How we understand it....
Dear readers, how are your repeated notes & octaves coming along? Ready to change the subject for a bit? Let’s return to what we were talking about before: music as a language (as it came up in the post on what theory is good for). I didn’t mean this as any kind of literal analogy to grammar, but nor did I mean it as a worn-out cliché! Music communicates, and we can come to understand it. What we call theory describes how this works.
Harmonic function, I suggested, is of crucial importance in understanding musical language. The tendencies and implications of different harmonies are a large part of what motivates the music to do whatever it is going to do, to go wherever it is going to go. Tonic-function harmonies (usually I, but could be iii or vi or various seventh chords, in many inversions—different chords with varying strengths or concentrations of tonic-ness….) give way to subdominant-function sounds (various forms of IV or ii…)…. which make their way (in this vastly oversimplified example!) to dominant-function sounds (V, V7, vii, vii7…), which may or may not resolve to tonic-function sounds (the one we expect—I—or perhaps different substitute-tonics we didn’t foresee….). And the whole thing starts again. We realize then that we have units that could be defined by their movement from points of minimal harmonic tension, through the introduction, increase and variously changing levels of harmonic tension, up through the resolution of that tension, at which point the next unit can begin.
Any person we recruit at random for our experiment can hear those units, I submit, even if they’ve never had a music lesson in their life! Why is that? It’s because we all know about tension and conflict, how it feels when they creep in, intensify, and resolve. And it’s also because of the punctuation! The cadences. Let’s learn to listen for those cadences: little packages of harmonic expectations-fulfilled that come at the end of the phrase. Harmonic progressions, propelled by the various energies of chords of different function, arrive at their completion in cadences. Cadences are really important, and we’ll come back to them—but first—that word! Did you hear it? Phrase! P H R A S E ! If we do not yet have a real musical relationship with this word: our lives are about to change.
Dear readers, first I’ll tell you that when I was an undergraduate at Oberlin many years ago, a certain whimsical red-haired violist came up with alliterative nicknames for us all (do any readers out there remember this?)—with the result that I answered in those days not only to the name of Rachel (and occasionally Ingrid), but also to Frances Phrase. (Phrances, I liked to think of it.) I was proud of the moniker bestowed upon me, since it associated me with one of those musical elements I love best, and one that I know to carry so much of the potential for the expressive, communicative powers of music. Phrases are responsible for the fact that we can understand music at all—nothing less than that! And what is a phrase? A musical sentence, basically. It’s a complete musical thought, comprehensible and coherent, with beginning, middle and end.
The idea of the musical phrase is very different in different styles of music. In some styles, the lengths of phrases are obvious, regular, and predictable as clockwork; in others, we find, long, complex musical syntax, full of clauses and parentheticals, taking all kinds of twists and turns, delivering many kinds of surprises and letting in many different strands of thought before coming to conclusion. And sometimes we might not find “complete sentences” at all, but wisps of thought, fleeting ideas or images that seem to drift rather than pull us along—phrases that act on us very differently (I’m not saying better or worse!) than music that has the qualities of clear, powerful, goal-oriented & persuasive “sentence structure.” Words, too, might be many kinds of poetry or prose…. The uses of musical language are as diverse as musicians. But the idea that we hear music in units that are comprehensible in and of themselves, and that these units relate to and build upon one another, crosses at least most stylistic and historical boundaries. (YES, we can hear magnificently coherent phrases in Schoenberg, though it is less familiar, and whether we “like” those sounds or not! Also: thank you, SW, for your insightful comments on Schoenberg on the last post—and NB, Schoenberg’s own masterful presentation of the way traditional, tonal musical language works can be found in his book Theory of Harmony, now out in its 100th anniversary edition. Though he extended musical language to into completely new territory, Schoenberg did so out of a deep and abiding respect for the musical language that preceded and led to his.)
For people who might not play any instrument: listening for phrases, hearing their beginnings and endings and internal shapes, can enhance our enjoyment of what we hear EXPONENTIALLY. If we think back to high school French class… maybe we haven’t gotten too far yet…. We’re listening to a native speaker rattle something off at breakneck speed. The sounds themselves may be beautiful to us. We note the particular kind of enjoyment that is: the kind in which we may love the sounds, but do not attach meaning to them. At first, we catch a few words here and there, but then—the lightbulbs start to go off as we realize we’re taking in sentences! It is a thrill to get to the point where we know we can start to really understand. We can hear the units that create and carry the meaning. Our listening is elevated and transformed. The same set of light-bulbs is illuminated for us when we begin to notice musical phrases, to actively listen that way!
And for us as players—let’s make sure we are never so caught up in the technical problem solving, or the coordination and multitasking of it all, that we lose sight of our phrases. Knowing where our phrases go should be of primary importance to us with any piece we are studying. OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE, yes!!!! Is it that way for us? When we play in phrases, we are creating units of musical meaning that have clear beginnings, middles and ends as well as coherent shapes. If we are not playing, thinking, listening in phrases, then our playing—however accurate, technically impressive, or even gorgeous it may be in certain ways—is gibberish.
Ouch! That sounds harsh, Phrances Phrase knows. And yet she must insist.
But how do we know where the phrases go? How can we tell?
