Methodological message on the topic of interdisciplinary connections in the study of polyphony. "work on polyphony in elementary grades"
Berezina Elena Sergeevna,
additional education teacher (piano)
GBOU Gymnasium No. 587 Frunzensky district of St. Petersburg
Working on polyphonic works is an integral part of learning piano performance. This is explained by the enormous importance that developed polyphonic thinking and mastery of polyphonic texture have for every piano player. The development of polyphonic hearing and polyphonic thinking is one of the most important aspects of educating students’ musical culture. The student develops and deepens the ability to hear polyphonic fabric and perform polyphonic music throughout the course of training. If a student acquires correct pianistic skills from the first grade, then he perceives and performs the polyphonic repertoire meaningfully and meaningfully.
As you know, polyphony is a type of polyphony, which is a combination of two or more equal melodies played simultaneously. Consequently, the study of polyphony begins with the correct perception and ability to perform one of the most important components of polyphonic music - melody. This task should begin with the first touches of the keyboard, when the student learns to play individual sounds.
From the very first steps of their education, students go through plays by ancient, Russian and Soviet composers, which contain elements of polyphony. The polyphony in these pieces is mainly subvocal, and in some - with elements of imitation. As a result of working on such works, students accumulate the necessary skills that allow them to move on to studying more complex imitative polyphony in middle and high school, in particular, the polyphony of J. S. Bach.
Polyphonic material for beginners consists mainly of light polyphonic arrangements of subvocal folk songs. It is advisable for the teacher to talk about how these songs were performed among the people: the singer began to sing, then the choir (“podvoloski”) picked up the song, varying the same melody. I would like to give an example of one of the methods of working on subvocal polyphony. During the lesson, the teacher invites the student to perform the song in a “choral” way, dividing the roles: the student plays the part of the lead singer learned at home, and the teacher “depicts” the choir on another piano. After two or three lessons, the roles change. By playing both parts alternately with the teacher in an ensemble, the student not only clearly feels the independent life of each of them, but also hears the entire piece in the simultaneous combination of both voices.
Imitation can also be figuratively explained using such a familiar and interesting phenomenon for children as an echo. The perception of imitation will be greatly enlivened by playing in an ensemble presentation, the melody is played by the student, and its imitation “echo” is played by the teacher. Then the roles change.
From the first steps of mastering polyphony, the student must be taught both the clarity in the alternating entry of voices, and the clarity of their conduct and ending. It is important that the endings of motives in one voice are not drowned out by the incoming voice. In each lesson, it is absolutely necessary to achieve a contrasting dynamic embodiment and a different timbre for each voice separately. For example, we play one voice loudly and the other quietly, like an “echo.”
A new, more complex and necessary step on the path to understanding polyphonic music and its performance is the study of the pedagogical heritage of the great polyphonist J. S. Bach. It is generally accepted that teaching J. S. Bach is one of the most difficult sections of music pedagogy. Unfortunately, we often encounter the fact that students treat the polyphonic works of J. S. Bach as dry and boring music. Teaching a child to love the music of J. S. Bach by revealing to him the rich inner world of Bach’s thoughts and their emotional content is one of the most important tasks of a teacher.
Easy polyphonic pieces by J. S. Bach from the “Note Book of A. M. Bach” are the most valuable material that actively develops the student’s polyphonic thinking, his sound palette, and develops a sense of style and form. The small masterpieces included in the “Note Book of A. M. Bach” are mainly small dance pieces: polonaises, minuets and marches. They are distinguished by their extraordinary richness of melodies and rhythms, not to mention the variety of moods expressed in them.
It is desirable that the teacher, figuratively and accessible to children’s perception, tell the student about ancient dances - minuet, polonaise. About, for example, how from the end of the 17th century the minuet was performed during solemn palace ceremonies, how in the 18th century it became a fashionable aristocratic dance, which was carried away by prim court aristocrats in white powdered wigs. The minuet was danced with great solemnity, squats and curtsies. In accordance with this, the music of the minuet reflected in its melodic turns the smoothness and importance of bows, low and ceremonial curtsies and curtsies. Of course, J. S. Bach did not write his minuets for dancing, but from them he borrowed dance rhythms and form, filling these pieces with a wide variety of moods.
At the initial stage of work, the first thing you need to understand is the nature of the play. Having determined the mood of the piece, the teacher directs the student’s attention to the difference between the melodies of the upper and lower voices, to their independence and independence from each other, as if they were performed by two different instruments. Then moves on to show the phrasing and associated articulation of each voice separately.
Of the many tasks that stand in the way of studying a polyphonic piece, the main one continues to be work on melodiousness, intonation expressiveness and independence of each voice. Independence of voices is an indispensable requirement that any polyphonic work places on the performer. Therefore, it is so important to show the student exactly how this independence manifests itself:
· in different, almost nowhere matching phrasing;
· in the discrepancy of dynamic development: the upper voice is crescendo, the lower voice is diminuendo);
No matter how confidently a student plays a polyphonic piece with both hands, careful work on each voice should not stop for a single day. Otherwise, voice guidance quickly becomes clogged.
Based on the material of two or three pieces from the “Notebook of A.I. Bach" the student learns various features of Bach's music, learns the principle of the "eight-piece", and becomes acquainted with a very important feature of Bach's melodic language - the fact that Bach's motives begin on the weak beat of the bar and end on the strong beat. Therefore, the boundaries of Bach’s motive do not coincide with the boundaries of the beat, and therefore the accents in Bach’s works are determined not by the meter, but by the inner meaning of the theme or motive.
It is difficult to overestimate the role and significance of the collections “Notebook of A. M. Bach”, “Notebook of V. F. Bach”, “Little Preludes and Fugues”, and later fifteen two-voice and fifteen three-voice inventions and symphonies in the formation of students as future musicians. The collection of J. S. Bach “Inventions and Symphonies”, due to the artistic content of the images and polyphonic mastery, is of great value and is one of the important and mandatory sections of the pedagogical repertoire in the field of polyphony in middle and high schools of children's music schools. Despite their original pedagogical purpose, Bach's inventions are true masterpieces of musical art. They are distinguished by a combination of high polyphonic skill, harmony of form with depth of content, a wealth of imagination and a variety of genre shades.
After the student gets acquainted with the play performed by the teacher, we analyze the content of the intervention. Together with the student, we determine the boundaries of the topic and its nature. The theme in Bach's inventions is the core of the entire work; it is it and its further modifications and development that determine the character and figurative structure of the entire work.
When playing again, you need to identify and understand the form of the piece. When the student clearly understands the structure of the invention, you can begin to carefully work on the line of each voice. An essential point in learning voices is maintaining the correct strokes, fingerings, and dynamics. While working on the melodic line of each voice, the student should carefully hear the length of the long notes and how the next sound naturally flows from them. When directing the student’s work, you need to draw his attention to the fact that the combination of three voices in the invention resembles a conversation into which melodies - voices with different statements - enter. Each voice has its own “face”, character, coloring. The student should achieve the desired touch: a more ringing, open sound in the upper voice; slightly matte sounding middle voice; a thicker, more solid, solid and noble sound in the bass. Work on voices must be carried out carefully. Much will depend on the quality of knowledge of voices in future work. In order for the student not to lose sight of the whole, it is necessary that he constantly hears the entire piece, in three voices, performed by the teacher. It is useful to play in an ensemble: the student plays one voice, and the teacher plays the other two.
In his manuscripts, Bach limited himself to recording notes and decorations and left almost no instructions regarding dynamics, tempo, phrasing, fingering, or decoding of decorations. Information about this was communicated to the student directly in class.
Articulation is one of the most important conditions for the expressive performance of ancient music. She should be given great attention in her work. It should be explained to the student that the correct division of the melody into motives and their correct intonational pronunciation in the time of J. S. Bach was given great importance. It is also important to remember that in most cases the composer's motives begin with a weak beat. Here I would like to remind you that the short lines put down by the editor, and occasionally by J. S. Bach himself, indicate the boundaries of the motives, but do not always mean the removal of the hand.
Issues of articulation were deeply and carefully studied by Professor I. A. Braudo. Studying the texts of manuscripts and the patterns of practice in performing Bach's works, he derived two articulation rules: the eighth rule and the fanfare rule. I. A. Braudo noticed that the fabric of Bach's inventions, as a rule, consists of adjacent rhythmic durations. This allowed him to conclude that if Bach has one voice in quarter notes and the other in eighth notes, then the quarter notes are played with disjointed articulation, and the eighth notes are played coherently or vice versa. This is rule eight. The rule of fanfare is as follows: within the voice, the melody moves either gradually or abruptly; and when there is a long interval jump in the melody, the sounds of the jump are played with a different articulation. Bach's music is characterized by the following types of strokes: legato, especially dissected, with a clear pronunciation of each tone; non legato, portamente, staccato.
In dynamic terms, the main feature of the performance of Bach's music is that his compositions do not tolerate nuanced diversity. When thinking about the dynamic plan in the works of J. S. Bach, it should be remembered that the style of music of the composer’s era is characterized by contrasting dynamics and long dynamic lines. F. Busoni and A. Schweitzer call it “terrace-like dynamics”. Short crescendos and diminuendos, the so-called “forks,” distort the courageous simplicity of Bach’s writing.
As for tempos, in Bach's time all fast tempos were slower and slow tempos were faster. As a rule, a work should have a single tempo, with the exception of changes indicated by the author.
Great care must be taken when it comes to pedals. It can be recommended to use the pedal mainly in cases where the hands are not able to connect the sounds of the melodic line. It is also appropriate to take the pedal in cadences.
A huge expressive means of Bach's music is ornamentation. There is a lot of controversy around this issue. Bach himself included a table of decoding of a number of decorations in the “Wilhelm Friedemann Notebook”.
The next stage of work is for the student to connect all the voices. First try to combine two voices, then add a third. The greatest difficulty for the student will be the combination of two voices in one hand. When the student plays the whole invention, new musical tasks will be included in the work. One of them is the search for the desired ratio of all voices in their simultaneous sound.
With the onset of the final stage of work, the implementation of the entire invention should take more and more time and attention. The main task of the final stage of work on the invention is to convey the content of the music, its basic character
Working on the inventions of J. S. Bach helps to understand the world of deep, meaningful musical and artistic images of the composer. The study of three-part inventions gives students of children's music schools a lot for acquiring skills in performing polyphonic music and for musical and pianistic training in general. Sound versatility is characteristic of all piano literature. The role of working on inventions in auditory education, in achieving timbre diversity of sound, and in the ability to lead a melodic line is especially significant.
Bibliography
1. Alekseev A. Methods of teaching piano playing. M.: Muzyka, 1978.
2. Braudo I. Articulation (about the pronunciation of the melody). L.: LMI, 1961.
3. Braudo I. on the study of Bach’s keyboard works at a music school. M - L, 1965.
4. Kalinina N. Bach’s keyboard music in piano class. L.: Music, 1974.
6. Tsypin G.M. Learning to play the piano. M.: Education, 1984.
7. Schweitzer A. Johann Sebastian Bach. M.: Muzyka, 1964.
Methodical report of a piano teacher - page No. 1/1
Methodological report
piano teacher
Achegu V.B.
(MBOU DOD Children's Music School No. 5, Murmansk)
Features of working on polyphony in piano class.
The spirit of polyphony generally lies
at the heart of musical art,
based on intonation
S. Skrebkov.
“Different eras hear differently,” wrote R. Schumann.
Indeed, musical consciousness, the auditory attitude towards the perception of music depend on the dominant type of musical presentation, on the nature of the musical thinking of composers of a particular era.
Every musician or music lover, having come into contact with the music of the previous and our centuries, is convinced that the texture here is more saturated with simultaneously sounding meaningful melodic lines, rhythms, timbres, harmonic layers than in the works of composers of past centuries. In a word, modern music requires listeners, first of all, to have multifaceted, polyphonic hearing.
