Schumann's Kreisleriana

[Mandryka]

Someone once commented to me that despite all his shortcomings - nasty hard tone, failing technique - with Rosen's Schumann you can sometimes hear the love of the music coming through. I think that this is the case here with Kreisleriana.

Any ideas in there which make it specially interesting? I kind of let it wash over me so I can't answer that.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I wasn't entirely sure what you meant by that, but checked the Henle edition (which follows Clara) which suggests 5-2 1-5 (for a''-a'-d''-d'''). That's an interesting fingering in that it necessitates a break after a'' and therefore sets it in relief. I'll work on it

Should have said 5-1, 1-5. That works very well for me.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Someone once commented to me that despite all his shortcomings - nasty hard tone, failing technique - with Rosen's Schumann you can sometimes hear the love of the music coming through. I think that this is the case here with Kreisleriana.

Charles was often a very anxious performer (one of his essays is about stage-fright, to which he confesses freely, and I remember him being totally rattled by a memory lapse in a performance of the Goldbergs I heard at my school in the 70s). In his later years he preferred the lecture-recital format, perhaps so he wouldn't have to endure the pressure and formality of a full recital program. I remember hearing some truly ugly sounds in one of these events devoted to Chopin. But I wouldn't say his technique defeated him altogether. Close to the end of his life I heard some outstanding performances of the Carter Sonata, some Mendelssohn and Brahms, and a Beethoven recital devoted to op. 111 and the Diabellis. At the latter who should sit in the row ahead of me but Elliott Carter (this is called name-dropping), and the whole audience was amused at what was truly the funniest performance of the Diabellis I've ever witnessed.

A whole essay could be written about Charles Rosen's character, and truth to tell it was not the prettiest picture. In the early 70s, when I took his seminar at SUNY Stony Brook, his manner could best be described as New York homosexual intellectual sadism. A student would try with difficulty to formulate an idea, and Rosen's impatient "yes, yes" would indicate how obvious and elementary the student's comment was. Rosen was a genius, you were not, and he wasn't going to let you forget it. There was an upright piano in our classroom, and on several occasions Rosen would toss off a Chopin etude before starting class, just to show he could. A good friend of mine, who nonetheless venerates Rosen as almost "God himself," has recounted to me the often painful experience of writing his doctoral dissertation on Verdi under Rosen at the University of Chicago. Our seminar nicknamed him "Chuck," though never was anyone less a Chuck than Charles.

He also favored the male students, and the women knew it. And he could be wickedly funny. I delivered my personal presentation on Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction, where Booth argues how novelists shape their readers' reactions through the creation of an "implied author" or "second self." At one point Keith M., the best-looking and most naïve boy in our class, made the very earnest statement that for Booth, "the author makes his readers." A perfectly timed pause, then Rosen, with a wicked glint in his eye, replied: "To the pure in heart, all is pure."

All the same, Charles had his gracious side, and when he autographed my copy of The Classical Style, he wrote "to Sforzando, with my congratulations on his work." But given his nature, I am more inclined to view his comment as noblesse oblige than sincerity.

And if you were of no use to him, Rosen had no use for you. Many years after our class, I was seated in Carnegie Recital Hall for an all-Ferneyhough recital, and Rosen took the row in front of me. I made bold to say hello and that I had taken his seminar 30 years earlier. Rosen: "Thirty years is a long time," and turned his back on me. He softened a bit during intermission, but Rosen was always Rosen. I passed him a couple of years later in the aisle during intermission at an ABT performance at the Met, and he gave no sign of recognition. I am told he behaved the same way even to the person who prepared the musical examples for one of his major books.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I recently auditioned Imogen Cooper's which completely crushes the middle note of each figure into the final one, after the rest of her recording took a standard high-precision approach.

My Cooper is a live version from 1995. You're absolutely right; perhaps to keep the 6/8 rhythm from descending into duple, she nearly loses the middle note almost every time.

[(poco) Sforzando]

[audio]http://www.mediafire.com/listen/qrv8oq5jofqc14w/Kreisleriana+MP3.mp3[/audio]

Let's see if this works. The MP3, if it plays for you, is a computer-generated sample from #8 of Kreisleriana so you can hear exactly how the rhythms should sound as Schumann wrote them.

If this one works, I'll do the Scherzo from the Bruckner 7th too.

Well, I've tried Dropbox and Mediafire and I can't get either of them to work. Phooey.

[Brian]

It played for me! And no - I've never heard the piece played that way.

(I right-clicked and copied the URL into my browser.)

[amw]

[audio]https://www.mediafire.com/?qrv8oq5jofqc14w[/audio]

Let's see if this works. The MP3, if it plays for you, is a computer-generated sample from #8 of Kreisleriana so you can hear exactly how the rhythms should sound as Schumann wrote them.

If this one works, I'll do the Scherzo from the Bruckner 7th too.

