my first performance in thirty years

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Aug 20 - 08:11 AM

Just listened to it again (Clifford Curzon and strings from the Vienna Octet). Apart from in the slow movement, I can't hear anywhere that the bowed sustain of a double bass is significant. An electric bass guitar would work just as well.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: leeneia
Date: 05 Aug 20 - 11:37 PM

Thanks for the link, keb. It's a beautiful piece, and listening to it will improve your playing. And I don't think it would hurt a bit if you slowed it down some.

Do you have a date for playing it?

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Aug 20 - 12:08 PM

Tough being the one who has to tell the young violinist that sometimes somebody else gets the lead. Maybe her therapist should be the one to tell her. :-)

Maybe nobody should say anything and let her conclude that it's Schubert's fault.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: JennieG
Date: 04 Aug 20 - 01:37 AM

Well done, and congratulations - I admire you!

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Aug 20 - 01:08 AM

Congratulations, keb, on being part of a performing musical group. There's nothing like playing music with others to make the blood sing in your veins - no pun intended.

Don't worry about the missing double-bass player. It's better to play the way you can than to let the music die by going unplayed.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 08:25 PM

This English translation is a patchwork.
This is because composer Schubert set three of the five stanzas above,
and singable translations exist, obviously,
taking only the musical setting into account
and ignoring the other two stanzas.

This post will include a singable English translation, for which
one Frederic Field Bullard takes the credit (c. 1904).


THE TROUT

Down in a brook swift-running
A trout both small and wise
Did dart with happy cunning,
As swift as arrow flies.
Upon the bank I laid me,
And watched, with sweet content,
The waters, cool and shady;
The trout, on pleasure bent.

With rod and line an angler
A-fishing came that way,
And, cruelly exulting,
Saw where the troutlet lay.
'If I am not mistaken,'
Quoth I, 'the brook's so clear,
The trout will ne'er be taken,
Tho' long he persevere.'

[suppressed verse]
In the stream of life,
Many fair young things dart past,
Unaware that a siren
Menaces them from a whirlpool.
Before they are aware of it,
The attraction of love draws them in,
And once the water is muddied,
Their innocence is gone.

At last the persecutor
Stepped down the bank, and stirred
And dimmed the crystal water,
When, quicker than a word,
His cruel rod was bending,
The trout had seized the bait,
And I, with grief heart-rending,
Beheld its cruel fate.

[Schubert did not set this stanza]
Remember the trout, young ladies,
As in the heedless confidence of your youth
You dally at the wellsprings of life:
Run away at the first sign of danger!
Lack of prudence often results in
The shedding of innocent blood.
Before it is too late, maidens,
Beware the fisherman.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 06:32 PM

Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart.

My mistake -- it is he who wrote the poem "Die Forelle,"
not Franz Grillparzer
(who did indeed write Schubert's epitaph, though).

When I have enough time,
a future post to this thread
will submit something in the way of an English translation
so that everyone who doesn't have German
can share my disappointment (okay, disgust) in the text.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 05:28 PM

I wonder if any animated cartoon film artist has given
the Disney Fantasia treatment
to Schubert's theme and variations on "Die Forelle" [The Trout].
Maybe it has happened already and I am unaware?
I suppose I ought to look up Schubert at the IMDB website.

The very young colleague who plays violin in our ensemble
took one look at Variation I, and got downright indignant!
In this one, the piano takes the song melody/theme,
and the strings either support or ornament the music.
The violinist, in this one, is required by the composer
to scoot their fingers up the neck practically to the bridge
in order to make the shrill squeaky little trilling ornaments.
What this has to do with sound effects for a bucolic fishing scene
I could not say, so I wondered myself:
are these bird calls? are they mosquitoes?
The indignant violinist, who has a dry sense of humor
and a deadpan delivery, quickly volunteered an opinion:
the little fishy has been caught and is already on the hook,
and that god-awful violin noise is the fish, shrieking for help!

And that's only the first of five variations.

It is in Variation III that I meet my personal battlefield,
in which the piano takes off like a jet plane,
and streams of thirty-second notes fill the piece from start to finish. This is all in the highest registers of the keyboard,
where one's playing is fully exposed and every mistake can be heard.
The theme, in this Variation, is taken up by the cello and string bass; and, especially with that double-bass hamming up the melody,
it sounds less like a little trout than a sporting leviathan,
a whale splashing around, say, off the island of Dominica in the Caribbean, where sperm whales like to raise their young.
While that commotion in the piano sounds less like a babbling brook with a little trout in it, than it does
like a school of dolphins performing acrobatics at sea. It's hilarious. I think that Variation alone should have an animated cartoon.

