Tag: Words

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Aduna (To gather)

In the months after my first trip to Illinois, everything had progressed, more or less, as planned. I passed the candidacy and had registered for classes in Perugia. I went to see Mr. Wustman again the week before flying out to Europe. This time, I brought some arias with me.

It was almost a decade before the birth of Google.  Yet, I did my homework on what and how to prepare for a lesson with Mr. Wustman.  Several people familiar with his work told me that he asked his students to use orchestra scores when studying operatic works.  I chose to play Mimì’s aria “Donde lieta” from the third act of La bohème: a beautiful slow piece with manageable orchestration—overall a safe choice.

Even in my undergraduate years, I was always curious about score reading.  As a piano student in graduate school, I did a little more work on the subject, playing string quartets.  I love doing it because it is a game of calculation: moving staff lines in my head to organize melodies and harmonies.  At the same time, I can hear the colors of various instruments coming through moment by moment.  With that said, it is not always possible to play everything with ten fingers on a piano keyboard.  So, the real challenge is to try to understand the composer’s intention and to make educated choices.  The other challenge is to play smoothly and musically while sorting out the information.

My playing must have been acceptable. . ..  Mr. Wustman didn’t stop me.  However, he almost jumped when we arrived at the phrase “se vuoi sebarla. . .,” where the orchestration built up and the range widened.  I followed the melodic doubling in the higher register and let go of the bass underneath the syllable “-bar.” He asked me what I just did.  I explained my choices.  He said, “One would never cut off the bass.” This advice has stayed with me all these years.  No matter how complicated the score is, I know where the foundation of the structure is.  The harmony and the sonority must all be built upon the bass.

At the end of the lesson, with a few minutes left, we discussed my next steps.  I expressed my desire to move to Illinois, since I could work on my dissertation wherever I chose. I talked about my trip to Italy in the following week.  I told him that I knew how important it would be for an accompanist to know Italian and how it would also benefit my research.  Mr. Wustman asked me a question that I wasn’t prepared to answer: “How are you going to study?” I knew that he wasn’t asking about which classes I would take.  So, I asked for explanation. 

He took me back to the piece that I just played.  In the verse “Le poche robe aduna che lasciai sparse” (Gather the few little things that I left spreading around), he asked me about the word “aduna.” I knew it meant “to gather.” His next question stunned me: “What does the word really mean?”

I never thought about how words came about.  Aduna was a combined word of “a” (to) and “una” (one).  So, it actually meant “to make one.”  The little one syllable word “a” works magic in Italian language.  The word “accompagnare” which has become my daily life means “to company”—to be friends with my fellow music maker.

I took Mr. Wustman’s advice and made my best effort to understand the words in any language and any materials that I had been studying.  It really made my world much richer and interesting.  I would never forget those first moments of our meetings.

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Tempo

Daylight Saving Time ended on Sunday.  Clocks on all the devices in my room reset automatically.  But the ones in the kitchen needed manual adjustments.  Somehow, working around the apartment, I got confused.  For a brief moment, I panicked about not managing my time well.

Every year, we adjust our clocks following the changes of seasons—and temperatures.  The linkage between time and weather always reminds me of the Italian word “tempo.”  It means “time.”  One would ask, “Non ho molto tempo.” (“I don’t have much time.”). It also means “weather”—as in “Fa bel tempo oggi” (The weather is nice today).

For the written portion of my doctoral candidacy exam, I was to review then newly published The Tempo Indications of Mozart by Jean Pierre Marty.  Although Marty assigned metronomic markings for each tempo/meter combination, his arguments were based on the understanding of the meaning of Mozart’s tempo indications.  I opened the review exploring the meaning of “tempo”—a simple word that musicians live with every day.

If we were lucky, our teachers would have taught us how each term would be linked to a certain speed, as marked on old-fashioned metronome.  The truth is most of the words that the composers put down at the beginning of their compositions have more to do with its character than a performance speed. Allegro means cheerful; vivace means lively; andante means walking; largo means broad, so on and so forth. They can be further qualified by words such as molto (very), non troppo (not too much), grazioso (gracious), maestoso (majestic), sostenuto (sustained), etc.  So, instead of thinking about “speed,” it is more suitable to consider the “temperament” of the composition.

Robert Schumann often broke away from the traditional Italian markings and turned to his native German.  In Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David), Op. 6, one finds Lebhaft (lively), innig (intimate), mit Humor (with humor), ungeduldig (eager/impatient), einfach (simple), and wild und lustig (wild and funny).  Hugo Wolf took it much further, abandoning Italian markings all together.  For “Liebe mir im Busen zündet einen Brand” (Love in my bosom ignites a fire), he wrote “Äusserst rasch, mit leidenschaftlichstem Ausdruck” (Extremely rapid, with the most passionate expression); “Schlafendes Jesuskind” (Sleeping Jesus Child), “Sehr getragen und weihevoll” (Very sustained and ceremonially).

Claude Debussy frequently gave detailed directions throughout his compositions.  At the beginning of  “Soirée dans Grenade” (Evening in Granada), the second piece of his suite Estampes, he wrote “Mouvement de Habanera –Commencer lentement dans un rythme nonchalamment gracieux” (Movement of Habanera—beginning slowly in a rhythm nonchalantly gracious).  Then, he gently guided the performer by saying “Retenu” (hold back) . . . , “Tempo giusto” (proper tempo) . . . , “Tempo rubato” (flexible tempo) . . . , “Très rythmé” (very rhythmic) . . . , “Tempo primo—avec plus d’abandon (First tempo—with more abandonment).  Toward the end of the piece, he asked twice for “Léger et lointain” (light and distant) as everything quietly faded into the night.

Erich Leinsdorf in his thoughtful book The Composer’s Advocate: A Radical Orthodoxy for Musicians wrote about the importance of understand composer’s chosen words.  These words lead the performers as well as the audience into the right atmosphere—the right tempo, the very thing that Mozart considered to be the most important to music making.  Let’s always hope for the perfect “tempo.”