Sounding the Piano

 Not all pianos are created equal, and they certainly vary in the sounds they produce. What are some of the physical properties of pianos that affect their sound?

Starting with steel strings, the same string twice as long as its original length vibrates one octave lower, but creating a piano with the same thickness of string would be unwieldly, but a wider and heavier string vibrates more slowly. That is why a piano’s bass strings are thicker than the higher notes.

The string’s tension also plays a role in the velocity of the string’s pulse as it is hit by the piano’s hammer. The highest strings need to have the highest tension/

Furthermore, the longer the string, the longer the wavelengths and the better tonality. With increased reverberation and power, the better the harmony, so the larger the piano, the better, all other variables held constant.

Even then, the property of the strings as they have to create 88 notes can result in uneven quality of tone. Therefore, most pianos use multiple stringing so that the vibrations travel more efficiently, making a louder sound, which can also be sustained longer, depending on how the strings are hit.

But strings by themselves don’t make much sound, so that is why a soundboard (make of lightweight wood) is needed to vibrate with the strings and amplify the sound through the surrounding air. The strings run across a wooden bar bridge, which is glued to the soundboard.

Moreover, the room in which the piano is placed, also impacts the piano’s acoustics. For instance, a rug under the piano and irregular shaped objects along the wall can absorb excess reflected sound. However, adsorptive objects such as upholstered furniture and heavy drapes can deaden the sound. In that respect, having exposed flooring at the room’s edges makes the resonance more “live.” Opening the doors of a room can clarify a piano’s bass tones.  Upright pianos work fine in small rooms, but grand pianos need lots of space to resonate properly. Acoustics professional can fine-tune the room for optimum sound quality.

Take Note

 

As a music teacher, Tomoko taught student how to read musical notation, but how many students realize the history of that notation and how much it has helped musicians to perform the music? 

Nearly two thousand years, Greeks wrote down a way to remember music using letters, with special symbols above the letters.

Not until 800 AD did another notation method was invented. To help monks sing plainchant, a system called neumes was created. Symbols above the words how when the pitch is rising or falling, but not the degree of pitch. This system was not standardized, which limited its usefulness.

About 1000 AD Benedictine monk Guido d’Arezzo drew a red line and labeled the first note as either F or C (which became the clef) with neumes above or below the line to indicate fixed pitch. Over time, this monk added lines and different colors, and the neumes symbols became square-shaped symbols.

The next couple of centuries featured 5-line staves and the beginning of key signatures, starting with one flat (but not sharp key signatures yet).

By the 14^th century, notes represented both pitch and rhythm, and clef symbols indicated 4/4 and 2/2 time. Europeans also created names for note duration: from minima to maxima.

The concept of measures and bar lines didn’t arrive until the 17^th century, which greatly facilitated composition writing. Note were oval-shaped by then, and both quarter and eighth notes were symbolized. Fraction style time signatures and sharp key signatures were also introduced. However, as was the case 800 years earlier, practices were not standardized.

As music became more expressive and dynamic by the 18^th century, notations started include symbols such as staccatos, slurs and letters – the letters p and f now indicating the relative loudness of the music. Additionally, as music began to be printed more frequently, standardization also emerged.

Composers continue to explore different ways to notate music, and their practices can be shared and adapted more easily than ever before.

Out of This World Music

 

Some music is out of this world! Or maybe it sounds spacy. Many composers have written about outer space. Here is a sampling, all of which have been composed or arranged for piano.

Gustav Holst’s The Planets is the most obvious example. While it was composed as an orchestral suite with seven movements (one for each planet), piano arrangements for one and two pianos have be written.

Three centuries early, in 1648, Heinrich Schutz wrote a motet based on the Psalm 19, which begins “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

Over a century later, Joseph Haydn used the same Psalms in his 1798 oratorio The Creation. This piece too has been arranged for the piano.

On to the next century. In 1868 Josef Strauss (Johann’s younger brother) wrote the waltz  Music of the Spheres.

