sturm and drang: is it a figment of the imagination or real?

[pianonut]

ok.  here it goes.  in the 1770's sturm and drang had the aim of frightening, stunning or overcoming the audience with emotion.  (BTW what is the literal translation of sturm and drang - is it storm and stress?)  have any of you actually frightened your audiences (i should have asked this to 'trancendental genius")?  has anyone stunned an audience before?  (can literally hear a pin/pencil/cell phone drop from stunned person)  and finally, has anyone just broken out crying or laughing in your audience.

has anyone read the play by Freidrich Maximilian Klinger (1776) about the American Revolution?  apparrently the term comes from there!

"unrestrained and unpredictable emotion?"  is this the antithesis to rational thought.  what do you do with a person who has too much sturm and drang in a lesson (cries incessantly)?  would you tell them they are not rational?  or would you say very seriously ' i think you have a case of sturm and drang.'   can one use sturm and drang as a sort of recipie for audience manipulation.  can one really stress out their audience, so to speak, or is this passe in our time.  do people hear so much music (tv, radio, etc) that music is always 'background' to our feelings and rarely 'foreground.'

is it adviseable as a teacher to limit sturm and drang music for overemotional students?  or, the reverse, to give more of it to those students who seem to have no feelings?  what if they cannot relate to the sturm and drang.  is this an obvious case of sturm and drang deficiency?  have they listened to too many MP3's?  what causes one person to become 'drugged' by their own music (or others) and someone else to pick their teeth or fall asleep?

[lenny]

yes, this was a movement in the 18th century, when people began to want to be thrilled by music.

if you can imagine the kind of music that was around that that time, it was elegant, sweet, restrained, and generally pretty dull IMO.

look out for the swedish composer krauss, a contemporary of mozart - his symphonies in minor keys respresent some of the pinnacles of classical era fury.

[pianonut]

krauss, eh.  ok. i will be prepared for my next class.  i am thinking of doing several experiments  (prepared sturm and drang audience faking reactions - ie placebo) and the effect on performers when suddenly this audience adulation is replaced by honest MP3 boredom.  does this affect the performer?  have you ever felt that sturm and drang was missing from a performance?  do you ever go to a concert to hear sturm and drang? 

[lenny]

of course, this is what cziffra and horowitz were famous for.

thundering aggression and virtuosity.

and if you are a fan of orchestral music(who in their right mind isnt?!) then there are plenty of conductors that emphasise the drama in music.

lenny bernsetin is one such conductor, he gets from the music of all its emotion,  some even say he is TOO emotional and dramatic, he is an idol of many young musicians for his sheer passion.

[pianonut]

besides the minor keys- other signs of 'irrationality' in music are:  syncopation, chromaticism, melody lines with wide leaps, abrupt and somewhat irrational changes in musical materials, use of intensified contrapuntal textures, rapid tonal shif, use of remote keys, and unusual modulations.

what should i expect when i play brahms and then barber?  should i prepare my audience for two different types of reactions from themselves.  should i put a little survey on the back of my program to describe their 'feelings' about each piece.  i am very interested in how music is influenced by composers and how it is influenced almost equally by listeners.

if we are following art, fashion, etc.  it seems that there is now a need for STATEMENT.  something different.  something meaningful to us today.  and yet, a bit of nostalgia.   if you were to say something about barber's desire from an audience, would you say that he wished people to see something 'romantic' in his music YET 'planned' (like classical form).  the nocturne has a sort of ABA form - but nothing is repeated exactly the same way (much like the brahms intermezzo i am playing).  

[pianonut]

leonard berstein, yes!  and cziffra, yes!  i forgot to mention my love for pollini, tho, too, who is very authoritative, but less emotional (if that's the word)?  i tend to like all sorts of music and it just depends on my mood- but for some audiences they come and expect something specific.  i am thinking about taking 3 minutes to start my program by simply talking about expectations, experience, and enjoyment.  can someone enjoy something they didn't expect?  do they like the experience of the unexpected?  can i play something once one way and then during a repeat - another way - different lines brought out.   

[ted]

There exist contradictions in what famous people say about it. Milhaud wrote that Wagner was an idiot for basing his music on angst. Stravinsky stated that music has nothing to do with emotion. Dave Brubeck said that emotion is what music is all about.

So the first thing is to forget about what everybody else says and answer for oneself. I find I can become emotional about music or not as I choose. I think this freedom of choice is something which comes on one with age. When I was young all music was more or less emotional to some extent and I was very preoccupied with these emotional and metaphysical "programmes" for pieces.

As I said in the answer to another post, I think we are more at liberty than we think to assign our own semantic meanings to musical phenomena. These meanings may or may not bear resemblance to what we term "emotion". To take an example, when I play Mazeppa I cannot become emotional about some out of date story concerning somebody strapped to a wild horse. I therefore make my own images and I have the freedom to invent new ones as I see fit.

