Rolling Classical 2021

Why are the violin and piano favored? Does anyone know?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-z6wXqB-s

(For the piano, perhaps just for the acoustics as for the electric guitar in the late 20th century?)

Thanks. I think there is also the joy of expression, the movement and the sound, why there are jazz clubs and festivals and raves and afternoon concerts and listening to rehearsals.

Yeah, the live performance, the act and practice of playing, is largely the thing with classical (although obv there is Gould, audiophile collectors, etc).

As for the piano and violin, before checking any history books, I can say both instruments project powerfully in a hall, esp if you're comparing to a classical guitar. The piano gives you almost the full range, in pitch, of an orchestra, at least closer than any other single acoustic instrument does, and a p much unparalleled ability to play multiple parts at the same time. Although it is quite limited in terms of range when it comes to timbre or articulation, as harmony and counterpoint became privileged in European music, the piano is probably the most powerful solo instrument from those points of view. The violin otoh does allow a great deal of expressive range wrt timbre, articulation, and dynamic expression, with no frets to block sliding between pitches, and allows for great sustain as long as the player keeps bowing, so is a powerful lyrical melodic instrument. The classical guitar is soft and has little sustain and has been traditionally relegated more to the status of a household or parlour instrument - otoh, it gives a balance of allowing for greater polyphony than the violin while allowing for greater timbral and expressive range than the piano, as well as a history with Spanish folk traditions.

has been traditionally relegated more to the status of a household or parlour instrument

(I was also thinking of European predecessors to the guitar - lute, Baroque guitar, etc)

Some notes from Nicolas Meeùs's article on the keyboard in Grove Music Online:

The keyboard probably originated in the Greek hydraulis, but its role in antiquity and in non-European civilizations appears to have remained so limited that it may be considered as characteristic of Western music. Its influence on the development of the musical system can scarcely be overrated. The primacy of the C major scale in tonal music, for instance, is partly due to its being played on the white keys, and the 12-semitone chromatic scale, which is fundamental to Western music even in some of its recent developments, derives to some extent from limitations and requirements of the keyboard design...

By the beginning of the 14th century, however, the development of polyphony had caused a widening of keyboard compass and the progressive addition of chromatic keys...

The most common keyboard compass in the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century was from F to a″, often without F♯ or G♯. In Italy, upper limits of c‴ or even f‴ were common. The instruments reaching f′′′ were perhaps made at a lower pitch standard. The low limit was extended to C, often with short octave, in the 16th century. From then, the compass of string keyboard instruments increased more rapidly than that of the organ, as the latter had a pedal and octave stops that made a wide compass less necessary. However, organs with a ‘long compass’ keyboard, extending below C, were common in countries which had a tradition of single-manual organs, e.g. England and Italy from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Harpsichords reached five octaves, usually from F′ to f‴, about 1700. Pianos attained six octaves, often from F′ to f‴′, by 1800 and seven octaves, from A″ to a″″, by 1900. Pianos now usually cover seven octaves and a 3rd from A″ to c″″′ and some reach eight octaves. Modern organ keyboards rarely cover more than five octaves.

In the 18th and 19th centuries keyboard instruments gained a leading position in European musical practice. This led to attempts to provide all types of instrument with a keyboard mechanism. The most successful of these attempts were the harmonium and the celesta, and very many of the electric and electronic instruments produced in enormous numbers since the 1930s are controlled by means of a keyboard

From A History of Western Music (Burkholder/Grout/Palisca):

Ensemble music [ in the mid-18th century ] was written for numerous combinations. Very common were works for one or more melody instruments, such as violin, viola, cello, or flute, together with keyboard, harp, or guitar. When the latter play basso continuo, they serve as accompaniment to the melody instruments. But whenever the keyboard has a fully written-out part in the chamber music of the 1770s and 1780s, it tends to take the lead, accompanied by the other parts. The reason for this dominance lies in the role this music played in domestic music-making among middle- and upper-class families. The daughters were often skilled performers at the keyboard, since music was one of the accomplishments they were expected to cultivate, while the sons - typically violinists and cellists - devoted less time to practice. Therefore an evening's entertainment required works that would highlight the woman's greater expertise, while allowing all to participate.