The formation of polyphony began in the depths of folk musical creativity under the primitive communal system, in the cultures of the ancient world. The emergence of polyphony is due to the development of human consciousness, speech, and thinking; it is associated with the formation of the diversity of human perception (extra-musical and musical).
From the very beginning, both horizontal and vertical were present in the structure of early polyphony. Moreover, according to musicology, the horizontal, polyphonic principle was more pronounced than the harmonic one. Thus, the ability of polyphonic perception has been inherent in the creators and performers of music from time immemorial.
The historical development of musical thinking determines the formation and development of polyphonic and homophonic-harmonic structures, their interaction as opposites in dialectical unity and their integration into complex polyphony. Exaggerated development of one type at the expense of another has a negative impact on music and its accessibility to the listener.
Based on this, it can be argued that teaching music must necessarily include both polyphonic and homophonic-harmonic types of polyphony: one cannot be understood in isolation from the other; Without mastering both, a full perception of music is impossible.
The concept of polyphony, polyphony in a broad sense, reflects the general property of complex polyphony, to which most musical works belong. Their perception requires much more developed abilities than purely polyphonic or homophonic-harmonic works. The ability to hear the simplest polyphony is a necessary condition for the formation of a full perception of complex polyphony.
Therefore, we can assume that it is advisable to develop musical perception cyclically and in the following sequence:
monophony + elementary polyphony;
monophony + polyphony + homophony;
monophony + polyphony + homophony + complex polyphony.
Since polyphonic music exists, then both an ear for music and a person’s musical thinking have the prerequisites for perceiving polyphonic specificity.
It is known that monophonic music is perceived by rhythmic intonation, modal, timbre, and syntactic complexes. In polyphony, in addition to the indicated complexes, we encounter other, more complex structures - polyphonic and harmonic. They are also reflected by auditory consciousness as integral objects, and, of course, in a more complex way, at a higher level than when perceiving monophonic music.
The ability to fully hear and perceive polyphony must develop in a certain, psychologically determined sequence. Science distinguishes between such types of musical hearing as melodic and harmonic. Along with them, we can safely introduce the concept of polyphonic hearing.
By the concept of polyphonic hearing we understand the ability to hear, trace and correlate the movement of several simultaneously unfolding melodies, melodic lines, and, more broadly, textural layers. Polyphonic hearing, based on melodic hearing, provides hearing of the horizontal multi-composition of the musical texture, while harmonic hearing provides hearing of chords, their relationships and the entire vertical organization of the texture.
Any perception is associated with thinking. Musical perception is associated with musical-imaginative thinking - thinking, as a result of which the musical image of a work is realized and mastered. In the process of repeated perception of polyphonic works, not only their specific images are imprinted, but, what is especially important, generalized ideas are formed about polyphonic complexes of form, about polyphony as a specific type of music, and, finally, about polyphony as a property of polyphony.
Polyphonic thinking is manifested in the ability to differentiate and holistically represent the simultaneous development of several melodic lines, and more broadly, the parallel development of several textured layers with their polytonal, polymodal, polyharmonic, polyrhythmic, polytimbral richness. The “performance” of hearing depends to a greater extent on the feedback of thinking on it: hearing is finer, more differentiated, if mental needs are highly developed, if the listener knows how to listen, what to pay auditory attention to. A person can hear and perceive polyphonic music only if he has developed polyphonic thinking.
The process of cognition and thinking causes cognitive, so-called intellectual feelings. They are also characteristic of polyphonic thinking: the perceiver experiences not only the beauty of musical construction, but also the very process of assimilating the content and form of the work.
Memory plays a huge role in the perception of polyphony, as in perception in general. Memorization is facilitated by the brightness and expressiveness of the thematic material and its structural simplicity. The most important factor in memorization is the emotional beginning, the consolidation of perceived musical images through their experience (and subsequently awareness).
Let us trace the stages of polyphonic perception:
The stage of vague, poorly differentiated, scattered perception. Perception lacks both emotionality and analytical-synthesizing activity. The student simply does not hear much; polyphonic voices are reflected in his consciousness in fragments, with little differentiation, and they are not united into coherent logical structures. Music seems to him obscure and unexpressive.
The second stage is characterized by in-depth auditory analysis, differentiated and holistic development of the elements of structure and figurative organization of a polyphonic work. A new generalized and holistic musical image is formed in the consciousness, which is gradually synthesized from the interactions and relationships of individual voices and themes. This is the specificity of polyphonic thinking at this stage of polyphonic perception.
The next stage is characterized by greater integrity of perception of a polyphonic work. Emotional reactions, due to the consciousness of logic, the meaning of the relationships between voices, become, as it were, “smart”. The spheres of feeling and reason come closer and merge in the recreation of an artistic image.
Polyphonic thinking and intellectual feelings in this process are very important aspects of musical perception.
However, in the process of guiding the development of students’ perceptual abilities, it is very important to ensure the correct correlation of children’s musical mental activity with emotional reactions to polyphonic music. Underestimation of this side gives rise to a rational attitude, dry rationalism, which has such a detrimental effect on the perception of any art, especially music. “An empty head can hide behind a fugue,” said R. Schumann. Emotionally emasculated works of a purely constructive nature cannot be used in musical teaching, because this contradicts the aesthetic essence of music as an art form that affects the listener, first of all, with its emotional and aesthetic content.
Working on polyphonic works is an integral part of learning piano performance. After all, piano music is all polyphonic in the broad sense of the word. Education of polyphonic thinking, polyphonic hearing, that is, the ability to discretely, differentiatedly perceive (hear) and reproduce on an instrument several sound lines that are combined with each other in the simultaneous development of sound lines - one of the most important and most complex sections of musical education.
Polyphony is a special sound of voices. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to teach the child to hear one voice, to cultivate linearity. The student must hear its length, beginning and end, and hear the expressiveness of the voice. It is necessary to learn to play without “shouting”, accurately connecting durations; precise phrasing of motives, understanding the relationships of small links. The precise phrasing of motives and understanding of the interconnection of small links are important. The student must be able to work on intonation expressiveness. Distinguish voices using dynamics and instrumentation in work.
Modern piano pedagogy places great confidence in the musical intelligence of children. Based on the experience of B. Bartok, K. Orff, the teacher opens up an interesting and complex world of polyphonic music to the child from the first year of study at a music school.
The polyphonic repertoire for beginners consists of light polyphonic arrangements of subvocal folk songs, close and understandable to children in their content. The teacher talks about how these songs were performed among the people: the singer began the song, then the choir (“podvoloski”) picked it up, varying the same melody. Taking, for example, a Russian folk song, the teacher invites the student to perform it in a “choral” way, dividing the roles: the student plays the learned part of the lead singer during the lesson, and the teacher, preferably on another instrument, as this will give each melodic line greater relief, “depicts” a choir that picks up the melody of the chorus. After two or three lessons, the student performs the “backing vocals” and is clearly convinced that they are no less independent than the melody of the lead singer. When working on individual voices, it is necessary to achieve expressive and melodious performance by the student. I would like to draw attention to this all the more because the importance of working on students’ voices is often underestimated; it is carried out formally and is not brought to that degree of perfection when the student can actually perform each voice separately as a melodic line. It is very useful to learn each voice by heart. By playing both parts alternately with the teacher in an ensemble, the student not only clearly feels the independent life of each of them, but also hears the entire piece in its entirety in the simultaneous combination of both voices, which greatly facilitates the most difficult stage of the work - the transfer of both parts into the hands of the student.
Further, the study of polyphonic plays of the Baroque era, among which the works of J. S. Bach occupy the first place, becomes especially important. During this era, the rhetorical foundations of musical language were formed - musical rhetorical figures associated with certain semantic symbolism (figures of a sigh, exclamation, question, silence, amplification, various forms of movement and musical structure). Familiarity with the musical language of the Baroque era serves as the basis for the accumulation of an intonation vocabulary of a young musician and helps him understand the musical language of subsequent eras.
The best pedagogical material for cultivating the polyphonic sound thinking of a pianist is the keyboard heritage of J. S. Bach, and the first step on the path to “polyphonic Parnassus” is the well-known collection called “The Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach.” The small masterpieces included in the “Notebook” are mainly small dance pieces - polonaises, minuets and marches, distinguished by their extraordinary richness of melodies, rhythms, and moods. It is best to introduce the student to the collection itself, i.e., the “Note Book,” and not to individual pieces scattered across different collections. It is very useful to tell your child that the two “Music Notebooks of Anna Magdalena Bach” are unique home music albums of the family of J. S. Bach. This included instrumental and vocal pieces of various types. These plays, both his own and those of others, are written in notebooks by the hand of J. S. Bach himself, sometimes by his wife Anna Magdalena Bach, and there are also pages written in the childish handwriting of one of Bach’s sons. The vocal works - arias and chorales included in the collection - were intended for performance in the home circle of Bach's family.
You need to understand well that Bach’s music is keyboard music and only secondarily organ music. Bach composed a lot for the clavier, and clavier is the German generic name for three keyboard instruments: harpsichord, clavichord and organ. And no matter how much these instruments differ from each other (especially the organ from the harpsichord), everything Bach created for three instruments is keyboard music. As for us who teach piano, due to the tradition to which we are heirs, the main priority here is to discuss the problems of playing Bach on the piano. That is why our main task is to find the answer to the question: “What exact steps in today’s piano pedagogy should be taken in order to make Bach both alive and stylistically authentic, so that his music, even in student performance, carries meanings as clear to the listener as like those that the music of Beethoven, Chopin or Prokofiev carries within itself?
Articulation.
Articulation is one of the many means of expression in early music, and in particular in the music of Bach. Articulation is often compared to diction, and this is a completely correct analogy. Although it by no means exhausts the entire spectrum of meanings related to performing articulation. The usual interpretation of this concept, which often comes down to a simple differentiation between legato and non legato, needs to be significantly expanded. In the book of one of Arthur Schnabel’s students it is written: “Articulation - in Schnabel’s deep understanding of this term - means identifying the musical “details” of a piece by all means available to the performer - duration of sound, dynamics, time distribution, etc. Articulation is a very subtle element in performance, much too subtle to be accurately recorded in the notes.” In general, everything said in this work about “melodic,” “harmonic,” “metric,” and “rhythmic” articulation is directly related to Bach. There are two main problems in our system of musical education. One of them concerns legato, which is given increased attention in music school - and this is not the only, although one of the most important, ways of articulating a melody.
The second problem is related to the fact that our musical ear is formed mainly on the basis of harmonic four-voices. We don’t think much about it, but such musical education gives rise to certain consequences, in particular, the inability of a child playing the piano to perceive music linearly. The central problem here is the method of communication between sounds, which is precisely determined by the choice of one or another articulatory technique. Thus, articulation is the most important way of organizing motives, phrases and thereby identifying the character, and ultimately constructing the form of a particular fragment or an entire work. It is important to emphasize that articulation is primary in relation to tempo, because in ancient music it was articulation that determined the tempo, and not vice versa. And it is precisely ignoring this dependence that leads in many editions to an incorrect definition of tempo. In addition, articulation plays an important role in identifying the rhythmic pulse, rhythmic energy, that is, those qualities that are extremely significant in Bach's motor music. Two interrelated aspects emerged. The first concerns the need to educate linear, “horizontal” hearing. The second aspect concerns articulation itself. This does not require a complete rejection of traditional ideas, however, our views on articulation need to be expanded and brought closer to modern trends.
Defenders of legato often refer to the fact that in the famous “Instructions” for the “Inventions and Symphonies”, written by Bach in his own hand in 1723, there is an indication of the need to master cantable art, that is, the skills of singing. But, according to Schweitzer, this provision applies only to two-voice Inventions, intended by Bach not for the harpsichord, but for the clavichord - an instrument on which such melodiousness was quite feasible. Of course, today no serious pianist would deny the enormous role of cantabile, as well as legato. However, the great interpreters of both baroque and romantic music used a variety of types of articulation to perform lyrical melody, including portamento, marcato, and even non legato. And this is quite understandable, since at moments of highest expression it was often much more natural to use “recitation” rather than “singing” the melody.
