The Answer is Joy

Beethoven is the ultimate progressive, believing that the world exists for us to improve. While his own circumstances were miserable – loveless, pain-stricken and frustratingly deaf – he retained to the last a shining faith in peace and understanding.
Norman Lebrecht

At the end of his Missa Solemnis, Beethoven asks great and terrible questions. Why are we here? What is the point of existence? How can we achieve peace, both for ourselves, our society and our planet? These questions have vexed the greatest philosophers in history and Beethoven could be excused for simply ducking out the back door and leaving us all with the questions raised by that faux-unresolved chord at the very end of his great mass.

But that really wasn’t Beethoven’s style. Even as he was polishing up his great mass, Beethoven was already hard at work on something he hadn’t done in more than a decade–composing a symphony. In his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven resolved to leave no doubt as to his purpose; for the first time, Beethoven would speak directly to his audience in a language other than tones. And in this symphony, Beethoven would conclusively answer these great questions.

The Ninth Symphony is a work on a massive scale, laying down a marker so daunting that composers for the next 100 years spent the better parts of their lives wrestling with it. Indeed, it was the Ninth Symphony that gave rise to the formal discipline of musicology. While composers frequently studied the scores of their predecessors and contemporaries, the formal academic study of music was unknown in the West. Whether it was its message—a sonic wrecking ball of humanist ideals, advocating for social change, hope for the masses and prefiguring the political reforms to come over the century—or the chaotic music tied to a central coherence that seemingly slips through your fingers every time you think you’ve found it, academics across multiple disciplines have never tired of examining this remarkable work.

How to even begin taking about, in such and abridged fashion, this iconic symphony? Even the great composer, Hector Berlioz, considered that offering an opinion or analysis of it was a fool’s errand. Well, fortunately, I am exactly that sort of fool.

The Ninth Symphony was written on a grand scale, for an orchestra far larger than any that had come before it. Of course, Beethoven was completely deaf by this point–so it is worth stating that Beethoven was imagining a sound in his head that he was unable to test in practice, unlike any other composer in history. And it’s not like Beethoven had dumbed down his music–if anything, the Ninth finds Beethoven at his most revolutionary. Timpani solos? Yes, please. A full chorus? Absolutely. Complex fugues? Of course. A symphony composed on a vast scale, not equaled until the operas of Richard Wagner and the symphonies of Gustav Mahler? Naturally.

But that vast scope isn’t immediately apparent. In contrast to so many of his great symphonic works, the Ninth doesn’t open with a statement of intent. Instead, we are presented with music best described as “orchestrated silence.” Barely perceptible, the first theme begins to emerge from this primordial ooze–strings playing open fifths, As and Es, for 17 measures. This is music at its most basic–it is as if Beethoven is reaching back to the dawn of Western music, before the invention of the triad, to build his harmony. Some have compared this to the orchestra tuning up, since violins tune first on an A and E, but Beethoven has a deeper purpose here. Removing the third from the chord, allows Beethoven’s symphony to opens ambiguously, since a fifth is neither major nor minor. This is an idea that Beethoven will repeatedly return to: Ambiguity is part of the key to unlocking this score.

Beethoven builds his music gradually, through dynamics and rhythm primarily, and harmonics secondarily (by adding descending fourths to the score). We get the sense that Beethoven is building the music to something big, and the rhythm suggests both anticipation and nervousness in equal measure. Slowly, Beethoven brings in more instruments, almost imperceptibly–and when the horns and timpani announce themselves, we get the first theme, in glorious and terrible D Minor, the key of despair. Beethoven has added the third to his fifths, completing the chord and resolving the ambiguity. but theme is jagged and decidedly unmelodic. Rather, it is a command: Beethoven has orchestrated the moment of creation.

And then the music repeats, but the fifth is now a D and an A, giving us the sense that we are moving to something different. The second theme (in heroic B Flat Major, a third below D Minor) is sweet and stands in sharp contrast to the angry first theme. Beethoven begins to develop the second theme in a series of variations on the original motif (which includes a remarkable synthesis of the second theme’s harmony with the first theme’s rhythm).

The music is becoming more complex–and a more realized soundscape emerges. D Minor reemerges and struggles with the new key for supremacy. At times, it appears that Beethoven is developing both themes, albeit in fragments (even presenting part of the first theme in the key of the second!). And just as B Flat Major appears to have conclusively won the day, the primordial music returns and we enter the development section another third lower, in G Minor. Angsty and rage-driven music takes over, drowning out the sweetness. Repetitive, almost obsessive, Beethoven’s angst appears to recede, but it is a false dawn–the recapitulation comes, shocking and without warning (and with a barely perceptible key change to D Major, the key of triumph, breaking the rules about the restatement of the theme).

This key change to D Major is one of the more incredible moments in a work filled with them. Again, we are dealing with intentional ambiguity and this barely perceptible key change is important both for the resolution of this movement and the overall theme of the symphony. First, why is the key change so hard to hear? Because Beethoven puts the third that defines the key, F Sharp, in the lowest register (bassoons and basses), making it both difficult to hear and highly unstable. The struggle between minor (mostly D) and major (mostly D and B Flat) is an idea that Beethoven will repeatedly return to over the course of the symphony. And by shifting here, from minor to the parallel major, Beethoven hints at the meaning: The Answer he promised will be one of hope. But, at least for the moment, this hopefulness is lost amidst music filled with despair and defiance. Opinions differ on whether this opening chord of the recapitulation is terrifying or triumphant. To me, it is neither. I hear Beethoven’s defiant hope, despite everything. Defiant hope amidst a world filled with misery and despair would not be stable, it would be tenuous at best. And that’s exactly what Beethoven gives us. The instability of D Major is soon apparent as the mood darkens with a return to D Minor. At the close, a funeral march emerges, and Beethoven’s foul mood consumes all in its path, building to the final, inescapable, and inevitable resolution. But what is it? The final chord is an unharmonized D–our ears are tuned to D Minor, so that’s what I inevitably here. But it also could be D Major. This ambiguity is the Question, restated.

