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Another Bach Bourrée


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OK having done that and thought a bit more. It isn't in Cminor, is it? It's in C dorian, which uses the Bb scale, so 2 flats. Does that mean everyone who thought they were in C minor has been playing it badly?

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But I don't see how a player can phrase meaningfully (or even "correctly"!) if he misinterprets where the phrases are heading. How are you going to place your rits and ralls in the right place and shape the dynamics sensibly if you don't realize when you're about to hit the tonic? Of course the problem is unlikely to occur if there's a chordal accompaniment (or even a drone), but it can in this kind of monophonic music.

I would doubt the above, because of the interesting interview with Glen Gould that I listened to recently. Glen surprized me, when he said that he changed the piece of music to different count. To him it sounded better, and he also changed where the accents fall.

So the key signature didn't seem to hold much importance to him. Often he disagrees with composer's phrazings. It's not up to tonic/subdominant/dominant, it's up to what you want to deliver. I mean, in a ball park.

 

The only point of a key signature is to reduce the amount of notation needed, but unless the music stays in the particular key most of the time it can be a hindrance rather than a help, especially in many of the jazz tunes I play, which are constantly changing the "key of the moment".

 

Well then, do you study the music beforehand to see what key it's changing to, to place correct accents, or just listen to it and go from there?

I'm not into music theory much (no time), and kind of resisted internally when my bayan teacher tried to explain the pieces I was playing. It only clattered my brain. Probably was too much too soon.

 

I think you might be misinterpreting what Gould was saying. He was still hearing standard harmonic progressions, but was breaking up the bars to a different subdivision. For example, a piece might be written in 4/4, but instead of hearing the count in two groups of 2 half notes or 4 counts of 1 quarter note, he might have heard things in an asymmetric meter - for example, 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 in eighth notes. The rhythm still adds to four, but the accents are changed around. I would be very surprised if by those words, he meant that he heard the tonic as the subdominant, which is essentially what would happen if you conceived of a piece in C minor as being in G minor. Gould's interpretations were different, but not THAT different.

 

If one have no conception of what a key signature means, then yes - you'd just play the music by ear and it will probably sound passable, anyway. If one thinks that a piece in C minor is actually in G minor, then in theory one might mistake half cadences (which end on the dominant V chord) as authentic cadences (which end on the one chord). This seems unlikely to me though, since it would involve mistaking the tonic C as the subdominant in G, which would be very unnatural, and against what our ears tell us. So I would guess that it wouldn't actually make much of a difference to interpret the key signature incorrectly, unless you were slavishly basing your performance on an interpretation that your ears would tell you was incorrect.

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I think you might be misinterpreting what Gould was saying. He was still hearing standard harmonic progressions, but was breaking up the bars to a different subdivision. For example, a piece might be written in 4/4, but instead of hearing the count in two groups of 2 half notes or 4 counts of 1 quarter note, he might have heard things in an asymmetric meter - for example, 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 in eighth notes.

Yes. Exactly this. He was breaking bars differently, resulting in different accents.

Thanks.

 

So I would guess that it wouldn't actually make much of a difference to interpret the key signature incorrectly, unless you were slavishly basing your performance on an interpretation that your ears would tell you was incorrect.

 

Makes sense to me. Now I see why some people insist on correct reading. Perhaps they don't have the sense of hearing that others do, and reading correctly is the mean of playing reasonably. Or perhaps at some high level and complexity of music the dynamic picture is so complex, one needs all aid one can get, and seing the structure is essential.

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Can anybody provide some example of wrong music resulting from incorrect reading of the key?

I already did. See my story, above.

 

What is "round"?

A round is a simple vocal canon at the unison. A song in (usually) 3 or 4 parts of equal length that work together contrapuntally. One voice starts, another voice starts at the beginning when the first voice has reached the 2nd part, etc. The most familiar round (to Americans, anyway) is "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." Another, perhaps more internationally known, is "Frere Jacques." I even know a Russian version ("Ya Nye Znayoo...") but I don't know if it is actually sung in Russia that way.

 

In this case, by the way, my story ends before we actually started singing it as a round. We were singing it in unison to familiarize ourselves with it first.

 

Why even bother with the key signature, when it is possible to just write the #/b where needed? It will sure clutter the script, so the key signature is simply a convinience tool, not having any theoretical or practical significance.

