PROGRAM

PROGRAM NOTES

Claude Debussy: Preludes Book I (1910). This is the first book of twelve preludes composed by Debussy, the second appearing in 1913. Four of these preludes, No.4, 2, 10, and 11, were premiered by Debussy on the 25^th of May 1910 at the Societé Musicale Independenté. Many composers have written preludes, starting from Bach (Well-Tempered Clavier, two sets of 24 preludes in every possible key of the well-tempered tuning system), Couperin (in L'art de Toucher le clavecin), and Rameau (Pièces de Clavecin). Chopin (who composes, with obvious reference to Bach, 24 preludes each in a different key) and Scriabin write preludes, and so does Debussy, and so will many other composers following him (for example Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Shostakovich). Debussy planned to compose 24 preludes, and this constraint perhaps explains the delay in the publication of the second book and the uneven quality of the pieces especially in that book. Debussy did not like the complete series to be played as a whole; he commented: 'They are not all good ' and pianists do not always choose the best.' Debussy did not provide any more explicit guidance, and the choice tonight is to play the complete first book, which is full of truly admirable pages. To write about each of the Preludes would require too much space, and I simply describe some general features of the book. The Preludes can be seen as part of a general process of innovation which hit the classical musical scene with a vengeance at the beginning of the 20th century, leading to the creation of a bewildering array of vocabularies as alternatives to, or coexisting with, the tonal vocabulary which had dominated western music for four centuries. What is most striking about the music of Debussy is that although it represents a radical departure from tradition, his music remains highly accessible. The musical material in the Preludes is varied and influences come from many different cultural and musical traditions: medieval, non-western, Spanish, and popular. Of particular relevance is the relationship with the music of Java and the gamelan, which appeared on the European scene in 1889 at the Paris Universal Exposition. A developed, powerful, and beautiful music that was completely outside the western idea of what music could and should be, it made a profound impression on Debussy , who in 1906 wrote. "Do you remember the Javanese music, able to express every shade of meaning, even unmentionable shades . . . which make our tonic and dominant seem like ghosts, for use by naughty little children?" The elements of the music of Java borrowed by Debussy are of course highly modified (Debussy does not compose for a Javanese gamelan orchestra!), but one can observe the use of similar scales (pentatonic, whole-tone), the use of brief motives which are often repeated without any, or with minimal, development, and the use of a repeated note that can be heard throughout the entire piece, for example, in Prelude No. 2, which is certainly reminiscent of the periodic gong stroke of the gamelan cycle.

The universe of the Preludes is no longer tonal in the traditional sense. Tonal implications are most often unfulfilled, and some pieces are fully atonal (e.g., No. 4 or 6), but one also can find clearly stated and simple progressions, laid out using traditional functional harmony using the most recognizable progressions (e.g., No. 12). Finally, Debussy's preludes have titles, which appear in parentheses at the end of each piece. Titles here are hints, hidden references, possibly memories of starting inspiration points which might have no relationship with the actual realization of the piece. A good example is the second prelude 'Voiles.' The French word can mean either 'sails' or 'veils,' and Debussy was quite clear in that he 'criticized certain interpretations [of 'Voiles'] ' insisting that it was not a photograph of the beach or a postcard.' Titles are perhaps best explained with a reference to symbolism, as Mallarmé said about his poetry: "To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the pleasure of the [art] . . . to suggest, herein lies the dream," a statement which can be applied to Debussy's musical esthetic as well.

Ludwig van Beethoven. Piano Sonata Op. 110 (1820). This Sonata is probably one of the most profound and difficult piano pieces written by Beethoven. Schindler is the first to utter a warning: 'This music sprang in the first place from a profound personality and is only fully intelligible and useful to profound personalities.' Even if it is always a dangerous proposition, it might be interesting to look at the Sonata as mirroring the many difficulties of Beethoven's life in the years preceding its composition. The years 1813 to 1820 are some of the most difficult in his life. Although his energetic, fundamentally positive outlook and character spring out periodically, one can read from his letters and conversation books the heaviness in his daily life, the disillusion and disgust for the authoritarian restoration (at the end of the Napoleonic wars) of the ancient regime which crashes any republican hope so important to Beethoven. And the bitterness for his deafness, which is complete by 1816. And the lack of love'his most famous and mysterious love affair with the 'immortal beloved' ends in those years. And his almost maniacal attachment to the desire of fatherhood, and the associated bitter quarrels revolving around his nephew Karl. It is Beethoven who in a telling letter to Kanka (1817) writes: 'For indeed I am poor'owing to the times? To poverty of spirit, and to what else???? ' I must admit that everything around and near us compels to be absolutely silent' (my italics).

