Musical analysis spiced up with a healthy dose of discount memery, approaching classical music from a Jazz point of view and vice versa, ultimately striving to get to the essence of it all - the music.
Really enjoyed this, I'm going to play it more jazzy from now. You're right too, it's the notes that count, not whether we can identify the 'style'. I have thus theory that most composers just muck about and have fun with chords, but the ones that end up in their works have to stick to the so-called rules and expectations of their time. But there's a lot of jazz in Bach and Beethoven!
Thank you, most insightful analysis, and very helpful presentation. In classical harmony, the bII chord in bar 3 would be regarded as a Neapolitan chord with a flat 7th (Eb). The B is an appoggiatura, resolving to C (which belongs to the Neapolitan, and the chord where it is sounded, Fm). What is fascinating about this move is, the resolution is only sounded at the very end of the bar, so it is like coming up only briefly for air. I think this mechanism is an important part of the ebb and flow of this piece, and its character of sustained, almost suffocating tensions.
Very nice. Technically competent and not boring.....enlightening, even. Ah: At the end of your commentary you hit what I think is the essential thing about this music. The zeitgeist of that time. Satie evokes it more profoundly than any of his contemporaries. For me it is very powerful.....
Thank you for posting! I am currently going through them and am now on the third fugue! Really enjoyed your analysis and it helps bring more life to the piece, kind of like the bonus features to a movie you already liked :-D. One thing I noticed while learning this was that during the C7 and Fm section before the end, the last little part of the run is actually 64th notes. You have to go slower and then speed up on the way down. Thanks again for sharing! Keep it up!
Great stuff thanks. The Bb dim 7th at measure 27 seems to function as A7b9, is that why it is notated as II7/V (A is the II and D the V of Gm)? Bb is the III of Gm, so wondering if it should be listed as III/V or II7/V. Not arguing or anything, just trying to understand, as this is the "strangest" chord in this song. And Bach uses the diminished 7th chords in many crazy, interesting and confusing ways. Thanks again, cheers!
Hey, thank you for your comment! Indeed, I interpret the Bbdim7 as a rootless A7b9. A7 acts as a secondary dominant that leads to D(7), the fifth degree. Bb is indeed the 3rd degree of Gmin, but that's Bb major, not Bb dim (meaning Bb dim is a non-diatonic chord which needs to resolve in one way or another)
Okay. Great. But obviously the theory doesn't help U to understand the emotional side and how it should be played. 1 Bar, 8 chords and-U-play-each-and-eve-ry-one-the-same. Very German. Strict. But this is no march! Chopin wrote this knowing he will die soon at his young age... This is not a walk to the market on a sunny day. ;-) Sorry... when it comes to the Interpretation and how to play this masterpiece of simplicity this is beginners level here. Watch Seymore Bernstein teaching this piece. ;-)
You know, a really good advice I got from a teacher in a masterclass was: "With some people you just got to accept, they are not angry at you, they are just angry" ;)
Thank you so much for this analysis. I learned this piece as a teen-ager also. It was not easy for me, because I had to re-learn reading music again to learn the piece, but it was well worth it. Also, the fingering in the edition I learned from really helped a great deal. I finally understood the importance of fingering when playing Bach. 😄😄😄Anyway, I loved your harmonic analysis of this piece. Very interesting and clear.
Boulanger's Prayer of Bhudda is beautiful but I cannot listen to it because I had discovered it around the time we lost our son. It's association is just too painful. but I love Boulanger's music. Tragic she lived such a short life.
This is a very neat and useful analysis. Thank you very much for the effort. It helps me memorizing it as I can crosscheck my view with your analysis. Interesting that it's actually very even (I do not use the word "simple") in its harmonic architecture: I can basically follow one chord and one ostinato and some repeating patterns in every bar. But sadly enough, the way I am fingering it does not quite allow for simple repetition ...🥲 Vielen Dank für all die Arbeit und den Elan, ein derart gut ausgearbeitetes Video zu erstellen!
That's an interesting view about not using "simple", I'm going to keep that one in mind. And yes, isn't finding the right fingering always the main challenge when learning a new piece? I found that's what makes prima vista playing so tricky for me, that my fingers just do whatever they want 😅 Danke für das Feedback, freut mich! :)
So simple, yet so satisfying! I am not sure how much the BMV categorisations match up chronologically, but 999 would suggest it is a later piece. But for me this is much less complex than the preludes you tend to find in the second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier for example. It is indeed a master-class in simple voice-leading. It is interesting how he rearranges the notes of the chords to get dramatic effects. You played this well, but I admire some of the people (not the bourgois big record label pianists) who play this slowly using the all the pedal resources of the piano - including if you have it the sostenuto to get those pedal points and sustained notes.
The BWV ("das Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis") does not match with chronology at all, it is purely thematical. An attempt of representing that little bit of chronology which today we think we know, is the Bach-Compendium. Here, within the thematical gathering, a chronological order is represented wherever research gives a hint for it. There are many problems with the body of works by J.S. Bach when it comes to putting it into order: many pieces do not exist in original manuscripts anymore but only in copies (which may differ from each other slightly), and of some pieces we know that they must have existed once but they are lost forever. So, the more than 1000 works which we know today still bear many riddles and questions, and are an ideal object for research for so many scholars. 😅