And why can't we just all learn to read MIDI notation, which is completely unambiguous. Because we don't want to play like computers. We want to play like human beings.

 

OK having done that and thought a bit more. It isn't in Cminor, is it? It's in C dorian, which uses the Bb scale, so 2 flats. Does that mean everyone who thought they were in C minor has been playing it badly?

I would argue that it is in C minor, in every sense that the word meant 300 years ago. I doubt Bach ever heard the word "Dorian." Its meaning from hundreds of years before Bach's time has been resurrected in the 20th century and applied to the mode a lot of Irish tunes fall into. But Bach wasn't writing in the Dorian mode. He was writing it in C minor and notating it in a way that was mathematically indistinguishable from what we now call the Dorian mode.

 

Makes sense to me. Now I see why some people insist on correct reading. Perhaps they don't have the sense of hearing that others do, and reading correctly is the mean of playing reasonably. Or perhaps at some high level and complexity of music the dynamic picture is so complex, one needs all aid one can get, and seing the structure is essential.

Or put the shoe on the other foot: Maybe all this music theory stuff is passing you by and making it impossible for you to hear what is missing in your playing. I find knowing what key I am playing in to be an indispensable part of crafting a performance. I would feel naked trying to put one over on an audience if I didn't know what key I was in. Even if nobody noticed (like the fabled Emperor), I would feel like I was getting credit for something I didn't deserve.

 

Learn some music theory. It is immensely satisfying and will show you how much more there can be to performance than just playing the notes that are written.

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Can anybody provide some example of wrong music resulting from incorrect reading of the key?

I already did. See my story, above.

I meant to have something to listen to. If there are some recorded examples of incorrect playing due to mistaking the key.

I'm struggling with some pieces I learn, there seem to be misterious unwillingness of the music to come together and make sense. In addition I am not totally enamoured with how my concertina handles dynamics, so there I go.

I'd love to learn theory! There's no time.

The comforting thought is existence of many professionals, who do understand the Music, but whose playing is only so-so. It's correct and stuff, but not exciting 'to me".

The idea is to understand why their playing is boring (for me) and learn from their mistakes.

Since they know the theory, it must not be it then. Perhaps they are too ordinary, or tired, or play because they have to... Many things.

Like that Chopin's Prelude in Cmin. Most pianists play it "correctly" and it's very bland.

I don't feel the times, the Revolution, the loneliness, the illness, agony. To me it's a Requiem and a mourning song. Misery and despair. Chopin was ill, denied entrance to Poland, his family was trapped in Poland and Revolt was brutally put down.

The way it's slavishly played lacks all of the above. To someone, who can depict the thunderous emotions of the time, I will forgive incorrect accent here and there.

And I myself would like to learn to play it like that. Not smoothly, not sleek - would be nice, but no time to polish.

P.S.

Thanks for explanation of the rounds. Yes, there is lots of round singing in Russian, but I can't make up the song you menioned. Other words perhaps?

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Can anybody provide some example of wrong music resulting from incorrect reading of the key?

I already did. See my story, above.

 

I didn't think a scribbled note handed you by a musical illiterate that you couldn't immediately decipher proves much measured against an editted piece that simply has a flat added instead of in the key signature. I don't believe you are that clueless a musician.

 

Like that Chopin's Prelude in Cmin. Most pianists play it "correctly" and it's very bland.

I don't feel the times, the Revolution, the loneliness, the illness, agony. To me it's a Requiem and a mourning song. Misery and despair. Chopin was ill, denied entrance to Poland, his family was trapped in Poland and Revolt was brutally put down.

The way it's slavishly played lacks all of the above. To someone, who can depict the thunderous emotions of the time, I will forgive incorrect accent here and there.

And I myself would like to learn to play it like that. Not smoothly, not sleek - would be nice, but no time to polish.

 

So are you saying you don't need the correct musical info, just how the piece relates to the composer's circumstances at the time of writing?

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Why even bother with the key signature, when it is possible to just write the #/b where needed? It will sure clutter the script, so the key signature is simply a convinience tool, not having any theoretical or practical significance.

And why can't we just all learn to read MIDI notation, which is completely unambiguous. Because we don't want to play like computers. We want to play like human beings.

 

I do understand what he's saying, though. One of the habits we have to break first year theory students out of is over-reliance on the key signatures, for exactly the reasons that have come to light with this example (as well as modulations, etc.) The most important thing is for a musician to hear the function behind the key signature. Leading tones, dominant-tonic relationships, and so forth.

