Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner BIG Question. Need expert

I'm reading Adolph Christiani's book on Expression.
The Metrical Formation is where it starts getting really interesting.



He says this: "No composition an be really understood, unluess the mind is able to define its periods, phrases, and sections."
"Discrimination of these metrical groups becomes a revelation, and periodizing(described below) is the source of this revelation.)
"Many an uninteresting, because not comprehended, composition becomes of surprising interest, when the finger thoughts of the composer's architectonic are brought to light As the reader's mind descernes these architectonic phrases, so should he, as interpreter, convey them to his audience..."



He says that a regular phrase is constructed this way: A period consists of two phrases, a phrase is constructed of two sections, a section is constructed of 2 measures. So a regular period must always have 8 measures.


THAN, a IRREGULAR period, is constructed this way: A period has EITHER two OR three phrases, a Phrase has either Two or Three sections, a section has either two or three Measures.
If you do the math(don't do it!) you'll get 1872 different kinds of Periods. Of course, there are a couple that are most common periods and other options maybe never used. Anyhow, figuring out the "architecture of the music," can really help the interpretation he says.




So my question is, is this the way it is done/taught today? I tried analysing a composition this way, and it's absolutely amazing how the interpretation changes. You really figure out how to "tell the story", just like in a real story you need to know where the comma, period, ";", is.
So do they teach it like this today on colleges? Or did they improve it in the meantime. This book was written in 1885, so I figure 125 years later, they might have improved it.


Does anybody a very good book about analysing music this way? cause his explanation is quite brief. I tried to analysie Schubert's 4th impromptu, and ran into a problem, I need an expert(or expert book) to help teach me how to do this, cause I think it can make a huge difference in the interpretation.

What do we think?

Ps, the book is free on Google, you can read it.
The section the explained the thing described above, Metrical Formations, is page 105, till 137

I was taught about phrase structure as an undergrad music major, but nothing terribly complex. We were taught that there are two different types of regular phrase: the period and the sentence. I think the period is a 4+4 idea and the sentence more of a 2+2+4 thing (my prof used Happy Birthday as an example).

PS - I gather that Mozart is seen as the model for phrase structure.

I think phrase structure is enormously important and too often ignored by teachers and students. I don't think a systematic study is necessarily warranted, but some kind of thoughtful attention should be undertaken by every serious pianist.

well i think it's ONE way of looking at things. i certainly haven't thought of it entirely that way, but i think for most people, musicians or non-musicians, even if you haven't articulated it as clearly as Christiani, you have some intuitive sense what a "regular" phrase is.

non-classical examples: in pop music, you see so many 8-measure "phrases" it's really kind of tiring. interestingly, the very few rock music songs (mostly from playing guitar hero...) i know tends to break out of this mold, which is kind of cool. i suppose you can analyze in that "irregular phrasing" framework.

anyway, my point is, echoing Kreisler, pianists should certainly be mindful of it. whether you need specific tools (like Christiani's framework) for an analysis is debatable. i don't know much about Schenkerian analysis, but certainly it's another approach, and many many other approaches, for the theoretically minded to the performance-minded.

to reinforce this "all roads lead to rome" (or "convergence", i suppose) concept, i have an example of my own playing. i happen to play a bach piece for my teacher the other day. she had high praise for my playing, including this statement: "i'm sure you don't know Schenkerian analysis, but you're doing all the right things by listening and you're doing everything a Schenkerian analysis would tell you." Disregard whether my play was worthy of such a statement--my point is, use what her said as an example how various approaches can yield highly polished results.

If there are 1,872 types of period, what's the point of analysing music in order to establish which types there are in each piece? Our ears and our musical experience, ie our senses not our brains, inform us on how to discern the musical structure. Tovey on the Rondo of Beethoven's Op 26: "do not trouble to tell him [the listener] whether bars 1 -12 are four groups of three bars or six groups of two bars. This is a question that concerns only those people who can take a bird's-eye view of music or a ground-plan view of architecture. It is barely possible that an unprejudiced listener might be found who could spontaneously detect that bars 1 - 12 may be in either two-bar or three-bar rhythm. So keen a listener would deserve the pleasure of debating the alternative with himself."
Tovey was a great analyser, but he also knew what music is for: to play from the heart and to listen with the heart. Music is felt, not calculated.

