Simone Dinnerstein, Piano

SIMONE DINNERSTEIN, PIANO

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2023 | 7:30 PM

Shannon Hall at Memorial Union

David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Series

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SIMONE DINNERSTEIN, PIANO

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

François Couperin (1668–1733) Les baricades mistérieuses from Second livre de pièces de clavecin (before 1716)

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)

Philip Glass (b. 1937)

Arabeske, Op. 18 (1839)

Mad Rush (1979)

François Couperin Le tic-toc-choc, ou Les maillotins from Troisième livre de pièces de clavecin (before 1722)

INTERMISSION

Erik Satie (1866–1925)

Robert Schumann

Gnossienne No. 3 (ca. 1890)

Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838)

Äußerst bewegt

Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch

Sehr aufgeregt

Sehr langsam

Sehr lebhaft

Sehr langsam

Sehr rasch

Schnell und spielend

PROGRAM NOTES

“We are so accustomed to repetition in music that we accept it as something self-evident; that we never become aware of what an extraordinary phenomenon it is. A theme, a melody, is a definite statement in tones—and apparently music can never get enough of saying over and over again what has already been said, not once or twice, but dozens of times; hardly does a section, which consists largely of repetitions, come to end before the whole story is happily told over again. How is it that a procedure which, in any other form of expression, would produce sheer nonsense proves, in the language of music, to be thoroughly sensible—to such an extent that rehearing what has already been heard is one of the chief sources—for many, the chief source—of the pleasure given by music?”

—Victor Zuckerkandl (1896–1965)

Thus inquired philosopher and music theorist Victor Zuckerkandl in his Sound and Symbol about musical repetition—one of the most commonplace of compositional techniques. So, too, does Simone Dinnerstein ask us to consider these questions with this evening’s recital, her own exploration of musical repetition in a collection of six works spanning more than 250 years from three major style periods. The very sweep of these works alone indicates just how prominent a musical convention repetition is, and yet in the hands of each composer, the effect of music “saying over and over again what has already been said” takes on new meanings and growing resonances.

Baroque Repetition: Couperin’s Les baricades mistérieuses and Le tic-toc-choc, ou Les maillotins

Composer, organist, and harpsichordist François Couperin was the most prominent musician in France after Lully and prior to Rameau, despite not composing operas and remaining primarily a court musician (he became the King’s organist in 1693) and composer of requisite sacred music for King Louis XIV. Although undeniably Baroque in style, compared to two of his most famous contemporaries—J. S. Bach and Handel—Couperin’s music eschews the contrapuntal complexities of the German school as well as the emotional extroversion of the Italian style, instead highlighting valued traits of French music of his time: douceur (gentleness) and naturalness. While the former is apparent in the austerity and restraint of many of his compositions, the latter appears in his interest in depicting the “natural” world around him.

In his four books of Pièces de clavecin, Couperin composed more than 200 harpsichord works; many bear descriptive titles that illustrate his “imitative” approach to music, including the two works heard this evening: Les baricades mistérieuses and Le tic-toc-choc, ou Les maillotins. Although today the precise meanings of these titles have become obscured, they both purport to portray in music specific sensory experiences: “mysterious barriers”—which might be literal walls or possibly a metaphor for a woman’s eyelashes—and the onomatopoeic tick-tock of a clock or the hammering sound of mallets.

Both works show a characteristically Baroque approach to musical repetition. First and foremost, both use strict repetition of a single rhythmic figure as the propulsive force of the work: Les baricades mistérieuses is driven by syncopated upward leaps in the right hand against the simple, strong-beat emphasis of the left hand. In Tic-toc-choc, ou Les maillotins, the right hand provides constant running 16th-note arpeggios against melodic eighth notes in the left hand. In both works, the repetitive figures quickly fall out of focus and allow other musical elements to come into focus. Although it is hard to hear this as groundbreaking today, it is in fact the newly emerging harmonic language of tonality that comes to the fore as the nuanced changes in the pitches of the melody underscore the changing

harmonies. Indeed, this is especially apparent in Tic-toc-choc, ou Les maillotins when Couperin builds excitement by speeding up the rate of harmonic changes as he approaches cadences.

