Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[karlhenning]

I'm feeling a little reckless, so I think I will post a piece here that really doesn't look like the sort of thing I do at all, and which is really a very personal thing to me that I am a little dubious about sharing. But there's a reason for both of those things...

I wrote it a couple of months ago, and it was not intended for public viewing for a couple of reasons - 1) it's really a private piece, as might be clear from the score (though for the purposes of posting it here I've erased various things...); 2) it's a plain and simple out-and-out tonal Romantic pastiche of the sort Saul was asking for a week or two back. In terms of my main compositional output, it doesn't figure at all, like my fugues (only more unambiguously serious), but I wrote it with the idea that it became source material for something more 'me'. In point of fact the formal (not stylistic) model is Liszt, specifically his Petrarch Sonnets, initially written as songs which he then paraphrased into rather gorgeous piano pieces. Well, my piece is a Petrarch setting too, but it imagines that the song is already written, and goes straight to the paraphrase! The idea was that I paraphrase this paraphrase of an imaginary song in my own style at a later date - and eagle-eyed readers will spot that that is exactly what the Karl-destined clarinet+harpsichord piece of whose first lines I posted an image a few pages ago is. Only that piece, if it comes to fruition (I'm finding it hard to do) will not be a paraphrase, it will be a 'deconstruction', as you can see from the title on the image.

Well, here's the score....

Lovely, Luke!

[Luke]

OK, look, here's the audio file. But I feel really odd about putting it up here, I think I will take it down in a day or two after you've had a chance to download it:

http://www.mediafire.com/?mxd1niydhmz

[Saul]

Thank you, Cato, for looking, and so closely too! Yes, I tried to weave things together motivically a little, I'm glad it comes out in the reading...

As for the reticence - well, I always used to be hyper-reticent, but this thread, and a few successful public performances, commissions etc. cured me of that to a large extent. I still usually think long and hard before putting a work out there for any anonymous person to do with as they will, however. All of my pieces are is very personal, especially recently, as you know, so I have to treat them with care!

But this one is more personal and sensitive than most, and it is also me speaking through a temporary mask, as it were - it's both very deeply felt and at the same time not representative at all, except maybe in some deeper-than-the-notes way. Neither of those things make me wildly happy about showing it to the world, hence the particular reticence with it. At the same time, however, I think it's quite a nice piece, and it has to serve some purpose other than filling up a little space on my hard drive...

I believe that this piece would be much better, if you said less.
Meaning, there's way too many notes here, and the overall 'message' of what you want to convey to some extend is getting lost in all the commotion.

I believe that more directness is necessary.

Good playing though.

Thanks

[Luke]

The compositional model for the piece was this sort of thing, though, Saul (in fact, this image is taken from the first version of Liszt's Petrach Sonnets, which is what I found first at IMSLP but which I have never really looked at till now - and texturally there's quite a lot of this particular page in my piece, coincidentally!). The whole point is the variation-like dressing-up of the melody in various garbs, surrounded by flourishes and figurations of various sorts. Reams of notes are part of the style, IOW - Romantic excess and all that:

[Saul]

The compositional model for the piece was this sort of thing, though, Saul (in fact, this image is taken from the first version of Liszt's Petrach Sonnets, which is what I found first at IMSLP but which I have never really looked at till now - and texturally there's quite a lot of this particular page in my piece, coincidentally!). The whole point is the variation-like dressing-up of the melody in various garbs, surrounded by flourishes and figurations of various sorts. Reams of notes are part of the style, IOW - Romantic excess and all that:

I know but I'm also not excited with the way liszt did it.

He was all show and little content. A good piano composition is when you say what you want clearly without saying too much. When you're saying too much, the piece is lost.
Here's an example of saying too much when its not needed:
http://www.youtube.com/v/qYGlfp6NG-I

[karlhenning]

Saul, we have only your assertion that things are not needed.  Nor do we have much confidence in your ability to discern what is needed.

I don't find anything unnecessary in either content or presentation in Luke's piece.

[Luke]

I know but I'm also not excited with the way liszt did it.

He was all show and little content. A good piano composition is when you say what you want clearly without saying too much. When you're saying too much, the piece is lost.

Well, you know, as I set Liszt as my stylistic model, I'm content with what I've done - you don't like too many notes in either of us, that's fine!