By the time we get to the end of the movement, it feels as if we have heard an entire symphony. Beethoven has said so much–this would be impossible to top, right? And yet, Beethoven does so, flipping the script and deferring the traditional slow second movement. With a motif that nearly as recognizable as the four-note motif that opens his Fifth Symphony, Beethoven unleashes a scherzo of incredible power. This movement is about Earthly Pleasure. Typically placed as the third movement, the scherzo evolved out of the minuet, so is supposed to be at least notionally a dance. But this is no light dance–the frenetic energy and angst of the first movement gets even more intense here, no more so than in the famous four attacks that open the movement. This motif is a black comment on the serene opening of the first movement. There, the descending tones were peaceful and undisturbed; here, they are jagged and threatening. The opening motif evolves into the first theme, which is really an echo of sorts of the principal theme of the first movement. But there is no doubt that we are firmly in D Minor this time around, as the timpani, given a solo of sorts, is tuned to F. Beethoven thus links these two movements together, harmonically, and rhythmically. The theme evolves into a fugue, which leads to the first climax, a wild and uncontrolled dance that reminds me of a 90s era mosh pit. And by the time you can get a handle on what is going on, Beethoven flips the script, moving to C Major and unleashing another frantic dance. Following a transition, the fugue repeats, allowing Beethoven to show off. The theme had been originally presented in four beats, now it returns in a rhythm of three beats. Then the fugue returns to four beats, but becomes more complex, overlapping every two bars. This is superior stuff, a master at play. The main theme returns, more terrible than before, leading to wild celebration alternating between D Major and D Minor.

The trio, the second half of a scherzo movement–opens with a simple country dance. This theme recalls the B Flat Major theme of the first movement, while prefiguring the pastoral idyl of the next movement. And just as we’ve settled into this pure and simple music, as the scherzo returns with a fury. The movement ends with a joke (scherzo of course means joke in Italian)–just as it appears that Beethoven is about repeat the trio, he pulls the rug out and the entire movement comes to a crashing stop. Again, the movement ends with unharmonized Ds. But this time around, Beethoven has tuned our ears to D Major–something hopeful this way comes?

Hope comes in the form of a “sublimely beautiful” adagio. I will confess that, beautiful though it may be, my finger more often than not starts slipping to the skip track button here. This movement just slows everything down just as I’m ready for it to take off. But if I’ve learned anything over the last several weeks diving into Beethoven’s music it is this: He knows best. So what is Beethoven getting at? Why this languid slow movement?

Let’s recap what brought us to this point. In the first movement, Beethoven presents a epic struggle with the fundamental questions of existence. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life (the universe–everything!)? You can hear Beethoven raging against his faith, against divine Providence, against fate in this monumental movement. The second, while more playful, retains that sense of a man shaking his fist at the universe. And by the time we’ve reached the abrubt ending to the second movement, we’re about half an hour in. Simply put, Beethoven is exhausted. The orchestra is exhausted. The audience is exhausted. We are all emotionally drained.

Here in the third movement, Beethoven stops shaking his fist at the world. He’s poured out his emotions to us for 30 minutes and now, at long last, music’s great angry man appears to have accepted his fate. This–Beethoven’s great chorale–is nothing less than acceptance of the world by a man who is close to the end of his life. He’s done fighting. The choice of a chorale (a harmonized hymn) is surprising–this is the first time that Beethoven has used this form in one of his symphonies. Perhaps Beethoven is recalling the Lutheran tradition here, or perhaps he’s simply making fun of the chorus, which has been on stage for over half an hour without anything to do while calling our attention to the dozens of singers sitting on stage.

Structurally, the third movement is composed as a double theme and variation. The first theme (B Flat Major) seems to waft along at its own pace, disappearing into nothingness. This recalls the second more peaceful theme of the first movement, again tying the symphony together harmonically. A second theme (D Major–the other primary hopeful key in the symphony) emerges at a faster tempo, leading to the first variation on Theme A, the first variation on Theme B (in G Major), before arriving at the second variation of Theme A in the significant key of E Flat Major. And this is where Beethoven starts to go off on his own, ignoring the bounds of theme and variation. Beethoven elongates the A Theme and the choice of key darkens the mood. The pizzicato from the second variation of the B Theme reoccurs, questioning whether the two themes have merged. The music becomes nearly black and the despair of the first movement threatens to return, but the A Theme returns (perhaps with traces of Theme B) in a joyful, floating dance. A loud intervention–a fanfare of brass–is heard but ignored as the A Theme dance returns. But the brass will not be denied. The fanfare returns, even more insistent than before. And yet, the A Theme returns, leaving that dramatic chord hanging in the air, unresolved.

And, just as the A Theme threatens to take the music away into the ether, Beethoven brings us crashing back down to earth with terrifying intensity. The fourth movement, the most famous movement in all of symphonic music, has started. Wagner called this the Schreckensfanfare–the “horror fanfare”. It is, without question, supremely dissonant and shocking. How does Beethoven produce this effect–and why? Unpacking the music reveals that it is a chord that combines the two primary keys of the first movement–D Minor and B-Flat Major. This is conflict on a massive scale.

The low strings emerge, seemingly insistent on saying something. The orchestra recalls the opening of the first movement, but the low strings interrupt the theme, rejecting it. In doing so, Beethoven rejects his despair–that is not the Answer. The orchestra then offers up the fugue from the second movement, but the low strings reject that theme also. Earthly Pleasure isn’t the Answer either. Then Theme A from the third movement reappears but is also rejected. This is just too tender and languid–our souls need lifting. We are looking for something else. The orchestra suggests a new simple, yet easily recognizeable melody in D Major. And this new melody is accepted by the low strings. We have found the Answer.

A few words about this theme. First, as I noted several weeks ago, Beethoven borrowed this idea from Mozart–listen starting about 0:55 in the below.