Back to the 20^th century. One of Hector Villa-Lobo’s most popular piano compositions is a set of three piano miniatures called “The Three Marys,” which refers to the three stars in the constellation Orion’s belt.

More recently, Bela Bartok (one of Tomoko's favorite composers) created a series of 153 piano pieces called Microkosmos. This six-volume set starts with simple etudes and progresses to advanced technical works. This “little world” of music is its own cosmology.

Music to Mothers’ Ears

 

Tomoko celebrated Mothers’ Day celebrated recently, and music composers have celebrated mothers throughout the year for centuries. Here is a sampling of pieces that are These pieces are mother-approved.

Robert Schumann’s cycle of eight songs, “Frauen-Liebe und Leben” (“A Woman’s Life and Love”), follows a woman’s life of falling in love, marrying, and, becoming a mother. It has a very happy tone, but Schumann’s wife did not like the distraction of motherhood from her own musical career.

Richard Strauss’s piece “Muttertändelei” (“Mother-chatter”) recounts a mother’s praise of her child. It was written two years after Strauss’s wife gave birth to their son Franz.

Among Dvorak’s collection of gypsy songs is “Songs My Mother Taught Me.” One of his most famous melodies, this piece tells of a mother teaching her children the songs she herself learned from her mother.

Dvorak’s daughter was composer Josef Suk’s mother – and the inspiration for Suk’s piece pieces “About Mother, which were written for his children.

Ravel was another composer who wrote for children. Ma Mere l’Oye (or Mother Goose) His piano duet suite is a piano duet composed for his friend’s children.

Speaking of Mother Goose, Christina Rossetti penned nursery rhymes that were put to music in 1918 by John Ireland to become Mother and Child.  

The 1910 piano piece “Empress of Night” was a husband and wife effort; Amy Beach composed the music and her husband wrote the text. The piece was dedicated to Amy’s mother.

May (Birth) Day for Piano Composers

 Several of Tomoko’s favorite composers were Romantics and were born in May. Here is a sampling of them.

Wagner was born on May 22, 1813, in Leipzig and died in 1883 in Venice. He was particularly known for his Romantic operas.  His lieder that were often performed in the original piano version.

Brahms was born on May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, and died in 1987in Vienna.  His Romantic approach was exhibited in his professional piano composing, performing and conducting. When he toured, he met with several famous peers: Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, and the Schumans. Most of his music was written for vocal performance, but he also wrote two piano concertos.

Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia and died in 1893 in St. Petersburg. A Romantic composer, he was the first internationally renown composers. His piano music was often targeted to the home market, which increased its popularity. Tchaikovsky started piano lessons at age five, and was quite proficient by age ten, but then he was forced to be trained to become a civil servant. As an adult, he received Western musical theory training, which he merged with his Russian musical upbringing.

Massenet was born on May 12, 1842, in Montaud, France and died on 1912 in Paris. Similarly to Wagner, Massenet is most known for his 30+ Romanic operas, altjough he also wrote piano pieces. To earn a living Massenet started as a private piano teacher and a piano accompanist. His first published composition was a substantial piano work in nine sections.

Fauré was born on May 12, 1845, in Pamiers, France, and died in 1924 in Paris. Fauré’s compositions bridged Romanticism and Modernism.  Although not born into a musical family, he showed promise before the age of ten, and he was trained to be a church organist. However, he preferred the piano to the organ. It was only in middle age that he had enough time to compose, escaping from Paris to focus in the countryside.

Classical Jewish Piano Composers

 

Now is the time for Passover, remembering when God redeemed the Jewish people who were enslaved by the Egyptians. For hundreds of years, Jewish people have been known for their rich culture and their creative efforts, including in composing for the piano. Here is a sampling of classical European piano composers.

One of the earlier known Jewish composers is Giacomo Meyerbeer (né Jakob Liebmann Mayer Beer), who was born in 1971 near Berlin and died in 1864. Although known mainly for his grand opera style, he also wrote pieces for the piano, mainly early in his career.

