Ornamentation, part 3
shall we improvise?
Some of the most freeing words I ever heard were not from scripture. “
Don’t spend your time worrying what people think of you; they’re not thinking about you, they’re too busy worrying what everyone else thinks of them.”
Until I was far older than I care to admit, I worried that strangers passing me on the sidewalk laughed at my gait. I took it as a given that those surrounding me noticed every action I made and word I said, and judged me for it. What’s worse, I was sure they knew the thoughts in my head. Thus, a perpetual cycle of self-abuse ensued.
The friend who shared that wisdom did speak a scriptural truth. Galatians 5:1 says:
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Paul is speaking about Jewish law, that to take on one aspect of the law such as circumcision is to turn your back on Jesus’ grace. One’s identity as a justified Christian cannot be predicated on something not of Christ. If you follow the law, it becomes your justification.
My irrational fear of other’s thoughts never disappeared, but I learned to not let them define my own thoughts, words, and actions. And because I wasn’t beholden to imaginary thoughts from others, I could see the world anew. I found freedom from insecurity, freedom to come out of my shell as a person and musician. I played better than I had before, I had closer friendships, loved my parents more deeply, and, eventually, discovered romantic love.
The last two essays have dealt with ornamentation in Bach, and the ways legalism can infect and run our lives. I concluded the second essay trying to show how I attempt to live by the spirit, not the law, of the musical text when I’m interpreting a work. Musical interpretation, especially of ornamentation, can so easily fall into the trap of legalistic predeterminism.
I didn’t appreciate a lot of Bach’s music for a long time, particularly because of ornamentation. I point you back to this passage from Bach’s first English Suite, a work which is now one of my favorite works by any composer.
If you don’t read music, just know that for each small squiggly line above or below a note, the performer is supposed to add several extra ornamental notes. These ornaments are usually executed quickly with dexterity and must be rhythmically precise. At any moderate to fast tempo, playing ornaments becomes clunky and difficult. They’re annoying to interpret and to play. Try to make them sound natural?--such a nuisance!
So why not cut them out?
Most music students study counterpoint, which are the rules governing the interactions between two or more simultaneous melodies. It’s the study of notes against notes and the rules are rigorous. For centuries, composition students learned how to compose by writing painstaking counterpoint exercises because it does reveal ways of creating innate, natural-sounding music.
A composer such as Bach mastered counterpoint such that he could follow the rules to birth beautiful music, but he could also surreptitiously break the rules to great effect. Still, strip away the ornamentation, and some of Bach’s music looks a lot like counterpoint exercises. Ornamentation is a way to hide–not blemishes–but, the human face of music’s origin. It also amplifies the dissonance of some notes against other notes. Tension and resolution is essential to music. Beyond this, ornamentation is a way to connect music to dance. Much of Bach’s music derives from dance: his Partitas and Suites (like the one excerpted above) reference specific Baroque dance rhythms and forms.
Once I had to set aside my worries of the thoughts and judgements of people around me to learn to appreciate the richness they gave to my life. Instead of putting a negative purpose they themselves didn’t seek to fulfill, I let them closer, to serve their true purpose. Likewise, when I saw ornaments as nuisances, I could not see their deeper meaning. I couldn’t appreciate how they brought the music to life, how they revealed the depths of Bach’s genius. I certainly couldn’t play them well, of course they sounded clunky.
Much later, just recently in fact, I began experimenting with another layer of ornamentation in Bach: improvised ornamentation. It’s tradition in Baroque music such as Bach’s to, upon repetition of musical material, add one’s own ornaments. Many pieces are written with explicit repeat signs, such that every note should be played the first time with the ornaments given by Bach, the second time, with further ornamentation provided by the performer.
I always saw this as another instance of legalism. Who am I compared to Bach? Surely his ornamentation was sufficient. The only way I could provide new ornamentation would be to devise some new rule-based system: a trill here, a mordent there, all just…because?
The most devoted Bach and Baroque players had another way: truly improvise, as in, rewrite, the music. Keep the same number of beats, the same harmonic progressions and phrase lengths, the same rhythmic motives, and use the melodic material as a jumping off point. When something goes up, could it go down? When something moves by linked skips, can I fill it in with steps? Add notes for a floral glaze, add some pizazz and show off a little.
In this series of Bach’s French Suites, I started to take on ornamentation in this way. In each Allemande and Sarabande movement (the first and third of each suite), I’ve started to showcase my own elaborate improvisations. I do plan each improvisation out and developed a way of notating this lightly in my music. Turns out I really enjoy it and plan to continue to do this on more, faster moving dance movements. Eventually, I hope to let myself notate my ornaments less and less, and change them each time more and more. But stepping out as an improviser takes time to learn and master.
There’s a freedom in this. There’s mystery in this. Bach was noted as an improviser, so there’s certainly more truth in this. I find myself tethered to the great music that Bach composed, yet, I’m exploring the endless depth of relationships he left for me to discover. God did the same thing by sending Jesus to die for us, and rise again for victory over our sins. Like grace in the spirit, not legalism in the law, I need not be bound by the letter of the musical text. Hopefully, listening to these performances, you sense that freedom too. Each repetition in our lives need not be governed by presumptions or assumptions about the people around us.