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| Calbraith Hunter, Counterpoint Notebook Ex. 3 |
Writing a concerto movement (I mean 'concerto grosso') is a bit more involved than a little keyboard fugue. I needed to do something I could enjoy putting the time in on, something that would satisfy my expressive need. I wanted to bust out. I needed to fight back against all of this didacticism. I needed to do something funny. Ah, the pesky matter of timing. Counterpoint III was '75 - '76. I remember working on my 'concerted fugue' assignment in the room where the Chorus rehearsals took place. I remember this clearly because of an incident that made me virtually flunk-out proof. This piece was born in that room where we'd rehearsed Brahms and I'd first seen Justin Van Dyke. It might have reached the fair copy stage later in other places, but this struggle with material that might actually fit into the proportion scheme took place at that grand piano after hours. I'd jimmied the lock with an id card, and after a slice at Charlie's, snuck back in. Alone with a fine instrument and a bit of space, I improvised. At length it fell out of my fingers and then formed as a giggle in my mind: what if the 'old b-b-b-boy' had known of Stephen Foster? When you get knee deep in the Lutheran hymnody, you realize that the 'old b-b-b-b-boy' used the material of that weltanschauung in a way that makes the cantus firmus always present. Listen to the "Saint Anne" fugue, and you hear "Oh God Our Help In Ages Past." It's not quite right (as Dad would say), but there it is. So what about it? What if Bach had had Foster in his head and heart as I did? Out came a fugue subject that referenced "Old Folks at Home." This cracked me up at the grand piano, but pulling it off in a way that would get past old Fezziwig was going to take some work. The original draft, in ball-point (had I forgotten my pencil?) has the subject beginning on III. (This is the first pitch of Foster's tune.) The issue of the first pitch in a fugue subject is important, as we have seen, because it has an impact on the subject type, and therefore, the nature of the answer. In the end, after all the drafts were done, the piece's downbeat results in silence. I chopped off that third on the first beat. What did Hugo call this rhythmic impulse? "The rhythmic lead." I fell for it hook line and sinker. This allowed my fugue to have a 'real' answer as opposed to a tonal answer. You can look it up in Norden if you can identify and afford a copy.
I interrupted in my work on my fugue because I had to pee. I went out into the hall to find the men's. I opened the spring hinged door as usual, but discovered that I was not alone in there. I entered just in time to hear an orgasm in progress. "Ohhh! Yesss! The whole nine yards. It was the men's room and these were the voices of men. It was a jarring event, even in the context of spoofing Bach. I really had to pee though, so I pulled up at a urinal and let fly. I was done at length, but heard giggles from the stall of iniquity. I exited, my deed done. I'd heard my share of gay moaning and groaning, so I could let it be and get back to work. I had but a dozen feet to the rehearsal hall, but I didn't get to the door before I was accosted by Streator's voice.
"What are you doing in here?"
From the men's room door emerged my solfeggio ("ear training") teacher, still straightening his couture.
"I might ask the same question of you," I said.
Match point.
Once the plan was hatched, it proceeded apace. It had to. It was the final project. My grade depended upon it by one third. In the end, I think I succeeded. I succeeded on my terms, the only terms that matter. In the end. In the meanwhile, I had to make a decent pencil draft from the sea of notes and sketches and turn it in. As I began my pencil draft, I did as Hugo taught. I bowed to the gods and godesses of division, as they are called forth in "Form the Silent Language." I ruled out my 92 measures and in the lightest pencil reserved for sotto voce remarks, I made note of my key events. This step proceeded directly from my proportion graph. I had concocted a bidirectional scheme that worked from beginning to end and from end to beginning. I mapped onto the 18 stave scoring paper the positions of subject, counter subject/answer, restatement in the bass, end exposition (1-15), episode one (16-27), area of sub dominant (28-32), episode 2 (37-52), soloist catching the fuguing fever and doing it down a fourth (53), episode 3 (57-69), - sixty-nine? shouldn't something kinky happen there? ah yes! - the "sub tonic" - and this is gibberish to me now - what is a frickin' sub tonic? gin and tonic? - (70-74), episode four (73-77) - truncated and overlapped, because the scheme working its way from end to beginning is coming up fast as the beginning recedes in the rearview mirror -, expo 2, stretto and coda (78 - 92). That was the plan. Into the blank measures I poured my vision of Bach fuguing Foster. Listeners to the piece will hear the endless spinning off of the tune that begins "way down upon the Swanee River." I found this hilarious. In the event that anyone (Hugo Norden) should miss the joke, at the top of the pencil draft I wrote over the subject's first appearance after that kick in the ass sixteenth rest, "subject on side saddle." Over the answer (counter subject), I wrote, "collapsible counterpoint," making fun of the term "convertible counterpoint," which swallows up the concept of invertible counterpoint whole. (We're running out of gas. Our convertible is top down in a hail storm.)