Probably the most famous of the group is Felix Mendelssohn, who was born in 1809 in Hamburg and died at the age of 38. Both a composer and performer, Mendelssohn is known, in terms of his early Romantic piano composition, for his collection Songs Without Words.

Parisian composer Charles-Valentin Alken was born in 1813 and died in 1888. He was friends with Chopin and Liszt, and like them, he was as virtuoso pianist as well as a keyboard composer. He is known as the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music.

British composer Frederick Hymen Cowen was born in 1852 in Jamaica, moved to England at age four, and died in 1935. His father was Her Majesty’s Opera treasurer. Cowen wrote his first piano piece at age six, and gave his first public piano recital at age thirteen. He won a Mendelssohn scholarship to study at the Leipzig Conservatorium. He wrote over 300 songs as well as piano works for piano solos, chamber music, choral music, cantatas and oratorios.

Another renown composer is Gustav Mahler, an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, born in 1860 and died in 1911. Tol get is job as the director of the Vienna Court Opera, he had to convert to Catholicism; yet he still experienced significant anti-Semitism. Most of his works were written for large orchestras, but he did compose for the piano early in his career.

Arnold Schoenberg is also associated with Vienna, where he was born in 1874. One of the early modernists, he is known for his transformation of harmony and twelve-tone technique. Some of his best piano works were written during his final period and showcase both twelve-tone and tonal approaches.

Ernest Bloch, born in 1880 in Geneva and died in 1959 in Portland (Oregon), is celebrated as one of Switzerland’s greatest composers. Several of his compositions draw upon his Jewish heritage. He was also a noted music professor.

Another 19^th century German composer is Otto Klemperer, born in 1885 and died in 1973. At age five he started piano lessons with his mother. He was a student of Mahler, and started conducting for the opera when he was 22 years old. As a composer, Klemperer wrote almost a hundred songs for the piano and for orchestras.

Ukrainian composer Leo Ornstein was born in 1985 and died in 2002. His father was a Jewish cantor. Leo was a protégé piano performer, but stopped performing at age 40 to focus on his experimental composing, mainly for the piano.

Excellent Jewish piano composers continue to exist in modern society, many of whom are Americans, such as George and Ira Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Irvin Berlin, Jerry Goldstein, and Philip Glass.

These examples reveal that the world has greatly benefitted from Jewish piano composers.

And All That Jazz

 

April is Jazz Appreciation Month. While Tomoko focused on classical compositions when she performed and taught, she appreciated a wide variety of music and musicians, including those associated with jazz. Two individuals stand out in terms of Tomoko’s Conservatory association with jazz: a colleague and a student.

Beulah Forbes-Woodard

When Tomoko started teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, there was only one other non-Caucasian faculty member: a Black woman Beulah Forbes-Woodard, whose specialty was jazz music. Born in Ellensburg (in central Washington state), Beulah Forbes grew up in a musical family. Her father played ragtime music for silent forms, and all of Beulah’s siblings worked in music or the theater.  

Beulah studied classical music at the Conservatory, and she was their first African American graduate. Upon her graduation, Beulah was asked to join the Conservatory as a teacher, thus becoming the Conservatory’s first Black faculty member. When she retired from the Conservatory after teaching there for almost fifty years, the Conservatory awarded her a doctorate of music. She also taught at the University of San Francisco and Lone Mountain College.  

An accomplished pianist, she played professionally with well-known musicians, headlining performances in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Beulah also performed the first jazz concert at the Conservatory, which led to jazz being incorporated into the curriculum. 

George Duke

One of Tomoko’s students, George Duke, became a jazz musician. If you have heard of The Mothers of Invention, then you know of George Duke – and that he became a famous jazz musician. George joined the rebirth of this rock band in 1970 as their keyboardist and vocalist.  