I think some analysis is helpful in determining what the choices are, which is what Tovey is highlighting in that particular passage.

When we simply go with the first thing we feel, we miss out on a lot of opportunities for exploration and discovery. And as anyone who's ever played chamber music will know, music can be felt a variety of different ways, and discovering those different ways is part of the fun.

I agree that it is terribly important, more important than people think.

Anybody familiar with Schenkerian analysis?

I want a good book about this.

I audited a graduate seminar at the Shepherd School involving biographical/theoretical analysis of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The subjects of hypermeter and phrase rhythm came up a few times;interestingly, Mozart's hypermeter (meter over multiple measures) was much more irregular and inventive than Beethoven's (though I don't remember how early the string quartet we looked of his was - probably early)!

We also discussed Schenkerian analysis - on a very basic level it's about phrase outlining. I don't fully remember; it was a while ago. Very interesting ideas, however. I do believe Schenker himself wrote a book on analysis, so that might be a good place to start.

Hit the right notes in the right time at tempo. If you can do that in several big concertos, and from memory, you could go on tour right now.

You can go on tour without that ability also with your Gyro stand up comedy act. Having people pay to hear you play the piano requires more.

If that were true, fugues and the formal structures of music would not even exist.

If it weren't true, everyone would be able to compose fugues like Bach.

If it were true, everyone would be able to compose fugues like Bach.

Not only all that, but it is worth mentioning that Tovey's two possibilities for that passage are not the only ones.

And I think he's being somewhat condescending about what listeners perceive. There is an entire cottage industry of supplemental analysis of classical music, much of it intended for people who may not have much of a formal music education but are still are interested in how music is put together because it helps them get what is going on (which helps them to feel the music more intensely, naturally). BBC Radio 3 has a long-running hour-and-a-half weekly program devoted to that kind of stuff (I just listened to a partial analysis of Sibelius' 4th Symphony on it, and even if it was a bit elementary, I still got something out of it). As a kid, a long time ago, I was lucky enough to catch some of Leonard Bernstein's TV programs (it amazes me today that those things were on prime-time network TV - how things have changed!), where he would frequently do some analysis of why the music they were performing was what it was and worked how it did.

There are also pre-concert talks in many places, and sometimes performers will simply preface the music they are about to play, pointing out salient features for the audience to notice, if they are so inclined. To me, it seems that there is a real thirst for this kind of music analysis, and people feel it enhances their experience of the music.

I'd also point out that Chopin, who seems to be some kind of icon for the swoony anti-intellectual end of the musical spectrum for many folks, had his students do analysis of the pieces they worked on. He even had a favored theory teacher to whom he sent his piano pupils if their analytical abilities were found wanting.

Oh, I think Bach had a feel for fugues that no one else had. Everyone is taught the basic 'calculating' principles for writing them, yet somehow, no one can duplicate them.

Analysis is fine for those whose primary faculty is thinking, but a simple question: what inspires you when you play and listen , the knowledge of how the composer put the music together, or how it sounds? Analysis is one means to an end; there are other means.
Kreisler: I did not say go with the first thing we feel. Feelings develop with experience, the awareness of the music "works" for the player changes with practice. For me, my ear tells me, rightly or wrongly maybe for my listeners, how to phrase, how the shape of the music makes sense and that process is evolutionary. Sensory, intuitive and feeling faculties offer for me direct ways to explore music. Intellect/thinking is a diversion, a questionable step for me. For others it is clearly different.
Musical form follows practice. Music evolves through the inspiration of composers, not "how can I write music in such and such a way that is different and show how clever I am at inventing a new structure" That is sterile. For me, knowing how and why great composers' pieces work does not create the wonder, it adds to the wonder already evoked by the sounds and the feelings I hear, whether playing or listening.
Terez is indeed right: Bach had a feel for what and how he wrote. It was not a series of calculations to produce theoretically correct pieces. That too would be sterile and sterile Bach was not.
Lest you think I am anti-theory and anti-thinking, I have studied music theory and spent decades working analytically in systems and telecommunications. I value rational analysis: it just doesn't do much for me on the music front.