I made one final and colossal mistake. I wrote the draft with systems of three staves so that it could be played by a small ensemble of harpsichord and two soloists. I had an ensemble in mind. I did not have the string orchestra lined up, and wouldn't for a few years. I wanted to hear my piece played, to share it with others, to have it laughed at out loud. This is what music is about. It is not about sitting in some pedant's drawer, collecting dust having had all of its contrapuntal flaws encircled in red pen! So while Hugo had asked for an imitation of the Bach concerto, written out in six stave systems, I had a practical reason for doing it otherwise. I followed my understanding (misunderstanding) of acceptable, pragmatic Baroque practice. "As the Italian musician Agostino Agazzari explained in 1607: '...as is the constant practice at Rome in concerted music, I say that it is not necessary to make a score… A Bass, with its signs for the harmonies, is enough. (But if some one were to tell me that, for playing the old works, full of fugue and counterpoints, a Bass is not enough, my answer is that vocal works of this kind are no longer in use).'" In 1607! Before Bach was born! I followed the accepted practice of using the continuo and figures (which we had been trained to do), and I spurned the turgid (though justifiable, given the remarkable genius that Bach manifested) and overly pedantic practice of writing out the obvious in full score. I was acknowledging that I was not Bach, merely an humble composer fulfilling the requirements of a perverse assignment in such a way that my labor along these lines might be put to practical use (a performance!), and, by the way, to save me a lot of paper, ink, and time. Time was running short. I turned the pencil draft in.
When I got the piece back, the title page had endured an explosion of Hugo Norden's red ink. His pen encircled my indication that the ensemble could be an harpsichord, flute, and violin, with optional 'cello (continuo) or string orchestra. (Either way. You could play it on bagpipes for all I cared. In the Baroque, you picked up your paint brush and jammed.) The circle was intersected with one of his vivisecting (dividing) lines that led to a hunk of his scrawled text. "Makes no sense as presented. If this is for string orchestra as required, score it out in full." But wait, there's more! "This is a serious composition and your warped concept of humor is completely misplaced!" Yes, OK, but what about the music, dude? I flipped the page. Inside, he again circled my instrument indication: harpsichord or string orchestra. "Which is it?", he scrawled. He circled my two written jokes. "This is not funny." "Is this supposed to be humorous?" He missed the divine joke of the actual piece. Nowhere are his marks that scold for contrapuntal mistakes. He didn't read it, he didn't grade it. He sent it back to the kitchen for a redo or a refund. Whatever. He also sent a notice to the Dean that I was derelict in my duty. The final project was worth a third of the semester's grade, and with a forfeit, I was in the hole.
Now, Hugo Norden died in 1986. The old wound is healed, and I no longer use his systems. Were he still living, I would be Googling him and maybe sending him a note of thanks. At the time, unlike Biney-Smith, his pen had way too much blood in it. It is a serious matter to have no sense of humor. He incited me to riot and then would not read the manifesto.