Thinking back to this musician, Tomoko remarks, “Maybe because his jazz influence or upbringing, he was very down to earth, not like many classical musician divas.” She concludes, “There is a big difference between the classical world and non-classical musicians. The latter are more easygoing. I also found that out when I was recording at Skywalker.” Her comments reflect George’s own feelings in that he switched from classical music to jazz because it was more freeing for him, and it allowed him to improvise.  

Catholic Patron Saints of Music

 

Tomoko converted to Catholicism in college. One of the unique features of that religion is its famous saints. Several of those saints have special meaning for musicians.

Saint Cecilia is the most famous patroness of musicians. According to legend, she heard heavenly music as she was being wed to a pagan. She told her husband-to-be that she was already betrothed to an angel. When he asked to see that angel, he actually did – and was converted.

Saint Gregory lends his name to Gregorian chant. Why? Because this 6^th century Pope created this kind of monophonic music to accompany liturgical texts.  

Saint Dunstan restored monastic life in 9^th century England, and served as a minute of state to kings. Later in life he taught in Canterbury’s Cathedral school and wrote hymns.

Saint Hildegard Von Bingen, a German who lived in the 12^th century, is considered one of the most prolific and respected composer of liturgical music. She also wrote the musical morality play “Ordo Virtutum.”

Tomoko and many other musicians may have felt the guidance of these saints as they performed and taught music.

The Challenges and Joys of Piano Accompanying

 One of the first jobs Tomoko had as a piano performer was accompanying other musicians, especially singers. She did this at her high school and at a Catholic church as a college student. Tomoko has also performed any times as a member of a musicians’ group throughout her career.

One thing she learned quickly is that being an accompanist takes more than playing the piano well. Here are some aspects to consider – and appreciate.

One way to start is to accompany yourself. Interestingly, singing while you play the piano can help you play better. Typically, soloists sing the melody line, which usually aligns with the treble clef staff notes on traditional sheet music. The piano part tends to play the melody as part of a chord using the right hand. The left hand then plays the base line, which includes the chord roots. Those chords support the melody so it helps you to coordinate those two aspects of music.

Learning how to accompany yourself singing can help you accompany others. As a good test of how well you know the piano piece, trying singing along as you play. This exercise helps you pay attention to both your playing and the other musician’s music. Another good step is practicing the piano piece to a recording and backing track of the music, aiming to play the piece simultaneously without error. This step can help you gain more self-confidence when you practice playing with the musician(s) themselves. This “reality check” is most useful while the other players are honing their parts because you can get a sense of their style and habits (especially how they handle mistakes). If you are lucky enough, you might be invited to the musician’s own lessons with the teacher so that everyone can be literally on the same page.

As an accompanist for other musician, the key point is that you need to coordinate with them. That means knowing their part as well as yours – and how the two fit together. It means actively listening and playing simultaneously, rather like mirroring another person’s action simultaneously. You need to be at the same point, not ahead and not behind. And if the musician changes the beat or skips a note, you need to adjust immediately to support that person seamlessly to cover their tracks. You might even need to transpose the music to another key during the performance.

To add to the challenge, accompanists usually get their music after the other musicians, so that means less time to practice. Sometimes accompanists get no prep time but have to sight-read the music for the first time while they are accompanying the musician during the performance. Even if you get the piece a bit before the performance, you may find that piece difficult to play, in which case you may need to drop some of the complexity yourself, making it simpler with fewer flourishes to keep up the tempo and still support and align with the musician’s part. Just think of it as a realistic arrangement.

By now you can see how important piano accompanists can be; they can make or break a performance. Friendships have been formed – and broken – because of the accompaniment experience. It is no surprise that the job can be daunting, but the experience can also really hone your own performance – and make you more appreciative of musicians.  Including Tomoko.