One way is by simply noticing and trusting our instincts. In the recent post about theory, I was making the point that we don’t have to know what any of it is called—what chord is this? What function does it have, what key is it in, what type of cadence is this? We just have to feel it. And as long as we pay enough attention to really listen and let it in, we will feel these things. We do feel them. If knowing theory, i.e. grasping all this mentally, helps us get to the point of hearing it and feeling it—that, again, is what theory is good for! Reader MP recently sent me an article from Neuroscience News that is of interest here (thank you, MP!). It describes scientists’ explorations of the ways the human brain understands beginnings and endings by making predictions based upon relative levels of “entropy” of different musical pitches. Call it levels of entropy, or call it levels of consonance or dissonance, call it scale degree—theory terminology or no, it is now Scientifically Proven that the human brain can understand phrases, including their endings and new beginnings, simply on the basis of pitch. I would love to ask the researchers to find ways to include rhythm in their assessment…. Inviting participants to linger as long as they choose on any pitch, as was done in this study, may enhance perception of one way of understanding a phrase, while shutting the door completely on another component…. Yet more evidence of the pitch-bias, I am thinking? But what do I know about neuroscience? Nothing—and I am just happy that science has acknowledged our hard-wired capability to understand the phrase!
So: we can know where the phrases go because we possess human brains and that is enough, first of all. But if we don’t quite trust that: sometimes you can see the phrases clearly on the printed page, too. This tends to be true particularly (but not always, and not only) in 18th-century music, with its hallmarks of great clarity and balance. You can see a lot of 2 + 2 = 4, 4 + 4 = 8 in music from the Classical period. I am not going to inflict a lot of musical examples on you here, knowing how tiny they appear on your screens, but if you pause here to open up some music from that period, you might see what I mean. You might be looking mostly at the right-hand melodies for this. You might spot rests at the ends of phrases, or clear places where the same melodies begin again (if it’s beginning again, NB, something must’ve ended….).
Be careful about looking at slur signs, though, as indicators of phrase length. Sometimes they are tremendously meaningful that way; other times, not at all. Sometimes a slur means a very specific articulation (legato) and nothing more. Sometimes (not all our readers are pianists!) the slur is a bowing indication. So we need context.
If we do know a little bit about theory, we can look for those wonderful little cadences. Seeing phrases on the page as I just described will be probably more of a melodic thing; but to see cadences, look at the bassline! Look at the harmony. If you spot a place that seems like it might be the end of a phrase, but you’re not sure: does it consist of the chords V - I in any shape or form?
We will now pause for a pure Theory Moment! Here is a tiny little textbook on cadences just for you, dear readers. Skip it if you’re not sure what all those Roman numerals mean.
V - I: authentic cadence. By FAR the most common type. There are sub-categories (perfect authentic and imperfect authentic) that are defined differently in different places, but let’s don’t get hung up on the detail of that. We’ll just know that there are different relative strengths possible. The V may have a seventh attached (or 9th, or…) or not. A cadence is stronger, more definitive, when both chords are in root position; when the uppermost voice finishes on the tonic scale degree; perhaps when that “do” is arrived at from “ti”… Never mind! Whether it appears in its strongest form or with features that render it more subtle, feel dominant to tonic in your gut! Trust me: you can; you do.
V - vi (or VI): deceptive cadence. Our brains (prediction machines, as the article MP sent reminds us!) are so, so deeply conditioned to expect and want that dominant, V, to move to I. When it goes, instead, to vi or VI: though that chord does function as a temporary tonic, it is a surprise, a deception, sometimes a severe shock. And it means that although temporary resolution may be at hand, yet a new kind of tension has been introduced, too, and we still have to find our way home.
IV - I: plagal cadence. Sometimes called the “Amen” cadence (play one and you’ll know why, if you have any familiarity with church hymns!). A softer, more resigned setting-down of tension…. Find your own language to describe it, for you, but feel how different it is from V - I!
(Something, pretty much anything) to V: half-cadence. It’s the end of the phrase, we know from context and all kinds of other cues (including melodic and rhythmic ones), and yet this phrase ends on the dominant. ? It’s a question! Again, we have a sense of temporary ending-ness, but more is needed. The question will, we hope, be answered in the next phrase or two or three….
In a musical phrase (at least in the most typical examples in most of what we play), we have a wonderful coming-together of melody (the melody of our phrase is something that might be sung, just as our analogous sentence might be spoken) with harmony and harmonic function, clinching the end of each phrase with a type of cadence that signals completion of this particular thought. If we really open up to the fact that these phrases exist: we can trust our instincts, our guts, the not-even-conscious powers of our mighty human brains to help us understand and feel and hear them. We can also analyze our phrases up one side and down the other, if we so choose, and marvel with our thinking minds at their structures and behaviors. The first important thing is that we know where each phrase begins and ends, so that we can speak our lines in a way that is intelligible and meaningful. And—there’s more! (There is always more….)
So, subsequent posts on the subject of phrasing will take up not just how we know where the phrases are, but what to do with them. How we make decisions, or learn to trust our instincts, regarding how to shape these phrases, to inflect them in order to convey their meaning and their beauty as clearly and convincingly as we can. Practice tools in the arena of phrasing are not only laboratories for grasping the really important things about theory; they are also creative, delightful and ripe for inspiration.
The pianist who can bounce efficiently and tirelessly on the key (or accomplish whatever technical feat is at hand in our current repertoire) and convey each musical phrase with intention, sensitivity and the fullest possible expression (of whatever the music carries) is a happy pianist indeed. Happy practicing, everyone! Look for a featured practice tool on phrasing coming soon for subscribers, and thank you for reading! If you enjoy Pride & Practicing, please tell your friends.