Beethoven loved this theme. He used it first in an early song called Gegenliebe–listen to the below starting at 2:55:

And, again, in his Choral Fantasy–skip to 5:20 in the below:

Beethoven builds his great theme slowly. First come the basses. Then the other strings, the woodwinds, and, finally brass and timpani. The music revolves around the interval of a fifth–recalling the open fifths that open the symphony (it was D Major, after all). And careful inspection of the score reveals numerous instances where Beethoven has been prefiguring this theme in fragments, unknown to us. Those idyllic passages from the first three movements (the B Flat Major theme in the first movement, the opening theme of the trio in the second movement, Theme A of the third movement)? They are all related and all lead up to this moment when Beethoven pulls back the curtain. Beethoven has been training our ears to accept this theme too as the natural culmination of the symphony–it is as if Beethoven wants us to recognize that we all knew the Answer all along.

But just as glory appears to break out, the Schreckensfanfare returns and the music seems to be headed back into the muck. After a pause (pauses are so important in Beethoven!), a lone bass-baritone rises from the chorus and puts a stop to the gloom and despair:

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!

These are Beethoven’s words:

O friends, not these tones!

Let us intone more pleasant ones.

More filled with joy.

And thus begins the Ode to Joy. There is so much to say about the remarkable fourth movement, but some things should be experienced first and analyzed second. Here, Beethoven resolves the conflict between his three principle keys in favor of the key of triumph, D Major. He unites the entire symphony, harmonically, rhythmically, and, for the first time, melodically. He calls upon the most secular of music (the Turkish march) and the most sacred (a hymn based on Palestrina). Into this musical vortex, all ideas are being consumed. There are no more questions. Only the Answer.

At the conclusion of the symphony, the orchestra races out in front (Beethoven notes “as fast as possible”), leaving the chorus behind. It is as if Beethoven is racing out ahead, leading us all to a better world. As one critic summarized:

That final movement itself is then an enactment of a victory for humanity, as individuals come together in joy and love: a community of choir, vocal soloists, and musicians that isn’t led by great men or even by God, but rather is built on the bonds between “brothers” of Schiller’s poem, as this new, true heroism of humanity creates its own destiny and fashions the world in which Beethoven wanted to live. That world symbolically includes geographical and ethnic diversities just as it encompasses the secular and sacred, in the Turkish music that interrupts the finale and with which the whole symphony noisily, joyously, overwhelmingly ends; as well as its virtuosic counterpoint, its sensuous polyphony and its cantata-like – but terrifyingly challenging – choral writing.
Tom Service, The Guardian

The power of Beethoven’s music and his message of unity, peace and hope for all mankind has not dimmed across the centuries. It is the official anthem of the European Union. Leonard Bernstein conducted the Ninth at the Brandenburg Gate in 1989 to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall—a concert that featured musicians not only from West and East Germany, but also from each of the four occupying powers of the US, France, Britain and Russia. The Ninth is performed every year in the penultimate concert of the BBC Proms, the greatest of all music festivals. It is performed annually across Japan every New Year.

I could fill an entire book with inspiring quotes about the Ninth, but I think it really does speak for itself. Schiller’s original German is more poetic, I like to think that this part of the Ode is Beethoven’s final message to us:

Whoever has succeeded in the great attempt,
To be a friend’s friend,
Whoever has won a lovely woman,
Add his to the jubilation!
Yes, and also whoever has just one soul
To call his own in this world!
And he who never managed it should slink
Weeping from this union!

All creatures drink of joy
At nature’s breasts.
All the Just, all the Evil
Follow her trail of roses.
Kisses she gave us and grapevines,
A friend, proven in death.
Ecstasy was given to the worm
And the cherub stands before God.

Gladly, as His suns fly
through the heavens’ grand plan
Go on, brothers, your way,
Joyful, like a hero to victory.

And that is The Answer. In his last public appearance, Ludwig van Beethoven took only one character more than Deep Thought to provide the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

The Answer is Joy.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, “Choral”, Op. 125:

On May 7, 1824, Beethoven premiered the Ninth in Vienna. It was a typically fraught affair. Frustrated by Rossini’s success, Beethoven had threatened to premiere the new symphony in Berlin before being convinced to remain in Vienna. Securing a hall and performers was also challenging, and Beethoven had to settle for a group of amateurs who really weren’t up to the task. It didn’t matter. Beethoven’s fans turned out in droves, some being carried in on their deathbeds. One last time to see the master in the flesh.

Much has been made of Caroline Unger, the alto making her debut that night, tugging on Beethoven’s sleeve when the performance was over to turn him around towards the cheering crowd. It’s a nice story and one that is likely true. But there is another detail about this concert that often goes overlooked. The Ninth wasn’t the only work on the program that night. Beethoven also debuted some music that Viennese audiences hadn’t heard before. Three “hymns”, as they were billed, were performed right before the Ninth. In reality, they were the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei of the Missa Solemnis. If Beethoven was going to provide the Answer, he was sure that everyone first heard the Question.

Beethoven Unleashed

Here’s a sonata that will challenge pianists and that people will be able to play in 50 years.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Now that Beethoven was writing for himself, he undertook to compose a piano sonata of such incredible power and complexity that it can only be described as symphonic. What became his 29th sonata for piano remains at the very summit of music written for piano, not only because of its technical difficulty, but because of the significant interpretive choices Beethoven demands of his soloist. No work of music more challenges the body and the brain in equal measure. To get the most out of this score, the pianist must solve the many riddles Beethoven buries within the music, making key choices as to tempo and coloration.

This is such a formidable challenge that, upon publication, no one dared perform it–the first public performance would be in 1836, nearly a decade after Beethoven’s death. The site? The Salle Erard in Paris. And the pianist who dared scale Mount Olympus to confront Beethoven face-to-face? Only the greatest pianist of all-time: Franz Liszt.