In my case, although I'm not going to say any more about the more personal side of the piece, I will say that the floods of notes and the bubbling-over activity of much of the piece are precisely what I did want to 'say' in any case - it's a piece 'about' abundance, in a sense.

[karlhenning]

In music, the medium is part of the message.

[Luke]

I know but I'm also not excited with the way liszt did it.

He was all show and little content. A good piano composition is when you say what you want clearly without saying too much. When you're saying too much, the piece is lost.

This the kind of thing you mean?

[karlhenning]

Maybe Saul is thinking "So many notes, hence, I couldn't play that, hence, too many notes."

[Saul]

This the kind of thing you mean?

If I'm not mistaken that's Mendelssohn's fantasia in F sharp minor, and no thats not what I meant

[Luke]

But it fits your description of bad piano music perfectly - I quote 'all show and little content... [fails to] say what [it] wants clearly without saying too much'

I mean, actually, I think it's a perfectly OK piece that, and fun to play, but the Liszt you posted is a much better piece even in the terms you put forward - the figuration is all thematic and functional and pushes the thing on, there is thematic and motivic content in every bar. In this Mendelssohn, OTOH, it really is a case of all show and no content  - honestly, that page is doing nothing much thematically, there are just figurations imposed on a few chords. I've got no problem with a bit of show, which is why personally I have no problem with this page. But you do - so why does it escape your negative judgement? I think I know the answer...

[Saul]

But it fits your description of bad piano music perfectly - I quote 'all show and little content... [fails to] say what [it] wants clearly without saying too much'

I mean, actually, I think it's a perfectly OK piece that, and fun to play, but the Liszt you posted is a much better piece even in the terms you put forward - the figuration is all thematic and functional and pushes the thing on, there is thematic and motivic content in every bar. In this Mendelssohn, OTOH, it really is a case of all show and no content  - honestly, that page is doing nothing much thematically, there are just figurations imposed on a few chords. I've got no problem with a bit of show, which is why personally I have no problem with this page. But you do - so why does it escape your negative judgement? I think I know the answer...

The difference is that Mendelssohn wrote it in very classical mode, if you look to some Beethoven fantasia and sonatas he also has similar music writing, but in that case its all in the context of the music, and every note has to be there, not so with Liszt where he overstretched the theme .

[Luke]

The difference is that Mendelssohn wrote it in very classical mode, if you look to some Beethoven fantasia and sonatas he also has similar music writing, but in that case its all in the context of the music, and every note has to be there, not so with Liszt where he overstretched the theme .

No, the first part of what you say it dead right - the Beethoven Fantasia is similar, and there are Mozart pieces like this, and many others too - it's not a bad mode to write in per se. But (in the case of this page of Mendelssohn) it emphatically is not 'all in the context of the theme' and 'every note' is not there. This page of Mendelssohn is simply show, it has no relation at all to the thematic substance of the piece; even when a fragment of melody does surface, it's actually unrelated to anything else in the piece - it's absolutely fine to do that, this is a fantasia after all, but it is the opposite of what you said good piano music does. That's my point really.

Whereas in the Liszt, ironically, the theme and the figurations are much more tightly integrated with each other.

[Cato]

The difference is that Mendelssohn wrote it in very classical mode, if you look to some Beethoven fantasia and sonatas he also has similar music writing, but in that case its all in the context of the music, and every note has to be there, not so with Liszt where he overstretched the theme .

Saul: trust me.   0:)

Luke Ottevanger's works are in fact in a "very classical mode" by which I mean that there is a cohesive logic unifying the work, based on themes/motifs: in the work at hand there is even a cyclical return as a sort of Q.E.D.

IF you look/hear more analytically at what you are considering to be "too many notes" (like the criticism of Mozart by the Emperor Joseph in Amadeus), you will see/hear that the figurations have both a harmonic and motivic logic, and are not just there to show off the pianist's agility.

Re-read what I wrote earlier please.

Q.E.D.

0:)

[karlhenning]

(* munches popcorn *)

[Saul]

(* munches popcorn *)

That's way better then those "2 sweet mangos"...

[Luke]

Cato, thanks again - glad the motivic writing comes across so clearly, I was at pains to have the piece be more than just a splurge of notes!

[Saul]

Luke, just listen to Dante Sonata by Liszt...

[Luke]

Yep. Bagfulls of notes, sure, but the whole thing is thematic/motivic, very formally clear, and the various textures Liszt devises are structurally important too. It's an extremely lucid piece, for all its difficulty.