It’s funny how much in the arts we spend hours and hours learning to do things automatically and then have to later stop ourselves from doing those same things.
To me the double is the closest thing I’ve come across to the jazz idea of ‘soloing on changes.’ The Bach doubles also feel much like bop to play; running lines over the harmonies. The violin partitas are a favourite with jazz guitarists.
Hi Michael, if one wants to study composition in the spare time, how to best structure a self study program? Id like to to study partimenti, then move one up to Late romantic and finally study orchestration/Film and write my own stuff :)
Hallo Martin! Schwer zu sagen. Ich würde sagen, es gibt keinen "geraden" Weg... die Disziplin dazu bringt man ja eh nicht auf und es ist ist eigenltlich sicher nicht schlecht immer zwischen den Stilen und Aufgabenbereichen hin und her zu springen, da das eine das andere immer erhellt. Und wenn man ganz ehrlich ist: das darf man sich nicht so vorstellen, dass man z.B. erst den Kontrapunkt "auslernt" und dann zum Nächsten übergeht. Für mich stellt sich das momentan eher so dar, dass du in jeder dieser Teilbereiche im Prinzip nie ausgelernt hast und letztlich unendlich vertiefen kannst.
I think that any models are a necessary, but insufficient, basis for composition and improvisation. It’s no wonder they are often referred to as “vocabulary”. Fluency in English is a prerequisite to being Hemingway, but there’s a lot more to writing beyond having a good dictionary. And yet, Hemingway’s raw materials are available to everyone. I recently started a job as a ballet pianist, a gig which gives you free rein to improvise for hours at a stretch, and it’s hard not to suffocate in an atmosphere of your own improvisations at that scale. I’m suddenly gasping for repertoire, and Chopin sounds more inventive than ever. I finally feel like I have the schema firmly at my fingertips after years of practice, but it’s a false summit - there are many bigger peaks beyond that one. Ironically, I feel like I now have to return to the most superficial features of music that any casual listener would be attracted to, the things I loved about music as a child: rhythm, dynamics, and the narrative created by those basic elements. The technique of schema is a vessel to carry those elements.
I disagree with your opinion on RO. It includes all the main dominant and subdominant chords, which are absolutely needed for any. And you can realize many partimento with only RO if you are aware of the modulations.
To me, attempts to reduce music into compositional building blocks, it comes from the deep desire of understanding music, as for us it almost seems like music of the past is something not completely comprehensible due to the fact that is composed with a total different way of thinking, which is completely different from our. If one just accepts this view, music becomes just a mess that somehow evokes our feelings, so schemata becomes a necessity for us of the XXI century.
LOL well, have you heard anything about that book? Like Reviews? Although it is a very attractive looking book with a very special layout, format, high quality paper and print the only thing I can say is: I was super disappointed when I started browsing through it - yeah I bought a copy. I can't remember the price but it was criminally high but I was willing to pay for it as just from the cover/format I was expecting a lot. When you go through the book it is actually hard to tell what it is all about: compsoing? improvising? Music theory? A contribution to schema theory? My impression: all and nothing of this. As I already foreshadowed in the video it even tries to rise the number of schemata by introducing all sorts of new ones up to a degree that nobody can ever grasp. I wanna give you a representative example: among the cadences that the author presents is one that reaches the tonic by step, coming from the 5: 5-4-3-2-1. Which he calls "walking cadenca" AND - for what ever reason - "sbarco" (whatever!?, just like totally random) THEN he does a differentiation of that schema: 1) "Sbarco Tertia" (which basically is RO) , 2) "Sbarco Gliding" (which is a Fauxbourdon), 3) "Sbarco Caterpillar" (a 7-6-chain). 4) "Sbarco Galant" (a C5 ), 5) "Sbarco Ottocento" (again RO and hard totell why it's not a "sbarco tertia"), 6) "Sbarco X" (an imperfect cadence with stepwise bass, 7) "Sbarco Chains" (like sequences of sbarcos)... And we're talking about a single lousy cadence here. It is as well questionable how and why in 2015 (!) he doesn't to go for a consequent terminological alignment with already well established terms of schemas or basic scaffoldings - well to be fair partly he does refer to and pic up terms like Monte or "Passo indietro" (a Gjerdingen term). So if you extrapolate this strategy to dozens of other schemata presented in the book you can imagine that this is not just becoming a jungle of terms but more like a total disaster. Very obviously none of his terms did find their way into the Partimento common sense, or have you ever heard the terms "Lancia" (not the car! the half cadence!!), "Ouverture Ottocento", "Reverence" or "Whale Tertia"? So including Strobbe's "Il Tiranno" we now have 4 terms for the beginning of the C major Prelude (Mortensen's "Page 1", Rices "The Lully" and Ijzerman's "descant cadence") - I mean if this isn't a total mess???? The other thing is that it is especially disappointing methodolgically: for each of the schemata he usually provids a single basic "textbook"-example in 3 or 4 voices and provides an elaborated example taken from an original composition - and that's it. The book's layout and text style obviously aims teachers of younger composers but many of the orignal examples are far out of the technical level of a beginner or child - he probably aims at an army of Alma Deutschers. I could go on as there is so much more odd about this book. In general I imagine Lieven Strobbe as a very nice teacher with a head full of creative and valuable pedagocal ideas but it just didn't work out as book. Sorry. Since I've bought the book I actually never really used it or came back to it, it just wandered straight to the shelf. BUT maybe now I'm gonna give it another try - although the format makes it a hard read on the couch (ouch!) :DD sorry haha, nothing personal congrats, you received the longest comment ever cheers
