roman: flute sonatas and a swedish mass

In her new two-CD set Johann Helmich Roman’s flute sonatas (Caprice 2007; CAP 22060), flutist Maria Bania provides a well-written short biography of this “father of Swedish music”. Stockholm-born Roman (1694-1758), a talented violinist, was in London between 1716 and 1721 and played in Handel’s orchestras (the King’s Theatre and later the Royal Academy). Thus he participated at at least seven of Handel’s operas; “operas at the highest European level and with the most eminent singers of his time.” Unsurprisingly, “it was a reluctant Roman who returned to a Stockholm that had neither opera house nor public concerts.”

I have sympathy for the man.

bach on the piano

After years away from the studio, Murray Perahia has issued a new CD with three of Bach’s partitas. The official Perahia website, maintained by Sony, provides audio samples of the new recording. As reviews are being written, we will in all likelihood once again have to endure the silly arguments for and against playing Bach on this, that or the other instrument.

To be sure, Perahia himself has an open-mindedness about the issue that many other pianists (and sadly enough many harpsichord lovers) seem to lack. In this interview, for example, he is quoted as saying “I think the pursuit of authenticity is fine. There’s nothing against it, but it’s not the only way.”

five months later

28 March, 09:03 p.m. Amusing coincidence: Since I began this blog last November, I’ve had exactly 6000 visitors, and 600 spam messages were caught by the friendly WordPress robot. Thanks for reading, folks!

balance of the hands V

Final post about handedness and keyboard technique

Continuo practicing

Depending on one’s handedness, the preparation of continuo bass lines and continuo chords calls for different approaches. Obviously, continuo is about harmonies and bass line phrasing, but in terms of performance, it is first and foremost about being together. One could describe the ideal state of mind of a continuo player as ‘being part of the music’ to the extreme. Continuo playing is not about waiting and reacting, it is about anticipating, participating and breathing. No matter what her or his handedness, if the continuo player worries about the poor performance of her or his non-dominant hand, this will likely prevent the directness (I keep wanting to write “flow,” but to be honest, I do not know very much about flow) and spontaneity necessary for a good performance.

balance of the hands IV

Part IV of V about handedness and keyboard technique

3) Learning complex passages in two hands

How do we practice a complex passage that involves both hands? I am thinking of technical writing such as in bars 60-64 in the Gigue of Bach’s fifth partita. Trying to approach such passages while comfortably relying on our dominant hand will lead us nowhere. I prepare this kind of music by first establishing in detail how both hands have to interact and trying to practice away any jerky or panicky arm or finger movement at about half tempo. Now I make extra sure that my dominant hand knows exactly where it has to go and what it has to do - increasing the security here can be compared with establishing anchor points, with memorizing the moments when the balance within the hand is perfect or, in short, with giving that hand extra authority. Now I can begin to work with the non-dominant hand, focussing on two things: agility and coordination. By first ‘grounding’ the dominant hand, I give freedom to the non-dominant hand, and eventually the passage emerges as secure and repeatable.

balance of the hands III

Part III of V about handedness and keyboard technique

I came to acknowledge the potential of my dominant hand in keyboard playing through an accident. I am posting all this partly so that others won’t need to repeat the trick I played on myself. One day, early on in my studies, in a period where I fought to overcome some invisible technical barriers through a fierce practicing routine, I got up at six in the morning and fetched breakfast. The idea was to start with my exercises at seven sharp, together with the wakeup chorus of Czerny and Clementi produced by the pianists elsewhere in the dormitory. At a quarter past six, I tried to cut the crust off a bit of elderly Gouda cheese, using a cheese plane. At 6:15:30 I was running for my medicine box: the plane had slipped and I had chipped off two of my finger tops - moderately enough not to need a doctor; thoroughly enough - as it turned out - not to be able to play with that hand - my non-dominant hand - for a month (I will stick to the terms dominant hand and non-dominant hand in order to make it easy for both right-handed and left-handed readers to wade through my text). I stopped the blood flow and kept myself from fainting, cleaned up the mess, had a quiet hour of self-contemplation, canceled my harpsichord lesson and returned to eating cheese. There is nothing so upsetting as an interrupted routine.

balance of the hands II

Part II of V about handedness and keyboard technique

The ideal of balance between the hands of a keyboard player was clearly not at all the most likely historical cause of why the standard keyboard developed as it did, with the treble at the right-hand side. To be sure, speaking as a historian, that cause can never be definitely stated. The development of keyboard instruments took a long period and most of the remainders of its early stages are lost. And even if they were not - surviving artifacts rarely disclose their most important secret: why their inventors made them as they did.

The only valid statement about the mechanics behind the development of the modern keyboard layout is, hence, one about correlations