 

Plus, in 20th and 21st century classical music, tonal functionality breaks down to the point that a key signature is meaningless, and I would venture to say that now days most composers don't use them at all. I do think they are a shorthand. A very handy, easy shorthand, but they don't have a lot of theoretical weight by themselves.

 

That being said, I agree that we need to know our key signatures, what they represent, etc. It's just part of being a musician

 

 

OK having done that and thought a bit more. It isn't in Cminor, is it? It's in C dorian, which uses the Bb scale, so 2 flats. Does that mean everyone who thought they were in C minor has been playing it badly?

I would argue that it is in C minor, in every sense that the word meant 300 years ago. I doubt Bach ever heard the word "Dorian." Its meaning from hundreds of years before Bach's time has been resurrected in the 20th century and applied to the mode a lot of Irish tunes fall into. But Bach wasn't writing in the Dorian mode. He was writing it in C minor and notating it in a way that was mathematically indistinguishable from what we now call the Dorian mode.

 

The church modes were well codified by Bach's time, and these included Dorian and the other Greeky-named modes (actually a misinterpretation by early music theorists at recreating the original Greek modes written about by Boethius). So I'm sure he would have been aware of them. I'm a bit unclear as to the exact way that modality (a term that's really kind of troublesome) changed to tonality, except that it was kind of gradual, and finally codified in a treatise by Rameau in the early 18th century. Alan Atlas would be the one to go to for more specifics, I'm sure.

 

And naturally, I agree with you that theoretical knowledge will only serve to enrich performance and listening, but then, I'm a bit biased. :P

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Like that Chopin's Prelude in Cmin. Most pianists play it "correctly" and it's very bland.

I don't feel the times, the Revolution, the loneliness, the illness, agony. To me it's a Requiem and a mourning song. Misery and despair. Chopin was ill, denied entrance to Poland, his family was trapped in Poland and Revolt was brutally put down.

The way it's slavishly played lacks all of the above. To someone, who can depict the thunderous emotions of the time, I will forgive incorrect accent here and there.

And I myself would like to learn to play it like that. Not smoothly, not sleek - would be nice, but no time to polish.

 

So are you saying you don't need the correct musical info, just how the piece relates to the composer's circumstances at the time of writing?

 

Who would've thought that Michael would be a representative of the New Musicology? :lol: I had a professor this past term who argued exactly that.

 

Personally, I think you need a balance. The composer's background and where he was coming from is important, but you can't be too reliant on it. And regardless, you can't say that all of Chopin's music is an expression of the circumstances that Michael mentioned. Maybe it was composed in a happy leisure moment with George Sand (his fiancée), and the troubles at home were forgotten. Maybe it was composed for a specific deadline. More research would be needed regarding the exact time it was composed , anyway, if you were going to base your performance off that.

 

At any rate, I think that music can take on contemporary meaning as well, and as long as you have a musical interpretation and reasoning for how you phrase and interpret, it's good by me, whether you do what the composer originally intended or not.

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So are you saying you don't need the correct musical info, just how the piece relates to the composer's circumstances at the time of writing?

 

Mm..., what is correct musical info? There is no way to know how Chopin played it himself, only how scholars interpret his writings today. My bayan teacher taught me to play it a certain way. Many CD recordings, mp3 files, Youtube clips gave me a glimpse of what my teacher meant. I disagree with even meter of the piece, disagree with the interpretation of solemn sadness. I see a thin man on his bed in a dark room, lost and disoriented. All is futile, but life is still there. So he brings himself up, to finish that piece, to stand up and walk out, but then sits down again, then lays down and turns towards the wall. That's the end of the piece. Other than that I'm not very interested in it, esp. when they play it separating the chords.

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Who would've thought that Michael would be a representative of the New Musicology? :lol: I had a professor this past term who argued exactly that.

 

Ha! At least I'm happy to know I'm not alone.

 

Maybe it was composed in a happy leisure moment with George Sand (his fiancée), and the troubles at home were forgotten.

 

It was bumpy enough to have troubles forgotten. But I just hear the calamity in that Prelude, what can I do? I think it makes very good piece for the accordion, rather than for piano.

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Why even bother with the key signature, when it is possible to just write the #/b where needed? It will sure clutter the script, so the key signature is simply a convinience tool, not having any theoretical or practical significance.