David D. Boyden and Peter Walls on the violin in Grove Music Online, sticking to the facts, clearly (I'm listening to a Carnatic violinist rn so they have something of a point wrt its dissemination globally):

The violin is one of the most perfect instruments acoustically and has extraordinary musical versatility. In beauty and emotional appeal its tone rivals that of its model, the human voice, but at the same time the violin is capable of particular agility and brilliant figuration, making possible in one instrument the expression of moods and effects that may range, depending on the will and skill of the player, from the lyric and tender to the brilliant and dramatic. Its capacity for sustained tone is remarkable, and scarcely another instrument can produce so many nuances of expression and intensity. The violin can play all the chromatic semitones or even microtones over a four-octave range, and, to a limited extent, the playing of chords is within its powers. In short, the violin represents one of the greatest triumphs of instrument making. From its earliest development in Italy the violin was adopted in all kinds of music and by all strata of society, and has since been disseminated to many cultures across the globe (see §II below). Composers, inspired by its potential, have written extensively for it as a solo instrument, accompanied and unaccompanied, and also in connection with the genres of orchestral and chamber music. Possibly no other instrument can boast a larger and musically more distinguished repertory, if one takes into account all forms of solo and ensemble music in which the violin has been assigned a part.

The most important defining factor of the Western orchestra, ever since it emerged during the 17th century, has been the body of ‘strings’ (i.e. violin-family instruments) playing together with (usually) more than one player to a part. The violin (and violin family), however, had originated well before the 17th century – the three-string violin was certainly in existence in the 1520s and perhaps even earlier – and by the early 17th century the reputation and universal use of the violins were such that Praetorius declared (Syntagma musicum, ii, 2/1619): ‘since everyone knows about the violin family, it is unnecessary to indicate or write anything further about it’...

At the dawn of the 17th century, the violin was beginning to develop a role as an expressive and virtuoso solo instrument. New idiomatic repertory appeared at a rate which suggests an almost feverish excitement in its possibilities. Already two towns, Brescia and Cremona, had emerged as pre-eminent in the manufacture of the instrument...

If violin making was virtually an Italian preserve at the beginning of the 17th century, so too was the development of an idiomatic soloistic repertory for the instrument. It is, of course, coincidence that the greatest stile moderno composer, Monteverdi, came from Cremona – though his realization of the violin's rhetorical power and his exploration of its technical resources in such works as Orfeo (1607) or Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) may owe something to his origins. Works by other composers of the period also seem to be born of excitement at the possibilities of the instrument...

By the end of the century Italian violin composition had an enormous impact on English taste. Purcell three times acknowledged the importance of Italian models for his own work: in the prefaces to the Sonnata's of III Parts (1683) and Dioclesian (1691), and in the section on composition he contributed to the 12th edition of Playford's An Introduction to the Skill of Music (1694). In the 18th century London, as the largest and most cosmopolitan city in Europe, became a mecca for foreign virtuosos, many of whom (Geminiani, F.M. Veracini, Felice Giardini and Viotti) settled there at least for a time...

As a composer of violin works, J.S. Bach neglected the main genres of his age. The solo violin concertos (BWV1041 and 1042) and the concerto for two violins (BWV1043) are in the Vivaldian mould, though they far outstrip their models in musical content (especially in harmonic complexity). But with the exception of that contained in the Musical Offering there are no authentic trio sonatas involving violin, and there are just two continuo sonatas, dating from early in Bach's career. He did, though, invent new genres of his own. The six sonatas for harpsichord and violin (BWV1014–19) are the earliest such compositions, effectively trio sonatas in which the harpsichord acts as both second violin and bass. There is a significant repertory of unaccompanied violin music before Bach's (1720): by Thomas Baltzar (in
GB-Ob Mus. Sch. 573), J.P. von Westhoff (a suite for violin ‘sans basse’, 1683, and six partitas, 1696), Biber (Passacaglia, c1676) and J.G. Pisendel (unaccompanied sonata, ?1716). But nothing approaches the Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas (BWV1001–6) either for musical architecture or for a comprehensive exploration of the technical and expressive capabilities of the violin...