Well, I've tried Dropbox and Mediafire and I can't get either of them to work. Phooey.

Try embedding this url: http://www.mediafire.com/listen/qrv8oq5jofqc14w/Kreisleriana+MP3.mp3 (for the audio tag to work I think it needs to recognise a valid .mp3 extension on the end).

Though no one's a computer, I think Anton Kuerti compares reasonably well with the sample
[audio]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32084883/01-08%20-%20Robert%20Schumann%20-%20Kreisleriana%2C%20Op.%2016%20-%20VIII.%20Schnell%20und%20spielend.mp3[/audio]

My Cooper is a live version from 1995. You're absolutely right; perhaps to keep the 6/8 rhythm from descending into duple, she nearly loses the middle note almost every time.

Sounds like the same one—good to know that they reissue those BBC Music Mag recordings in more accessible format sometimes. (Perhaps they'll get the Hogwood 76 & 77 for the upcoming Decca Haydn set, they've been consigned to the vagaries of charity shops ever since)

Someone once commented to me that despite all his shortcomings - nasty hard tone, failing technique - with Rosen's Schumann you can sometimes hear the love of the music coming through. I think that this is the case here with Kreisleriana.

Any ideas in there which make it specially interesting? I kind of let it wash over me so I can't answer that.

I haven't had a chance to listen yet—thanks for sending me it though! Will post reactions when I do

But I wouldn't say his technique defeated him altogether.

Me neither. The late Hammerklavier and Op. 110 from 1997 is not as secure as the earlier 1965 recording in all the notey passages or in rhythmic clarity, but his technique is much better where it comes to varieties of piano touch. (Somewhere in the intervening years he learned to play quietly!) My assumption is that when he makes the piano sound ugly he's doing it on purpose, but I could be totally off base on that.

A whole essay could be written about Charles Rosen's character, and truth to tell it was not the prettiest picture. In the early 70s, when I took his seminar at SUNY Stony Brook, his manner could best be described as New York homosexual intellectual sadism.

I wasn't in New York but I had a few professors like that as an undergraduate. One of them briefly supervised me in composition and I eventually learned that the highest praise he'd ever pay a student's piece was to indicate a similarity to one of his own works. Still active and teaching, so names won't be named

[(poco) Sforzando]

It played for me! And no - I've never heard the piece played that way.

(I right-clicked and copied the URL into my browser.)

All I'm seeing are light blue bars now. And the only way I can get amw's file too is to quote and pull the URL from his message.

And yes, Brian, that's what Schumann wrote - though my software is not generating the staccatos as crisply as Kuerti. I am mainly concerned however about the rhythm.

ETA: Whoa. Now I'm not getting blue bars, but I can't play my own file though I can play amw's.
And now I'm getting blue bars again.

[amw]

If you're seeing blue bars, try refreshing the page, or clicking on the title of the post (text saying Re: Schumann's Kreisleriana at the top of each post)

[Mandryka]

My assumption is that when he makes the piano sound ugly he's doing it on purpose, but I could be totally off base on that.

A very refreshing and charitable response.

[Jo498]

Does the example have the original left hand as well? I always thought the main (dotted 6/8 "fast siciliano") rhythm was somewhat blurred in many interpretations because the left hand did some conflicting cross-rhythm thing...

Because that rhythm is not all that complicated (play a siciliano and speed up ) although it is messed up sometimes in the first mvtm. of Beethoven's 7th as well. In the latter movement some interpretations tend to something like dotted 16th-32nd-8th-notes instead

I can play amws in a different window; in the original post I get a light blue bar with a horizontal scroll bar but nothing clickable... (but embedded stuff does not work at my computer since I got a new one a few weeks ago...)

a...holish professors: People like Rosen are so uber-smart that I can to some extent understand it. (They really might be bored with almost everyone else most of the time.)
But there are a whole lot of similar super-arrogant/dismissive professors who have in no way "earned" that right...

[Florestan]

A whole essay could be written about Charles Rosen's character

Based on your recollections, it would actually contain one single word: JERK. 

a...holish professors: People like Rosen are so uber-smart that I can to some extent understand it. (They really might be bored with almost everyone else most of the time.)

Then he shouldn´t have chosen a career which involved getting into closer and constant contact with people who were much less knwoledgeable than him --- unless that was precisely the career he wanted, namely to ostentatiously and rudely show how almost everyone is so dumb and insignificant as compared to him who is so smart and important. That is, jerk.

[(poco) Sforzando]

To pick up a variety of recent comments:

@amw: I am still having difficulty with the embed feature and I think I'll just provide a URL within posts from now on.

@Jo498: My example does include the original left hand. The left hand is pretty easy and the real problem is that the right is playing two separate lines requiring different rhythms and articulations. Agreed that the rhythm is not complicated in itself at least in a moderate or slow tempo, but at quicker speeds the dotted quarter-eighth-quarter pattern seems harder to control when repeated numerous times in succession. The result is that performers often fall into duple meter like the dotted 16th-32nd-8th you describe.