Before diving into the music, a short comment on the sonata’s common sobriquet: Hammerklavier. Despite the wonderful visual that name conjures, the formal title of the sonata is Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier. The hammerklavier as its German name implies is a keyboard instrument that uses a hammer to play the strings–a fortepiano. Beethoven’s title reveals two things. First, that the era of the harpsichord is dead (sorry, Gert–we’ll find you again in the 1960s). And second, his inspiration–a new piano from the British Broadwood firm. Beethoven’s new piano provided the composer with a greater range–six octaves and 73 keys in all (the modern piano, seven octaves and 88 keys would not emerge until the 1880s). Although Beethoven could no longer hear his new instrument, he fully understood its capabilities and, perhaps, how the instrument would continue to evolve.

Back to the music: Part of the challenge here is determining the correct tempo. Beethoven uniquely included a metronome marking of “half note = 138” in the score, rendering the first movement all but unplayable, even two centuries later. This has led, perhaps more than any other of Beethoven’s compositions, to the myth that Beethoven’s metronome was “faulty”. Nonsense. Pianist Andras Schiff, arguably the foremost interpreter of Beethoven’s music on the scene today, did the only sensible thing and examined the metronome himself. That’s right–despite generations of pianists and musicologists peddling the “faulty metronome” story, no one had actual gone and tested the thing. And it’s not like the metronome is hard to find. It resides in the greatest music hall on the planet, Vienna’s Musikverein. Spoiler alert: It works just fine. So what are we to make of Beethoven’s notation? Personally, I think that this is one of the many things left open to pianist to explore–but in doing so, it is simply wrong to reject Beethoven’s notation as “wrong” or “faulty”–you must reckon with Beethoven on his terms.

To the music: Like may of his symphonies, the first movement opens with a series of thundering B-Flat minor chords.

From here, Beethoven takes us on a harmonic adventure, first to D major (a third higher) and then to G major (a third lower). And this sets up the predominant harmonic theme of the entire sonata. Since John Dunstable, the triad had formed the foundation upon which Western music had been constructed. In this sonata, Beethoven explores the entirety of that mighty edifice through the repetition of thirds. In nearly every bar, we hear thirds. Rising thirds. Descending thirds. And tenths (extended thirds). Yet this composition is by no means conventional. As I have written previously, Beethoven is doing a gut renovation of the musical landscape from the inside out and the key to this remarkable sonata is to pay attention to what Beethoven is doing tonally. He starts to explore unconventional tone pairings, siding up B natural to a B flat, which creates a very unsettling feeling. These two tones, and their respective domiants in F and F#, clash repeatedly throughout the first movement. Beethoven resolves this conflict in favor of B flat, conventionally confirming the tonic structure of the sonata. How the pianist reveals this harmonic struggle is what separates a great performance from a simply competent one.

We know by now that Beethoven is taking us repeatedly between dominant and tonic by thirds, so we continue to expect that throughout the sonata. But it is these unconventional side-steps to distant tonal landscapes that anticipate the great harmonic revolutions of the later 19th century. To avoid completely shocking us, Beethoven cleverly disguises a lot of what he’s exploring here. In the Classical Period, trills had been used solely as ornamentation–often by an improving keyboardist. Beethoven, however, recognizes a more utilitarian purpose for the trill, which he uses to modulate between far flung keys. We are predisposed to consider a trill as something beautiful and so adjust to unusual harmonic relationship through these repetitive devices.

While each of the four movmements that comprise Beethoven’s 29th piano sonata are worthy of attention, let’s skip the second (a scherzo) and the third (an adagio that has been called “a mausoleum of collective sorrow”) to focus on the remarkable finale. Here Beethoven gives us, in full, the various elements he would explore in his Late Period. Most importantly, at the heart of this remarkable movement lies a fugue–which Beethoven notates as Fuga a tre voci con alcuna licenze (“fugue in three voices with some license”). Beethoven had been studying Bach, primarily in the library of his patron, the Archduke Rudolf. Interest in the old master had been on the rise and publishers had reissued Bach’s Well Tempered Klavier, Goldberg Variations, B Minor Mass and The Art of the Fugue. Copies of the latter two were found in Beethoven’s possession after his death. Bringing back counterpoint to Western music reintroduced some of the harmonic complexities that had been lost during the Classical Period, but Beethoven’s fugues are decidedly unlike and far more forceful than Bach’s.

Beethoven also breaks apart chords–the opening of the movment is simply a deconstructed chord–while looking for usual harmonics based on altered overtones. In doing so, the doors for the harmonic revolution of the late 19th and 20th centuries have opened. The classical structure, built as a preconceived journey from harmonic conflict to harmonic resolution, is beginning to crumble around the new and glorious structure that Beethoven has created, a world where harmonic galaxies can be explored without an obvious plan or pattern. Stravinsky called this movement “exhausting and inexhaustible”; it ranks among the most daring and complex music Beethoven ever composed.

Two years before his untimely death in 1985, Emil Gilels recorded one of the more introspective interpretations of Hammerklavier. Gilels is, for me, the best interpreter of Beethoven and I have long consider this recording to be Gilels’ very best. But it is not definitive. The genius of Hammerklavier is that it cannot be reduced to a single definitive interpretation. It takes a great pianist to master its technical demands. But if you are able, Beethoven shows remarkable generosity of spirit, allowing the artist to truly share equal billing with him.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106, Hammerklavier:

And yet, having listened to more than two dozen recordings over the last few weeks, I now find Gilels’ version to be almost painfully slow–some of less generous spirit might say ponderous in the extreme. Schiff makes a compelling case for respecting Beethoven’s notations on tempo, both intellectually (are we really to second guess the greatest composer in history?) and, ultimately, musically. In Schiff’s hands, the Hammerklavier seems more alive and vital–and much more revolutionary. Gilels takes nearly 50 minutes to traverse the same score that Schiff dispenses with in about just over 42 minutes. Here is Schiff live at Wigmore Hall in London performing the Hammerklavier, but I also highly recommend his most recent studio recording of the sonata.

History records that over the course of the last 15 years of his life, Ludwig van Beethoven composed only one symphony, his Ninth. This, in my view is wrong. In his Opus 106, Beethoven composed what should be called his “Symphony No. 9 in B-Flat Major, for Hammerklavier”.