A really difficult time which will however see the production of true masterpieces and then lead to the so-called third period of Beethoven's life as a composer, and the creation of, among others, the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony, the last Quartets, and the Diabelli Variations.

Op. 110 is part, with Op. 109 andOp. 111, of the last monumental group of piano Sonate composed by Beethoven. Op. 110 is divided in four main 'movements' which are however so connected and sometimes intertwined with each other that they piece into an interrupted unit. The first movement is almost a reminder of opportunities not taken, of feelings which superimpose upon each other without ever reaching a fully defined destination. The whole movement alternates between melodic lines, often remote and ethereal sonorities, and climaxes which are however again and again almost immediately taken away. It is almost frustrating but it depicts the uncertainty, the difficulty of choice, the trouble. The second movement could be seen as a possible reaction to these troubles and to the despair following possibilities and opportunities which were not harvested. It starts with a musical joke (based on two vulgar Dutch folk-song tunes), but in the trio the music acquires a stranger character, with leaps and strongly dissonant runs, and it assumes an almost hysterical quality which is reflected by its non-standard choice of harmonies. The movement could be seen as the depiction of two psychological states both originated by an attempt to react against the concluding hopelessness of the first movement. The scherzo represents a reaction which dismisses, or rather ignores, trouble by not taking it seriously. We have all made jokes about peril, loss, or death as if laughter could be used as an exorcism. The trio represents, or perhaps is, this reaction in its almost manic manifestation: mental equilibrium starts to vacillate, laughter does not work, or it works too much, and it starts to sweep mental control over to a different place where structure (that is, harmonic structure) and mental control start to vacillate. The second movement ends with a coda of 15 bars, of which half are completely silent: we are descending somewhere and the place reached is neither false superficial joviality, nor hysterical laughter. It is instead deep despair: following a short adagio and a recitative we arrive at the 'Arioso dolente' which is followed by the finale. This 'third movement' is one of the most original of Beethoven, combining the Adagio followed by the Arioso, and the finale which is in turn composed by a fugue, interrupted by a return of the Arioso, and then the return of the fugue (with the inversion of its theme) and a final coda with a relentless impetus to the final swooping arpeggio of the final five bars. The Arioso is one of the most desperate pieces ever written by Beethoven. His specific instructions, when the Arioso returns after the first fugal section, read 'perdendo le forze' (losing strength) and 'ermattet, klagend' (exhausted, plaintive): a 'sobbing' motive is clearly heard through the return of the Arioso and it will spill over, before it is finally overcome, in the return of the fugue. After the long descent in a hopeless and desperate territory there is, so characteristic of Beethoven's spirit, the emergence into a new light. The fugue is itself perhaps used as a signal: the most dynamic form in western music (a form which 'drives itself' forward with relentless strength) is used to depict a reaction, a possibility out of this deep despair. At first the reaction fails, the arioso returns in even more desperate terms, but then it triumphs, although the triumph takes all the concentration and depth one can muster to succeed. The fugue restarts with the indication 'as soft as possible' (using the piano sordina), and Beethoven explicitly instructs the performer to keep the sordina for 33 bars and release it progressively. The dynamics of the piece move progressively from 'as soft as possible' to very soft, then, after the sordina is released, to a soft and then little by little, still with some hesitations, to the final 'extremely loud': it is a dramatic sweeping crescendo which is never interrupted and occupies the totality of the end of the movement (some 80 measures!). In summary, accordingly to this interpretation, the psychological states we travel through correspond to beauty but also indecision or doubt (the first movement); we then have a perhaps immature, or simply necessary, reaction to the losses: jokes and laughter (the second movement). Then deep despair and then, little by little, with much fatigue we move to a new triumph of the will of life.

Perhaps this is too literal an interpretation for a piece of music; nonetheless one can't help feeling that much has been traversed in this piece, 'many different emotional places are journeyed through, and deep statements about life enunciated.

'Program notes by Davide Verotta

About the performer. Davide Verotta studied in Milano with Isabella Zielonka Crivelli, taught piano to children, and taught musicianship in the Italian Middle school. After a long interruption, he studied piano in San Francisco with Renee Witon, Peggy Salkind, Robert Helps, and now Julian White. He holds the equivalent of a Bachelor of Art in Music. He teaches piano in his piano studio in San Francisco's Richmond district and at the Community Music Center (Richmond branch) in San Francisco. He is a reluctant professor in mathematical modeling at UCSF.

Contact Information: Davide Verotta:415-751-2457, davide@itsa.ucsf.edu.

Piano studio Web Page: http://davide.gipibird.net