Category: Symphony Class

OK, so the more I listen, the more I get confused. There are elements to music composition that are imperceptible to my plebeian, non-musician ear–emotion expressed through dynamics and tonal shifts alone, as well as voices of instrument solos are not enough to tell pieces apart. I am sure I am CAPABLE of developing my ear, but I am skeptical of the time frame. It is very similar to observing a classroom–it is one thing to focus on what Sammy or Lizzy are doing, and a whole another thing to know HOW much they progress, what their social situations are, and many other things that shape their PRESENT behavior. Their teacher sees a whole lot more than what I see in the timeframe I may have in the classroom, though I like to indulge in thought that maybe I can see something the teacher does not…

…or maybe I am feeling totally inadequate and being a sore loser because I keep mixing up Mendelssohn with Brahms.

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed professors, Members of the Committee, peers, brutes: let it be known–I am deaf! And not Beethoven-deaf–I am deaf in the most horrific way, like those who think Kanye West makes music.

Therefore, I read. A lot. So many cool things that are turning up!

I started a Prezi presentation to make sense of relationships, timelines, and whatever else I dig up as I move along this period.

https://prezi.com/p/q9myk1dwxu9l/romantic-period/

First of all, Schubert reminds me very much of Haydn–humble beginnings and incredible talent definitely find converge in their sound (obviously, I am judging only by what little I heard)–sturm und drang, but definitely evolving.

The neverending revolutions are shaping (and being shaped by) all kinds of thinking–not just politics and philosophy. Music, too. The uncertainty, and the latter rise of nationalist thought that came after the Holy Roman Empire ceased to be, and the multiple revolutions swept over Europe.

Transportation! Steam locomotion was still in infancy, which means pockets of intellectual development maintain their sphere of influence geographically. Leipzig School, then later Weimar School; this, of course, did not change that much from the last century, but Romanticism suddenly made so much more sense as man and nature lined up to be measured.  As technology continued to defy the limits of man and what was possible, I think the role and significance of nature had to be reexamined from many possible angles. …And as a side thought… just to think that Berlioz was able to take a “long” way home from Rome he hated so much–and probably gained so many more opportunities to reflect on his experiences and to compose… Good thing they did not drive at that time–he probably would have killed his fiancee Marie Moke and her mother the “hippopatame,” and never lived to reach the mastery he reached because of his romantic and family conflicts and relative freedom of a person who did not commit any crimes. I was thrilled to learn that his “Harold in Italy” was written in response to Paganini’s request, though Paganini decided there was not much for him to play in “Harold” after all…. Paganini came up so much as an influence in other composer’s lives, too.

The “Jewish” question, too–here in the States and in education there is so much that revolves around race, so it was good to be reminded that the ugly has many heads. Just to think that Mendelssohn had to negotiate his Jewish heritage as a musician and an authority figure in cultural life. Mahler, too… he was even closer in the timeline to the stench that eventually led to Holocaust… It made me so angry and brokenhearted to learn that my favorite “party” in the War of the Romantics–Wagner, Liszt, Cosima Wagner Liszt were tainted by antisemitism.

I don’t know if they were my favorite, but much like Wagner, I believe that any “purity” can be a dangerous thing (which is why his antisemitic inclination seems such a puzzle to me!)–I love that he experimented with music, and did not think of it as a stable form; I love it that he thought so much of literary and visual modes of expression to champion their evolution…

It is funny how both the absolutists and the arts of the future camps found their inspiration in Beethoven. I read Schumann initially named his First Symphony “Spring,” but in later editions changed his mind. Why? Pride? The budding paradigm shift that put Liszt and Wagner on one side of the chasm and Schumann and Mendelssohn on the other–in other words, politics?

The new art was considered “dangerous.” Why? There is more than one answer, of course, but dangerous? I find myself now in a similar epistemological paradigm shift as a researcher. Statistics, though a dominating method of analysis are being countered by competing forms, and “danger” of relativism is being echoed in many conversations. Poststructuralism is being accused of being a dangerous interruption in social scientific thought, and maybe I can understand why proponents of fundamentalism would think so, but I disagree all the same. We cannot stay rooted in tradition–roots eventually rot!