And why can't we just all learn to read MIDI notation, which is completely unambiguous. Because we don't want to play like computers. We want to play like human beings.

 

I do understand what he's saying, though. One of the habits we have to break first year theory students out of is over-reliance on the key signatures, for exactly the reasons that have come to light with this example (as well as modulations, etc.) The most important thing is for a musician to hear the function behind the key signature. Leading tones, dominant-tonic relationships, and so forth.

 

 

Fascinating examples here of "little learning being a dangerous thing"!

 

As a lingist, I see the confusion arising from a somewhat loose usage of the term "key signature". The arrangement of sharps or flats at the beginning of a score does help you to identify the key, but does not do so unambiguously. Even in "nomal" classical music, two sharps doesn't mean G major. It means G major OR E minor. My mother (a trained pianist who - significantly - could also accompany familiar tunes by ear) told be to look at the key signature and then at the last note in the bass line. Signature '##' + last bass note G = G major; signature '##' + last bass note E = E minor. And when you get into traditional Irish songs, with their (nowadays so-called) Dorian and Mixolydian modes, things get even more complex.

 

What the so-called "key signature" does define unambiguously is the scale the piece uses. With no sharps or flats, the notes A, B, C, D, E, F and G are all we need; with two sharps, we'll need only A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G. If we need any more - like when we modulate to a related key - we write them as accidentals.

So it would be better to call it a "scale signature".

 

There are practical reasons for putting this up front, especially for players of diatonic instruments, like Celtic harps, keyless flutes or 20-button anglos. It tells the harpist which strings to sharp, and it tells the 20k angloist whether he can manage the piece in this key or not. If there's a C# or a Bb, he has to pass.

But on chromatic instruments, like English and duet concertinas, it tells the player at what points he must take one of the outer buttons, which I'm sure is more comfortable than having no key signature and sharping or flatting the notes when they appear. A signature up front gives more structure.

 

For computers and purely mechanical musicians, this may suffice. But by-ear players and singers need a tonality to hold on to. It makes a helluva difference to them whether the two sharps mean G major or E minor.

 

There are two ways of distinguishing modes. One way is to take the major scale, and specify which of the notes are flatted. Flat the 7th, and its Mixolydian; Flat the 3rd and the 7th, and it's Dorian. This is how I as a singer do it.

Or you can take the major scale and change the tonality, i.e. "home in" your tune on a note other than the "doh" of the major scale. Take the 2nd step of the major scale as your tonic, and you're in Dorian; take the 4th step, and you're in Mixolydian. This is how I think of it when playing tin whistle or Anglo.

 

In short, the scale with one sharp is sufficient to play tunes in G major, A Dorian, D Mixolydian, E minor (or Aeolian) and a couple of other rarely used modes. Each mode, including the classical major and minor, has a completely different feel to it, even from a melodic pooint of view. When harmonisation is added, the feel gets even more different, because the chord sequences are leading to different destinations, and the available intervals are different.

For instance, with one sharp, you can't build an A major triad - so the mode beginning on A has to have a minor triad as its tonic chord. So Dorian is a "minor mode", though distinct from the classical minor scale.

 

Ironically, the naive, illiterate musician has little trouble with these modalities. If he's grown up with them, he handles them quite naturally, and if he hasn't grown up with them - well, they don't impinge on him.

The people who do have problems with modality are those who are not "native" to it, but have tried to approach it via sheet music. Sight reading is usually taught in the context of mainstream European classical music, so its application to ethnic or ancient musics is not dealt with.

Having learned the use of the alphabet in English, you're not going to be able to read French or German such that a Frenchman or German will understand you (and not laugh), although these languages use the same alphabet. Same with music - many musics use staff notation, but meaningful interpretation of the notation requires knowledge of the "vocabulary" and "grammar" (i.e. theory) of the music involved.

 

One thing I've noticed when teaching English and German as foreign languages to adults: people who have a good grasp of the grammar of their mother tongue can learn the structure of the foreign language much more easily than those who have not. The ideal pupils (of either language) are the ones who did Latin at school, and are "theoretically overqualified".

 

Make your musical life easier - don't just learn to "read misic", get a good grounding in musical theory!

 

Cheers,

John

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The arrangement of sharps or flats at the beginning of a score does help you to identify the key, but does not do so unambiguously. Even in "nomal" classical music, two sharps doesn't mean G major. It means G major OR E minor.