 

Hand It to Handel

 

George Frideric Handel was born on February, 23, 1685, in Halle, Germany. One of the most prolific composers, several later composers have created variations of Handel’s works:

• ·       Beethoven’s 12 Variations in G major is based on Handels’ Judas Maccabaeus.
• ·       Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel Opus 24 is based on Handels’ second harpsichord suite.
• ·       Philippe Gaubert’s Petite Marche for flute and piano is based on Handel’s Trio Sonata Opus 5, No. 2 fourth movement.
• ·       Luis Gianneo composed Variations on a Theme by Handel for piano.
• ·       Arnold Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quarter and Orchestra in B-flat major is based on Handel’s Concerto Grosso Opus 6/7.
• ·       Percy Grainger composed Variations on Handel’s ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’. Later, he reworded the first part of that piece to create Handel in the Strand, including a piano version.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Handel has been greatly flattered.

Early Anthem Time

 

Anthems are usually associated with national anthems such as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” 

It usually represents a group, a country, or a movement. An anthem can also be a sacred song. When Tomoko played for Catholic services, she included anthems in her repertoire.

Church-based anthems go back as far as the 16^th century, and they were quite popular with the advent of the Reformation. Most of the lyrics are drawn from the Bible. English composers developed two kinds of anthem: a “full” anthem that was sung by an entire choir, and a “verse” anthem in which verses were sung by soloists and the chorus was sung by the whole choir. Some of the earliest famous English composers (all lived before 1700) of religious anthems follow.

 Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) wrote mainly English High Renaissance choral music. He composed and played the organ for Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Although a Roman Catholic, we wrote anthems for both Catholics and the Church of England. He was one of the first composers to write anthems set to English words.

 William Byrd (1543-1623) was taught by Thomas Tallis, and both of them had a monopoly on printing music within England. Byrd composed in several forms: sacred and secular vocals, consort music, and keyboard pieces. He is considered one of the great Renaissance composers.

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) is known for writing pieces for the virginal and the organ. He built upon Byrd’s madrigal forms as well as composed full and verse anthems. He was one of the youngest contributors to the first printed collection of English keyboard music. His most famous verse anthem is “This is the Record of John.”

 Henry Purcell (1659-1695) composed Baroque music. Besides being considered one of the best English opera composers, he is also known for writing sacred music. He wrote his first anthem, “Lord Who Can Tell,” at age 19. Two of his best anthems were written for King James II coronation.

Ringing in the New Year with January-born Piano Composers

 Several classical composers started their lives at the beginning of a year: January. As a good first example is one of Tomoko’s favorite harpsichord and fortepiano composers: Mozart, who was born on January 27, 1756 in Vienna.  Here are some more famous January piano composers.

Franz Schubert was born on January 31, 1797, in Himmelpfortgrund, Austria. Although he died early, at age 31, Schubert composed more than 600 secular vocal works and with many piano pieces. Tomoko performed one of his famous works: Trout Quintet.

Giovani Battista Draghi was born on January 4, 1710, om Jesi, Italy. He too died early: at age 26, from tuberculosis. Nevertheless, he is considered one of the greatest composers of the early 18^th century. Known for his Baroque pieces, the most famous is his Stabat Mater. Draghi was also an accomplished organist.

Alexander Scriabin was born on January 6, 1872, in Moscow. He was largely influenced by Chopin and is associated with late Romanticism and Russian symbolism. In turn, he influenced Stravinsky and Prokofiev. During his life, Scriabin was known as a controversial professional pianist besides being a composer. Scriabin’s ten sonatas for piano have become increasingly acclaimed.  

Francis Poulenc was born on January 7, 1899, in Paris. Among his compositions were solo piano works, the most famous one being the Trois Mouvements Perpetuels suite. His Organ Concerto is also well known. Under Satie’s mentorship, Poulenc was part of Les Six: six young neoclassic composers. He started playing the piano at age six, and was influenced by Schubert and Stravinsky.

Frederick Delius was born on January 29, 1862, in Bradford, England. While he taught violin, he took more delight in improvising on the piano. Like Scriabin, Delius was first influenced by Chopin. While he lived in Florida to manage his family’s orange plantation, he began composing, having been influence by African-American music there. He was not successful in agriculture but he was promoted by several conductors. The Delius Society continues to promote him, and sponsors an annual Delius Prize competition for young musicians.