Nevertheless, I still enjoy Schubert and Schumann, and Brahms, and Mendelssohn’s works. They are difficult for me to tell apart at this moment, sure, but I find myself renewed after being immersed in the sound. So many times I actually dream many of the main themes at night, waking up to the dramatic timpani  and all kinds of oompa-oompas, or the folksy melodies of Bohemian and Austrian dances… I wonder if this is what being a musician feels like, and so I dream well into my mornings.

Oh Lord, where did the time go? I managed to meet publication deadline for the collaborative article AND just submitted my Qualifying Exams. Fingers crossed, in ten days I will know whether I can advance to doctoral candidacy. I am not worried–I know both articles are publishable, and now that I met both deadlines, I feel like a ton of bricks has been lifted off my shoulders.

Back to music I go! What a treat! I truly love this class–this was a brilliant idea. I am actually starting to think with facts I learned about music in the Enlightenment era–the whole quantitative-qualitative research methods war I am in the middle of right now actually began during the classic era. Empiricism vs. Rationalism. Individualism vs. present search for new ways of knowing in posthumanist thought. In short, I am finding that what I am learning in this class is starting to really inform my understanding of philosophies of inquiry.

I had been listening little by little, but frankly, I cannot yet pass the threshold of mere appreciation of sound, form, and the experience of this beautiful music to the realm of analysis.

It is getting so much more complex! Baroque and fewer instruments and formal structures of the classic period were great clues for telling Sammartini apart from Stamitz, or the Bachs from Beethoven. I think my ear has reached the boundary of the development–I simply have not heard enough and or long enough to tell apart Schubert’s music from Schumann’s. I just want to make a note of this here and now as this is a valid point in my learning journey this semester.

….on the other hand, this is the whole point of me trying to learn something new from a new discipline anyway. Is it not? I am panicking and preparing myself for not doing well on the test, but I will just take one step at a time for now–listen more and read, read, read.

Haydn is still my favorite. Followed by Beethoven, followed by Mozart.

I appreciate the complexity, experimentation, and the entire new sound I hear in Beethoven’s music–he took it to a whole new level with his unusual key resolutions and tempos, and use of melody for sure (Mozart is great, but I think his music is more about virtuosity than new ways of expression, and though I still enjoy it, it kind of blends in for me with Haydn and Beethoven, makes it more difficult to recognize).

I have been using practice files like flash cards, and had Eddie quiz me on them. I am nervous about being nervous during the test–I either get carried away when I answer open ended questions or panic and freeze.

How I love, love, LOVE Haydn. His music is so expressive, not just sturm und drung, oh no, it is STURM und DRUNG. I do not just feel it, I see it.

I never really enjoyed his music before… I heard his name plenty of times, of course, and I am sure I heard his compositions on many occasions. I just never linked the name to the music.

What makes him even more amazing is his story–the narrative of the self-made man. The gem-in-the-dirt discovered talent–hats off for his parents who recognized his gifts and made the decision to part with him to develop his talent! The Bachs were born into life of music, even J.C., though never had a chance to be properly cuddled by his father, had his trail blazed. Haydn did not. He literally sang his heart out for food when he was young… I am not sure how much I would be able to produce on a hungry belly, but he kept impressing all the right people, and moved up to become Europe’s leading composer by the end of the century. Yet, he remained a simple man, modest, easy going, loyal to his patron, Prince Nicolaus. His orchestra musicians loved him, as did his students and other composers he mentored; though used to living in the remote Esterháza, I am amazed at how easily London surrendered itself to Haydn.

An interesting historic detail from this era–the establishment of public music concerts (https://www.britannica.com/art/concert)

Woke up on the couch at 1am and tried to go back to sleep. …But in the silence of the night thoughts do not sleep. They buzz around, like bees. They almost make me dizzy, so I decide to follow one… I am a little anxious–with publication deadlines approaching in the next 6-8 weeks, my two papers are not even close to being done. No pressure! One doubles up as my qualifying exam. I cannot monkey it up… time. I need more time to compost everything I see, hear, read, think, do if I am to produce something of value, something not pedestrian or banal. Such compost needs time and variety of experiences to decompose that which is obvious and stands in the way of discoveries–of research.