Personally I don’t think the sim of schemata theory is to reduce music to it basic schemas, and the worst mistake of an analysis it to favour poor music because you can name basic schemata. The value of reduce music to schema, is to recognise the rich craft on superficial elements. In other words: how the creativity of a good composer can be on elaborating the on the foreground of basic structural patterns. Boring music usually happens when we use basic patterns without elaborating the foreground in a creative way, or didn’t work on the flow of the music, focusing at schemata as “building blocks” and not as linearity. Since with came with “philosophical” questions, one can see the way Parisian curriculum worked in early nineteenth century from a foulcalt perspective: prescribing patterns harmonic patterns in accompaniment lessons, prescribing more voice leading patterns in harmony lessons, arriving at more abstract rules (and finally reducing the prescriptions by showing few “avoid” rules). So when one arrived at free counterpoint/composition, he would be constrained by the habitude of prescriptive rules and could abandon extreme standardised composition without falling list or unrecognisable music….
For me, an improvisation is never meant to be great music so if you are trying not to continually spew out schemata or trying to make your sequences shorter, you won't necessarily (although I guess it's possible if you have Olympic level skills and all the Gods are conspiring to help you find an original path) come up with something as brilliant as an original compostion that wants to be listened to over and over again during a bike ride across town. I think that shortening the sequences and avoiding circle of 5ths reduces the listeners expectations and that moves the music along in a less boring way but when composing rather than improvising, those tricks may or may not be the most helpful solutions. I think you're trying to take baroque improvisation to a higher level but still keep it baroque and the barrier of this style (or any style) is limiting. I think that there is probably more scope for creativity in improvising fugues in a baroque style.
00:00 Intro
00:47 What’s a „Double“???
01:14 Corelli’s bass
02:13 Composed Double 1:2 + comment
04:34 Improv Double 1:4 + comment
06:11 Story time
07:21 The intro improv + comment
08:44 Controversy on schemata
It’s funny how much in the arts we spend hours and hours learning to do things automatically and then have to later stop ourselves from doing those same things.
I love the philosophical touch in this one.
To me the double is the closest thing I’ve come across to the jazz idea of ‘soloing on changes.’ The Bach doubles also feel much like bop to play; running lines over the harmonies. The violin partitas are a favourite with jazz guitarists.
Hi Michael, if one wants to study composition in the spare time, how to best structure a self study program? Id like to to study partimenti, then move one up to Late romantic and finally study orchestration/Film and write my own stuff :)
Hallo Martin! Schwer zu sagen. Ich würde sagen, es gibt keinen "geraden" Weg... die Disziplin dazu bringt man ja eh nicht auf und es ist ist eigenltlich sicher nicht schlecht immer zwischen den Stilen und Aufgabenbereichen hin und her zu springen, da das eine das andere immer erhellt. Und wenn man ganz ehrlich ist: das darf man sich nicht so vorstellen, dass man z.B. erst den Kontrapunkt "auslernt" und dann zum Nächsten übergeht. Für mich stellt sich das momentan eher so dar, dass du in jeder dieser Teilbereiche im Prinzip nie ausgelernt hast und letztlich unendlich vertiefen kannst.
I think that any models are a necessary, but insufficient, basis for composition and improvisation. It’s no wonder they are often referred to as “vocabulary”. Fluency in English is a prerequisite to being Hemingway, but there’s a lot more to writing beyond having a good dictionary. And yet, Hemingway’s raw materials are available to everyone.
I recently started a job as a ballet pianist, a gig which gives you free rein to improvise for hours at a stretch, and it’s hard not to suffocate in an atmosphere of your own improvisations at that scale. I’m suddenly gasping for repertoire, and Chopin sounds more inventive than ever. I finally feel like I have the schema firmly at my fingertips after years of practice, but it’s a false summit - there are many bigger peaks beyond that one.
Ironically, I feel like I now have to return to the most superficial features of music that any casual listener would be attracted to, the things I loved about music as a child: rhythm, dynamics, and the narrative created by those basic elements. The technique of schema is a vessel to carry those elements.
I disagree with your opinion on RO. It includes all the main dominant and subdominant chords, which are absolutely needed for any. And you can realize many partimento with only RO if you are aware of the modulations.
What's my opinion?
