Ad LibitumAuthor(s): FesteSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 80, No. 1159 (Sep., 1939), pp. 654-657Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/920972Accessed: 10/08/2010 15:40

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654 THE MUSICAL TIMES September 1939

the one-string fiddle ; it costs about ten shillings, and the one I heard would pass for an excellent 'cello so long as you listened and didn't look. It provided a capital and telling bass for several items. Some admirable examples of bamboo recorders were heard.

The pipes are well adapted for polyphony; think of such music played on an organ Lieblich and you won't be far out. But as the Lieblich becomes less successful the lower it goes, so the bass and tenor pipes need a little more

' bite.' No doubt this will come as a result of experi- ments. I found myself wondering whether a, good instrument could be made from an organ pipe of the sort that has a touch of string tone-- a Dulciana rather than a Bourdon.

The material used in pipe-making is normally bamboo. In most houses you will find an old bamboo curtain-rod stowed away in some odd corner: a six-foot pole yields five pipes. From the fact that such a pole costs tenpence comes the claim that a pipe costs tuppence. This is a picturesque tarradiddle if you make only one pipe, for it leaves out the cost of tools-unless you have at hand an auger, wood-file, rimer bit, and hacksaw, in addition to your penknife and ruler. Actually the complete outfit costs about five shillings, and the more pipes you make for yourself or for a band the nearer you get to the tuppenny estimate. No other musical instrument of such good quality costs anything like so little ; hence the claim that it runs choral singing close so far as cheapness is concerned.

Not the least of the merits of the pipe is that you cannot be noisy with it. The pressure is so gentle that, as somebody said to me at the School, 'you don't blow it: you just breathe into it.' To the three families of instruments that we strike, scrape, and blow, must be added this

fourth, into which we breathe. Perhaps we should add a fifth in the clavecin : even quiet conversa- tion drowns it, and in any case you are out of ear- shot at a few yards. It seems absurd to speak of striking a clavecin : call it stroking or tickling and you are nearer the mark. As a refuge and a relief from the noise of a blatantly advertising world from which rises (as Mr. Cunningham so aptly said at the R.C.O. recently) 'one vast appalling cry of " Stop me and buy one!"' nothing could be better than a duet for pipe and clavecin. In fact, the revival of old instruments and their music is among the most refreshing and hopeful features of the musical world today. (The pipe is a revival, for it is merely a homely form of the recorder; and it will undoubtedly lead to an increased use of that delightful English instrument.)

The pipe repertory and literature are already considerable: the guild 'Handbook' gives par- ticulars (unfortunately omitting an important one-the price).

It may b- necessary to add the reassuring fact that the School I attended was run by well- qualified professional musicians. The funda- mentals were well looked after, and in music and performance alike the taste was impeccable.

This year's Summer School was the ninth, and the attendance during each of its two weeks was close on ninety. All grades of player were catered for; there was plenty of social liveliness-folk- dancing, excursions, games, etc.

But if you are a hitherto mute amateur on the look-out for an instrument that is cheap to buy or make, and easy to play, don't wait till next August : there's a pipe waiting for you, and very likely a branch of the Guild not far off.

The Guild Secretary is Mrs. Rigg, Stocksmead, Washington, Sussex. H. G.

Ad Libitum By 'FESTE'

CADENCES 'N your August article,' writes a protesting

correspondent, 'you describe the clotted discords with which Kienek ends his set of

Twelve-Tone Pieces as "a final cadence." Cadence my eye !'

And mine as well. But the term is still used to describe the close of a piece, no matter how unusual that close may be.

My correspondent goes on to ask me to discuss the question of final cadences in general.

Literally, a cadence is a fall (the word being derived from a Latin word with that meaning) and early melodies usually conformed by descend- ing to the tonic at the close. This primitive tendency is perpetuated in the C.F. of strict counterpoint, which (in my young days, at least) always fell from supertonic to tonic. We used to ask why, but nobody told us; perhaps some recent treatises have given this or some other explanation, but I haven't seen it.

The analogy between the cadences of speech and early music is close : finality is expressed by a fall. Questions have a rising inflection, answers a descending. (Compare the inflections of plain- song.) When the Duke in ' Twelfth Night' said 'That strain again; it had a dying fall,' he meant, no doubt, that the fall (cadence) died. away-a morendo cadence, as we should say now.

(The fall that dies most completely, and takes the longest time about it, is that at the end of the Finale of Tchaikovsky's 'Pathetic.')