So, the concept of legato itself should be interpreted not as one isolated means, but as a more or less wide range of means. There are a lot of gradations here. “You cannot think,” writes I. Braudo in his book “Articulation,” that articulatory techniques should always be considered as an arrangement from legato to staccato. You can build a palette of tools located around the legato line. These means obviously range from legatissimo to dry legato. Isaiah Braudo, our famous organist and teacher, who has devoted many years to studying this problem, also says that in each voice it is necessary to create conditions for autonomous, that is, different articulation, since this is what gives rise to sufficient relief in polyphony. The choice of technique for each voice should not be strictly determined, because it depends on the imaginary instrumental “analogue”, which is latently present in many of Bach’s keyboard works. When studying Bach, you need to look for different ways of articulation. There are many of them, but erudition and rich auditory experience in the field of mastering baroque music are required in order to choose in each specific case something that is suitable in style and, at the same time, allows you to perform a given fragment with proper expressiveness.
Tempo and metrhythm .
Moving on to the problems of tempo and metrhythm, do not forget that the choice of tempo in Bach’s music in many cases depends on the choice of articulation, so that if the articulatory technique changes, not only the sound, but also the tempo appearance of the work can become completely different. The sense of time in music is just as important as the sense of sound.
The question of the pulsation of rhythm in Bach's music is very important and complex. Substantive statements on this topic can be found in the work of Alexander Alexandrov and Mikhail Arkadyev. There, in particular, it says: “If the Viennese classics are characterized by the pulsation of the “main” metric beats in quarters in the sizes 2/4, 3/4, 4/4..., as well as the pulsation of measures in two-beat, three-beat, four-beat, etc. . structures, then Bach’s music is characterized by intra-bar “fine pulsation”. This constant, elastic pulse, which is the necessary internal core around which the entire musical fabric “weaves,” is always present in Bach.”
Pace.
It is worth paying attention to the fact that the Italian terms that we currently regard as tempo - for example, Allegro, Andante, Presto and others - were originally interpreted differently, and their meaning was significantly different from our current understanding. For most of Bach's contemporaries, such designations served as indications of the nature of the movement, or affect. Tempo designations were used not so much to determine the speed of movement, but to express emotional content.
The emphasis was more on mood, on the so-called "affect", than on direct indication of tempo. "Allegro" meant "fun", "active" (not "soon"); “Grave” – “seriously, strictly” (not “slowly”); “Allegretto” is “active and graceful with a touch of playfulness”; “Andante” - “passively, measuredly”; “Adagio” - “heartfelt”, etc. Let us formulate a method for determining tempo in Bach’s works. First of all, we will rely on what we see in the author’s text, and then turn to the editor’s instructions. Our own notations follow. Which we contribute in the course of teaching work. In addition, we must not forget that one of the incomprehensible secrets of Bach's work is the extreme stability of his music to changes in tempo. The nature of the work in such cases, of course, changes, but this does not detract from its artistic merits. And only Bach’s texts have this property.
Dynamics.
When performing Bach, in such an area as dynamics, we must limit ourselves to the use of the dynamic capabilities of the piano rather than expand these capabilities. Such self-restraint requires a certain auditory discipline and, of course, is not an easy task. Polyphony is music of a strictly style. And in Bach’s music, in particular, the stability of emotional states is important. Whereas traditional musical education accustoms one to the instability of such states and to constant dynamic changes. Thus, in this case, we must rebuild our inner emotional world and, accordingly, our attitude towards the instrument on which we have the good fortune to play Bach’s music.
Bach's polyphony is characterized by polydynamics, and to reproduce it clearly, one should, first of all, avoid dynamic exaggerations and should not deviate from the intended instrumentation until the end of the piece. A sense of proportion in relation to all dynamic changes in any work by Bach is a quality without which it is impossible to convey his music stylistically correctly. Only through a deep analytical study of the basic laws of Bach's style can one comprehend the composer's performing intentions. All the efforts of the teacher should be directed towards this, starting with the “Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach”.
Based on the material of the pieces from the “Note Book,” the student learns new features of Bach’s music, which he will encounter in works of varying degrees of complexity. For example, with the peculiarities of Bach rhythm, which is characterized in most cases by the use of adjacent durations: eighths and quarters (all marches and minuets), sixteenths and eighths (“Bagpipes”). Another distinctive feature of Bach’s style, which I. Braudo identified and called the “eight-piece technique,” is the contrast in the articulation of adjacent durations: small durations are played legato, and larger ones – non legato or staccato. However, this technique should be used based on the nature of the pieces: the melodious Minuet in d-moll, Minuet No. 15 in c-moll, and the solemn Polonaise No. 19 in g-moll are an exception to the “eighth-major rule.”
When performing vocal works by I.S. Bach (Aria No. 33 in F-moll, Aria No. 40 in F-Dur), as well as his chorale preludes (at a further stage of training), one must not lose sight of the fact that the fermata sign does not mean a temporary stop in these pieces, as in modern musical notation; this sign only indicated the end of the verse.
Melismas.
When working on Bach's polyphony, students often encounter melismas, the most important artistic and expressive means of music of the 17th-18th centuries. If we take into account the differences in editorial recommendations, both regarding the number of decorations and in their decoding, it becomes clear that the student will definitely need help and specific instructions from the teacher. The teacher must proceed from a sense of the style of the works being performed, his own performing and teaching experience, as well as available methodological manuals. We can recommend the article by L.I. Roizman “On the execution of decorations (melismas) in the works of ancient composers,” which examines this issue in detail and provides instructions from I.S. Bach. You can turn to Adolf Beischlag’s major study “Ornamentation in Music”, and of course, get acquainted with Bach’s interpretation of the performance of melismas according to the table compiled by the composer himself in “Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s Night Notebook”, covering the main typical examples. Three points are important here:
Bach recommends performing melismas based on the duration of the main sound (with some exceptions);
All melismas begin with the upper auxiliary sound (except for the crossed out mordent and a few exceptions, for example, if the sound on which the trill or uncrossed mordent is placed is already preceded by the nearest upper sound, then the decoration is performed from the main sound);
Auxiliary sounds in melismas are performed on the steps of the diatonic scale, except in cases where the alteration sign is indicated by the composer - under the melisma sign or above it.
A new step in mastering polyphony is acquaintance with the collection “Little Preludes and Fugues”, and from it many threads stretch to the “Inventions”, “Symphonies” and “HTK”. I would like to emphasize that when studying Bach’s works, gradualness and consistency are very important. “You cannot go through fugues and symphonies unless you have thoroughly studied the inventions and small preludes,” warned I. Braudo. These collections, in addition to their artistic merits, give the teacher the opportunity to deepen the student’s familiarity with the characteristic features of Bach’s phrasing, articulation, dynamics, voicing, and to explain to him such important concepts as theme, opposition, hidden polyphony, imitation and others.
The student became acquainted with imitation in the first grade of music school. In middle school, his idea of imitation expands. He must understand it as a repetition of the theme - the main musical idea - in a different voice.
Imitation is the main polyphonic way of developing a theme. Therefore, a thorough and comprehensive study of the theme, be it a Little Prelude, Invention, Symphony or Fugue, is the primary task in working on any polyphonic work of an imitative nature.
When starting to analyze a topic, the student independently or with the help of a teacher determines its boundaries. Then he must understand the figurative and intonational nature of the topic. The chosen expressive interpretation of the theme determines the interpretation of the entire work. That is why it is so necessary to grasp all the sound subtleties of the theme performance, starting from its first performance. While still studying pieces from Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook, the student realized the motivic structure of Bach's melodies.
Speaking about intramotive articulation, the child should be taught to distinguish between the main types of motives:
Iambic motives, which go from weak to strong tenses;
The motives are trochaic, which begin on the strong beat and end on the weak beat.
The iambic structure of Bach's themes also determines the peculiarity of Bach's phrasing, which students must be aware of. Starting from a weak beat of the bar, the theme freely “steps over” the bar line, ending on a strong beat, thus, the boundaries of the bar do not coincide with the boundaries of the theme, which leads to a softening and weakening of the strong beats of the bar, subordinate to the inner life of the melody, its desire for semantic culminating peaks - main thematic accents.
Bach's thematic accents often do not coincide with metric ones; they are determined not by meter, as in classical melody, but by the inner life of the theme. The intonation peaks of Bach's theme usually occur on the weak beats. “In Bach’s theme, all the movement and all the strength rush to the main emphasis,” wrote A. Schweitzer. – On the way to him, everything is restless, chaotic; upon his entry, the tension is discharged, everything that precedes it immediately becomes clear. The listener perceives the topic as a whole with clearly defined contours.” And further, “... in order to play Bach rhythmically, one must emphasize not the strong beats of the bar, but those on which the emphasis falls in the meaning of the phrasing.” Students unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Bach's phrasing often replace the thematic accent with a time accent, which is why their theme falls into pieces, loses its integrity and internal meaning.
Another essential feature of Bach's thematicism is the so-called hidden polyphony or hidden polyphony. Since this feature is common to almost all Bach melodies, being able to recognize it appears to be a critical skill that prepares students for more complex tasks.
It is necessary to draw the student's attention to the fact that Bach's melody often creates the impression of a concentrated polyphonic fabric. Such richness of a monophonic line is achieved by the presence of a hidden voice in it. This hidden voice appears only in the melody where there are leaps. The sound left by the jump continues to sound in our consciousness until the tone adjacent to it appears, into which it resolves.
Such a movement of the hidden voice will help to consolidate in the child’s mind a figurative name – “path”. Such a track should be performed sonorously, with support. The hand and finger are lowered onto the keys slightly from above, which results in a lateral movement of the hand. A voice repeating the same sound should be played barely audible. The student will use the same technique when working on more complex works.
Often teachers have a question: how to perform imitation - to emphasize it or not. There is no clear answer to this question. In each specific case, one should proceed from the nature and structure of the play. If the counterposition is close in nature to the theme and develops it, then in order to preserve the unity of the theme and the counterposition, imitation should not be emphasized. As L. Roizman figuratively put it, if each implementation of the theme is performed a little louder than other voices, then “... we find ourselves witnessing a performance about which we can say: forty times the theme and not a single time of the fugue.” In Bach's two-voice polyphonic pieces, imitation should most often be emphasized not by volume, but by a different timbre from the other voice. If the upper voice is played loudly and expressively, and the lower voice is played easily and invariably quietly, the imitation will be heard more clearly than if it is performed loudly. The theme - depending on the dynamic plan - may sometimes sound quieter than other voices, but it should always be significant, expressive, noticeable.
Marking Braudo's imitations can be considered appropriate in cases where the main character of the work is associated with a constant alternation of motives, with their constant transfer from one voice to another. The roll call of voices in this case is included in the main image of the work.
Following the mastery of the topic and answer, work on the counter-addition begins. The counter-compound is worked out differently than the theme, since the nature of its sound and dynamics can only be established in combination with the answer. Therefore, the main method of work in this case is to perform the answer and counter addition in an ensemble with a teacher, and at home - with both hands, which greatly facilitates finding the appropriate dynamic colors.
Having worked well on the theme and the counter-addition, and having clearly understood the relationships: theme - answer, theme - counter-addition, answer - counter-addition, you can move on to carefully working on the melodic line of each voice. Long before they are combined, the piece is performed in two voices in an ensemble with a teacher - first in sections, then in its entirety and, finally, completely transferred into the hands of the student. And then it turns out that in most cases the student, even if he hears the upper voice quite well, does not hear the lower voice at all, as a melodic line. In order to really hear both voices, you should work by concentrating your attention and hearing on one of them - the top one (as in non-polyphonic works). Both voices are played, but in different ways: the upper one, to which attention is directed, is f, espressivo, the lower one is pp (exactly).