In fact, if you read Gunther Schuller's The Compleat Conductor, a perverse if fascinating exploration of how conductors often fail to observe composers' indicated tempi, balances, and phrasings, he claims that few conductors, Carlos Kleiber being one exception, get the rhythms in the first movement of the LvB 7th consistently right. And I also point to the scherzo from the Bruckner 7th, where the motif is notated as double-dotted quarter - sixteenth - quarter in every single instance, and conductors almost invariably play it as single-dotted quarter - eighth - quarter. Reviewing YouTubes the other day, I found Celibidache to be one of the worst offenders, while Klemperer comes closest than most. The difference may be subtle, but since Bruckner notates the motif with the double-dotted quarter every single time, literally hundreds of instances, I think performers ought to at least make the effort and exaggerate the double-dotting rather than the opposite. I'll upload computer files showing the correct rhythms soon.

@Jo498 and Florestan, re Rosen: From what I've heard from someone who knew him far better than I, Rosen had few real friends, because few people could match his level. At the same time, there was a competitive, insecure streak to him that made him difficult for most people to deal with. It didn't help that his eyesight and hearing were weakening towards the end; I tried to ask a question during one of his late lectures, and since I don't have a Wagnerian voice, someone had to repeat my question because Charles's hearing was failing. As for his choice of career, bear in mind that within the upper echelons of the American university system at least, professors are hired and evaluated primarily on their scholarly publications; a prestigious scholar like Rosen would be given at most one discussion class, one large lecture, and a couple of dissertations to supervise. Otherwise the university could care less about the quality of his teaching and his engagement with students. Over and over students have found to their dismay that the famous names are unapproachable and involved primarily in their own research; the better teachers are often the less-known ones with more limited scholarly ambitions and greater concern for the people they teach.

[Florestan]

Over and over students have found to their dismay that the famous names are unapproachable and involved primarily in their own research; the better teachers are often the less-known ones with more limited scholarly ambitions and greater concern for the people they teach.

And who, I presume and please correct me if I´m wrong, are paid much less than the Rosens, or even underpaid.

[(poco) Sforzando]

And who, I presume and please correct me if I´m wrong, are paid much less than the Rosens, or even underpaid.

Oh yes. Of course, tenured and tenure-track professors at most schools are also expected to publish, but the more prestigious names at the more prestigious schools are given virtually free rein to spend most of their time doing research (including sabbaticals) - which accrues to the greater prestige of the school, helps attract more prestigious faculty, etc.

By far the worst situation is for part-time teachers, usually known as adjuncts, who teach punishing workloads in basic courses like English composition or foreign languages and who earn little, have no benefits, have no say in departmental policy, and have no chance at tenure. Some of these people are graduate students who serve as teaching assistants for the professors who give large lecture classes and have little interaction with the huge numbers of students they lecture to for perhaps 2-3 hours a week in a plenary session. Back in the 1970s when I was in graduate school, there was a famous article in an educational journal entitled something like "The Re-Ni****ing of Higher Education," and I remember fellow students who got their Ph.D.s and then taught 4-5 grueling sections of college composition at two separate colleges, grading endless papers for virtually no money and having no chance at professional advancement. The situation was bad then, and from all I've heard it's even worse now:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/higher-education-college-adjunct-professor-salary/404461/

(We've gotten far away from Kreisleriana, haven't we?)

[Jo498]

So it seems that the two lines/rhythms in the right hand make this difficult and probably it *should* feel somewhat strange, not like the good natured cousin with similar rhythm and postilion-style signal melody at the end of "Carnaval" (this one is known a German folksong with diverse texts, e.g. "Es ritten drei Reiter zum Tore hinaus").

Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony also has a similar rhythm in the first movement.

Why Bruckner almost always double-dots rhythms, even in a tempo (like that whole-bar-counted scherzon in the 7th) when de facto this will be only a very slight difference, I don't know. Maybe he was afraid that single dots would be played as 2:1 instead 3:1, so he writes 7:1. But this won't help here because the "fast siciliano" does not tend to collapse into 2:1 for the dotted and short note, but into a too short dotted and too long note following the short one.

[Florestan]

(We've gotten far away from Kreisleriana, haven't we?)

As far as it gets.

[(poco) Sforzando]

As far as it gets.

Yes, but both you and Jo498 joined in, and given Schumann's (at least the younger Schumann's) taste for flights of bizarre fancy, I have no doubt he'd approve.

Back to issues of rhythmic performance in fast sicilianos later, when I have more time . . . .

[Florestan]

Yes, but both you and Jo498 joined in, and given Schumann's (at least the younger Schumann's) taste for flights of bizarre fancy, I have no doubt he'd approve.

A thread should be like the world, it must contain everything. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

A thread should be like the world, it must contain everything. 

No danger of that not happening here . . . .