Since I have been adjusting my semantic responses to sound my appreciation of music has broadened immeasurably. To lock yourself into a particular emotional response to a certain sound might seem a good idea, and I did it myself when I was young. However, the obverse side to it is that having negative associations might stop you enjoying many classes of music which you would come to like were you not carrying emotional baggage about them.

Taking another example, I used to dislike Bach's music for many years because of emotional association. As soon as I treated it as pure abstract sound and got rid of all the mental imagery and garbage about Bach and his music I slowly began to enjoy it.   

So in short no, it isn't a figment of the imagination; "sturm und drang" is real. However, like all rigidly held emotional associations, it is a double edged sword and I therefore avoid it in my music. Emotion can be a fine thing in playing the piano but I wish to control it, to call it up at will; I do not wish it to be my master.

[pianonut]

what a good answer.  i didn't think anyone would reply since i was serious about some questions and joking about others.  i like many things that you said.  about associations.  about old ideas vs. newer ones you invent yourself (do you sometimes share them with the audience?) and also what you said about the double-edged sword of over-sentimentality (especially in the 21st century).  interesting too, what stravinsky says and then what brubeck says.  i suppose it is what you want to convey, and what the audience wants or expects to take away.  i especially liked what you said about being the master of the piece (and not letting a piece master you).  i would consider 'letting a piece master you' to mean that you must play it with every note perfect vs. imperfection possibly, but your own 'sturm and drang' which may be less emotional (on the sleeves) and more emotional in the sum of the piece. (ie not planning to make your audience awe struck with a certain section- but thinking of the piece as a whole).

[ted]

Pianonut:

I do not perform and therefore have no audience. However, when I give recordings to people I sometimes include notes concerning the genesis of my music. But the last thing I would want is for people to feel obliged to associate a particular image with something I had written. Listeners form very definite, very personal and very varied associations with any given sound, and I think that is all to the good. Surely music is completely abstract and therefore its consequences in the mind of any given individual are unpredictable. Human minds and psyches are formidably complex things, and each mind will create its own mapping of a sound onto itself. This mapping may contain memories, emotions, visual imagery, in fact anything at all that the mind can do or remember.

To me this constitutes the wonderful power of music; unlike writing it has no commonality of meaning. Yes, I know a book such as Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" has much the same property but such writing is not common. Literature usually conveys restricted and realistic notions.  I think this is probably why the old classical composers wisely named very few works.  Five hundred people hearing a "sonata" or a "study" will respond with five hundred widely differing images and states of mind. Some will have "sturm und drang" reactions, others will start imagining anything from flowing water to a love affair of thirty years ago. A few may not feel any emotion but may achieve a meditative oneness or a feeling of affinity with unfolding organic form. Still others, of course, poor souls, will be analysing the key changes, watching the pianist's fingers or wondering if the bar will open during the intermission - but these latter need not concern our discussion.

Sometimes, I suppose, a title or programme can help kick the imagination into gear. But would James Johnson's "Carolina Shout" be any worse a piece of music if we did not know it was an evocation of a Baptist service ? I don't really think so, do you ? Take Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" - are we really meant to imagine the leaf of a tree ? Again, no, of course not. There is such a thing as impressionism though, and presumably when we hear "Gardens in the Rain", Debussy wishes us to visualise gardens in the rain. This is a strong and intended image but, even in such clearly defined cases, it still seems a toss-up to me whether the music gains anything by titular restriction.

I do know that the older I get the more I delight in abstraction and ambiguity of musical meaning, including emotion. Whether this is a consequence of improvising so much or just a property of aging I do not venture to guess !

[pianonut]

interesting points!  you made me laugh a lot with the 'carolina shout' idea.  i might use that one when i answer some questions about sturm und drang next week in class.  you are where i am in interpretation now, too.  i don't mind listening to jazz so much (used to focus only on classical) and i like the element of relaxing the mind and just taking it in (without absolute meanings).  experiencing.

that's great that you have made some recordings.  when i get to that point, (have changed so much from 20's to 40's) i want my listeners to be drawn in by the beginning, carried away with the development, and to be pleased by the ending.  i don't like fear producing pieces, horrific sounding pieces, or barely tolerated percussionistic pieces.  i tend to like pieces that don't have tonal ambiguity (even if they are atonal) so i like poulenc/barber/and other composers that can relate back to plain chant with a common repeated tone.  to me, the line in music is what carries it through (and i find it disturbing when the line is interrupted by long silence or very very wide leaps). 

i wonder if there is a test of some kind that relates the personality of the person to their music.  like perfume makers who match all the scents into one perfume for a certain persons tastes (there is a place in nyc where you can create your own personalized perfume and name it).  there doesn't seem to be much sturm und drang in palestrina.  does this mean that extra effects might be needed in my performances.  maybe a video screen behind the piano with the digital electronic color images that pop up when you listen on-line ( that react to the music sound waves and create visuals of different sorts).  where could i find someone to do this for me, or could i simply use a laptop and project it onto a screen.  just an idea.