G. Neuhaus called this method the “exaggeration” method. Practice shows that this work requires just such a large difference in sound strength and expressiveness. Then not only the upper, main voice at the moment, but also the lower one can be clearly heard. They seem to be played by different performers on different instruments. But active attention, active listening, without much effort, is directed to the voice that is performed more prominently.
Then we turn our attention to the lower voice. We play it f, espressivo, and the top one – pp. Now both voices are heard and perceived by the student even more clearly, the lower one because it is extremely “close,” and the upper one because it is already well known.
When practicing in this way, good results can be achieved in the shortest possible time, since the sound picture becomes clearer for the student. Then playing both voices as equals, he equally hears the expressive flow of each voice (phrasing, nuance). Such precise and clear hearing of each line is an indispensable condition in the performance of polyphony. Only having achieved it can you then work fruitfully on the work as a whole.
When performing a multi-voice piece, the difficulty of hearing the entire fabric (compared to a two-voice piece) increases. Concern for the accuracy of voice guidance requires special attention to fingering. The fingering of Bach's pieces cannot be based only on pianistic convenience, as Czerny did in his editions. Busoni was the first to revive the fingering principles of Bach's era, as most consistent with identifying the motivic structure and clear pronunciation of motives. The principles of shifting fingers, sliding a finger from a black key to a white one, and silently replacing fingers are widely used in polyphonic works. At first, this sometimes seems difficult and unacceptable to the student. Therefore, we must try to involve him in a joint discussion of fingerings and clarification of all controversial issues. And then seek mandatory compliance with it.
So, having determined the nature of the sound of the theme, its articulation, phrasing, culmination, having carefully played out and sung into the theme, the student proceeds to get acquainted with the first imitation of the theme, called the answer or companion. Here it is necessary to direct the student’s attention to the question-and-answer dialogue of the topic and its imitation. In order not to turn the imitations into a monotonous series of repetitions of the same theme, Braudo advises playing one of the themes, singing the other, then performing the dialogue between the leader and the companion at two pianos. This type of work greatly stimulates hearing and polyphonic thinking.
Working on three- to four-voice works, the student can no longer learn each voice specifically, but learn two voices in different combinations: first and second, second and third, first and third, playing one of them f, espressivo, and the other pp. This method is also useful when combining all three voices together: first one voice is played loudly, and the other two are played quietly. Then the dynamics of the voices change. The time spent on such work varies depending on the degree of advancement of the student. But teaching this way is useful; this method is perhaps the most effective.
Other ways to work on polyphony include:
performance of different voices with different strokes (legato and non legato or staccato);
performance of all voices piano, transparent;
the performance of the voices is smooth with specially focused attention on one of them;
performance without one voice (imagine these voices internally or sing).
To understand a polyphonic work and the meaningfulness of the work, the student must, from the very beginning, imagine its form, its tonal-harmonic plan. A more vivid identification of form is facilitated by knowledge of the unique dynamics in polyphony, especially Bach's, which consists in the fact that the very spirit of music is not characterized by its overly crushed, wave-like application. Bach's polyphony is most characterized by architectural dynamics, in which changes in large structures are accompanied by new dynamic lighting.
The main ways to work on a polyphonic work:
Play each voice separately for a long time and learn by heart the names of the notes;
Connect voices according to the “teacher-student” principle; in different registers;
Play each voice with singing, naming the notes;
Play voices in different combinations;
Play with emphasis on any voice;
If the stroke is similar in 2 voices, it is necessary to play with a different stroke;
Isolate interludes;
Carefully analyze the tonal plan;
Instrumentation of voices is required;
Feel like a ruler, the master of all voices;
Fill voices with meaning, look for comparisons;
Explain in detail the genre nature of the works;
Achieve meaningful play, work on rhythm, on cadences (voice them significantly);
Work on melismatics (sing with the name of the notes), achieve the quality of melismas, work on them carefully and a lot;
Avoid diversity of dynamics; but the voices must maintain dynamic mobility.
You cannot change the instrumentation until the end of the voice. You cannot change the theme of the theme in any event throughout the entire event!
Murmansk 2014
MUNICIPAL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION FOR ADDITIONAL CHILDREN'S EDUCATION
CHILDREN'S MUSIC SCHOOL
SHCHELKOVSKY MUNICIPAL DISTRICT
MOSCOW REGION
Methodical message
"Work on polyphony in the junior classes of children's music schools."
Teacher
Shchelkovo-2011
Work on polyphony at Children's Music School
Folk music, especially the music of the Russian people, is always imbued with the spirit of the ensemble, collectivity, and carries within itself the tradition of polyphony.
The melodic melodiousness of folk music is not monophonic in nature. She strives for collective intonation, to reveal herself through the choir, through polyphony. Classical music - in opera, in symphony, in chamber forms - has always provided high examples of rich and diverse polyphony, which has its origins in folk tradition. Polyphony, as an effective force in music, could not help but attract the creative attention of composers of various directions throughout the history of music. Composers have never been indifferent to polyphony. Learning polyphony is the key to mastering the art of piano playing. After all, piano music is all polyphonic in the broad sense of the word. To master the piano well, as Yuri Bogdanov said, you need to play etudes and works. Therefore, in the initial years of study at a children's music school, it is necessary to cultivate interest and love for music, and therefore for polyphonic music.
The best guide to the world of music for a child is a song. It is this that enables the teacher to interest the student in music. The first grader willingly sings familiar songs, listens with interest and guesses the different characters of the plays that the teacher plays for him (funny, sad, dance, solemn, etc.) Along the way, the child should be told that sounds, like words, convey content and different feelings . In the first lesson, I usually play a “game” with a student to determine the nature of music. First, I play him various pieces, where he must determine the mood conveyed by the composer, then I ask the student to determine the nature of the music by the title or by the picture, which clearly conveys the mood. Children especially like the plays from the collection “Getting to Know Music” by Artobolevskaya. For example, the play “Where are you, Leka”, based on the picture, children tell a whole story about why the dog is sad. The picture accompanying the Minuet clearly conveys the era of that time, the costumes of those dancing at the ball. Based on children's stories, one can determine the child's horizons, his vocabulary, sociability, etc. This is how musical impressions gradually accumulate. Melodies of children's and folk songs in the lightest single-voice transcriptions for piano are the most intelligible educational material for beginners in terms of content. Careful selection of repertoire is of great importance in a student's musical success. Songs should be chosen simple but meaningful, characterized by bright intonation expressiveness, with a clearly defined climax. Thus, from the first steps, the focus of the student’s attention becomes a melody, which he sings expressively, and then just as expressively tries to “sing” on the piano. The expressive and melodious performance of single-voice melodic songs is subsequently transferred to the combination of two of the same melodies in light polyphonic pieces. The naturalness of this transition is the key to maintaining a keen interest in polyphony in the future.
The polyphonic repertoire for beginners consists of light polyphonic arrangements of subvocal folk songs, close and understandable to children in their content. The teacher talks about how these songs were performed among the people: the singer began the song, then the choir (“podvoloski”) picked it up, varying the same melody. For example, the song “Oh, you, winter - winter...”. It can be performed in a “choral” way, dividing the roles: the student plays the part of the lead singer, and the teacher on another piano “depicts” the choir, which picks up the melody of the lead singer. After two or three lessons, the student performs the “backing vocals” and is clearly convinced that they have no less independence than the melody of the lead singer.
The student’s active and interested attitude towards polyphonic music depends entirely on the teacher’s method of work and his ability to lead the student to an imaginative perception of the basic elements of polyphonic music
From the first grades of school, the student must become familiar with all types of polyphonic writing - subvocal, contrasting, imitative - and master the basic skills of performing two and then three voices in light polyphonic works of various types. But it is hardly advisable to introduce a first-grader to the term imitation. It is easier to explain this concept using examples that are accessible and close to the child. So in plays such as the children's song “On a Green Meadow...”, you can play the original tune an octave higher and figuratively explain to the student the imitation, that is, the repetition of a motive or melody in a different voice, like the familiar concept of ECHO. Playing in an ensemble will greatly enliven the perception of imitation: the student plays the melody, and its imitation (ECHO) is played by the teacher, then vice versa. Imitation is the main polyphonic way of developing a theme. This technique is especially useful in plays where imitation is accompanied by a melody in a different voice, as in piece No. 17 from the collection “Piano ABC”: it could be called “Cuckoos”, so much so that a comparison of imitation with the roll call of two cuckoos suggests itself. In this collection there are many etudes and plays built imitatively on themes of song and dance (studies No. 17, 31, 34, 35, 37). The best pedagogical material for cultivating polyphonic sound thinking of a pianist is the clavier heritage, and the first step towards understanding polyphony is the well-known collection called “The Music Book of Anna Magdalena Bach.” The small masterpieces included in the “Note Book” are mainly small dance pieces - polonaises, minuets, marches, distinguished by their extraordinary richness of melodies, rhythms, and moods. “Music notebook” is a kind of family home music albums. This included instrumental and vocal pieces of various types. These plays, both his own and those of others, are written in notebooks in the handwriting of Bach himself, sometimes his wife Anna Magdalena, and there are also pages written in the childish handwriting of one of Bach’s sons. The vocal works - arias and chorales included in the collection - were intended for performance in the home circle of Bach's family. The collection contains nine Minuets. At the time, the Minuet was a widespread, lively, well-known dance. It was danced both at home and at merry parties and during ceremonial palace ceremonies. Subsequently, the minuet became a fashionable aristocratic dance, which was enjoyed by prim courtiers in white powdered wigs with curls. A good illustration of the balls of that time in Artobolevskaya’s collection “First Encounter with Music”. Children should pay attention to the costumes of men and women, which to a greater extent determined the style of dancing: women had creoles, immensely wide, requiring smooth movements, men had stocking-covered legs in elegant high-heeled shoes, with beautiful garters - bows at the knees. The Minuet was danced with great solemnity. The music reflected in its melodic turns the smoothness and importance of bows, curtsies and curtsies. After listening to a Minuet performed by a teacher, the student determines its character, that it resembles more a song or a dance, therefore the character of the performance should be soft, smooth, melodious, in a calm, even movement. Then it is necessary to draw the student’s attention to the difference between the melody of the upper and lower voices, their independence and independence from each other, as if they were sung by two singers: the first high female voice is a soprano, and the second low male voice is a bass, or two voices are performed by two different tool. I. Braudo attached great importance to the ability to instrument the piano. “The first concern of the leader,” he wrote, “will be to teach the student to extract from the piano a certain sonority that is necessary in this case.
The performance of two voices in different instrumentation has great educational value for hearing. For this purpose, it is useful to play the first polyphonic samples being studied with the student so that he can actually hear the combination of two voices. One voice is performed by the teacher, the other voice by the student. If there are two instruments, it is useful to play both voices simultaneously on two instruments - this gives each melodic line greater relief. It is also useful to separate the voices through the octave (upper – flute, lower – violin). The upper voice in place - the lower one down an octave, the lower one in place - the upper one up an octave. The maximum possible separation of voices is two octaves. If two voices pass simultaneously in the part of a hand, we can recommend that the student first play these constructions with both hands: in this way it will be easier for him to achieve the desired sonority and the purpose of the work will become clearer. It is necessary to ensure that the student is able to play each voice from beginning to end completely completely and expressively. The importance of working on students' voices is often underestimated; it is carried out formally and is not brought to that degree of perfection when the student can actually perform each voice as an independent melodic line. After carefully studying individual voices, it is useful to practice them in pairs. To ensure the necessary auditory control, when performing voices, it is advisable to play them at first not from beginning to end, but in separate small formations, returning again to the most difficult places and playing them several times. A very effective way of working for advanced students is to sing one of the voices while the others are played on the piano. It is also useful to sing polyphonic works in chorus. This contributes to the development of polyphonic hearing and familiarize students with polyphony. Sometimes it is useful to practice two voices, playing alternately in each of them only those segments that should prevail in their semantic meaning in a two-voice performance. If you have three or more voices, it is useful to work on each pair of voices. So, for example, with a three-voice presentation, it is useful to separately teach the upper and middle voices, upper and lower, lower and middle. It is very useful to play all the voices, focusing your attention on one of them. Remove the middle voices (they are like filling), and lead the extreme ones, they are like a skeleton.