At first sight there appears to be little scope for individuality in a cadence: having estab- lished your tonic for the last time you signify your intention of ending by giving it a little extra insistence, and by such devices as slackening the pace, working up to a fortissimo or down to a pianissimo, pausing on the final chord or cutting it off abruptly in order to show that it is the last one, and so on, the choice of device depending on

September 1939 THE MUSICAL TIMES 655

the style and mood of the piece. Yet composers' finger-prints are shown here as unmistakably as elsewhere. Handel's clinching type became a mannerism; Bach had a greater variety, among them being' The British Grenadiers' anticipation, which every youngster knows, as one of its occurrences is in the little Prelude in C :

The *Rule Britannia' close of the Fugue in E in Book II is by way of being a nuisance: one doesn't want to be reminded of even the best of tunes with a political flavour at the end of a piece of music that is pure contemplation from start to finish.

What was the origin of the protracted cadences that came in with the symphonic composers ? Fugues almost always ended with what Parry (was it ?) called the tying of the contrapuntal knot; and it is easy to see that anything further would risk an anticlimax, especially if there had been a particularly good sample of the stretto just before the knot.

The pedal point was not given the alternative name ' organ point' for nothing, and the long- held bass note that was easy on the organ probably started the habit of hanging round the tonic at the end of a piece. (It is significant that of the few tonic pedal-points in the ' Forty-eight ' the only difficult one is that at the end of the A minor Fugue in Book I-which happens to have been written for a harpsichord with pedals.) Yet a glance through Bach's organ Preludes and Fugues will show surprisingly little use of the device in final cadences. Apparently the insistence on the tonic at the close came when the main interest in music shifted from the contrapuntal to the harmonic.

I have read somewhere that the repetitions of the tonic chord at the close of classical symphonies was a concession to uneducated listeners; their sense of tonality being poor, composers had to emphasize the change of key before starting the second subject (the device which Wagner called ' the rattling of dishes ') and to hammer the tonic at the end in order to show beyond doubt that all concerned had got home.

I have never been convinced by this theory. Were Haydn's, Mozart's and Beethoven's lis- teners less intelligent than those of the far more exacting Bach ? In a sense, yes: there were more of them, for music was emerging from the home and salon into the concert-hall, and the early audiences inevitably included a proportion of listeners who were merely curious and impres- sionable. But this does not explain the twenty- one bars of repeated tonic chords (preceded by twenty bars of dominant and tonic) which wind up the ' Eroica' ; the twenty-nine which amuse (when they do not irritate) at the end of the C minor, and the fourteen which add to the final hullabaloo of No. 9. Beethoven never does this sort of thing in the piano sonatas or in the string quartets. He often emphasizes the tonic, but more briefly, and not by merely banging it out: there is invariably some decorative feature (often

of great interest). At the end of Op. 90 he even gives us the tonic almost as if it were something to keep quiet about :

SP PP

However, this is so exceptional that it may be a little joke of Beethoven at his own expense: knowing that the usual underlining is expected, he cocks an eye at us and does little more than hint.

Some day an interesting book will be written about the ways in which the development of the public concert affected the style and idiom of music. Repetition, dynamics, length, virtuosity, emotion, pace, key-contrast, climax-such fea- tures come to mind at once. The chief difference is roughly that which distinguishes conversation from public-speaking. The man who declaims in conversation is a nuisance; the one who con- verses on the public platform is apt to be in- effective; and a point that is successfully made by a single statement across the table has to be driven home on the platform by repetition, not so much for the sake of the unintelligent hearer as for effect, on the principle of ' What I say three times...' And just as the man with the telling voice and commanding presence finds this method natural and effective, so the com- poser with an orchestra to play with makes the most of it. He knows all about the virtues of reticence and restraint, but he thinks they are best practised when writing for some less opulent and expensive medium.

To return to those hammered chords at the end of the classical symphonies : we may dismiss the idea of their being necessary for the untrained listener. Beethoven's sonatas were played in public, but (as we have seen) such endings do not occur in them.

So we may reckon that Beethoven wound up his symphonies in that way for two reasons: a battery of repeated chords belongs to the orches- tra rather than to a solo instrument; and they are as effective as a singer's concluding top note in bringing down the house. Haydn and Mozart did it; Beethoven overdid it-simply because it was his nature to use both fists where his pre- decessors were content with one.

It is odd that the repetitive cadence found its way into the simpler kind of choral music, such as glees, where it had no point whatever. (The choral polyphonists, like the instrumentalfuguists, said their say and left it.) I remember an example much sung and enjoyed in my youth, the last verse of which ran like this (so far as memory serves; when it fails I fall back on the community singer's refuge, ' la, la,' and I mayhave inadvertently added to the superfluous cadences): From yonder lone and rocky shore, The warrior hermit to restore, The warrior hermit to restore. FI never understood this restoring of a hermit,

656 THE MUSICAL TIMES September 1939

and still don't.] And la la la la breezes blow, La la la la la time we row,

^ r l NI/ i' l k , " ir - ?