Music class… I realize now I have been thinking of it as a project. A thought experiment. It is a graded class, of course, and I treat it as such–hence an extra layer of anxious thoughts–but it is so, so much more. It is the minor shift  that Manning talks about, the concept that troubled me so much that I reached out to Rob Kapilow a year ago in search of clarity… Ironic that I now return to music to disrupt my thinking. Is it ironic?

In my world–education–music is an abstraction. In the political landscape of (many) school curricula discourses, humanities were sacrificed for postpositivist approach to sciences a long time ago. Art programs are typically first to go when budget cuts threaten public education. Research, too, has been dominated by the postpositivist thought. Studies that rely on statistical analysis are a standard design. Data that can be counted and measured are preferred. Music… music is a hobby. And yet, contemporary connoisseurs of classical music are either trained musicians, or those who boast excellent education. The latter, the non-musicians, are also affluent. Ironic? I think so.

In my preferred niche of research–qualitative–arts based research music is also an abstraction. Music is thought of as language, a form of expression. In research conceptualized by humanist orientation, music can be a voice. I do not think most researchers have the experience and/or the expertise to conceptualize music as method; therefore, it is a giant abstraction–pregnant with potential, yes, for those who actively resist the hegemony of quantitative/postpositivist visions of knowledge, but also out of reach due to its complexity and consequent (?) removal from the philosophies in inquiry. To me, it is an opening to Aladdin’s treasure cave. At the moment, it is shrouded in patchy fog (or desert sand storm if I stick with previous analogy), but it is becoming more clear the more I engage… Last week’s introduction into early symphonic literature sent me down the cave’s chasm–I spend the weekend reading about the five featured composers–Monn, Sammartini, Stamitz, Bachs… the Bachs had most information, of course, and I started piecing together the portraits.

I would be an idiot to think of this type of inquiry in terms of validity or (God strike me dead!) objectivity–all these stabs at constructing reality are highly subjective. We imagine all these worlds, identities, which is why timeline is not even relevant for the most part! There is no way I can be sure that if I conduct an interview with a research question in mind, I will have access to “truthful,” somehow “authentic” data. Sure it will be a snapshot of a person’s thoughts situated in a specific material context, but to distill a “true meaning” from such an event and sell it as valid or objective is not just folly, but intellectual crime. We are imagined. Our interpretations of events are imagined, but also real because reality is not a single universal truth we can come to with our need for knowledge but a multiplicity, always becoming, always subjective, diffractive,  unpredictable, unstable…

My thoughts are like bees… I follow one, and somehow end up far away from where I started….

…so the exercise of thinking with classical music–early symphonic literature–proved fruitful. …Or interesting enough to keep me up at night. I thought of music as a commodity, much like research is a commodity in my world. Like research, music was produced, commissioned, guarded, paid for and sold. It was livelihood, a profession. But this commodity does not exist in a vacuum. There were interesting familial dynamics, of course, the politics. I thought of Christmases in the Bach household… back then, people did not do weekend getaways–the transportation was much slower…the pace of life was slower. If someone came to visit from out of town, they had to stay for weeks. That said, what were family holidays like? I can only imagine the table conversations…or recitals… composers clearly bred composers.

I still want to make the map of monarchs. I should–they would provide an excellent point of departure for analysis of power structures, a possible scaffolding in music production. I think I will next time I plunge into the chasm.

The older of the two Bach brothers under the spotlight, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, made living for a while as an accompanist to Frederick the Great who thought himself an accomplished flautist.  He had a degree in law which no doubt gave him weight and opened doors for career moves that some of his less fortunate peers could not have imagined. It seems that back then, affluence was not measured in money like it is now… an interesting thought in the context of contemporary neoliberal systems…

And the competition! Cut throat conditions, I imagine… How did innovation look at the time? What caused it? Stamitz, who died young, brought in the minuet and changed symphony from 3 to 4 movement structure. Also, what possessed him to incorporate the oboes and horns? Did he have friends who played these instruments and he wanted to help them? Or were they strictly colleagues? Was it a spark of genius induced by wine? These are not even questions–they are speculations, really, but they could be worth the pursuit if I am to “demystify”the newly Enlightened composer.