The upper voice is melodic, the lower is harmonic. Use timbre fantasies: lead one voice on the forte, removing the rest on the piano. When the middle voice stands out, it is difficult, but very rewarding to do. To hear the lower voice, change the voices crosswise, transfer the lower voice to the upper one, and the upper one to the lower one, this is difficult, but effective. Be sure to hear long notes and delayed notes. Hearing harmony formed by several voices - (vertical). Hear horizontal. Play slowly and stop on the downbeat.
Polyphony is characterized by polydynamics and to reproduce it clearly, one should, first of all, avoid dynamic exaggerations and should not deviate from the intended instrumentation until the end of the piece. A sense of proportion in relation to all dynamic changes in any work is a quality without which it is impossible to convey its music stylistically correctly. With Bach there is not an outpouring of emotional feelings, but a concentration of feelings - self-restraint, turning inward. Everything that is written in the text should sound: clarity, accuracy, melodiousness in sound. What is progressive in the text is played legato, a jump is the removal of the hand. Bach has equal beats, the strong beat does not stand out. He sets the phrasing in size. The main thing is not to break the line, and the beginning of a topic is not as important as its end. Bach creates surround sound, harmonic fullness. Whenever working on Bach's keyboard works, one should be aware of the following basic fact. In the manuscripts of Bach's keyboard works there are almost no performance instructions. Then this was accepted, because there were no musicians - performers in our understanding of the word; on the other hand, Bach meant almost exclusively the performance of his works by his sons and students who were well acquainted with his principles. As for dynamics, it is known that Bach used only three notations in his works, namely: forte, piano and, in rare cases, pianissimo. Bach did not use the expressions crescendo, dim, mp, ff, forks indicating increased and decreased sonority, and finally, accent marks. The use of tempo notations in Bach's texts is equally limited. And where they exist, they cannot be taken in their modern meaning. His ADAGIO GRAUE tempos are not slow like ours, and his PRESTO is not as fast as ours. There is an opinion that the better you play Bach, the slower you can play it; the worse you play, the faster you need to take the tempo. The liveliness in Bach's works is based not on tempo, but on phrasing and emphasis. Of the many tasks that stand in the way of studying polyphony, the main one remains work on melodiousness, intonation expressiveness and independence of each voice separately.
2 – in different, almost nowhere matching phrasing (for example, in bars
3 – in the mismatch of strokes (legato and non-legato).
4 – in a mismatch of climaxes (for example, in the fifth – sixth bars, the melody of the upper voice rises and leads to the top, and the lower voice moves down and rises to the top only in the seventh bar)
6 – in a discrepancy in dynamic development (for example, in the fourth measure of the second part, the sonority of the lower voice increases, and the upper voice decreases).
The majority of keyboard works belong to works with unmarked articulation. Those easy keyboard works that make up the main Bach repertoire of a schoolchild are completely devoid of any performance instructions.
Of the 30 inventions and symphonies, only the F minor symphony contains two leagues. From all of the above, it is clear that single performance instructions found in Bach’s manuscripts can serve as valuable research material concerning the performance of ancient music.
We know that he himself intended the easy keyboard pieces not for concerts, but for studying and playing music at home. Therefore, the real tempo for an invention, a small prelude, a minuet, a march is considered at the moment to be the tempo that is most useful for the student. What pace is most useful at the moment. The tempo at which the piece is best performed by the student. Study tempo has as its main goal not preparation for a fast tempo, but preparation for understanding music. The fast tempo makes it impossible to listen to the music.
What the student gains by working at a slow tempo—an understanding of music—is the most essential. You should imagine the tempo as if they were being sung, sing them out loud or mentally to yourself. This way is the easiest way to establish a pace that is free from haste and immobility. But you should also make sure that the slow tempo does not turn into a series of slow, monotonous movements that have no connection with the music itself.
MATERIALS USED:
1. A. Alekseev “Methods of teaching piano playing.”
2. G. Neuhaus “On the art of piano playing”
3. I. Braudo “On the study of Bach’s keyboard works in a music school.”
4. Materials of advanced training courses.
5. N. Kalinina “Bach’s keyboard music in piano class.”
MOUDOD Children's music school of the Shchelkovsky municipal district of the Moscow region
Materials
for certification
Teacher by class
piano
Kuznetsova
Nadezhda Mikhailovna
Municipal budgetary educational institution of additional education for children of the Khanty-Mansiysk region
"Children's music school"
« Work on polyphony in elementary grades"
Methodical message.
Petrenko Tamara Grigorievna
class teacher
piano, first
Gornopravdinsk village 2013
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………3
Work on polyphonic arrangements of folk songs
(N. Myaskovsky, S. Maykapar, Yu. Shchurovsky)………………………5
A detailed analysis of the work on J. S. Bach’s “Little Preludes”
and fugues"………………………………………………………………………………...9
Work on imitative polyphony - inventions, fuguettes, small fugues………………………………………………………13
Conclusion……………………………………………………………......16
References…………………………………………………….17
Introduction.
Relevance of the topic: Work on polyphony is one of the most difficult areas of education and training of students. The study of polyphonic music not only activates one of the most important aspects of the perception of musical fabric - its versatility, but also successfully influences the general musical development of the student, because the student comes into contact with the elements of polyphony in many works of a homophonic-harmonic nature.
« Polyphony" is a mandatory attribute of educational programs in the specialty "piano" at all levels of education: from children's music school to university. Therefore, today, the topic is relevant in matters of the formation of a modern musician-performer.
The purpose of my work is to show the basic methods of working on polyphonic works in elementary grades using examples of works.
The tasks are to help the performer determine the melodic lines of the voices, the meaning of each, hear their relationship and find means of performance that create differentiation of voices and diversity of their sound.
When considering the topic of polyphony, we should not forget about other areas of its existence. In polyphonic literature, a large role is given to two-voice works of large form. In plays of small forms, especially of a cantilena nature, the three-plane texture is more fully used, combining melody and harmony. More serious attention is paid to ensemble playing and sight reading.
In the process of musical, auditory and technical development of a student in grades 3-4, new qualities especially appear that are associated with the enrichment of previously acquired knowledge and the tasks that arise during this period of training. Compared to grades 1-2, the genre and stylistic boundaries of the program repertoire are noticeably expanding.
Great importance is attached to performing skills associated with mastery of intonation, tempo-rhythm, mode-harmonic and articulatory expressiveness. The use of dynamic nuances and pedaling is significantly expanding. New, more complex techniques of fine technique and elements of chord-interval presentation appear in the piano texture of the works. By the end of this period of training, differences in the level of development of students’ musical-auditory and piano-motor abilities become noticeable. This allows us to predict the possibilities of their further general musical,
professional and performance training. The student’s artistic and pedagogical repertoire includes piano music from different eras and styles. Compared to the two initial years of study, in grades 3-4, the specifics of developing musical thinking and performance skills when studying different types of piano literature are clearly revealed.
1. Work on polyphonic arrangements of folk songs
(N. Myaskovsky, S. Maykapar, Yu. Shchurovsky).
The musical development of a child involves developing the ability to hear and perceive as separate elements of the piano tissue, i.e. horizontal and a single whole – vertical. In this sense, great educational importance is attached to polyphonic music. The student becomes familiar with the elements of subvocal, contrastive and imitative polyphony from the first grade of school. These types of polyphonic music in the repertoire of grades 3-4 do not always appear in an independent form. We often find in children's literature combinations of contrasting vocalization with subvocal or imitative vocalization. A special role belongs to the study of cantilena polyphony. The school program includes: polyphonic arrangements for piano of folk lyrical songs, simple cantilena works by I. Bach and Soviet composers (N. Myaskovsky, S. Maikapar, Yu. Shchurovsky). They contribute to the student’s better listening to voice performance and evoke a strong emotional reaction to music.
Let us analyze individual examples of polyphonic arrangements of Russian musical folklore, noting their significance in the musical and pianistic education of a child. Let's take for example the following plays: “Podblyudnaya” by A. Lyadov, “Kuma” by An. Aleksandrova, “You are a garden” by Slonim. All of them are written in verse-variation form. When repeated, melodious melodies “overgrow” with echoes, “choral” chord accompaniment, plucked folk instrumental background, and colorful shifts into different registers.
Arrangements of folk songs play an important role in the polyphonic education of a student. An excellent example of a light adaptation of a Russian folk song is “Kuma” by An. Alexandrova:
The play has 3 sections, like 3 verses of a song. In each of them, one of the voices carries out a constant song tune. Other voices have the character of echoes; they enrich the melody and reveal new features in it. When starting to work on a piece, you must first introduce the student to the song itself, performing it on the instrument. A figurative representation of the content helps to understand the musical development of the play and the expressive meaning of polyphony in each of the three “verses.” The first “verse” seems to reproduce the image of Kuma, sedately starting a conversation with Kum. Subvoices in the lower register are distinguished by smoothness, regularity and even a certain “decency” of movement. They must be performed slowly, with a soft, deep sound, achieving maximumlegato. When working on the first “verse”, it is useful to draw the student’s attention to the characteristic modal variability, emphasizing the folk-national basis of the play.
The second “verse” is significantly different from the first. The theme moves into the lower voice and takes on a masculine tone; she is echoed by a cheerful and ringing upper voice. The rhythmic movement becomes more animated, the mode becomes major. In this cheerful “duet of Kuma and Kuma” it is necessary to achieve the relief sound of the extreme voices. Great benefit can come from their simultaneous performance by the student and the teacher - one plays for “Kuma” and the other for “Kuma”. The final “verse” is the most cheerful and lively. The movement of eighths now becomes continuous. The lower voice plays a particularly important expressive role in changing the character of the music. It is written in the spirit of typical folk instrumental accompaniments, widespread in Russian musical literature. The playful and playful nature of the music is emphasized by the imitations of voices skillfully woven into the fabric of the piece. The final “verse” is the most difficult to perform polyphonically. In addition to the combination in the part of one hand of two voices, different in rhythmic terms, which took place in the previous “verses”, here it is especially difficult to achieve a contrast between the parts of the two hands: the melodiouslegatoin the right hand and lungstaccato in the left hand.
Usually the student is not immediately able to perform forced roll calls of voices. Study of "Kuma" by An. Alexandrova is useful in many ways. In addition to developing polyphonic thinking and skills in performing various combinations of contrasting voices, the play provides an opportunity to work on a melodious song melody and get acquainted with some of the stylistic features of Russian folk music.
Below we give examples of pieces in which the student acquires the skills of cantilena polyphonic playing, mastery of episodic two-voices in the part of a separate hand, contrasting strokes, hearing and feeling the holistic development of the entire form. We find the combination of subvocal tissue with imitations in Ukrainian folk songs arranged for piano by I. Berkovich, arranged by N. Lysenko, N. Leontovich. His plays became established in the school repertoire:
"That's dumb i rsh n i to whom"
“Oh, because of the fire of Kam’yanoi»
"Plive Choven"
"Noise i la l i little girl"
In which the verse structure is enriched not only with imitations, but also with a denser chord-choral texture. The student comes into contact with contrasting voice leading mainly when studying the polyphonic works of J. S. Bach. First of all, these are pieces from the Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach.
II . A detailed analysis of the work on J. S. Bach’s “Little Preludes”
and fugues."
J. S. Bach "Little Prelude" A minor (first notebook).
In general, the intended interpretation of the topic sounds like this:
The further development of the polyphonic fabric is characterized by the repeated implementation of the theme in the lower and upper voices in the key of the dominant.
The prelude is written in the character of a two-part fuguetta. In the two-bar theme that opens it, two emotional images are felt. The main, longer part (ending with the A sound of the first octave) consists of a continuous “rotational” movement of three-tone melodic units, each of which is built on a gradual expansion of the volume of intervallic “steps”. This development of the melodic line necessitates expressive intonation of ever-increasing tension from smaller to larger intervals while preserving exclusively melodiouslegato. In a short conclusion to the theme, starting with sixteenth notes. It is necessary to note intonationally the tritone turn (A-D #) followed by a decline in sound.