Both works are rondeaux: a common Baroque and Classical form in which the recurring A sections, usually in a stable key, are interspersed with contrasting sections (B, C, etc.) that venture further harmonically. In Les baricades mistérieuses, the A section features a prominent bassline sequence (similar to that of Pachelbel’s Canon), which provides stability and also a jumping-off point for the contrasting sections to modulate. Ultimately, Couperin’s approach to repetition in his works offers opposing effects: On the one hand, repetition of rhythmic figures allows this granular element to fall away from our attention. On the other, repetition of whole sections calls attention to itself, signaling the passage of time in the music and reminding the audience of where we were, where we went, and where we are now returning.

Romantic Repetition: Schumann’s Arabeske and Kreisleriana

As heard in the works by Couperin, repetition in the Baroque era often created a singular musical mood through strictly repeating rhythmic figures, or it worked to substantiate a formal structure. Starting in the Classical era, in which tuneful, natural melodies with fleeting emotional states took prominence, such repetitive rhythmic figures fell by the wayside. However, the large-scale repetition of whole phrases became one of the most defining characteristics of the era: what are called periodic forms, or works organized around repeating themes. After the Classical era, repetition was most commonly the type that announced itself as an important musical moment of return. When these general compositional principles merged with the 19th-century Romantic interest in the inner world of feelings and sensations, subjective moods and deep emotions, the use of repetition for formal organization started to carry even more specific associations of memory and reminiscences—most famously in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and his famous idée fixe.

In the hands of Robert Schumann, repetition often offered exactly this type of reminiscence, especially as he started to experiment in large-scale works. All the while, however, Schumann remained a great admirer of Bach, and often imitated Bach’s restrained style as a counterbalance to his own more naturally effusive Romantic spirit. Indeed, his Arabeske, Op. 18, was a deliberately restrained composition from a time when the composer started to write music he could sell to amateur performers (many of whom were women interested in making music in the home, leading Schumann to describe his work as “for ladies.”) The Arabeske ultimately attempts to capture a singular mood in brief, and to accomplish that end, Schumann starts by deploying a very Baroque repetition of a single dotted rhythmic figure. Once again, harmony takes the lead, but it is more adventurous than any harmonies Bach (or Couperin) could have imagined.

Schumann’s approach to repetition in his masterpiece Kreisleriana underlines the duality of his compositional style. The work is a set of eight miniatures in contrasting styles that are meant to offer a portrait of the fictional character of Johannes Kreisler created by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Hoffmann’s Kreisler is a Kapellmeister with many similarities to Schumann: He was a devotee of J. S. Bach, and he was moody, alternating between depression and joy. In Schumann’s work, what emerges is a study in sharp contrasts built on fundamental dualities of excessive Romanticism in pursuit of emotional intensity, and a restrained Classicism (although Schumann’s inspiration was often Bach). As such, Schumann used repeating rhythmic figures across different movements to create moments of austere Baroque style. The opening movement, “Äußerst bewegt,” for example, follows an ABA form wherein the A and B sections both feature repeating rhythmic figures, but their juxtaposition provides the Romantic drama: The triplets of the A section feel frantic but are soothed by the dotted rhythms of the B section (which resembles Schumann’s Arabeske). In the following movement, “Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch,” he uses a repetitious Baroque style for two intermezzo sections that intervene between large sections of melodic lyricism in parallel octaves in the right hand. Indeed, the fourth movement, “Sehr langsam,” feels uniquely rhapsodic, Romantic, and roaming as its melody flows freely without any Baroque-style rhythmic restraint.