What of Kant’s philosophy? How did his idealism and transcendence shape early German symphony? Or was it the other way around? or did they meet each other somewhere half way through, during an evening at one of the most fashionable salons of the time? or even court? Another interesting breadcrumb trail leads to Kant’s (older) contemporary Hume who, a trained physician, worked to bring empiricism and skepticism to light–the very kind of empiricism that is squeezing the oxygen out of qualitative inquiry now. People died a lot back then and early… medicine was the human’s way to grieve and refuse to give in to tragedy. J.S. Bach’s family lived through a 6 or so year spell of loss–several children died right before J.C. and his sisters came into existence.  In what ways, then, did Hume shape the culture of the British Empire in which JC Bach found his new home? The music of the latter began with Italian styles which for a while were allegedly en vogue in Europe and London. Yet, Italian culture does not boast much philosophical thought at the time. Dare I suspect a Cartesian, so to speak, split between arts and sciences? Empiricism and humanities are parting ways in mid 18th century? Already? How does music reflect that? How do these ideas imprint on music? What moved innovation then and what moves innovation now?

 

It has been a wonderful week that produced some reflections (always a good sign) and even first revelations. I was not sure what to expect, and so far, what I took away from the class has exceeded my expectations. Granted, I was not entirely sure what I was hoping get–I pitched the idea for this class to my Committee and to Dr. Robison on pure speculation that there will be a connection to Arts Based Research–at least, in the way I conceptualized ABR at that time–at that, too is already changing.

Week 1 Major takeaways:

1. 1. There is more than one Bach!
      Eons ago, I used to know that “The” Bach had sons musicians, but the fact faded from my memory due to lack of context and relevance.
      I am piecing it together now: who is s/he, The Human of the Modernity? Can  artifacts of humanities spur (and inform) phenomenological inquiry? I should read up more on phenomenology… or maybe further evaluate phenomenology as a genre of contemporary social science research.
   2. If music was (obviously) a family business in that era, does it mean music was a commodity? That is something that was produced, bought, and sold? It occurred to me that so far in ABR context, I have been looking at music as an alternative to language in agreement with Derrida’s critique of linguistic structures. In other words, music is a form of communication, a way to express painful or elusive thoughts and memories, for example, by eliciting affect. This is what music has been to me–an expression. It tells stories. Instruments are voices. Movements are discourses. But…
      what if I do look at classical music from the social systems lens? Can this angle produce something new and useful for my present obsession with General Systems Theory?
   3. A happy thought: I can hang in this class! Although my ear is far from trained. I rely on Dr. Robison’s podcasts and walk-throughs to make note of the nuances that separate one piece from the other (or one school from the other, for that matter), but I am pleased that I do not struggle to understand most of the language he uses to analyze excerpts (i.e. “dynamics” crescendos, diminuendos,  fermata, syncopation, key changes, and so forth). More importantly, these terms opened the floodgate for my happy memories of when I attended music school in preadolescence. This is my special, personal tie to music that cannot be fairly expressed through language–the experience of MAKING music, and, even more important, making music together with others, making that special connection…

      I had to look up the basic structure of symphony and brush up on forms–minuet, sonata, etc. but this is great–an easily digestible analytic material.

   4. The extractions, the bullet points are helpful–a fellow student commented that Italian music is about beauty and elegance. By contrast, the German music of the time is about thought. Dr. Robison pointed out how it privileged complexity and refinement. I should definitely look up Italian and German philosophers of the time–historically, schools of thought draw from many contexts. Paradigm shifts marked by hyper-productivity in the arts always seem to be geographically and politically situated.  I am thinking Moguchaya Kuchka that ,
   5. There relationship between the philosophies of Enlightenment–the domain of humanities, and philosophies of inquiry–the domain of social science research  is gaining visibility for me. I can definitely see how just about any work in this class will be a fertile ground for my thinking. I am not entirely sure in what way.