A Blade through the Chaos

What should become apparent to anyone reading this is that my self-guided journey is chaotic at best. I have no instructor but experience, reason and the embedded instruction that must be teased out of great pieces of music I listen to. So if, like me, you are teaching yourself classical composition, this log is not likely to give you security of knowing where you are at any moment on the path. That doesn't bother me. I'm OK embracing the mystery of what insights may lay ahead. The inviting quality of mystery keeps us engaged and intrigued. And that's a good feeling to approach creative learning with.

So today I'm thinking about runs. They are uneasy blades that carve through a piece adding cascades of melody. But blades can cut both ways. Runs can shift a melody and take it to an edge where it simply falls off. The run of notes can become an exercise for the pianist or violinist that detracts from the core of the song.

When a run goes for too long, it is commonly in repeated 16th notes and we could lose a sense of the melodic rhythm. What we do get is a sense of the pulse rhythm. Because of its repetitive quality, an extended series of runs can clear the rhythmic pattern and (while exhausting the audience's melodic ear) it resets the audiences rhythmic ear. It's a strange concept, too many notes can actually be cleansing.

In a related vein, I watched the film Amadeus last night. There is a scene when the emperor(?) describes his music as having "too many notes".

It's not really a good film. It made Mozart out to be an arrogant, drunken and disrespectful young man. This is because it cast Mozart from the viewpoint of a jealous rival, Salieri. It would be great to see him from the viewpoint of his relationship with Haydn: two enormous musical geniuses who esteemed each other to no end. It could sample from his works that soar more majestically and capture greater depth of character. The poor guy lost 4 of his 6 children, at birth or by the age of 1. Two of his sons survived into adulthood. One, Franz, was a composer and conductor throughout Europe, by the way.

Now imagine my surprise this morning when I see that the british released today an online book of Mozart's that lists most of his last great works, with annotations about the work and its commissioner. He includes the first 2 lines or so of each piece. It can be found at:

Mozart's Notebook

I found nothing particularly readable or useful in it. Perhaps it is inspiring just to witness writing in his own hand.

So back to runs. Runs represent a change-up. They trigger a release. They clear the rhythm pallatte. They need not be melodically dull. If a run is a diatonic step-down from one note to another, it certainly doesn't need to be a conventional staircase. In fact, I've noticed that I have to listen very carefully to detect when the staircase is broken or convoluted. For example, A run down from C to an octave lower, can often sound like an even staircase when it contains a blip. I will use small letters to indicate notes, capitals indicate chords. Try playing:
c b a g f e d c straight down, fast. Now do the same thing with the g repeated an extra time. When played fast it is hard to detect the blip, but it can make for a more melodic package in the end. Especially in that it breaks the run into an even numbered cadence (two 4-note sections).

But what is fun to play with are the myriad beautiful staircases of runs that can lead from one note to a lower or higher note. It can be both an intellectual puzzle and an artistic delight.

Here is a sample etude I wrote a few minutes ago. It has a simple run in C major, but note the tiny jumps at the end to make ending on c the timely punchline for the run. I've also added an interesting turn at the end. Where it may be conventional to wrap up a section with I V I, or here C G C, I am using a C F C. But to give it greater resolution the F is actually a Dm played over an F in the Bass.


The mp3 file is: Etude3

And that's my adventure today.