Or both! Take How Deep Is The Ocean, for instance, which starts out resolutely in C minor (with a cadence to confirm) but ends equally resolutely in Eb major.

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I'm struggling with some pieces I learn, there seem to be misterious unwillingness of the music to come together and make sense.

[...]

I'd love to learn theory! There's no time.

I know what you mean about 'no time', but you would probably find that time spent learning at least the basic theory would pay back many times over by reducing the time spent 'struggling' ;-}

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Thanks for explanation of the rounds. Yes, there is lots of round singing in Russian, but I can't make up the song you menioned. Other words perhaps?

The tune is "Frere Jacques." The words are silly Russian words (not a translation of "Frere Jacques"). I don't know how Russian words are correctly spelled in the English alphabet, and I don't know how to type Cyrillic characters, so this is the best I can do. It only uses three words/phrases and they are:

 

Ya Nye Znayoo (I don't know)

Nychevo (Nothing)

Xorosho (Great, groovy)

 

I'm sure you've recognized all these words, now.

 

The round goes:

 

Ya nye znayoo, ya nye znayoo.

Nychevo. Nychevo.

Nychevo nye znayoo. Nychevo nye znayoo.

Xorosho. Xorosho.

 

Even in "nomal" classical music, two sharps doesn't mean G major. It means G major OR E minor.

One sharp. Two sharps is Dmaj/Bmin.

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Thanks.

I recognized the words, but they don't comprise any meaning.

I just read the annotation for the first of Bach's Inventions and am very impressed by the lack of musical knowlege I posess. It was written for young piano students, but the phrses constructed in such a way, that I literally feel like hacking my way through the jungle.

Sometimes, when I understand the meaning, it is simple, like "the # before C in second half of third measure is ...bla bla bla.... necessary, because the practice ...bla bla bla... shows the students invariably forget about the preceeding # in the first half measure, so it is adviceable to ...bla bla (meaning "to put it down") before third 8th note of second half measure of third measure in the first ...bla bla bla..., ending in double bar....."

More or less!

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Sometimes, when I understand the meaning, it is simple, like "the # before C in second half of third measure is ...bla bla bla.... necessary, because the practice ...bla bla bla... shows the students invariably forget about the preceeding # in the first half measure, so it is adviceable to ...bla bla (meaning "to put it down") before third 8th note of second half measure of third measure in the first ...bla bla bla..., ending in double bar....."

More or less!

 

Sometimes a bit of tautology can help to make things more readily comprehensible. Same with music as with words. "He divided his collection of concertinas equally between his sons" is an unabiguous statement. But "He divided his collection of concertinas equally between his two sons", though tautologous, is usually understood more quickly and with more certainty. (For non-English speakers: "Between", strictly speaking, implies two. If the concertina collector had three or more sons, we would say "among". But unless the reader is aware that the writer is something of a pedant, there is some uneasiness in his interpretation if the number of sons is omitted.)

 

This example is roughly parallel to the convention on the notation of accidentals, by which an accidental applies for the rest of the bar, and only for the rest of the bar. But not everyone knows this, and not everyone who knows this can be sure that the writer of the score knows it, and when you're writing a score, you don't know how sure the reader is that you know and apply the convention. So you sharp or flat the same accidental twice in one bar, and put a natural sign on it in the next bar, even if it conforms to the key signature.

 

That's not music, that's the psychology of communication.

 

Cheers,

John

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Even in "nomal" classical music, two sharps doesn't mean G major. It means G major OR E minor.

One sharp. Two sharps is Dmaj/Bmin.

 

Correct!

 

I wanted to simplify my original example, and missed the "two" before "sharps"! :(

 

Cheers,

John

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Well, this topic seems to have generated quite a lot of interest and replies from some very knowledge folks, for which I thank you all. Now, has anyone (Mischa?, Danny?, Anglo-Irishman?) attempted to play the bourrée? Well, there are two of them linked and the first one is repeated at the end, it seems. I have made a stab at playing the first one, my first proper attempt at playing a piece of classical music and I am making good progress but not yet ready for a public performance! And David B., if there are any corrections needed to the second bourrée, and you know what they are in ABC format, can you possibly send me the appropriate ABC coding and I will make the necessary amendments to the file in the tune-o-tron. Thanks.

 

Chris

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