[pianonut]

the barber nocturne does have some wide leaps, but 9ths are ok to me.  i am finally being able to reach that far (unless one is a black note, a bit further, and then i angle it and jump quickly).  to me, any composer that would use 10th's is a bit excessive in their expectations of the pianist.  that type of piano practice is just not fun. 

[aquariuswb]

the barber nocturne does have some wide leaps, but 9ths are ok to me.  i am finally being able to reach that far (unless one is a black note, a bit further, and then i angle it and jump quickly).  to me, any composer that would use 10th's is a bit excessive in their expectations of the pianist.  that type of piano practice is just not fun. 

Funny you mention this... I'm working on the first movement of LvB's Waldstein sonata, and the right hand runs toward the end are accompanied by a series of left-hand 10th leaps. I can reach a 10th, but it's quite difficult to do it accurately multiple times in succession, moving up a note each time. It's too fast for me to just lay my left hand down and use a "rolling" motion -- when I try it this way it's just too sloppy; maybe if I had bigger fingers it would work fine. No, what I must do is literally leap with my left hand. So as soon as I play, say, the F with my pinky, I immediately jump to the A a 10th up with my thumb. Then, it goes from G to B, A to C, B to D, C to E, and D to F, in quite rapid succession. In fact, it's too rapid for me to focus on both my pinky and my thumb, so I've learned to just look at my left-hand thumb, and by my thumb's location, I can now accurately move my pinky to the right note. I do this same thing with my left-hand octaves (look at my thumb, not my pinky), so it was just a matter of engraining the distance of a 10th into my finger memory.

And you're right, practicing these 10ths was NOT fun... until I practiced it enough that I could just do them. Now they're tons of fun because as I'm playing them I can think to myself, "Now THAT'S awesome!"

Cheers!
   -Mike

[pianonut]

interesting you mention beethoven.  first, could you tell me which measures you are speaking of in the first mov't.  i think i played that passage with two hands.  one run for the left hand and one for the right.

i was just reading an article by barry s. brook about sturm und drung.  he mentions some interesting things (about haydn, mozart, and beethoven, too) that i never knew.  starting with the beginning:

barry performed an experiment with trained listeners (at university level) and played 1. Haydn's Symphony No. 55 (4th mov't)

[pianonut]

my kids are distracting me, and accidentally posted before finished.

ok. #2 Haydn's String Quartet in G minor (2nd mov't)
      #3 Haydn's Symphony No. 49 in F minor (4th mov't)
      #4 Dittersdorf, Symphony in A minor (1st mov't)
      #5 Haydn's Piano Sonata in C minor (1st mov't)

the experiment involved listening to these pieces (unidentified) for two minutes on each piece.  then, the listener was invited to choose one of six composers for each piece (haydn, mozart, beethoven, schubert, schumann, and mendelssohn) and one of six fifteen year time spans (1760-74, 1775-89, 1790-1804, 1820-34, 1835-50). 

there was a considerable variation in response, "though in fact all the works date from around 1770.  all but #4 are by joseph haydn (#4 by dittersdorf and served as a smokescreen for true haydn experts who might catch on).  only the first excerpt was a 'papa-haydn' work and was properly identified by most listeners.  the others were "widely dispersed as to composer." 

i like writers such as barry because he takes the time to prove his points.  then he goes on to explain that 'sturm und drang' was "seated in the bosom of the classical era."  with this premise, he went on to explain that two ways of thinking were pervading the times:  one favored the divine right of princes, uncritical acceptance of dogma - or the individual's right to independence of action and freedom of thought (feelings back then are 'rights' now!)

anyway...there were a circle of self-styled geniuses (university students) all born around 1750 and in their early 20's.  they were lenz, heinrich wagner, maler muller, and freidrich max klinger who wrote the play that gave the movement it's name.  (the setting is the american colonies during the revolution)

barry has a site that you can obtain more info (writing him directly) so i won't quote everything, but one thing that struck me is that he has delved into the impact of sturm und drang on haydn (and then, haydn being one of beethoven's teachers) the impact on beethoven.  there is a very REAL similarity of haydn's symphony #44, III Adagio and Beethoven's moonlight sonata (op. 27 #2) 1st. mov't Adagio.  It is so real that i was going to post it for another person who asked about classical form.  beethoven lifts the key, rhythm, and melody.  highway robbery we would call it, but that's ok because he turns it into something totally different (yet still sturm und drangish).