I was in a pickle. I could not fail counterpoint. I had to negotiate my way back. I did indeed have a performance opportunity for this work. I had been corresponding again with Heidi. Ms. Walker had seen the world on an academic cruise, and now informed me of her wish to resume her studies in Boston. She planned to enroll at the Museum School just down the street from the Cal Crib. I was enthusiastic about this for all of the usual wrong reasons. Her letters were forthright and creatively massive. They began to burst out of their envelopes with outpourings of wit and wisdom. As an offshoot, a second theme in her mix of magic, she played the violin in a small ensemble. The ensemble was organized by a Bethesda doctor. He owned and played an harpsichord. They had a flautist and a 'cellist. He knew the figured bass. Did I happen to have a piece that they could read? I made a fair ink copy for the good doctor and his band of merry musicians. I dedicated the work to this fine man (whom I had met, and whose instrument I had found in need of voicing). I left out the jokes, but the joke had gone in before the name went on. I took it down to Prudential Center to have it copied. I sent the xeroxes off to Bethesda. The original, I covered in a prophylactic double sheet of the 18 stave paper and resubmitted to Dr. Hugo Norden. I did not want him scribbling all over my fair copy. I had made no changes: I stuck to my guns. If he was going to flunk me, let him get on with it. I was deadly serious about my mirthful brainchild. He did not completely disappoint me. He filled the false title page with vitriolic scribble. "Texturally this completely disintegrates. Why not stick to the contrapuntal fabric of the Bach model? Also, why not adhere to the usual scoring techniques?"
He may as well have asked 'why not forget about everything you have learned about the Baroque?' I'd been in a time machine (on drugs) and gone back to the feet of the Master. My decisions were well informed. (Or so I thought.) Furthermore, I'd written an effective piece of chamber music that used Norden's 'silent language,' but topped his ability to send a phrase to the moon and back. On top of all of that, I'd made a Dionysian connection between the actual experience of the ancient culture and the current one. So fuck you, Dr. Norden. And thank you very much, may you R.I.P..
Most importantly, he gave me a letter grade. C minus. I passed by the skin of my teeth.
I vowed revenge. I signed up for private lessons in composition with Hugo Norden in my senior year. Starting September 23rd, 1976, I went each Thursday to my lesson with Norden armed to the teeth with little fugues, chorales and other sundry pieces designed to show him what music was. (Van Dyke and I had gotten on to studying Ives, and I had in mind Ives' remark to critics and interpreters alike, 'don't they know anything about music? Well, I'll show them!' - Ives the pugnacious, Ives the misunderstood, Ives the standout, outstanding outside of understanding - it had great appeal.) We met in that little room called the library annex at an old oak desk and huddled together over runes and little black dots, the written language of the art I loved. My notebook from those sessions proves that we covered a fair amount of ground. The pages are in no order and again there is no chronology. The paper itself is of three basic types: A Boston Conservatory package of 12 stave manuscript paper with factory perforations for a three ring binder, some cheaper generic unmarked version of the same, and loose sheets once paper clipped to the sheets that filled the binder. The loose sheets, with a few exceptions, are on 9 stave paper marked with the name of Hugo's local publisher, Carousel Publishing Corporation, 27 Union Street, Brighton, Mass. This was also the imprint of his books. Our handwriting is mingled on all of these sheets as we passed exercises back and forth. There must've been some moisture over the span of years, because the paper clips rusted and I removed them. The only way to connect up the 'dots' would be the kind of patient analysis that we practiced together in these sessions, and who has the time for that?
I see that we analyzed the literal hell out of "Wenn wir in höchsten nöten sein." The text, in English, is a good one, and appropriate. "When we are in utmost need, and know not what to do..." It finally gets around to absolution out of grace. We picked the flesh from the bones of Bach's harmonization of this chorale. We saw the canonic framework, and listed the ornamental effects. We mapped the proportions and analyzed the harmony. We traced the rhythmic leads and diagramed the divisions. On the pages that dissect this chorale, which are entirely in my own handwriting, the beauty of Bach as a craftsman, a draftsman of the highest orderer, a wizard without a wand, is made plain for the eye. I bent to my task here with respectful zeal, under the gaze of Dr. Hugo Norden, my local guide to foaming at the mouth craziness. We absolved ourselves out of grace, considering not our sins (well, perhaps a little). I'm quite sure on that morning of our first meeting I had in hand my concerted fugue. I had to speak of how he missed my point and how I had proportion schemes going forward and back. Wouldn't I have done this? If I didn't, I am proud at last of showing some restraint. In any case, he did not want to analyze my pieces, he wanted to analyze Bach (or a few others that he liked) and take me deeper into his bizarro world of "form, the silent language."
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| Calbraith Hunter, Counterpoint Notebook Ex. 4 |