Rameau’s Harmony

Rameau’s importance to the development of opera notwithstanding, his claim to fame lies in his music theory. Rameau’s harmonic innovations, and especially his development of a fundamental bass, form the basis of modern theories of tonality. Rameau’s 1722 Treatise on Harmony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traité_de_l%27harmonie_réduite_à_ses_principes_naturels) more or less governed musical composition until Debussy more or less threw it out the window over 150 years later.

The Treatise is divided into four parts: Book 1 (the relationship between harmonic ratios and proportions); Book 2 (the nature and properties of chords); Book 3 (Principles of composition); Book 4 (Principles of Accompaniment). Rameau’s revolutionary text proposed a comprehensive system that covered all aspects of composition: Rameau describes how keys or tonalities are developed and why certain harmonic progressions work, while others do not. His basic terminology for describing fundamental principles of music—chord inversion, tonic, dominant—are still used today. Here is a great article that describes the math and science behind Rameau’s Treatise in greater detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/31v6nz/til_jeanphilippe_rameaus_treatise_on_harmony_1722/

In his Treatise, Rameau sought to establish, much as Pythagoras had done at the dawn of Western music, that the rules of harmony were derived from nature. Using mathematical proofs, Rameau presents an analysis of overtones by pitch, finding that the natural harmony of any individual note is a major triad: the octave; the fifth; and the third. Rameau subsequently broke down these triads into smaller intervals, major and minor thirds. A chord is either major or minor, diminished or augmented. In Rameau’s view, the quality of a chord is determined by the relationship of the thirds that are used to construct it. Those rock songs that are based on three chords? That’s Rameau all over again.

And yet that’s arguably not even Rameau’s greatest contribution to the development of Western Music. That would be his groundbreaking argument that the figured bass is the prime generator of harmony and harmonic progression, an innovation that pushed music forward in a way not seen since Monteverdi’s Seconda Practica. Rameau’s view, that harmony is produced through functional chord progression grounded by the bass line, endured; the German School’s emphasis on harmony through counterpoint did not. Rameau’s harmony is the foundational rock upon which Western music was ultimately built. For those seeking a more in-depth analysis of Rameau’s music theory, this is a great starting point: https://symposium.music.org/index.php/24/item/1970-composition-before-rameau-harmony-figured-bass-and-style-in-the-baroque.

We close with three instrumental works: one of Rameau’s “concerts”, best described as a harpsichord concerto, followed by one of the more recognizable of his works for harpsichord (the pieces de clavecin are often cited as one of the high points of Baroque composition), before ending with his Le Dauphine for solo harpsichord.

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Six concerts transcrits en sextuor, I. Premier concert, Le Coulicam:

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Pieces de clavecin, Suite in E Minor, No. 8, Tambourin:

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Le Dauphine: (with some bonus material for Gert. Le Dauphine is the first piece).

Why so much harpsichord? Partially because Gert requested it. But also because of the wonderful quote about Rameau, who loved the harpsichord above all others: “His heart and soul were in his harpsichord; once he had shut its lid, there was no one home.”

Rameau’s controversial compositions notwithstanding, he died in great popular esteem—200 musicians performed at his funeral to a crowd of over 1000. At the close of his funeral, the harpsichord lid was shut and the great man laid to rest.

Baroque Music IX: Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

Of that generation of composers who were born in the decade between 1675 and 1685, there is a good argument to be made that Jean-Philippe Rameau had the greatest influence. Not Bach. Not Handel. Not Vivaldi. In fact, the term “baroque” was derived from a pejorative comment made about Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie: Jean-Baptiste Rousseau dismissed Rameau as a “distiller[] of baroque chords of which so many idiots are enamoured.” Other critics complained that Rameau’s “misshaped composition lacked coherent melody, was overly dissonant and changed key and metre too much.”

Rameau was savagely attacked during his lifetime by traditionalists who braced at his harmonic innovations. And yet Rameau held on to his exalted position as court composer, much to the dismay of the so-called “Lullyists” who championed the cause and aesthetics of his predecessor. Perhaps it is hard to hear today what caused passions to run so hot in Paris during the 1750s—but it is fair to say that Rameau’s opera subverted Lully’s conception of French opera completely—driving the entire composition through harmonic progression and changing overnight what French society deemed to have been unchangeable. To find a parallel to the storm of controversy created by Rameau’s Hippolyte, we need to look to 20^th century Paris and the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. And that guy drank with The Rolling Stones.

So let’s listen to this revolutionary work. In the Act IV conclusion to his controversial Hippolyte, we see opera take on a bigger, grander sound—perhaps even more so than Handel ever composed. The discordant tones that so enraged the Lullyists back in the day are clearly discernable, even if their shock value has diminished over the centuries.

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hippolyte et Aricie, Act IV conclusion:

For my money, Rameau’s best opera is Les Indes Galantes, which I doubt will ever be performed again given the subject matter. Rameau is often derided for lack of melody. This selection puts that debate to rest.

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Les Indes Galantes, Tendre Amour:

Rameau is the first true modern opera composer, laying down the maxim that has guided the art form to this day: “I conceal art with art,” he said, signaling his intent to unite all of the arts (music, fine art, architecture, decorative arts, dance, poetry, etc.) in opera itself. Rameau was the originator; Wagner was its realization a century later.

Personal note: As some may know, my other passion lies in antitrust law and economic theory. It is therefore unsurprising that Rameau is a personal favorite of mine, not only because of his music, but because he came to so dominate the French opera scene that a petition was circulated in 1740 seeking a royal order to limit his output in any given year. Who doesn’t love output restraints in Baroque opera?