Conducting a response (lower voice) requires greater dynamic saturation (mf). The counterposition, rhythmically similar to the theme, is shaded by different dynamics (mp) and a new stroke (menolegato). After a four-bar interlude, the theme reappears in the main key, sounding especially full when intonating the major turn towards C-sharp. The three-bar coda consists of recitatively pronounced single-voice lines in sixteenth notes, ending with a final codan. The Prelude is an excellent example of Bach's imitative polyphony. Mastering the structural and expressive features of her voice preparation prepares the young pianist for further study of the more developed polyphonic fabric in inventions and fugues.
I.S. Bach "Little Prelude" in C minor (first notebook).
The performance of this prelude by students is usually characterized by a desire for speed and toccatism; its rhythmically similar texture often sounds monotonous due to children’s unclear ideas about the form, logic and beauty of harmonic and mode-tonal connections. This often interferes with the rapid memorization of music.
A detailed analysis of the prelude allows you to hear three clearly emerging parts in it: 16 + 16 + 11 bars. Each of them reveals its own characteristics of harmonious development, predicting the principles of interpretation of the whole and parts. In the first part they
appear first in the form of a harmonic community of both voices in two measures (bars 1-2, 3-4,5-6). Further (bars 7-10), the functional stability of the upper voice is combined with the identification of the molar beats of the gradually descending line of the bass voice (sounds C, B flat, A flat, G). Towards the end of the movement there is a purer change of harmonies. Given the relative stability of the harmonic fabric, everything is performed on the piano, with only an occasional shading of the line of the bass voice towards the end of the movement.
In the middle part, the climax is achieved through means of harmony. Here, with almost complete preservation of the sounds of the bass (organ) “D” part of the right hand, continuous bar-by-bar changes of function occur. In conditions of general emotional tension, the figurations themselves sound melodically rich. At the same time, the upper sounds are heard in them,
resembling the line of an independent voice (F sharp, G, A becar, B flat, C, B flat, A becar, G, F sharp, E becar, E flat, D). According to the identification of the hidden voice in the right hand part, a wave-like melodic movement is felt in the right notes of the up-beat figures of the lower voice.
In the final part of the prelude, the harmonic tension subsides and the melodic figuration leads to a final bright G major chord. Having revealed the figurative content of the prelude, we will try to analyze the techniques of its execution. Initial
The fourth note of each measure in the left hand is played by plunging it deeply into the keyboard. The figure in the right hand, entering after a pause, is performed by lightly touching the keyboard with the first finger, followed by the support of the third or second on the initial sounds of the second quarter bars. At the same time, accurately removing the left hand during a pause makes it possible to hear it clearly. The alternation of hands in figurations of sixteenth notes on the third quarters of measures occurs when they barely noticeably fall on the keys in the receptionnonlegato. The recommended pianistic techniques will undoubtedly help in achieving rhythmic accuracy and evenness of sound. In the most dynamically rich middle part of the prelude, a short pedal marks out bass sounds, especially in places where the hand parts are written in a wide register arrangement. Once again I would like to emphasize the need for students to understand the logic of harmonic development when perceiving the musical fabric of the prelude.
III . Work on imitative polyphony - inventions, fuguettes, small fugues.
imagery. Even when working on the lightest examples of such music, auditory analysis is aimed at revealing both the structural and expressive aspects of the thematic material. After the teacher has performed the work, it is necessary to move on to a painstaking analysis of the polyphonic material. Having divided the play into large sections (most often based on a three-part structure), one should begin to explain the musical and semantic syntactic essence of the theme and the counterposition in each section, as well as interludes. First, the student must determine the layout of the topic and feel its character. Then his task is to expressively intonate it using means of articulatory dynamic coloring at the found basic tempo. The same applies to opposition if it is of a restrained nature. Already in two-voice small preludes, fuguettes, inventions, the expressive features of the strokes should be considered horizontally (i.e. in the melodic line) and vertically (i.e. with the simultaneous movement of a number of voices). The most characteristic horizons in articulation may be the following: smaller intervals tend to merge, larger intervals tend to separate; moving metrics (for example, sixteenth and eighth notes) also tend to merge, and calmer ones (for example, quarter, half, whole notes - towards dismemberment).
Yu. Shchurovsky “Invention” C - dur .
In “Invention” by Yu. Shchurovsky, all sixteenth notes, set out in smooth, often scale-like progressions, are performedlegato, longer sounds with their wide intervallic “steps” are divided into short leagues, staccato sounds ortenuto. If the theme is based on chord sounds, it is useful for the student to play its harmonic skeleton with chords, directing his auditory attention to the natural change of harmonies as he moves to a new section. To more actively listen to the student’s two-voice fabric, his attention should be drawn to the technique of the opposite movement of voices, for example, in the “invention” of A. Gedicke.
A. Gedicke “Invention”F- dur.
N. Myaskovsky “Hunting Call”.
Municipal state educational institution of additional education for children "Mikhailovskaya Children's Art School"
Zheleznogorsk district, Kursk region.
METHODOLOGICAL REPORT
“Working on polyphony in class
piano"
Prepared by:
Piano teacher
Goncharova L.M.
lyric Mikhailovka
2014
Working on polyphonic works is an integral part of learning piano performance. After all, piano music is all polyphonic in the broad sense of the word.
Education of polyphonic thinking, polyphonic hearing, that is, the ability to discretely, differentiatedly perceive (hear) and reproduce on an instrument several sound lines that combine with each other in the simultaneous development - one of the most important and most complex sections of musical education.
Modern piano pedagogy places great confidence in the musical intelligence of children.
Based on the experience of B. Bartok, K. Orff, the teacher opens up the interesting and complex world of polyphonic music to the child from the first year of study at music school. The polyphonic repertoire for beginners consists of light polyphonic arrangements of subvocal folk songs, close and understandable to children in their content.
The teacher talks about how these songs were performed among the people: the singer began the song, then the choir ("podvoloski") picked it up, varying the same melody.
Taking, for example, the Russian folk song “Motherland” from the collection “For Young Pianists” edited by V. Shulgina, the teacher invites the student to perform it in a “choral” way, dividing the roles: the student plays the learned part of the lead singer in the lesson, and the teacher, preferably on another instrument , since this will give each melodic line greater relief, “depicts” a choir that picks up the melody of the chorus. After two or three lessons, the student performs the “backing vocals” and is clearly convinced that they are no less independent than the melody of the lead singer. When working on individual voices, it is necessary to achieve expressive and melodious performance by the student. I would like to draw attention to this all the more because the importance of working on students’ voices is often underestimated; it is carried out formally and is not brought to that degree of perfection when the student can actually perform each voice separately as a melodic line. It is very useful to learn each voice by heart.
By playing both parts alternately with the teacher in an ensemble, the student not only clearly feels the independent life of each of them, but also hears the entire piece in its entirety in the simultaneous combination of both voices, which greatly facilitates the most difficult stage of the work - the transfer of both parts into the hands of the student.
In order to make a child’s understanding of polyphony more accessible, it is useful to resort to figurative analogies and use program essays in which each voice has its own figurative characteristic. For example, Sorokin’s arrangement of the song “Katenka the Cheerful,” which he called “Shepherds Playing the Pipe.” The two-voice subvocal polyphony in this piece becomes especially accessible to the student thanks to the program title. The child easily imagines two levels of sonority here: like a game of an adult shepherd and a little shepherd boy playing along on a small pipe.
This task usually captivates the student and the work progresses quickly..
This method of mastering polyphonic pieces significantly increases interest in them.,
and most importantly, it awakens in the student’s mind a living, imaginative perception of voices. This is the basis of an emotional and meaningful attitude towards voice acting. A number of other subvocal plays are learned in a similar way. They can be found in many collections for beginners, for example: “I want to become a musician”, “The path to playing music”, “Pianist - Dreamer”, “School of Piano Playing” edited by A. Nikolaev, “Collection of Piano Pieces” edited by Lyakhovitskaya , "Young pianist"
V. Shulgina.
Elena Fabianovna Gnessina’s collections “Piano ABC”, “Small etudes for beginners”, “Preparatory
exercises".
In the collections of Shulgina “For Young Pianists”, Barenboim “The Path to Playing Music”, Turgeneva “The Dreaming Pianist”" creative tasks are given for subvocal plays, for example: select the bottom voice to the end and determine the tonality; play one voice and sing the other; add a second voice to the melody and record an accompanying voice; compose a continuation of the upper voice and so on.
Composition is extremely useful as one of the types of creative music-making for children. It activates uswpassion, imagination, feelings. Finally, it significantly increases interest in the works being studied.
The student’s active and interested attitude towards polyphonic music depends entirely on the teacher’s method of work, on his ability to lead the student to an imaginative perception of the basic elements of polyphonic music and its inherent techniques, such as imitation.
In the Russian folk songs “I Walk with the Loach” or “The Woodcutter” from V. Shulgina’s collection “For Young Pianists”" , where the original melody is repeated an octave lower, the imitation can be figuratively explained by comparison with such a familiar and interesting phenomenon for children as an echo. The child will be happy to answer the teacher’s questions: how many voices are there in the song?? What voice sounds like an echo? And he will arrange (himself) the dynamics (fand p), using the "echo" technique. Playing in an ensemble will greatly enliven the perception of imitation: the student plays the melody, and its imitation (“echo”) is played by the teacher, and vice versa.
It is very important to accustom the child to clarity from the first steps of mastering polyphony.
alternate entry of votes, clarity of their conduct and ending. It is necessary to achieve a contrasting dynamic embodiment and a different timbre for each voice in each lesson.
From the plays of B. Bartok and other modern authors, children comprehend the originality
musical language of modern composers. Based on the example of Bartok's play
“The Opposite Movement” shows how important the game of polyphony is for the education and development of a student’s ear, especially when it comes to the perception and performance of works of modern music. Here the melody of each voice separately sounds natural. But when initially playing a piece with both hands at once, the student may be unpleasantly surprised by the dissonances and lists of F - F-sharp, C - C-sharp that arise during the opposite movement. If he first properly masters each voice separately, then their simultaneous sound will be perceived by him as logical and natural.
Often in modern music one encounters a complication of polyphony with polytonality (voices in different keys). Of course, such a complication must have some justification. For example, in the fairy tale play “The Bear” by I. Stravinsky, the melody is a five-note diatonic chant based on the lower sound C, the accompaniment is a repeated alternation of the sounds D flat and A flat. Such “alien” accompaniment should resemble the creaking of an “alien” wooden leg, to the beat of which the bear sings his song. B. Bartok's plays "Imitation" and "Imitation in Reflection" introduce children to direct and mirror imitation.
Following the mastery of simple imitation (repetition of the motive in a different voice), work begins on plays of a canonical type, built on a string imitation, which begins before the end of the imitated melody. In plays of this kind, not just one phrase or motive is imitated, but all phrases or motives until the end of the work. As an example, let's take Y. Litovko's play "The Shepherd" (canon) from V. Shulgina's collection "For Young Pianists." This play is subtextual with words. To overcome a new polyphonic difficulty, the following method of working, consisting of three stages, is useful. First, the play is rewritten and learned in simple imitation. Under the first phrase of the song, pauses are placed in the lower voice, and when imitating it in the second voice, pauses are written in the soprano.
The second phrase is rewritten in the same way, and so on. In such a simplified “arrangement”, the piece is played for two or three lessons, then the “arrangement” becomes somewhat more complicated: the phrases are rewritten in stretto imitation, with pauses indicated in the 5th measure in the soprano.
The second phrase is learned in the same way, and so on. The ensemble method of work should become the leading method at this time. Its importance increases even more at the last, third stage of the work, when the piece is played by the teacher and student in the ensemble as it was written by the composer. And only after that both voices are transferred into the hands of the student.
