Author: James Dyson

Getting to perform a solo is an opportunity I will never turn down. I was super excited when the bassoon professor at Princeton, Bob Wagner, suggested Bach’s second viola da gamba sonata to Ruth as a solo piece I could perform in Leipzig. I have a lot of experience playing music written for strings on bassoon, so I knew it would be a challenge, but one I would be willing to take on.

Playing string music on wind instruments is a challenge for a number of reasons. The first, and probably the most obvious, is that string players don’t need to breathe to play their instruments. String music is often written with very long passages that a wind player would need to add pauses during in order to breathe. This was probably the biggest challenge in learning this piece; in the entire allegro section of the first movement, there are only five total places to breathe in 106 measures, which sections as long as 28 measures with not a single rest to breathe. To figure out how to solve this, I listened to several recordings to find potential places to add some rubato, cut a note short, etc. without disrupting the flow of the piece, so I could take time to breathe without making it sound rushed or cutting any notes out. This piece is usually played on string instruments (cello and double bass, mostly), so there were some spots I had to come up with on my own to mess with the tempo a little.

From learning about a wide range of baroque pieces in Leipzig and listening to many different interpretations of these pieces, I’ve noticed baroque musicians tend to not use that much vibrato. This was another reason playing this music on bassoon proved to be difficult: I am so used to playing pieces of classical composers like Mozart and Tchaikovsky that I tend to naturally put vibrato on any longer notes. Going back to listen to the recording of my performance, I am noticing that I did that quite a bit with this movement. If I had more time or another opportunity to perform this, I would probably listen to more recordings and get a better sense of how much vibrato baroque players use with this piece to make it fit more with the music of the period.

The third challenge of this piece was not playing it too fast (particularly the allegro section). As mentioned earlier, I am very classically trained, so when I see a tempo marking like “allegro”, I usually want to go relatively fast. When first learning this section of the first movement, it took me a while to realize I was learning it way too fast. I then listened to some recordings and noticed they were going quite a bit slower than I was taking it. I came to realize the way I was playing it made it sound very rushed, and unlike most baroque music. However, the first time I played it at a more reasonable tempo, I noticed there were a lot more challenges arising with breathing. Playing it faster meant I didn’t have to find nearly as many places to breathe. This goes back to what I talked about earlier, with finding places throughout the movement to breathe without disrupting the flow of the piece.

Getting to do this piece with Ruth was a lot of fun, and taught me a lot about baroque music and performance practice of the time. Going forward, I hope to expand my repertoire with other music like this. For now, that wraps up my time and studies in Leipzig!

Our final performance at the Alte Börse was definitely the part of the program I was most looking forward to. As a music major who’s been in love with performing for practically my whole life, getting the opportunity to perform international in a setting unlike any I’ve ever played in was incredible! I especially enjoyed performing my own solo on bassoon, and getting to play in a piano trio, both of which I had not been able to do since high school.

The solo I played was Bach’s Sonata for Viola da Gamba No. 2 in D Major, first movement. This was a particularly interesting choice—Bob Wagner, the bassoon professor at Princeton, suggested it for me. When I first heard about it, I was intrigued, but also admittedly a little hesitant. I had originally wanted to play a solo written for bassoon, but I realized there’s probably not a lot of bassoon repertoire from Bach’s time. I figured I’d give the sonata a shot, and I’m very glad I did! Listening to several different recordings of the piece, I grew to love it. Especially the opening adagio section, it’s a beautiful way to introduce the piece, with a nice peaceful melody that prepares you for the soon-to-come allegro melody. Before coming to Leipzig, I had not really been a fan of Bach’s music. As a pianist, I had grown up learning his inventions, which I think were a little too… musically simple for me (I’m not sure if that’s exactly the phrase I’m looking for…). I like music with several parts, and many different overlapping aspects to it. But when I played the inventions, I was also quite young, so I didn’t have a great understanding of the true difficulties of them. I hadn’t been introduced to much of Bach’s instrumental music, which my time in Leipzig made me fall in love with!
I played a transcription of the piece for cello on bassoon, so it was quite a challenge, mainly with figuring out where to breathe. Luckily, a close friend of mine from high school is an incredible cellist, and we would always play cello duets together, so I have a lot of experience with playing music not necessarily meant to be played on an instrument that requires breathing. Once I had figured that out, it was so much fun! I’ve always loved faster sections, and it’s very satisfying figuring out how to make those technically faster melodies also have a musical, emotional aspect to them. Once I was able to achieve that, I really grew to love the piece (and Bach in general)!
(Shoutout to Ruth for accompanying me!!!)