To me, attempts to reduce music into compositional building blocks, it comes from the deep desire of understanding music, as for us it almost seems like music of the past is something not completely comprehensible due to the fact that is composed with a total different way of thinking, which is completely different from our. If one just accepts this view, music becomes just a mess that somehow evokes our feelings, so schemata becomes a necessity for us of the XXI century.
"Tonal Tools for Keyboard Players" looks to be out-of-print :(
LOL well, have you heard anything about that book? Like Reviews? Although it is a very attractive looking book with a very special layout, format, high quality paper and print the only thing I can say is: I was super disappointed when I started browsing through it - yeah I bought a copy. I can't remember the price but it was criminally high but I was willing to pay for it as just from the cover/format I was expecting a lot. When you go through the book it is actually hard to tell what it is all about: compsoing? improvising? Music theory? A contribution to schema theory? My impression: all and nothing of this. As I already foreshadowed in the video it even tries to rise the number of schemata by introducing all sorts of new ones up to a degree that nobody can ever grasp. I wanna give you a representative example: among the cadences that the author presents is one that reaches the tonic by step, coming from the 5: 5-4-3-2-1. Which he calls "walking cadenca" AND - for what ever reason - "sbarco" (whatever!?, just like totally random) THEN he does a differentiation of that schema: 1) "Sbarco Tertia" (which basically is RO) , 2) "Sbarco Gliding" (which is a Fauxbourdon), 3) "Sbarco Caterpillar" (a 7-6-chain). 4) "Sbarco Galant" (a C5 ), 5) "Sbarco Ottocento" (again RO and hard totell why it's not a "sbarco tertia"), 6) "Sbarco X" (an imperfect cadence with stepwise bass, 7) "Sbarco Chains" (like sequences of sbarcos)... And we're talking about a single lousy cadence here. It is as well questionable how and why in 2015 (!) he doesn't to go for a consequent terminological alignment with already well established terms of schemas or basic scaffoldings - well to be fair partly he does refer to and pic up terms like Monte or "Passo indietro" (a Gjerdingen term). So if you extrapolate this strategy to dozens of other schemata presented in the book you can imagine that this is not just becoming a jungle of terms but more like a total disaster. Very obviously none of his terms did find their way into the Partimento common sense, or have you ever heard the terms "Lancia" (not the car! the half cadence!!), "Ouverture Ottocento", "Reverence" or "Whale Tertia"? So including Strobbe's "Il Tiranno" we now have 4 terms for the beginning of the C major Prelude (Mortensen's "Page 1", Rices "The Lully" and Ijzerman's "descant cadence") - I mean if this isn't a total mess????
The other thing is that it is especially disappointing methodolgically: for each of the schemata he usually provids a single basic "textbook"-example in 3 or 4 voices and provides an elaborated example taken from an original composition - and that's it. The book's layout and text style obviously aims teachers of younger composers but many of the orignal examples are far out of the technical level of a beginner or child - he probably aims at an army of Alma Deutschers. I could go on as there is so much more odd about this book.
In general I imagine Lieven Strobbe as a very nice teacher with a head full of creative and valuable pedagocal ideas but it just didn't work out as book. Sorry. Since I've bought the book I actually never really used it or came back to it, it just wandered straight to the shelf. BUT maybe now I'm gonna give it another try - although the format makes it a hard read on the couch (ouch!) :DD sorry haha, nothing personal
congrats, you received the longest comment ever
cheers
Personally I don’t think the sim of schemata theory is to reduce music to it basic schemas, and the worst mistake of an analysis it to favour poor music because you can name basic schemata. The value of reduce music to schema, is to recognise the rich craft on superficial elements. In other words: how the creativity of a good composer can be on elaborating the on the foreground of basic structural patterns. Boring music usually happens when we use basic patterns without elaborating the foreground in a creative way, or didn’t work on the flow of the music, focusing at schemata as “building blocks” and not as linearity. Since with came with “philosophical” questions, one can see the way Parisian curriculum worked in early nineteenth century from a foulcalt perspective: prescribing patterns harmonic patterns in accompaniment lessons, prescribing more voice leading patterns in harmony lessons, arriving at more abstract rules (and finally reducing the prescriptions by showing few “avoid” rules). So when one arrived at free counterpoint/composition, he would be constrained by the habitude of prescriptive rules and could abandon extreme standardised composition without falling list or unrecognisable music….
As always: solid comment!
For me, an improvisation is never meant to be great music so if you are trying not to continually spew out schemata or trying to make your sequences shorter, you won't necessarily (although I guess it's possible if you have Olympic level skills and all the Gods are conspiring to help you find an original path) come up with something as brilliant as an original compostion that wants to be listened to over and over again during a bike ride across town.
I think that shortening the sequences and avoiding circle of 5ths reduces the listeners expectations and that moves the music along in a less boring way but when composing rather than improvising, those tricks may or may not be the most helpful solutions.
I think you're trying to take baroque improvisation to a higher level but still keep it baroque and the barrier of this style (or any style) is limiting. I think that there is probably more scope for creativity in improvising fugues in a baroque style.
Erster *,*