It should be noted that the process of rewriting polyphonic works itself is very useful. This was pointed out by such outstanding teachers aswof his time, like Valeria Vladimirovna Listova, Nina Petrovna Kalinina, Yakov Isaakovich Milshtein. The student quickly gets used to the polyphonic texture, understands it better, and more clearly understands the melody of each voice and their vertical relationship. While copying, he sees and grasps with his inner ear such an important feature of polyphony as the discrepancy in time between identical motifs.
The effectiveness of such exercises is enhanced if they are then played by ear, using different sounds, in different registers (together with the teacher). As a result of such work, the student clearly understands the canonical structure of the play, the introduction of the imitation, its relationship with the phrase that is being imitated, and the connection of the end of the imitation with a new phrase.
Since string imitation in the polyphony of J. S. Bach is a very important means of development, a teacher who cares about the prospects for a student’s further polyphonic education should focus on it.
Further, the study of polyphonic plays of the Baroque era, among which the works of J. S. Bach occupy the first place, becomes especially important. During this era, the rhetorical foundations of the musical language were formed - musical - rhetorical figures associated with certain semantic symbolism (figures of a sigh, exclamation, question, silence, amplification, various forms of movement and musical structure). Familiarity with the musical language of the Baroque era serves as the basis for the accumulation of an intonation vocabulary of a young musician and helps him understand the musical language of subsequent eras.
The best pedagogical material for the education of polyphonic sound iswThe pianist’s career is the keyboard heritage of J. S. Bach, and the first step on the path to the “polyphonic Parnassus” iswIroko famous collection called "The Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach". Little oneswedevry, enteredwie in the "Note Book", are mainly small dance pieces - polonaises, minuets and marches, distinguished by their extraordinary richness of melodies, rhythms, and moods. In my opinion, it is best to introduce the student to the collection itself, i.e., the “Note Book,” and not to individual pieces scattered across different collections. It is very useful to tell your child that the two “Music Notebooks of Anna Magdalena Bach” are peculiar home music albums of the family of J. S. Bach. This included instrumental and vocal pieces of various types. These plays, both his own and those of others, are written in notebooks by the hand of J. S. Bach himself, sometimes by his wife Anna Magdalena Bach, and there are also pages written in the childish handwriting of one of Bach’s sons.
The vocal works - arias and chorales included in the collection - were intended for performance in the home circle of Bach's family.
I usually begin introducing students to the Music Book with Minuetd-
moll. The student will be interested to know that the collection includes nine Minuets. During the time of J. S. Bach, the “Minuet” was a widespread, lively, well-known dance. It was danced both at home and at merry parties and during ceremonial palace ceremonies. In the distantwThe minuet became a fashionable aristocratic dance, which was enjoyed by prim courtiers in white powdered wigs with curls. It is necessary to show illustrations of balls of that time, to draw children's attention to the costumes of men and women, which largely determined the style of dancing (women had crinolines, immensely wide, requiring smooth movements, men had legs covered in stockings, in elegant high-heeled shoes, with beautiful garters , - bows at the knees). We danced a minuet with
with great solemnity. His music reflected in its melodic turns the smoothness and importance of bows, low ceremonial curtsies and curtsies.
I heardwIn the “Minuet” performed by the teacher, the student determines its character: with its melody and melodiousness, it is more reminiscent of a song than a dance, therefore the character of the performance should be soft, smooth, melodious, in a calm and even movement. Then the teacher draws the student’s attention to the difference between the melody of the upper and lower voices, their independence and independence from each other, as if they were being sung by two singers: we determine that the first, a high female voice, is a soprano, and the second, a low male voice, is a bass; or two voices performing two different instruments, which? It is imperative to involve the student in the discussion of this issue and awaken his creative imagination. I. Braudo attached great importance to the ability to instrument the piano. "The first concern of a leader, - he wrote, - he will teach the student to extract from the piano a certain sonority that is necessary in this case. I would call this skill... the ability to logically instrument the piano." "The performance of two voices in different instrumentation has great educational value for the ear." This difference is sometimes convenient to make clear to the student through figurative comparisons. For example, the solemn, festive "Little Prelude of St.dur"It is natural to compare it with a short overture for an orchestra, in which trumpets and timpani take part. Thoughtful “Little Prelude e-moll"It is natural to compare it with a piece for a small chamber ensemble, in which the melody of the solo oboe is accompanied by string instruments. The very understanding ofschits nature of sonority, necessary for a given work, will help the student develop the demandingness of his hearing, will help direct this demandingness to the targetschcreating the required sound."
In Minuetd- mollthe melodious, expressive sound of the first voice resembles the singing of a violin. And the timbre and register of the bass voice approaches the sound of a cello. Then you need to analyze with your child, asking him leading questions, the form of the play (two-part) and its tonal plan: the first part begins ind - moll" e, and ends in parallelF- dur" e; the second part begins atF- dur" eand ends atd - moll" e; phrasing and associated articulation of each voice separately. In the first part, the lower voice consists of two sentences, clearly separated by cadence, and the first sentence of the upper voice breaks up into two push-pull phrases: the first phrase sounds more significant and persistent, the second is calmer, as if in response.
To clarify the question-response relationships, Braudo offers the following
pedagogical technique: the teacher and student are located at two pianos. The first two-beat is performed by the teacher, the student responds to this two-beat - the question - by performing the second two-beat - the answer. Then the roles can be changed: the student will “ask” questions, the teacher will answer. In this case, the performer asking questions can play his melody a little brighter, and the one answering - a little quieter, then try to play it the other way around, out loud.wtry and choose the best option. “It is important that at the same time we teach the student not so much to play a little louder and a little quieter - we teach him to “ask” and “answer” on the piano.
You can work on Minuet No. 4 in the same way.G-
dur, where "questions" and "answers" consist of four-bar phrases. Then the entire first voice of the Minuet is played by the student, expressively intoning the “questions” and “answers”; work on the expressiveness of strokes deepens (bars 2.5) - here the student can be helped by figurative comparisons. For example, in the second measure the melody “reproduces” an important, deep and significant bow, and in the fifth – lighter, more graceful bows, and so on. The teacher can ask the student to depict different bows in motion, based on the nature of the strokes. It is necessary to determine the climax of both parts - both in the first movement, and the main climax of the entire piece in the second movement almost merges with the final cadence - this is a distinctive feature of Bach's style, which the student should be aware of. The question of the interpretation of Bach's cadences occupied
such authoritative researchers of Bach's work as F. Busoni, A. Schweitzer, I. Braudo. They all come to the conclusion that Bach's cadences are characterized by significance and dynamic pathos. Very rarely does a Bach piece end withpiano; the same can be said about the cadences in the middle of the work.
Of the many tasks that stand in the way of studying polyphony, the main one remains work on melodiousness, intonation expressiveness and independence of each voice separately. Independence of voices is an indispensable feature of any polyphonic work. Therefore, it is so important to show the student, using the example of the Minuet, exactly how this independence is manifested: in the different nature of the sound of voices (instrumentation); in different, almost nowhere matching phrasing (for example, in bars1- 4 the upper voice contains two phrases, and the lower one consists of one sentence); in mismatched strokes (legatoand poplegato); in the mismatch of climaxes (for example, in the fifth - sixth bars, the melody of the upper voice rises and comes to the top, and the lower voice moves down and rises to the top only in the seventh bar); in different rhythms (the movement of the lower voice in quarter and half durations contrasts with the moving rhythmic pattern of the melody of the upper one, consisting almost entirely of eighth notes); in a discrepancy in dynamic development (for example, in measure four of the second part, the sonority of the lower voice increases, and the upper voice decreases).
Bach's polyphony is characterized by polydynamics, and to reproduce it clearly one should first of all avoid dynamic exaggerations and should not deviate from the intended instrumentation until the end of the piece. A sense of proportion in relation to all dynamic changes in any work by Bach is a quality without which it is impossible to convey his music stylistically correctly. Leewb through a deep analytical study of the basic patterns of Bach's style, one can comprehend the composer's performing intentions. All the efforts of the teacher should be directed towards this, starting with the “Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach”.
Based on the material of other pieces from the "Notebook", the student learns new features of Bach's music, which he will encounter in works of varying degrees of complexity. For example, with the peculiarities of Bach's rhythm, which is characterized in most cases by the use of adjacent durations: eighths and quarters (all marches and minuets), sixteenths and eighths ("Bagpipes"). Another distinctive feature of Bach’s style, which was identified by I. Braudo and called the “eighth” technique, is the contrast in the articulation of adjacent durations: small durations are playedlegato, and larger ones - poplegatoorstaccato. However, this technique should be used based on the nature of the plays: melodious Minuetd- moll. Minuet No. 15c- moll, solemn Polonaise No. 19g- moll- an exception to the "rule of eight".
When performing vocal works by I.S. Bach (Aria No. 33f- moll. Aria No. 40F- Dur), as well as his chorale preludes (at a further stage of training), one must not lose sight of the fact that the fermata sign does not mean a temporary stop in these pieces, as in modern musical practice; this sign only indicated the end of the verse.
When working on Bach's polyphony, students often encounter melismas, the most important artistic and expressive means of music.XVII- XVIIIcenturies. If we take into account the differences in editorial recommendations both regarding the number of decorations and in their decoding, it becomes clear that the student will definitely need help and specific instructions from the teacher. The teacher must proceed from a sense of the style of the works being performed, his own performing and teaching experience, as well as available methodological manuals. So, a teacher can recommend article L.AND. Roizman “On the execution of decorations (melismas) in the works of ancient composers”, which examines this issue in detail and provides instructions from I.S. Bach. You can turn to Adolf Beischlag’s major study “Ornamentation in Music”, and of course, get acquainted with Bach’s interpretation of the performance of melismas according to the table compiled by the composer himself in “Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s Night Notebook”, covering the main typical examples. Three points are important here:
1. Bach recommends performing melismas due to the duration of the main sound (for
with some exceptions).
2. All melismas begin with the upper auxiliary sound (except for the crossed out mordent and a few exceptions, for example, if the sound on which the trill or uncrossed mordent is placed is already preceded by the nearestwy upper sound, then ukrawsinging is performed from the main sound).
3. Auxiliary sounds in melismas are performed on the steps of the diatonic scale, except in cases where the alteration sign is indicated by the composer - under the melisma sign or above it. So that our students do not treat melismas as an annoying hindrance in the play, we need to skillfully present this material to them, arouse interest and curiosity.
For example, learning Minuet No. 4G- dur, the student gets acquainted with the melody, not paying attention at first to the mordents written in the notes. Then he listens to the play performed by the teacher, first without decorations, then with decorations and compares. The guys, of course, prefer the performance with mordents. Let him look for himself, where and how they are indicated in the notes.
Having found icons (mordents) that are new to him, the student usually waits with interest for the teacher’s explanation, and the teacher tells him that these icons that decorate the melody represent abbreviationsscha special way of recording melodic turns, common in XVII - XVIII centuries. UkrainewThe expressions seem to connect, unify the melodic line, and enhance speech expressiveness. And if melismas are a melody, then they must be performed melodiously and expressively, in the character and tempo that are inherent in the given piece. To prevent melismas from being a “stumbling block,” you must first hear them “to yourself,” sing them, and only then play them, starting at a slow tempo and gradually bringing it to the desired tempo.
A new step in mastering polyphony is acquaintance with the collection "Little Preludes and Fugues", and from it many threads stretch to the "Inventions", "Symphonies" and "HTK". I want to emphasize that when studying Bach’s works, gradualness and consistency are very important. “You cannot go through fugues and symphonies unless you have thoroughly studied the inventions and small preludes,” warned I. Braudo.
These collections, in addition to their artistic merits, give the teacher the opportunity to deepen the student’s familiarity with the characteristic features of Bach’s phrasing, articulation, dynamics, voicing, and to explain to him such important concepts as theme, opposition, hidden polyphony, imitation and others.
