September 26, 2009: Partitas old and recent

The juxtaposition of two partitas, separated by about a quarter of a millennium, on either side on the intermission for violinist Ian Swensen's Faculty Artist Series recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music last night could be seen as a pedagogical strategy for the listener as much as the music itself could be seen in terms of the pedagogical challenges offered to the soloist.  As the online edition of The Oxford Companion to Music observes, "partita," like many musical terms, went through a variety of meanings, ultimately converging on the seventeenth-century German convention of using it as an alternative for "suite."  We know this convention best through the music of Johann Sebastian Bach;  and Swensen's pre-intermission selection was the first of three partitas (BWV 1002) that Bach composed for unaccompanied violin.  Like the third partita in this collection (but not the second), all the movements are based on dance forms.  However, unlike any other Bach partita, this composition consists of eight movements based on four dance forms (allemande, courante, saraband, and bourrée), each followed by a "double" movement.  The "double" offers a variation of its preceding movement, usually at a more rapid tempo (but not necessarily involving twice as many notes).  When all repeats are taken in all movements, the listener is thus presented with the opportunity to hear material that becomes more familiar as its progress evolves.

Whether Bach ever thought of having listeners as beneficiaries, as opposed to honing the performance skills of the soloist, is academic.  More important is that Swensen performed these eight movements with a clarity that made for a listening experience as keen as the performing challenges were.  This is particularly critical at the beginning of the composition, which is the one case that strains the usual "double" convention.  The reason is that the "double" section is much more consistent with usual allemande conventions, while the movement that introduces it (the first thing the listener hears) is heavily laced with less "standard" rhythmic patterns, punctuated with multiple-stop chords.  This is Bach at his most opaque;  and, given the way in which transparency emerges in the "double," one can assume that the opacity was deliberate.  However, Swensen's sense of this composition as a whole made him the perfect guide to lead those of us on the listening side through both the shadows and the brightness in this music.

While all of the notes of this partita are written out in full detail, the effectiveness of Swensen's performance was due in no small part to his recognizing the extent to which the manuscript reflected Bach's improvisatory nature.  I was reminded of a piece I wrote on my blog last year, in which I described Bach "as a master improviser, the likes of which never really surfaced on such an extensive scale until John Coltrane came along to stretch our expectations regarding the durations of jazz improvisation."  Bach's scale was probably at its most extensive in the final chaconne movement of the second partita in the set (BWV 1004 in D minor);  but, even within the conventions of the dance forms, Bach has a tendency to turn away from closure as if he just remembered something else he wanted to say.

This improvisatory spirit may provide the listener with the best link to the second partita on Swensen's program, composed for violinist Pinchas Zuckerman and pianist Mark Neikrug in 1984 by Witold Lutoslawski.  As the program notes observed, "The work consists of three main movements, Allegro giusto, Largo and Presto, separated by ad libitum, a perfect example of controlled aleatoricism."  This was a technique that Lutoslawski developed in which the musicians would take specifications in the score and realize them through their own choices of both pitches and rhythms.  Thus, the concept of the "double" had been replaced by opportunities for free improvisation, not necessarily as wild as Coltrane's inventions but definitely beyond the bounds of formal musical structure.  Similarly, Lutoslawski's "main" movements were no longer tied down to eighteenth-century dance forms (or, for that matter, more recent musical forms);  but they were still grounded in a structural integrity of his own sense of syntax.

This all makes for a challenge for the listener's "ear-mind coupling" that approaches, if not matches, the technical challenge facing the performers.  One again, the listener was provided with excellent guidance by Swensen, this time along with his accompanist Eric Zivian.  Nevertheless, this is not the sort of composition that can be appreciated in a single listening, any more than Bach (and, for that matter, Coltrane) can be so appreciated.  I would hope that Swensen's performance will inspire some of his students to take on Lutoslawski's partita, providing the rest of us with opportunities to hear more of this work in the not-too-distant future.

Lutoslawski's interest in aleatoricism was inspired by his exposure to the work of John Cage, so it was nice to see that Swensen chose to begin his recital with an early Cage composition that actually predates his first experiments with chance procedures.  Six Melodies for Violin and Piano was composed in 1950 through a process described in the program notes as "using the gamut technique by first creating independent collections of pitches and intervals, called gamuts, and then sequencing them to form melodies."  (Much later in life, Cage would synthesize this gamut technique with his use of chance procedures for an extended solo piano composition entitled "Cheap Imitation.")

The context in which these six short pieces were composed is nicely described in the Wikipedia entry for Cage:

The composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with the idea of music as means of communication: the public rarely accepted his work, and Cage himself, too, had trouble understanding the music of his colleagues. In early 1946 Cage agreed to tutor Gita Sarabhai, an Indian musician who came to the US to study Western music. In return, he asked her to teach him about Indian music and philosophy.[37] Cage also attended, in late 1940s and early 1950s, D. T. Suzuki's lectures on Zen Buddhism,[38] and read the works of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.[23] The first fruits of these studies were works inspired by Indian concepts: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, String Quartet in Four Parts, and others. Cage accepted the goal of music as explained to him by Sarabhai: "to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences".[39]

Swensen and Zivian nicely captured this underlying motivation of the quieted mind;  and perhaps some of us may have achieved Sarabhai's goal of becoming "susceptible to divine influences."

The program concluded with Sergei Prokofiev's D major sonata, Opus 94a.  This work was originally conceived and performed in 1943 as a flute sonata, but David Oistrakh convinced Prokofiev to rework it as a violin sonata.  I have heard both versions and find them equally satisfying.  This being Prokofiev, however, the virtuoso demands on the piano accompaniment tend to match those for the soloist;  so one of the primary virtues in the performance by Swensen and Zivian resided in their ability to maintain a sense of balance, each enjoying the spotlight while giving most of their attention to the integration of the duo.  In contrast with the Lutoslawski partita, this sonata is a familiar part of the repertoire and provided the listener with a conclusion to the evening on somewhat more reassuring ground (hopefully without diminishing curiosity for the new).