We row, we row,- la la la timewe row, we

row,_ we row, we row, e row, e row

In short, we row. However, this is no worse than the reiterated

'pacem ' at the end of some of the Masses of the Viennese school-not so bad, in fact, for there are no accompanying rapid scales to add pre- tentiousness to fatuity.

Of the traditional cadences the plagal is, I think, better than the dominant-tonic. The latter would have worn better had composers been able to refrain from adding the seventh. How refreshing is a dominant-tonic cadence with plain chords ! But, without hunting for them, can you name half a dozen examples in large- scale works ? At the moment I can think of only one, and it gives me pleasure every time I play or hear it-that which ends Saint-Saens's fine organ Fugue in E flat.

The plagal cadence is less easily spoilt than the dominant-tonic: even now that composers often stick on the supertonic and make the subdominant chord into a chord of the added sixth, it still power- fully suggests the Sound of a Grand Amen. And (talking of added notes) the once-daring sixth tacked on to the final tonic is now a common- place of the dance band. Here it is, preceded by another shop-soiled progression-a cloying ninth that has come down in the world:

Aidtiedpfence is you. - l--

A fate which perhaps it deserves; for to give I armonics much of the importance of fundamentals is all very well if composer and medium are right- say a Debussy and piano : all that happens then is that their enriching and colouring qualities are increased. Otherwise the process is apt to do no more than give us too many notes and debase the vague into the concrete. So we may well leave these harmonic pimples to the Tin Pan Alleys of New York and London.

Leaving cadences for a moment or two, I should like information as to the origin and object of the half-closes in the relative minor which were sometimes interpolated between two major movements. A familiar instance is the G major Brandenburg Concerto, No. 3. After the first movement these two chords occur:

We naturally expect this half-close to be followed by something in E minor, but we don't get it. Instead, Bach plunges into the Finale in G. There are instances of similar procedure in some Handel Concertos (I'm writing away from home and can't specify) and no doubt in other works of the period. Can a reader throw light on this seemingly pointless feature ?

Apropos of Bach: I spoke above of the variety of his cadences. This variety appears to be more marked in the 'Forty-eight' than else- where, probably because the text is so often concerned with the subject until the close, variety of subject thus ensuring variety of cadence. But I had never realized how great this variety is until I looked through the ' Forty-eight'forthe purposes of this article. My favourite 'Forty- eight ' cadence just now is this, from the B flat in Book II:

__ 0

To appreciate it fully it must be heard. Taking in music through the eye is a useful accomplish- ment, but its pleasures are surely overrated. When we see a passage that is specially good, we ought to want to enjoy it through the ear: no Barmecide feast should satisfy us. So I don't mind admitting that when playing this Fugue I wind up with several repetitions of its last three bars. What is the secret of its charm ? To me it lies in the alto, with its drop from B flat through G to C. Rewrite this in four parts, and the bar becomes ordinary-a useful reminder of the beauty of good three-part writing. My other favourite Bach cadence happens to have the same bass for its penultimate bar: it is the grindingly dissonant close of the Toccata in F :

September 1939 THE MUSICAL TIMES 657

Give a hundred composers the treble and bass of this, and ninety-nine would produce :

or they would strengthen it by substituting A for G. But wasn't it like the old man, at the end of a long work rich in bold strokes (the boldest of which, as Mendelssohn said, seems likely to bring the roof down about our ears), to have one up his sleeve for the very end ?

I wish space allowed me to quote some of the beautiful and really original cadences invented (the right word) by some of the lesser and lyrical piano composers, with Grieg as perhaps the most fruitful. The revival of the modes (chiefly due to the folk-song movement) has done a good deal to enrich this detail of music; and the damper pedal, with its almost infinite possibilities in the way of lay-out and shading, must be given credit. A glance through any collection of good modern piano music will show how far behind we have left the conventional cadence-so much of a mere formula that you may interchange almost any dozen of Handel's and any two dozen of Beethoven's (when he wrote for orchestra).

Why should composers cease to invent when within twenty bars of the end ? What speaker

would dare to make a habit of winding up his peroration with a platitude ? Doesn't every writer worth his salt realize the importance of not letting his final page flop in the last sentence ? Analogies between music and letters are danger- ous, and I've hardly got these on paper before I see loopholes; but the fact remains that the thrills which (I'm glad to say) my family circle still gets from a Beethoven symphony change to derision at its end. Those repeated chords are ticked off (in more senses than one) with mock. anxiety as to whether they really are the tonic after all.