The student became acquainted with imitation in the first grade of music school. In middle school, his idea of imitation expands. He must understand it as a repetition of the theme - the main musical idea - in a different voice. Imitation is the main polyphonic way of developing a theme. Therefore, a thorough and comprehensive study of the topic, be it a Little Prelude. Invention, Symphony or Fugue, is the primary task in working on any polyphonic work of an imitative nature.
When starting to analyze a topic, the student independently or with the help of a teacher determines its boundaries. Then he must understand the figurative and intonational nature of the topic. The chosen expressive interpretation of the theme determines the interpretation of the entire work. That is why it is so necessary to grasp all the sound subtleties of the theme performance, starting from its first performance. While still studying pieces from Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook, the student realized the motivic structure of Bach's melodies. Working, for example, on the theme in Little Prelude No. 2C-
dur(Part1)
, the student must clearly understand that it consists of three ascending motives (example 3). To clearly identify its structure, it is useful to first teach each motive separately, playing it from different sounds, achieving intonation expressiveness. When the theme, after careful elaboration of the motives, is played in its entirety, distinct intonation of each motive is required. To do this, it is useful to play the theme with caesuras between motives, doing on the last sound of each motivetenuto.
Using the example of the InventionC-
durThe student should be introduced to intermotive articulation, which is used to separate one motive from another using caesura.
The most obvious type of caesura is a pause indicated in the text.
In most cases, the ability to independently establish semantic caesuras is required, which the teacher must instill in the student. In the InventionC-
durthe theme, antiposition and new implementation of the theme in the first voice are separated by caesuras. Students easily cope with caesura when moving from a topic to a counter-addition, but from a counter-addition to a new implementation of the topic, the caesura is more difficult to perform. You should carefully work on taking the first sixteenth in the second measure more quietly and softly, as if on an exhalation, and imperceptibly and easily releasing your finger, immediately lean on the second sixteenth of the group (G), sing it deeply and significantly to show the beginning of the theme . Students, as a rule, make a serious mistake here by playing the sixteenth note before the caesurastaccato, and even with a rough, harsh sound, without listening to how it sounds. Braudo recommends playing the last note before the caesura
possibilitiestenuto.
It is necessary to introduce the student to various ways of indicating intermotivic caesura. It can be indicated by a pause, one or two vertical lines, the end of a league, a signstaccatoon the note before the caesura.
Speaking about intramotive articulation, the child should be taught to distinguish between the main types of motives:
1. Iambic motives that go from weak to strong tenses.
2. Trochaic motives, I enterschie on the strong beat and ending on the weak beat. An example of staccato iambic is the iambic motifs in bars four–five in Little Prelude No. 2C- dur. Because of the hard ending, it is called "masculine". It occurs constantly in Bach's music, because it corresponds to its courageous character. As a rule, iambic in Bach's works is pronounced dissected: the upbeat sound is staccato (or pop is playedlegato), and the reference one is executedtenuto. A feature of the articulation of the trochee (soft, feminine ending) is the connection of the strong tense with the weak one.
As an independent motif, trochees, due to their softness, are rarely found in Bach's music, usually being an integral part of a three-member motif formed from the fusion of two simple motives - iambic and trochee. The three-part motif thus combines two contrasting types of pronunciation - separateness and unity. One of the characteristic properties of Bach's themes is their predominant iambic structure. Most often, the first time they are performed begins with a weak beat after a previous pause on a strong time. When studying Little Preludes No. 2, 4, 6, 7, 9,11
from the first notebook, Inventions No. 1, 2, 3, 5 and others.
Symphonies No. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and others, the teacher must draw the student’s attention to the indicated structure, which determines the nature of the performance. When playing into a theme without accompanying voices, the child’s hearing must immediately be included in the “empty” pause so that he feels a natural breath in it before the unfolding of the melodic line. The feeling of such polyphonic breathing
very important when studying cantilena preludes, inventions, symphonies, fugues.
The iambic structure of Bach's themes also determines the peculiarity of Bach's phrasing, which students must be aware of. Starting from a weak beat of the bar, the theme freely “steps over” the bar line, ending on a strong beat, thus, the boundaries of the bar do not coincide with the boundaries of the theme, which leads to a softening and weakening of the strong beats of the bar, subordinate to the inner life of the melody, its desire for semantic culminating peaks - the main thematic accents. Bach's thematic accents often do not coincide with metric ones; they are determined not by meter, as in classical melody, but by the inner life of the theme. The intonation peaks of Bach's theme usually occur on the weak beats. “In Bach’s theme, all the movement and all the strength rush towards the main emphasis,” wrote A. Schweitzer: “On the way to it, everything is restless, chaotic; upon its entry, the tension is discharged, everything that precedes is immediately clarified. The listener perceives the theme as a whole with clearly defined contours." And further, “... in order to play Bach rhythmically, one must emphasize not the strong beats of the bar, but those on which the emphasis falls in the meaning of the phrasing.” Students unfamiliar with features
Bach's phrasing, they often replace the thematic accent with a time-based accent, which is why their theme falls into pieces, loses its integrity and internal meaning.
Another essential feature of Bach's thematicism is the so-called hidden polyphony or hidden polyphony. Since this feature is common to almost all Bach melodies, being able to recognize it appears to be a critical skill that prepares students for more complex tasks.
Let us draw the student's attention to the fact that Bach's melody often creates the impression
concentrated polyphonic fabric. Such saturation of a single-voice line
achieved by the presence of a hidden voice in it. This hidden voice appears only in the melody where there are leaps. The sound left by the jump continues to sound in our consciousness until the tone adjacent to it appears, into which it resolves.
We will find examples of hidden two-voices in Little Preludes No. 1,2,8,11, 12 parts of the first. In Little Prelude No. 2 with-moll(part two) we will introduce the student to hidden two-voices of the type that is most often found in Bach’s keyboard works.
Such a movement of the hidden voice will help to consolidate in the child’s mind the figurative name “path”. Such a track should be performed sonorously, with support. The hand and finger are lowered onto the keys slightly from above, which results in a lateral movement of the hand.
A voice repeating the same sound should be played barely audible. The student will use the same technique when working on more complex works, for example, Alemanda from French Suite E-dur. Minuet 1 from Partita 1 and others.
So, having determined the nature of the sound of the theme, its articulation, phrasing, climax, carefully winningwHaving sung into the topic, the student moves on to familiarize himself with the first imitation of the topic, called the answer or companion. Here it is necessary to direct the student’s attention to the question-and-answer dialogue of the topic and its imitation. In order not to turn the imitations into a monotonous series of repetitions of the same theme, Braudo advises playing one of the themes, singing the other, then performing the dialogue between the leader and the companion at two pianos.
This type of work greatly stimulates hearing and polyphonic thinking.
Often teachers have a question: how to perform an imitation - to emphasize it or not. There is no clear answer to this question. In each specific case, one should proceed from the nature and structure of the play. If the counterposition is close in nature to the theme and develops it, as, for example, in Little Prelude No. 2 C-dur(ch.1) or Invention No. 1 C-dur, then to preserve the unity of the theme and the counterposition, imitation should not be emphasized. As L. Roizman figuratively put it, if each presentation of the theme is performed somewhat louder than other voices, then"... we find ourselves witnessing a performance about which we can say: theme forty times and fugue not a single time." In Bach's two-voice polyphonic pieces, imitation most often should be emphasized not by volume, but by a different timbre from the other voice. If the upper voice is played loudly and expressively, but the lower one is easy and invariably quiet, the imitation will be heard more clearly than when it is performed loudly.The theme - depending on the dynamic plan - may sometimes sound quieter than the other voices, but it should always be significant, expressive, noticeable.
Marking Braudo's imitations is considered appropriate in cases where the main character of the work is associated with a constant alternation of motives, with their constant transfer from one voice to another. The roll call of voices in this case is included in the main image of the work. It is with such a roll call that the bright, not devoid of humor, character of Invention No. 8 is connectedF- dur. Little Prilude No. 5 E-dur.
Following the mastery of the topic and answer, work on the counter-addition begins.
The counter-compound is worked out differently than the theme, since the nature of its sound and dynamics can only be established in combination with the answer. Therefore, the main method of work in this case is to perform the answer and counter addition in an ensemble with a teacher, and at home - with both hands, which greatly facilitates finding the appropriate dynamic colors.
Having worked well on the theme and antithesis, and clearly understood the relationships: theme - answer, theme - antiaddition, answer - antiaddition, you can move on to carefully working on the melodic line of each voice. Long before they are combined, the piece is performed in two voices in an ensemble with a teacher - first in sections, then in its entirety and, finally, completely transferred into the hands of the student. And then it turns out that in most cases the student, even if he hears the upper voice quite well, does not hear the lower voice at all, as a melodic line. In order to really hear both voices, you should work by concentrating your attention and hearing on one of them - the top one (as in non-polyphonic works).
Both voices are played, but in different ways: the upper one, to which attention is directed, isf,
espressivo, lower - pp (exactly). G. Neuhaus called this method the “exaggeration” method.
Practice shows that this work requires just such a large difference in sound strength and expressiveness. Then not only the upper, main voice at the moment, but also the lower one can be clearly heard. They seem to be played by different performers on different instruments. But active attention, active listening, without much effort, is directed to the voice that is performed more prominently.
Then we turn our attention to the lower voice. Let's play itf, espressivo, and the top one ispp. Now both voices are heard and perceived by the student even more clearly, the lower one because it is extremely “close”, and the upper one because it is already wellwo sign.
When practicing in this way, good results can be achieved in the shortest possible time, since the sound picture becomes clearer for the student. Then playing both voices as equals, he equally hears the expressive flow of each voice (phrasing, nuance).
Such precise and clear wordswThe sound of each line is an indispensable condition in the performance of polyphony. Only having achieved it can you then work fruitfully on the work as a whole.
( compared to two-voice) increases. Concern for the accuracy of voice guidance requires special attention to fingering. The fingering of Bach's pieces cannot be based only on pianistic convenience, as Czerny did in his editions. Busoni was the first to revive the fingering principles of Bach's era, as most consistent with identifying the motivic structure and clear pronunciation of motives. The principles of shifting fingers, sliding a finger from a black key to a white one, and silently replacing fingers are widely used in polyphonic works. At first, this sometimes seems difficult and unacceptable to the student. Therefore, we must try to involve him in a joint discussion of fingerings and clarification of all controversial issues. And then seek mandatory compliance with it.
Work on three- to four-voice works; the student may no longer learn
specifically each voice, and teach two voices in different combinations: first and second, second and third, first and third, playing one of themf,
espressivo, and the other -pp. This method is also useful when combining all three voices together: first one voice is played loudly, and the other two are played quietly. Then the dynamics of the voices change. The time spent on such work varies depending on the degree of advancement of the student. But teaching this way is useful; this method is perhaps the most effective. Other ways of working on polyphony include: playing different voices with different strokes (legatoand poplegatoorstaccato); execution of all voices p, transparent; the performance of the voices is smooth with specially focused attention on one of them; performance without one voice (imagine these voices internally or sing). These methods lead to clarity of auditory perception of polyphony, without which the performance loses its main quality - clarity of voice. To understand a polyphonic work and the meaningfulness of the work, the student must, from the very beginning, imagine its form, its tonal-harmonic plan.
A more vivid identification of form is facilitated by knowledge of the unique dynamics in polyphony, especially Bach's, which consists in the fact that the very spirit of music is not characterized by its overly crushed, wave-like application. Bach's polyphony is most characterized by architectural dynamics, in which changes in large structures are accompanied by new dynamic lighting.
The study of Bach's works is, first of all, a great analytical work. To understand Bach's polyphonic pieces, you need special knowledge and a rational system for assimilating them. Achieving a certain level of polyphonic maturity is possible only under the condition of a gradual, smooth increase in knowledge and polyphonic skills. A music school teacher who lays the foundation in the field of mastering polyphony always faces a serious task: to teach to love polyphonic music, to understand it, and to work on it with pleasure.