I also played piano in Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17, third movement. This was also so much fun, as I had heard about Clara Schumann but never really heard any of her music, only that of Robert. Just with the opening 8 measures of solo piano, I played it once and immediately knew I was missing out on a huge selection of music that has been unfortunately pushed down in society throughout history. With the opening melody, we are brought into a world of peace and calm, ready to sit back and relax and enjoy the beautiful nature of the world.
Clara Schumann wrote this piece at the age of 25 in Dresden, in 1846. When the trio was first rehearsed, she wrote in her diary a statement I’ve come to relate with over this past semester in Professor Dennehy’s MUS106 class, which was a great intro to composing: “There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself, and then listening to it.” The beauty of this trio and the joy that C. Schumann felt in composing it inspires me to both explore more music of her and similar composers of the period, and compose more music myself!

My time in Leipzig introduced me to a new era of music that I was previously not very familiar with. Since this is my last blog post, I’ll take this time to say: thank you to Wendy and Ruth for teaching us the history behind all this beautiful music. Going forward, I hope to take that new knowledge and use it to expand my repertoire, and grow even more as a musician. This was a wonderful experience, one I will treasure for many years to come.

Source:
https://clara-schumann-channel.com/2023/12/12/why-clara-schumann-wrote-a-woman-must-not-desire-to-compose/

Here are images of us holding random parts of the instruments (since they had already packed them up).
Me with the 2 bassoonists:

Me and Malcom (thank you Malcom for forcing me to socialize):

Going to see the St. John Passion performed in its entirety was an incredible experience. Of course, our seats weren’t ideal spots to view the orchestra, but one of the first things I saw when we got there after the orchestra came out was some kind of bassoon, that even from a distance I could see was not a standard bassoon used today. And then I saw that there were 2 different kinds of bassoons on stage! I figured they were both some kind of a baroque bassoon. I later found out one was a baroque bassoon, and the other a baroque contrabassoon! During the performance, it was difficult to hear them, but I could hear the low rattle of the contra, which added a lot to the feel of the piece.

After the performance, I stayed behind with Malcom in the hopes of getting the chance to see the bassoons up close. As a bassoonist, I own both a regular bassoon and contrabassoon, but I had never seen baroque versions of the instruments played live. We walked up to the stage to meet the bassoonists (credit to Malcom for forcing me to get over my unreasonably large sense of social anxiety…), and I was amazed at what I got to see. We talked to the bassoonists for a bit, I told them I was a bassoonist and had always wanted to see a baroque bassoon, and they showed me what the instruments looked like. It was fascinating, seeing how they differed from a regular bassoon. The bassoons we know today are extremely complicated, with a very large number of keys, 13 being for the thumbs alone. However, not only did the baroque bassoons have very few keys, and it seemed like there were more holes than keys, but the few keys they did have seemed to be very different from what you would see on a standard bassoon. I hope to one day be able to play one for myself and figure out the exact differences, because it is very interesting to me to see how the form of the instrument has changed through the years. I am curious to learn about the ranges too; a modern bassoon has a range of 3.5 octaves, and contra has a similar range. I wonder if it is possible to have a range that wide with so few keys, or if the repertoire for baroque bassoons is more limited in that sense. I am also curious about the shape of the instruments. It seemed like some parts of the baroque bassoons were more spherical, while the parts of a regular bassoon shaped more like cylinders. Does this affect the range of the instrument? Or the tone? Why has this part of the design changed over time?

Overall, I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to meet the bassoonists, and I learned a lot in that very short time. Someday, I hope to be able to play a baroque bassoon myself, and get answers to all these questions that came up just from seeing the bassoons up close.

Lastly, random flex: I followed both bassoonists on Instagram afterwards, and they both followed me back 😀

Going to see Jean-Guihen Queyras play all 6 Bach cello suites was an incredible and unique experience. As a double bassist, I have only played a couple movements from some of the earlier suites, but I have several close string player friends who have played more of the suites, so I am very familiar with several of them (mainly the first 3). The later suites I believe seem to be much more difficult, so I have very rarely heard those played. It was amazing seeing Queyras play all 6 nearly flawlessly, completely memorized too! The concert was a bit long, but quite engaging, because it inspires me greatly watching someone play over 2 hours of music memorized and enjoying themselves the whole time. As someone who really enjoys performing solos from memory, I hope to be able to do a similar thing someday.