Back in the Baroque: An Introduction and Preview

The Baroque period covers roughly 150 years of music history, divided into the early (1605 to 1630), middle (1630 to 1680), and late (1680 to 1750) periods. Just a quick detour into music theory. Baroque music introduces the figured bass (also known as the thorough bass), as composers began what was to become an obsession with harmonic progressions that continue to this day and across all genres of music. The figured bass part was played by one or more instruments (often a harpsichord, possibly joined by a cello or viola da gamba), collectively referred to as the basso continuo. Here is a much more detailed explanation: http://openmusictheory.com/thoroughbassFigures.html.

The figured bass also gave rise to the practice of basso ostinato or ground bass, essentially a repeating pattern in the bass line. For example, listen to the first eight notes of the following—one of the most famous examples of ground bass in music history:

Johann Pachelbel, Canon in D:

Pachelbel creates the harmony from the ground up; hence, ground bass. This is no longer the fixed drone of Renaissance polyphony—harmony, beginning in the Baroque, is free to journey away from the home tonic chord, led by the bass line. Chords, rather than individual notes, could provide a sense of emotional closure—something noted by Monteverdi in his seconda practica. No longer just a piercing high C (think back to Allegri’s Miserere and its high notes), this is more the emotive satisfaction of riff based on power chords. The notable effect of this new method of composition was to confine melody in a single voice (as opposed to multiple voices in polyphony), supported by accompaniment, i.e., monody, paving the way for opera, concertos, and more popular musical forms. These basso continuo parts, and the concept of the basso ostinato, links Western music across the centuries, beginning in or around 1600 to the present, from Beethoven’s symphonies to Count Basie to some of the best-known rock tunes.

The Beatles, Day Tripper:

Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song:

Baroque composers were now free to explore the relationships between the multiple melodic lines and the figured bass line, a compositional technique called “counterpoint”—literally point on point—which would come to dominate the Baroque Era. Here is a short video that provides an excellent introduction to contrapuntal technique:

Although counterpoint was present prior to the seconda practica, Monteverdi’s embrace of dissonance led subsequent composers to explore a greater range of tone color in their music. Harmonies therefore became more complex as composers both identified the natural affinity between chords, as well as how multiple tones could combine into new chords.

The culmination of these explorations in counterpoint manifested in the fugue form. Technically, a fugue is a “contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and recurs frequently in the course of the composition.” I think it is easiest to understand as the same basic melodic line (the subject) repeated at different times and at different pitches and meters, like Row, Row, Row Your Boat (in its most simplistic form). It opens with a short main melody (ending with “stream”), which is then repeated successively in each ensuing voice. When each voice has entered, the exposition is complete. Most fugues will then move on to more complex “development”, exploring different keys where material previously heard is transformed and transfigured, before returning to the home key for the recapitulation. Some fugues have a coda at the end.

Fugues are magical things. All you need is a simple tune to start and, frankly, it doesn’t need to be anything great. So, let’s pick a recent example from the top of the pop charts:

Ed Sheeran, Shape of You:

Not exactly great music. But give the tune over to a talented composer, unleash the contrapuntal power of the fugue and—BOOM:

Ed Sheeran (arr. Giovanni Dettori), Shape of You: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/ed-sheeran-fugue/ (see embedded link)

And if you want to hear a shorter vocal-only version:

Ed Sheeran (arr. Giovanni Dettori and Chris Rupp):

Renaissance Music IX: The End of an Era, Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Part I

We now arrive at the singular musical genius of Claudio Monteverdi. In any list of the most important composers in history, he’s Top 10, easily. As much as I love Tallis and Allegri, neither is on Monteverdi’s level artistically. Unlike Bach, who fully embodied his age with such mastery that (at least for me) his death took the entire Baroque Period with him to the grave, Monteverdi’s genius for innovation ended the Renaissance, began the Baroque, while pretty much inventing and perfecting opera along the way. More to say about him as a Baroque composer later, but for now, a true late Renaissance madrigal to close out that singularly gilded period. A standard form to be sure, but for Monteverdi a chance to incite a revolution in sound—Monteverdi dabbles in that black art of dissonance to achieve a more dramatic effect to his music, a technique that he would use to great effect in his operas. Instead of composing solely on closely related chords, Monteverdi experimented with combining chords that had no relationship to one another, adding additional color to his music and which enabled him to express a broader range of emotions.

Here is the story. In 1598, a group of composers and performers met in Ferrara in connection with the wedding of Philip III. Details of what emerged during those concerts was memorialized in the writings of Giovanni Artusi, a noted music theorist. Monteverdi used this occasion to trot out some of his more inventive compositions, which Artusi described as “harsh and little pleasing to the ear.” Chief among Artusi’s complaints was Monteverdi’s “open and exposed” use of dissonance, breaking Palestrina’s golden rules of harmony and counterpoint. The Artusi-Monteverdi debate raged without cessation much of the next decade—Artusi published his anti-modernist treatise on music theory in 1603 and Monteverdi responded in kind. Best not to debate a genius on his own turf: Monteverdi’s landmark Fifth Book of Madrigals compiled these innovative compositions and, in the introduction, the composer announced his intention to publish a treatise of his own, one that has come to be known as the Seconda practica, although Monteverdi’s full title was Seconda practica, overo Perfettione della moderna musica. Translation is probably not needed there.

The first selection, Cruda Amerilli, leads off the Fifth Book. Monteverdi undoubtedly placed it first, since this madrigal and come in for the harshest criticism from Artusi. In it, Monteverdi uses dissonances in the opening bars to convey the wounds of love suffered by the protagonists, the shepherdess Amaryllis and the shepherd Mirtillo:

Cruel Amaryllis, who even with your name, to love, alas,
instruct bitterly;
Amaryllis, more pure and beautiful
than the white privet,
but more deaf and more fierce and more fleeting than the deaf asp;
since in speaking I offend you,
I will die in silence.