The four great composers of the classical Viennese School all studied the violin. Joseph Haydn did so at St Stephen's in Vienna during his childhood, and though he was to describe himself later as ‘no conjuror on any instrument’, his writing for the violin shows a player's understanding. W.A. Mozart doubtless began his instruction on the instrument with his father, whose Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756) was the most comprehensive work on violin playing yet to have been published. Mozart's abilities as a violinist were exceptional, even though after he settled in Vienna in 1781 he chose to concentrate as a performer on the piano (he continued to play the viola in informal chamber music gatherings). From 1789 to 1792 Beethoven was employed as a viola player in the Bonn court orchestra; Schubert, during his years as a pupil at the Imperial and Royal City College in Vienna, became leader of the first violins in Josef von Spaun's student orchestra. All four wrote works for violin and orchestra. The last three (K216, K218 and K219) of the violin concertos Mozart wrote in Salzburg in 1775 give cause to wonder what masterpieces might have ensued had he contributed to this genre during his Vienna years. The Beethoven violin concerto (op.61, 1806), a work driven by musical rather than virtuoso imperatives, has been a cornerstone of the repertory ever since Pierre Baillot and Joseph Joachim rescued it from near oblivion in the mid-19th century. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Viennese composers to violin repertory is in chamber music. The string quarters of all four are of exceptional importance. In his violin and piano sonatas Mozart transformed the accompanied sonata into the duo sonata. This development was consolidated and extended in the ten great sonatas by Beethoven, whose ‘Kreutzer’ sonata (op.47, 1803) establishes a new register both technically and musically for the genre; Beethoven described it as being ‘written in a very virtuoso style like a concerto’.

The chaconne has some lovely dynamic and reflective sections. Was it written specifically for guitar? I should look this up. It's as if as an antidote to mourning you took up a very complex puzzle with 1 million pieces ... Who would have that self-discipline?

No, it's the last movement of Bach's Violin Partita II in D minor (BWV1004) but it's become adapted as a virtuoso repertoire piece for classical guitarists. (A bass voice or fuller chords are sometimes added on guitar but this is one piece that doesn't absolutely need it, which is rare!) There's a v fluid Julian Bream recording. If you want to stick with Ontario, Emily Shaw did a version on Vespers from 2019 where she played it straight from the violin score.

It works better on guitar imo! I've been waiting eagerly for Chris Thile to get to that Partita on the mando, even a shitty bootleg of it is transcendent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2yEYgSI6Y8

It works better on guitar imo!

Heh, not an opinion I expected from you! I'm not sure even I'd go that far.

The E major Prelude from 1006a otoh - even Bach clearly realized it would work better on lute.

Hard disagree there. You can have the chaconne but you can't have that one

The cello suites are, in comparison, consistently "cello music"; they are idiomatic to the instrument. With the violin sonatas and partitas, Bach was intentionally writing in styles that were unidiomatic, and making it work (usually). The three Adagios off the top of each Sonata are clearly "I am writing lute music, except for the violin"-- they would theoretically work better on lute, but that's not really the point. The C-major Adagio in particular is one of Bach's greatest feats of stylistic synthesis, in my opinion, it's both "lute music" and "violin music" and there is no other piece like it in the repertoire.

The Fugues that follow those Adagios are "keyboard music". I hold the less-popular opinion that these Fugues are bad music and don't really work. The g-minor one is amazing but the a-minor and C-major do not sound like music, they sound like a failed experiment. I would argue that all three fugues would sound better on a keyboard instrument, but Bach wrote oceans of fugues and these aren't top-drawer; why bother adapting them? (The g-minor one is excepted, it's an amazing thing.)

The chaconne is an outlier. It's doubtless one of the most brutally beautiful things that Bach wrote, but the 'experiment' of "polyphonic violin writing" is less interesting than the musical material itself. I think it is the movement of the entire opus that lends itself most readily to adaptation.

The rest of the work is often adapted-- I hear the E-major prelude on guitar as often as I do on violin-- but it's violin music, you can borrow it but it's not yours

Isn't the struggle and harshness of playing chordal music on the violin part of the point, though? Confession: I've never played it all. I sight-read the whole thing at half tempo (sometimes less) last night.

Prelude from Cello Suite 1 (BWV1007) one of my favourite guitar pieces.

Ultimately I think Bach was testing the limits of violinistic technique and certain movements cross a line into "this is too difficult to deliver anything really but accuracy" territory. The a-minor fugue, like, I enjoy Hadelich's and Shunsuke Sato's renditions but it's just too astronomically difficult in its writing for even the most brilliant of A-listers

Nice short new solo piano composition by Amy Brandon (perf Jennifer King): https://open.spotify.com/track/6v0TPSAvjaIurPJwsAaPLA?si=04c23c42d2444b78

Her programme note: Frost grows in two types of movements - a flash freeze, followed by the growth of slow fractal patterns of frost flowers. With Frost Moon I tried to capture this freezing effect in sound - a violent sudden crystallization, followed by intricate lattice-work, growing and overlapping in self-same patternings.