There were a couple things (many things actually, but a couple worth mentioning) in the performance that particularly impressed me. One of them I’ve already mentioned: Queyras’s ability to play over 2 hours of music completely memorized, and not getting tired! It takes a huge amount of work and dedication to be able to do that. The second thing was about one of the suites in particular, I believe suite no. 5. Looking at the score, I noticed this suite was written with a different tuning: the A string was tuned down to a G. It took me a while to notice this, but I noticed that the score was written with only the notes played on the A-turned-G string were transposed. So for example, if you had a C minor rolled chord with a low C2+G2+Eb3+C4, the chord itself would be written with the same bottom 3 notes, but the top note, C4, would be written as a D instead. I realized later this is because when a cellist sees a D written, they will automatically place their 4th finger down in 1st position (I think, speaking as a bassist here where everything is way different…). But with this new tuning, that finger placement will sound as a C instead. So I think having the notes on the top string written transposed is helpful to the cellist to make it easier to read and play, but the reason this caught my attention was because as someone with perfect pitch, reading transposed music is very difficult. For example, I used to play clarinet in high school for pep band, and I would always struggle reading even simple music because I would see a G written, and then I would hear an actual G in my head, place the fingers down that I know make the sound of a G, and then realize that the note that sounds like a G on a clarinet is actually an F, so I’m playing the wrong note! I would associate fingerings on clarinet with the notes they sound like, rather than like a typical clarinetist who would associate fingerings with the transposed notes. It was because of this that the 5th cello suite particularly impressed me.

Overall, this was an amazing performance. Watching the suites played in this way gave me a new appreciation for them and made me want to become more familiar with them. This summer, I want to potentially try to play some more of these on either bass or bassoon.
(Included the last picture for fun, I enjoyed trying to see where Bach’s initials are in the logo on the organ!)

Going to see Handel’s Agrippina last Friday was such a fun experience! This was only the second opera I have ever seen, the first being the Magic Flute, so it was quite a contrast from what I was expecting. As I’m sure the others who saw the opera will agree, it was a very interesting (and entertaining, I might add) interpretation. At the very start, the scene opens to reveal the setting of a Las Vegas casino. For an opera composed in the early 1700s, before Las Vegas existed, that was certainly quite unexpected. I was also expecting the scene to change, but it stayed on that setting for the entire opera.

Having read the synopsis beforehand and now having seen the opera itself, I wish I could go back and watch it again! I feel the first time around I spent a lot of the time trying to understand the plot (which was difficult, as the opera was in Italian with German subtitles, and unfortunately my German knowledge is not yet at the level of being able to read that quickly), but if I were to have another opportunity to see it, I would love to do more research on Handel’s original intentions when composing the opera and think about what might have inspired the directors of the production to put on this interpretation of it. It makes me think, how much of this comes from Handel himself? What does this show about who he was as a composer, and a person?

This opera is unusually NOT dark with the lack of any character deaths, but it still has a curiously light-hearted tone to it. There is a lot of anger and heartbreak and betrayal in the story, which would lead one to expect the viewer to feel more negative emotions when watching. However, the casino setting and the excessive and potentially unrealistic use of drugs and other not… kid-friendly scenes, I suppose, add a sense of comedy that does not match the usual emotions conveyed in similar stories. Going back to the questions I asked earlier, about what this opera reveals about Handel, we can also view the massive love triangle (or hexagon?) as adding a large comedic effect to the story. Perhaps the director of this specific performance saw the humor in this unrealistic situation and chose to add more elements in the story that would further exemplify the humor.

Having seen the Magic Flute last year and now Agrippina, it makes me want to go see more operas, and explore the different personality traits of various composers revealed by their works. I am also intrigued by something I hadn’t thought much about before, which is how the opera can change just based off the directors’ interpretations. In the future, I’d like to see different performances of the same opera, to compare the level of difference in various performances of the opera, and I want to consider what that reveals about what the composer intended to be portrayed in every performance.