Claudio Monteverdi, Cruda Amarilli:

The next selection, which closes the Fifth Book, has become the most famous of the lot. Here, Monteverdi takes harmony to new places, creating dissonances and ambiguity, augmenting the lyrics musically to drive the emotionally points home. The lyrics and music, in Monteverdi’s skilled hands, are fused to one. While these brief dissonances fall relatively easily on our 21^st century ears, they would have seemed like harsh daggers to the brain in 1605. This pain, this music, is all too real—we are still singing songs about it today:

O Mirtillo, Mirtillo, my love,
if only you could see
the inner life and feelings of her
whom you call most cruel Amarilli,
I know well that you would feel for her
that same pity which you ask of her.
Oh, our souls are too unhappy in love!
What joy is there, my heart, in being loved?
What joy is there for me in having so dear a lover? Why, cruel Destiny,
do you divide us when Love unites us?
And why do you unite us,
treacherous Love, when Destiny divides us?

Claudio Monteverdi, O Mirtillo, Mirtillo anima mia:

The use of dissonance has become more common over the centuries, but it still can be effectively employed to convey emotional pain. By 1964, The Beatles, and John Lennon in particular, had reached a tipping point. The extreme popularity of the Fab Four had completely eroded their privacy, subjecting The Beatles to constant attention—the pressure of fame had become literally physical as photos of the band from that era will attest. Lennon wrote a song about his emotional pain, which The Beatles would predictably lampoon in a movie by the same name. But the title and that remarkable opening chord tell a story as old as time.

The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night:

Monteverdi’s Fifth Book was a landmark in music history—this is where Monteverdi slams the door on the Renaissance for good, in compositions that would influence scores of musicians, from Mozart to Beethoven and right through to The Beatles and beyond. Bigger things to come next time, as Monteverdi’s genius reaches its full flowering; but for now, a farewell to the Renaissance and, oh, what a way to close out that glorious age.

Renaissance Music V: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

All visits to Rome trace (at least in part) the career of Giovanni Palestrina, who at times was employed at Santa Maria Maggiore, the Vatican, and San Giovanni in Laterano. Palestrina is also arguably the most important composer in history, even if the most celebrated story about him turns out not to be true. No composer was more revered or studies by other composers. Bach’s titanic B Minor Mass (which will get an entry all to itself later on), for example, reflects his careful study of Palestrina. In sum, Palestrina’s music is the embodiment of the Renaissance ideal.

In Palestrina’s music, Renaissance polyphony reaches its zenith, utilizing a somewhat reduced counterpoint to create the luminous harmonies that would so inspire Bach a century plus later. Reducing his use of counterpoint also enabled Palestrina to limit dissonance. Palestrina’s rules of composition, especially regarding the succession of intervals, produced a gorgeous harmony known as “the Palestrina style”—arguably, the most beautiful sonority ever achieved in vocal music. Led by the Catholic Church in full Counter-Reformation zeal, composers sought to codify Palestrina’s style, creating rules that would govern composition for more than 200 years:

The flow of music should be dynamic, not rigid or static.
Melody should contain few leaps between notes.
If a leap occurs, it must be small and immediately countered by stepwise motion in the opposite direction.
Dissonances are to be confined to suspensions, passing notes and weak beats. If one falls on a strong beat (in a suspension) it must be immediately resolved.

These rules would hold sway over Western music at least until Ludwig van Beethoven’s final years. And while Beethoven would go off to explore soundscapes that only he could imagine, Palestrina’s rules continued to provide the grounding structure of musical composition until Richard Wagner intentionally and purposefully shattered them in his Ring cycle of operas in 1874.

Palestrina’s magnum opus is the Missa Papae Marcelli. Even if the Church was unwilling to hand over responsibility for singing to the congregation as Protestants had, Church leaders wanted the word of God to be clearly articulated. Polyphony, as practiced in the high Renaissance, involved overlapping voices making many of the words totally unrecognizable. According to legend, a panel of cardinals at the Council of Trent threatened to put an end to beautiful music forever. But music had a savior: because Palestrina’s music was so beautiful, not even these draconian cardinals would dream of banning it. For this, Palestrina earned both the sobriquet “The Prince of Music” and everlasting glory. Unlike most composers, who saw their fortunes ebb and wane both during and after their lifetimes (even Mozart went out of fashion for a while)—the legend of Palestrina endured, as did his rules of composition.

Despite the indelible image of Palestrina composing music so beautiful as to persuade the Church to preserve polyphony, that story is, sadly, apocryphal. Here is the entry from Wikipedia: “According to this tale, it was composed in order to persuade the Council of Trent that a draconian ban on the polyphonic treatment of text in sacred music (as opposed, that is, to a more directly intelligible homophonic treatment) was unnecessary. However, more recent scholarship shows that this mass was in fact composed before the cardinals convened to discuss the ban (possibly as much as 10 years before). Historical data indicates that the Council of Trent, as an official body, never actually banned any church music and failed to make any ruling or official statement on the subject.”

Regardless of the truth, here is Palestrina’s Missa, in all of its glory, sung by the incomparable Tallis Scholars. In it, we can hear three distinct styles of music. First, we get all of the power and the glory of High Renaissance polyphony (Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus I). Second, Palestrina presents a newer form of composition, which seems to incorporate the Church’s movement towards shorter phrases and clearer word-setting. Palestrina adopts this style during arguably the highlight of the mass (Gloria) and the most important (Credo). Third, a proto-Baroque style appears to emerge during the Agnus II, in which counterpoint predominates. Palestrina. Genius. Bringer of Light.

Palestrina, Missa Papae Marcelli:

Renaissance Music I: John Dunstable (1390-1453)

It was the English composer John Dunstable who introduced the third to music, creating the unique color palette that allowed Western music to flourish. In short, a “third” is simply the third note above the root note: If your root note is a C, the third interval is an E. Thirds are referred to in music as imperfect because they can be both major and minor (depending on where you start). And, of course, when you stack two thirds together, you get the 1-3-5 triad—the foundation of all Western music through to that pop tune that came out last week.

Dunstable also found that there was an inherent logic that knitted together different triads, since each triad is composed of two notes of a different triad. Moving from one closely related triad to another gives a logic to music that has informed our understanding of harmony to this day. This video gives a great introduction to triads and chord theory:

Don’t worry about diminished and augmented chords, as they won’t become really relevant for a few hundred years.