Composers now go too far in the other direc- tion. This Kfenek 'cadence,'

Vivace- 120

ff

can be paralleled from many contemporary pieces which do not end but merely leave off. Those of us who were brought up to regard clearness of tonality as a sort of musical good manners cannot easily reconcile ourselves to these no-endings. When they are abrupt as well as dissonant, we even feel that their unceremoniousness has a touch of discourtesy. It is like taking leave of one's friends without saying goodbye, or at least giving them a friendly wave of the hand.

Music in the Foreign Press Moussorgsky

The April Sovietskaya Muzyka is a sp cial Moussorgsky centenary number, containing gen- eral articles by A. Alschwang and G. Khubov, one on 'Tsar Boris in Moussorgsky's Opera' by V. Protopopov, one by I. Kubikov on ' Moussorg- sky and Flaubert' (a contribution to the history of his ' Salammb6 ' libretto), one by B. Steinpress on 'Moussorgsky as a Pianist,' and one by Y. Kremlev on his musical idiom. Moussorgsky's letters to Golenishchev-Kutuzov, long regarded as lost, and discovered a few years ago, are published with notes by P. Aravin. They are twenty-five in number, the first written on June 20, 1873, the last in December 1879. Par- ticularly interesting is one in which Moussorgsky, after referring to his work on 'The Sorotchintsi Fair,' goes on to say :

'Setting " The Marriage " to music has given me experience of Gogol's prose. But " The Marriage " was merely an exercise in which a musician-or, more accurately, a non-musician -attempted to study and to grasp, so far as lay in his power, all the convolutions and shades of human speech as faithfully portrayed in Gogol's wonderful prose. " The Marriage " is an 6tude for use in camera. Something rather different is needful in a work intended for performance on a big stage.'

B

Andrei Rimsky-Korsakov provides information on two of Moussorgsky's friends: Apollon Seliverstovitch Gussakovsky (1841-75), who was regarded as a most promising composer, but had given up composition long before his death at the early age of thirty-four, and a certain Vassily Vassilievitch Vassiliev, mentioned in Rimsky- Korsakov's memoirs and Borodin's letters, but not identified so far. He has discovered two short notes from Rimsky-Korsakov to Vassiliev, one from Moussorgsky, one from Vassiliev him- self to Alexandre Molas, and a photograph of Vassiliev, who, according to the few documents available, was a physician, gifted with a fine tenor voice, and took part in the private readings of Dargomyjsky's ' Stone Guest,' Moussorgsky's ' Boris,' and Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Maid of Pskov.'

A noteworthy piece of information is that in 1859 Gussakovsky composed an 'Idiots' Scherzo' for string quartet (MS. in the Leningrad Public Library), which he inscribed 'To all idiots, antediluvian and modern.' It is intentionally primitive and crude in style, and has the following programme:

Viol I ... Rubinstein I. Viol II ... Rubinstein II. Alto ... D. V. Kologrivov. 'Cello ... K. Schubert.

Article Contentsp. 654p. 655p. 656p. 657

Issue Table of ContentsThe Musical Times, Vol. 80, No. 1159 (Sep., 1939), pp. 641-688Front Matter [pp. 641-650]The Happy Pianist: I [pp. 651-652]Piping for Amateurs [pp. 653-654]Ad Libitum [pp. 654-657]Music in the Foreign Press [pp. 657-658]The Musician's BookshelfReview: untitled [p. 659]Review: untitled [p. 659]Review: untitled [pp. 659-660]Books Received [p. 660]

Review: New Music [pp. 660-661]Review: Wireless Notes [pp. 662-663]Review: Gramophone Notes [pp. 664+672]MusicDe Battle ob Jerico [pp. 665-671]

Teachers' DepartmentAnswers to Correspondents [pp. 672-673]

Church and Organ MusicIncorporated Association of Organists' Congress. Nottingham, August 21-25 [pp. 673-675]Miscellaneous [pp. 675-676]Recitals [p. 676]

Tonic Sol-fa College of Music [p. 676]Letters to the EditorChopin: Manuscripts and Texts [p. 677]Cranmer's First Litany [p. 677]Anglican Pointing [p. 677]Composition Prize [p. 677]Students' Opera [pp. 677-678]

Notes and News [pp. 678-679]Academy and College Notes [pp. 679-680]The Promenade Concerts [pp. 680-681]Arthur Warrell: An Appreciation [pp. 681-682]The Amateurs' Exchange [p. 682]Musical Notes from Abroad [pp. 682-683]ObituaryWaldo Selden Pratt [p. 684]B. Walton O'Donnell [p. 684]Hugh Ambrose Burry [p. 684]

Miscellaneous [p. 684]Back Matter [pp. 685-688]