Summer musings on pure music

If you, doting mom and dad, had followed my advice in the past few columns, then by this time you should already be developing the musical sensibilities of your teenager on summer vacation – if only to keep his mind off malls and girls.

I had recommended starting your teen off on recordings of musical works that tell a story – those which Leonard Bernstein in his book The Joy of Music classifies as narrative-literary.

I also suggested CDs of pieces that are descriptive or atmospheric-pictorial.

If your conspiracy has succeeded and your boy is now listening to classical music, we won’t want to stop even when schools have reopened. In fact, we should double our efforts before he starts bumming around with his barkada again who may get him hooked on the Backstreet Boys, booze, even shabu and Ecstasy.

Lead your boy to a higher level of consciousness with music that Bernstein defines as affective-reactive – music that expresses emotions such as pathos, melancholy, joy, triumph – and music that does not convey anything other than pure form, like non-objective or abstract painting.

Start him off with a piece that is sure to blow off your boy’s mind: Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. This work casts a hypnotic spell with its persistent rhythmic pattern and a sensuous two-part melody which is repeated over and over almost to the point of monotomy. However, the music holds the listener enthralled because the melody is passed on from one instrument to another or a group of instruments against the inexorable rhythmic beat of the snare drum, the work hardly audible at the beginning, but almost imperceptibly building in volume. It is, in fact, a tremendous crescendo that is finally released in a titanic, orgasmic torrent of orchestral sounds which absolutely boggles the mind.

It will help the beginner to appreciate music if he first learns its components. These are: rhythm, the aspect of the rate of the musical flow; meter, the organization of beats into a pattern; melody, a meaningful and coherent series of tones (a melody that plays a role of structural importance is called a theme or subject); tempo, the rate of speed; dynamics, intensity, the relative loudness or softness; harmony, the combination of tones into chords.

Although the most basic of these elements is rhythm (to which we react instinctively), it is melody which is the most appealing. Musical organization, which is based on melodic patterns, is divided into single-movement forms and compound forms. The most common of the first kind is the binary which has two contrasting melodies (AB) and the ternary in which the first melody is repeated after the second (ABA).

Test your son’s capacity for concentration and make him listen to George Frideric Handel’s Water Music. Handel composed this work for King George I whom he had once offended. When the king and his retinue held a picnic on the royal barge on the River Thames, the composer and his musicians followed on another barge and serenaded the monarch with his new work to appease his anger and regain his patronage.

Water Music consists of three suites, divided into 18 numbers, with varying tempos and moods, but all of them tuneful and appealing. Play a game with your boy. Dare him to classify the numbers according to whether each is binary or ternary. And let Handel’s music bewitch him as it had done a king long, long ago.

One delightful gem of chamber music that is sure to charm your boy off his jeans is a movement from Franz Joseph Haydn’s Quartet No. 17 in F Major, Op. 3 No. 5. An example of the ternary form, this "Serenade" (Andante cantabile) glows with the sunny spirit of the classic tradition. Its simplicity and clarity of expression cannot fail to appeal even to those who are disposed to enjoy the classics. It is a sure cure for the prejudice that some young people have against anything old.

A tune that is even older – one dating back to the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century – has been orchestrated by Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on "Greensleeves." A more complex form of the ternary, it has an introduction played by flute and harp before the main theme – the old "Greensleeves" tune – is played by the strings. A more spirited middle section based on another folk song, Lovely Joan, is heard from which the flute and harp material returns to introduce the reprise in different arrangement of the principal theme. A heady old wine in a new bottle that even your youngster, who may despise old things, will be intoxicated by.

Theme and variations is the third single movement form, of which an example that can’t fail to charm your boy is the fourth movement of Franz Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A Major "The Trout," D. 667. A playful rippling rhythm accompanies the theme, drawn from the same composer’s song, Die Forelle (The Trout), which is heard in five variations. The variations do not swim too far from the regional basic tune and the untrained ear can easily catch the theme hook, line and sinker.

On a far grander scale of theme and variations is Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 43. The work is a set of 24 variations for piano and orchestra. The theme metamorphoses from one variation to another with growing complexity, with startling twists and turns that test the virtuosity of soloist and ensemble and the patience and capacity of your son for concentration. When the tension is finally released in the last few bars, and your boy heaves a sigh of relief and rewards you with a smile, you know there is no greater gift next to your parental love than the joy of music.

The fourth single movement form is the Menuet and Trio (AABA CC ABA) of which the purest examples are found in the third movements of symphonies by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Try the Symphony No. 40 in G minor which represents the finest of the classical ideals of balance, proportion, clarity and grace. When your son listens to the Menuet and Trio, he can follow, even on first hearing, where each part ends and the next begins. He will instantly attune himself to the childlike simplicity of the score.

The fifth is the rondo (ABACABA) in which the first theme is heard every other section. A beautiful example is the third movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 "Pathetique." After a mournful first movement which has given the work its appellation and a second movement, a serene Adagio cantabile, this sonata concludes with an academic rondo which follows the discipline of the classical tradition. At the very least, aside from appreciating the work of a master, your boy will learn the value of the observance of laws to establish order in music as in life itself.

The last of the single-movement types is the sonata-allegro or first movement form. This kind consists of four parts: the statement which presents two themes on two different related keys which cause tension; the development, in which a phrase is chosen from either theme and subjected to analysis; the recapitulation, in which the themes are both heard in the same key to relieve the tension; and the coda, which establishes with finality the dominant key.

The brief, witty example that will not tax the patience of your boy is the first movement of Sergey Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 1 in D, Op. 25 ("Classical"). It is a charming parody in the modern idiom of the Mozartian style in which the parts of the sonata-allegro form are stated with utmost clarity.

You might as well use the same work to introduce the boy to the compound forms of music. In addition to the suite, in which you have given him an example in Handel’s Water Music, and the sonata, of which he has heard its kind in Beethoven’s Pathetique, he should listen to a whole symphony.

The second movement of the Prokofiev has a leading theme with contrasting episodes in rondo form; the third is a brief, brisk ternary; and the finale presents two themes in vivacious imitation of Mozart. Let your son be charged no end by the with of Prokofiev.

One more compound from that your teener should study is the concerto, a work for orchestra and solo instrument. I recommend two examples.

Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, for guitar and orchestra, vibrates with the rhythms of Spain and pulses with the passion of the people’s historic past.

Aram Khachaturian’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor enchants with exotic folk melodies of Armenia and throbs with the blood of a people in whose mountains, the Caucasus, Noah’s Ark had landed after the Flood a long time ago.

Well, folks, this little lesson on the appreciation of pure music should detach your youngster from the bondage of his barkada and the lure of the opposite sex (at least, for the meantime). But who knows? It might inspire him to take lessons – on the piano, violin or guitar. He may surprise you yet, and turn out to be a prodigy.

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For comments and suggestions, e-mail jessqcruz@hotmail.com.