Of Dunstable’s other major developments, his revolutionary decision to move the melody from the tenor line to the top treble line is the most significant. In this, he broke the continental preference for dissonance and the primacy of lower voices. Before Dunstable, music was, with very few exceptions, dull, sparse and predictable. Dunstable is responsible for bringing the color of the Renaissance to music and with his music that we start our musical journey in earnest.

John Dunstable, Quam Pulchra Es:

Several hundred years later, a retired miner in the north of England composed a song based on a traditional Yorkshire ballad. Drawing his musical inspiration from the Middle English period (roughly from the 5th to 16th centuries), Ewan MacColl’s remarkable 1947 Canticle has been performed by many bands over the years, including most memorably by Simon and Garfunkel. From their legendary concert in Central Park, when these two brilliant musicians transported 1980s New York back to the English Renaissance, if just for a few minutes.

Simon and Garfunkel, Scarborough Fair:

Incidentally, I should note that my personal Rosetta Stone for Early Music was the Kronos Quartet’s remarkable album “Early Music” from the late 1990s. Kronos was, and remains, on the vanguard of contemporary music, but this album saw the group reach back across the centuries to find the inspiration for much of what they had been performing. The album effectively presents contemporary music along side music written several hundred years ago. The effect, for me, was remarkable and I recommend the album highly. It is one of my Desert Island Discs.

A brief introduction

At its core, music is as much mathematics as art: The godfather of Western music—all Western music—is none other than Pythagoras, the Triangle King himself. In or around 500 BC, Pythagoras developed the modern scale by taking metal bars and dividing them sequentially by 2/3 to create successive notes. Pythagoras’ scale had 12 tones—you can see these on any modern-day keyboard, where there are 12 keys within each octave. These are not, however, Pythagoras’ original tones, but their modern counterparts. The basics of western music are organized around a series of “perfect” fifths—called perfect because they are easily tuned by ear. The math, for those interested, is explained here: https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/fifths.html.

But Pythagoras’ scale had a problem—although his 12-tone scale replicated natural tones perfectly, the spacing between the notes was off and increasingly so as you went up the scale. So much so, in fact, that the octave note was considerably higher and thus “off”. Mathematically, this can be reduced to the basic premise that no power of two can equal any power of 3. Pythagoras’ solution to what became known as the Pythagorean Comma was to simply throw out all notes above 12 and 5 of the 12 tones he had discovered. The remaining seven form the bedrock of all Western music—they are literally the Do, Re, Me, Fa, So, La, and Ti that Julie Andrews sang about in the Sound of Music (bonus points to anyone who had that song as the first one I’d mention in this series). Again, the math stuff is here: https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/pythagorean.html.

As a side note, there are far more tones possible than the 12 set out on a modern keyboard. This may be summarized in the adage that G^# is not the same thing as A^b. Surely, our resident cellist, The Professor, can attest to that. While we consider semitone composition to be a 20th century phenomenon (influenced largely by Arabic music), experimentation with additional semitones goes back more than 500 years. Check out this video of an Archicembalo, which has 31 keys per octave, play an early experiment with 24-tone music:

But the bedrock for Western music is that familiar seven note scale and, with that established, it is time to start.

Not to endlessly quote Julie Andrews, but the beginning is indeed a very good place to start. Well, not really the beginning, since we know that music has existed pretty much as long as mankind has. Jazz musicians are known to lament all of the great music that disappeared, unrecorded, into the walls of jazz clubs—but that is nothing compared with the centuries, if not millennia, of music that have fallen silent, forever. There is a reason why a Greek chorus was given that name—its part was more than likely sung. It was the rise of what became modern staff notation in 11th century that allowed for modern musicians to replicate the music of the past (take a bow, Friar Guido of Arezzo—paying homage to Friar Guido is the second best reason to visit Arezzo, after the staggering Piero della Francesca fresco cycle depicting the Golden Legend, perhaps the greatest fresco cycle ever painted: http://www.travelingintuscany.com/art/pierodellafrancesca2.htm).

At the beginning, Western music was monophonic, that is a single line of melody only. Here is a classic example, and one we will return to in a few hundred years.

Anon., Crux fidelis:

I’d like to think it was the acoustics in churches that got composers thinking about harmony. Sound reverberates in a Gothic cathedral, producing direct and indirect sounds that overlap with each other. This is the primary reason why music composed for church performances should be heard in situ, and not in a sterile concert hall with its perfected acoustics. Regardless of the inspiration, late Gothic composers added a second line of music to their works. This was called organum.

Anon., Dies Irae:

Anon., Advocatam innocemus:

Commonly, that second line of melody was sung by a boys’ choir. In the Dies Irae selection, the two musical lines come together at around the 7:10 mark to produce the sound that is so characteristic of late Gothic music. Alternatively, composers created organum by having one voice sing a continuous unchanging note, around which the plainchant is sung. An example of this comes at the 1:30 mark of the second selection. This is, hilariously, called a drone and one of the more popular late Gothic instruments was called a drone organum, since it played only one note continuously.

Incidentally, the concept of a drone has endured through the centuries. The Velvet Underground used a drone extensively (and, no, I’m not talking about Lou Reed’s voice):

The Velvet Underground, Heroin:

Eventually, these new melodic lines would become independent on the main plainchant melody. Reflecting church hierarchy, the primary melody continued to be sung in the lower male voices (the cantus firmus), while the higher voices were given faster lines to decorate the basic plainchant. The invention of harmony, however, created a problem. While monophonic plainchant was easy enough to learn orally, multiple melodic lines needed to fit together precisely. Eventually, the unmeasured rhythm that characterizes early Western music gave way to measured rhythm—the allocation of precise time values to individual notes, allowing singers to remain both rhythmically and melodically together as the composer had intended. The need for measured rhythm gave rise to a need for written music. Enter Friar Guido and his neumes. (https://brianjump.net/2015/08/29/the-origin-of-notation/).