Then comes Variation IV, and WHAM! We dive into the minor key
and play this loud fast melodramatic theatrical-sounding thing.
And Schubert, at this point, cannot leave well enough alone,
and he starts going through all these switches from minor to major and back to minor, and changing keys every four bars or so ...
until we come back to the babbling brook and the trout.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: Helen
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 05:06 PM

Thanks for telling us about this performance. Having the opportunity to not only play your piano, but to play with a small group and work towards a performance is ... well, I can only imagine that it is bringing joy into your life.

Please keep us up to date on the progress and also let us know when you all perform the piece and how it goes.

Music is a blessing.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 02:58 PM

If you want to know what
the Theme and Variations from the "Forellen - Quintette"
sound like --

although, we will never in a hundred years
sound as good as this --

here is a filmed performance.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 02:14 PM

At Schubert's untimely early death, the same poet, Grillparzer,
wrote the inscription for his tomb.

Die Tonkunst begrub hier einen reichen Besitz,
Aber noch viel schönere Hoffnungen.

Subject: RE: my first performance in thirty years
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 02:05 PM

Schubert's music is based on a charming little song he wrote earlier.
And, as you are entitled to my opinion,
this is what I think of the words (by Grillparzer):

this is a truly lousy lyric.

DIE FORELLE

by Franz Grillparzer

In einem Bächlein helle,
Da schoß in froher Eil
Die launischer Forelle
Vorüber, wie ein Pfeil.
Ich stand an dem Gestade
Und sah, in süßer Ruh',
Des muntern Fischleins Bade
Im klaren Bächlein zu.

Ein Fischer mit der Rute
Wohl an dem Ufer stand,
Und sah's mit kaltem Blute
Wie sich das Fischlein wand.
So lang dem Wasser Helle,
So dacht' ich, nicht gebricht,
So fängt er die Forelle
Mit seiner Angel nicht.

[this stanza was suppressed, not set to music]
So scheu'st auch manche Schöne
Im vollen Strom der Zeit
Und sieht nicht die Sirene
Die ihr im Wirbel dräut.
Sie folgt dem Drang der Liebe;
Und eh' sie sich's versieht,
So wird das Bächlein trübe
Und ihre Unschuld flieht.

Doch endlich ward dem Diebe
Die Zeit zu lang; er macht
Das Bächlein tückisch trübe:
Und eh' ich es gedacht,
So zuckte seine Rute;
Das Fischlein zappelt dran;
Und ich mit regem Blute
Sah die Betrogne an.

[Schubert omitted this last stanza]
Ihr, die ihr noch am Quelle
Der sichern Jugend weilt,
Denkt doch an die Forelle:
Seht ihr Gefahr, so eilt!
Meist fehlt ihr nur aus Mangel
Der Klugheit; Mädchen, seht
Verführer mit der Angel --
Sonst blutet ihr zu spät.

(poem published 1785, in Karlsruhe.)

Subject: my first performance in thirty years
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 01:48 PM

Well, it isn't much. It isn't even public, speaking strictly.

Four of us are patients in a clinic and,
each of us being classically trained,
we have been reading through classical music together --
we never knew each other before being admitted here.

The youngest of the lot, the violinist, will soon be discharged,
as it is time for school, to which this musician will return.
We hope to see our fellow patient off, when the time comes,
by performing at the clinic together, and our audience will be
the staff and our fellow patients.
(Due to the pandemic, we can't have visitors / guests here.)

In truth the other three musicians (including the violinist)
are all a lot younger than I am, and their technique
is reasonably up to speed, they play often enough,
even if they are not music majors (they aren't)
as I was at their age.

Me, I play the piano part, and for the last thirty years
the only keyboards I have touched have been for computers
(I did learn touch-typing in my youth as well).

So here we are,
practicing the Theme and Variations from
Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet -- just one movement.
It doesn't take long, but it is a lot of work to prepare.
My technique is SO bad.

I have an excuse for the dirty little tricks I am using,
abbreviating the piano part to make it easier to play.
This piece is a quintet -- we're a quartet.
The fifth musical part, the missing part,
is a double-bass viol -- we don't have that player.
I'm using my left hand, at the piano keyboard,
to hit the bass notes, filling in for the missing player,
while my right hand fakes the piano part,
and when the double-bass viol drops out,
then my left hand can grab onto the rest of the piano part.
So it isn't strictly what Schubert wrote,
and the purists would throw a tantrum;
but it makes it possible
for the four of us to play this quintet
and for it to sound good, if not magnificent.