the parts of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (J.T.'s adaptation), so I haven't exactly been idle these past few months...

This final bit is the end-variation on the last section, and it completes the piece. D minor is the final chord, but held in its first inversion in the right hand. Bubilitchki doesn't actually change keys at all throughout, so it's been in D minor all this time. I seem to recall a lot more Fs and As than Ds though. But in two prior culminating moments that ended each bigger section, the final sequence of notes in the left hand were D-B Flat-A-F-D. (I really should have included a picture of that, too.) So I guess a D minor key signature holds up. This song was fun to play, and I probably moved on from it too soon. Well, I suppose I haven't really, since I do still practice it, even though I'm currently learning something else.

Alan Chan's rendition

27. Romance

I think I've done this song an injustice. At some point I decided there were a few songs in the John Thompson Third Grade book to which I was going to allocate minimal effort, and this one was on the list. For me, minimal effort translates to sight-reading through the piece, perhaps a couple times if interesting. Since this one proved a little difficult to sight read, I guess I concluded it wasn't interesting and abandoned it. Yet whenever I listen to a recording of it, I find it's an extremely well crafted and moving song. Furthermore, it's composed in minor mode, and since my knowledge of how that mode works is extremely limited, I ought to learn more songs written that way. This is why I decided I can't quite let this song go by without playing it through a few more times. The song is largely arpeggiated: note the opening bars and the group of four measures depicted below them. The frequent accidentals are telling of the unbeaten path the melody treads.

Pictured above right is an extremely high G, and an interesting shape the notes make in their progress to that point... lots of jumps followed by plateaux. Above left are a couple lilting phrases that flow very gradually down from the E flat to the A flat. The challenge is to keep that thumb down on D while performing the higher portion of the RH passage, but I'd already had some practice doing that in Boccherini's Minuet and The Skaters.

I'm hoping this section might help me analyse why I had trouble sight reading the text. I don't seem to have that kind of trouble when notes are written as quavers and semiquavers, etc. The beams connecting them must have a psychological effect, encouraging me to see them as a unit and therefore to read intervals more easily. I dunno, but I noticed that this was the case with Gavotte as well, since it contains a lot of disconnected notes. I compare my reading of those pieces to that of Pathétique, Watchman's Song, Tarantella, and Melody (Massenet). Those four gave me very little trouble presumably because they were full of quavers and their ilk. I guess I'll just have to motivate myself to see those connections even without the visual suggestion of the beams.

Alan Chan's rendition