Beyond his use of Baroque rhythmic repetition as a musical trope within his compositional universe, Schumann also allows the smallscale repetition of specific sections to form the larger structural organization of his work, offering moments of reminiscence when familiar melodies, textures, and keys return. In the final movement, which begins with the jauntiest and most charming music of the work, the atmosphere slowly builds to greater and greater dramatic tension before evolving completely into a moody and tortured middle section. The evolution happens organically and unknowingly, so that when the original jaunty melody returns, it is a reminder of the optimism that was lost along the journey.

Modern Repetition: Philip Glass and Erik Satie

The Baroque style, largely as embodied by Bach, has continued to be an important touchstone for composers, both as a source of academic mastery of styles and artistic inspiration. At the turn into the 20th century especially, composers in search of new directions often returned to the models of Bach to avoid the influence of Beethoven and the Romantics. What many in the 20th century found was the simplicity and austerity of Baroque music as well as the (supposed) objectivity of its formal structures and composition, rather than the inner world of subjective feelings and experiences that so fascinated the Romantics. For the iconoclastic Erik Satie, Romanticism had come to represent an overburdened style of increasingly disordered personalities and affectations. In his own compositional style, as in Gnossienne No. 3, he strove to write music that was superficial rather than deep, ambient rather than emotional, stylish rather than philosophical. Put simply, his musical ambition was to not be like Wagner.

For Satie, repetition helped him achieve his anti-Romantic goals by acting first and foremost as a radical razor, cutting away excesses and honing his miniatures with subtle precision. The repeating bassline of Gnossienne No. 3, for example, starts to sound like a drone, providing foundation yet—like the repetitious rhythms of the Baroque—easily falling away from the center of attention. His melodic phrases repeat in pairs, creating a bare-bones formal structure that feels elemental in its simplicity. Rejecting the decadent harmonic conventions of

the Romantics, he uses an invented modal scale with a raised fourth (highlighted in the descending tritone leap of the opening melody), which eschews normal harmonic progression, adding to the ambient stability of the work.

If Satie’s 1890 work represents the early emergence of modernism, Philip Glass’s 1979 Mad Rush sounds in many ways like a direct lineage (in part because Glass was himself rejecting his more immediate arch-modernist predecessors like Schoenberg and Boulez). Holding true to Satie’s anti-Romantic spirit, Glass’s minimalism also uses repetition as a razor. He uses strict repetition of rhythmic figures similarly to Baroque composers to bring harmonic progression into the foreground. Yet even compared to Bach or Couperin, his pacing of harmonic change is slower and more deliberate.

Glass also uses repetition to create music that somehow always sounds minimal regardless of its scope or scale (his film scores, symphonies, and operas are neither particularly short in length nor small in orchestration). Repetition forms the basis of what Glass called his additive and subtractive process of composition, in which he grows or trims his musical ideas. Glass’s additive and subtractive processes tend to create repetition in the middle ground of a work: A few measures are repeated, which is notably larger than, for example, a Baroque rhythmic figure, but also much smaller than the repetition of a complete melodic phrase or theme. Yet his mid-level repetitions also guide the larger formal structures of the work: Mad Rush essentially restarts three times, each time unfolding in the same basic trajectory, yet passages are shortened or lengthened to remain unpredictable and exciting.

ARTIST BIO

SIMONE DINNERSTEIN

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has a distinctive musical voice. The Washington Post has called her “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, as The New York Times writes, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

Since that recording, she has had a busy performing career. She has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic to the Melbourne Symphony, and performed in venues from Carnegie Hall to the Seoul Arts Center. Her 13 albums have all topped the Billboard classical charts, with her 2021 album, Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, receiving a Grammy nomination in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelopeat the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs.

The Washington Post writes that “ultimately, it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, Dinnerstein hopes that it can still be transformative.

Simone Dinnerstein appears by arrangement with IMG Artists 7 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019 Tel:212.994.3500. For more information please visit simonedinnerstein.com.

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