Away From Here: links elsewhere
Two Voices
BWV 996 is 'possibly' one of the suites we know Bach wrote for the lautenwerk - a harpsichord rather than a lute. Whatever the case, transposing from lute to guitar results in a substantial reinterpretation, because they are quite different instruments. What is clear about the Allemande, though, whatever instrument it is played on, is that it has two voices, which combine, separate, desist and return, cross over each other, and anticipate each other's transition from minor to major.
Segovia tuned his interpretation 5 semitones above the Em in which I have learnt it, and it would be nice to think that helps to make the separate voices clearer, though I suspect his technique - not to mention his enormous talent - has much more to do with it. In my interpretation there is somewhat more muddiness, and somewhat less clarity, which I can't blame on the key. That transposition does, however, alter the octave in which one of the final runs occurs (particularly the bass run of, in this case, the G up to the D#), making Am (in that case, C down to the G#) a more sensible key to play in. Maybe one day I'll try it.
Whose are the two voices? I played recently for the muse for whom the poem was written, and was asked what I thought of when I played. Impossible to answer that I thought of her. There is always an audience. There is no point in speaking, if not to someone - however imaginary - or even to oneself. If one voice is my own, is the other my imaginary friend, the Don? Is it the muse? Is it Bach? Are the two voices myself and the guitar? In any music interpreted from someone else's score, there are always two of us, since we require each other to complete the piece.
This is an exponentially proliferating polyphony of imagined voices, but there are only ever two halves of a whole, two hemispheres of one world, two people exchanging glances and gestures, censored as much by each other's conflicting pulls when they are alone, as they are by a third presence. I think that is what is in my mind when I play the Allemande from BWV 996 - and so grateful for that transition from minor to major.
June
In june, the Don kept his cards close to his chest for a while. It later emerged that he had been working for a considerable time on the Courante from a Bach Cello Suite (C-major). We hope this will soon be performable.
In the meantime, he produced a sturtering version of Merlin's Evocation which, because of - rather than despite of - its stuttering mistakes, expressed, he believes, the self-inspection and associated sorrow that accompanies rejection. The poem was written in 2001 for Charlotte, devourer of hope...
In 2001 the part of me that is not schizophrenic recorded Ferrer's Ejercicio. I had only two years before-hand begun to try playing classical guitar music from sheet. A precious copy of 'First Repertoire for Solo Guitar' fed me. But I was without a 'fitness-instructor', as it were: anything was fair game, and where I found sixth notes a little irksome, I modifed them to whole notes.
Five years later, having taken the time to actually read the score and the instructor's intentions, crying out to me from a century past to take the original transcription seriously, I reconsidered.
I can only refer back to the analogy of the apprentice and the master: restiveness is a quality that seems to recede with time. Learning, indeed, youth, is wasted on the young.
Is it a humiliation to acknowledge that your youthful ignorance did not (contrary to what you thought) excel those who went before? True fact: the first time I played this to a /lady/, she giggled and said it made her think of monks.
May
May 2006 is the first month of the record of Don Chihuahua's progress, return, last stand, and other punctuations. These things will become clear if they are not now.
It began with Leonard, which uses a finger-picking style which I could never play before when I tried, and then recently discovered I could play. I had, at that time, been slaving away over the Bach pieces Sarabande from BWV 1002 and Prelude for Cello BWV 1007. I was working on a trill from an old interpretation of a Sojo Cantico, and just added a string.
I like to think that playing Bach makes you better: a better person, as well as a better musician.
The Prelude took weeks to master - to the extent that it has been mastered at all... the tricky parts were not those I expected, like stretching for a large barre in the middle of a phrase, but changing my mind about counterpoints. The source I used had very little counterpoint (compared to Segovia's recording, for instance), so I added some of those by ear. Then I took them out again. Each time my fingers had forgotten what to do. And each time, I heard the Segovia version differently. Playing a piece of music changes your understanding of it totally, and there seems to be no going back.
Tarrega's Endecha, is slow, pompous, ponderous, over-dramatic and possibly not in the spirit of the thing at all. But when I played it I kept being put in mind of the passacaglias that Bach wrote for the organ, and so I played it that way. It is probably done more justice to by interpretations such as this by Braumeister.
I think June will see Don Chihuahua dwelling on lost love. I'll bring the story to you when I can.
to come
Away From Here: entries to follow soon...
