Tim Summers, violin

I’ve been curious to develop my harmonic conception and hearing for a long time… during the course of this curiosity (which continues), I developed some software over the years, the latest piece of which is this colorful little harmony app for the iPhone. I can’t speak, necessarily, to how useful it is. (I can’t speak to how useful an iPhone is, generally speaking.) But I have enjoyed building it and found that it clarifies my ideas about harmonic relationships.
I decided to color-code chords within keys to keys in such a way as to make their shared content clearer, if not absolutely clear. And then, of course, the sounds are there to be heard with the colors. It is available at the iTunes store.

It wasn’t a total loss, these past days. I was really sick. And kind of winter-brown after the psychological electric-storm. I would like, anyway, to point out the usefulness of writing this each day (and I did do it each day):

• Carl Flesch: Ur-Studien

They are good for covering the bases of what the violin has to offer. This is easy for a fairly abstract person like me to forget. Sometimes for years at a time. I would like to add, for myself (this is all for myself, no?) that it is useful to give the tip equal attention to the frog. When one plays at the frog, the tip gives a great deal of information, waving around in midair like a semaphore. Thinking of the two gives a better perspective on what happens in-between.

There are a few things to add, too, about Bach, which got a bit of cursory attention, at least:

• Partita No. 2, Corrente

This has always been one of my favorite movements, I’m not really sure why. I like very much the play between the smooth and skipping rhythms. I’d like to add two background thoughts that came to mind over the past days: 1) slurs occur almost always on stepwise motion, and disconnected dotted rhythms always on leaps — slurs occur in arpeggiated passages only at crucial spots; 2) the Ciaccona bass line is very strong in the first few bars of this movement, perhaps more audibly evident than in any others.

• Partita No. 2, Allemande

The vibe of this movement remains somewhat mysterious to me, or mysteriously prosaic. Like the other movements, it frames the Ciaccona at its outset, but in a very mildly conversational way… I’ve never really been able to find the dance in it, insofar as it may be a dance — it feels more exploratory, or introductory, or even an entrance-hall sort of fantasia. And partly because of the somewhat irregular arrivals of harmonic events (or so I imagine them, without having looked too closely, at least not for a while), it’s a devil to tune. New keys bring sudden new flavors, and settle quickly, after just a few notes. The ear must prepare to turn on a note, and it is not always easy to decide which one.

• Bach Partita #1 Allemanda — Double

The first question to stop progress through the Allemanda of the first partita comes on the first downbeat: what sort of a little upbeat is this that leads to such a grand consequence? I think the best answer I’ve found comes from making sure that the large first beat gets contrasted with the high-pitched, trilled, second beat. This high-low contrast will justify the scale down in bar two. (Without getting too detailed: what accounts for the change of tune and smoothing articulation in bar 3?) The second question will, I hope, bring progress back: how can one best create a relationship between slurred triplets (which only appear in bar 8, but take over by the end of the movement? I believe this question will bear significant fruit. I haven’t got the answer in my ear yet, though.

Although the Double of the Allemanda is in a different meter (alla breve), and probably should take significantly less time and space, it can of course be superposed, and is useful to hear as comparatively as possible. Its contour is wildly different from the Allemanda — a radically smoothed version of the rather spiky first movement. Although almost no two notes are contiguous, and there are variations in the two-note slur motion, the sense is of an outline or abstraction of an event-filled Allemanda, with a few of its harmonic travels smoothed over as well (see C Major, bar 19, in each).

This is enough to begin, I think.

Well. It started later than I thought it would. In fact, it hasn’t even started yet, and it’s almost 2. Have a very bad cold; slept late. Got myself up to take a shower; had inexplicable panic attack in the shower, with shampoo in my hair. Had to lie down on the floor. If you don’t know what a proper panic attack is, well, lucky you. It’s like a transporting body-nausea fear-blanket. (I say I had shampoo in my hair, but it would be more accurate to say simply that I had soap on my head.) So I took an Oxapax and waited for the dementia to stop. Then I watched The Daily Show, played a bit of Nintendo, and watched the Colbert Report. All caught up on the news, at any rate.

When you take an Oxapax you get marsupial-eyes.

So:

• Carl Flesch, Ur-Studien

And it begins…

• Carl Flesch Ur-Studien. Besser heute als gestern, und, ich glaube, wird noch besser morgen.
• Bach Partita No. 2: Sarabanda:

• Sarabande is a triple meter dance with a quarter-note, half-note pulse. (See Wikipedia. Seems accurate enough. Works here.)
• This rhythm also appears in the Chaconne movement, though the first beat is empty in the chaconne. Bass lines in bars 1-4 and 9-13 also resemble… but enough about the Chaconne already, it gets enough attention.
• 28 bars total, basically 8 (repeated) + 16 (repeated) +4 (coda). Could reaonably be considered 52, like a deck of cards without jokers. (Incidentally, the Bärenreiter part shows 29 bars, but that’s not quite right: the 25th bar has two different forms, the second of which should be called 25a rather than 26. No?)
• Rhythm motion of the first 4 bars is steady increase toward bar 5, when the phrase loses friction, and floats.
• The heaviness of the drop at bar 16 should probably recall bars 5 and 6.
• Bars 18 and 19 have a marked, if somewhat hesitant, rising line, which should probably come out. The rising idea is sharply contradicted at bar 21. Bar 22, just after it, has a more than two-octave span. (Similar to 16-17, incidentally.)
• It is also worth noting that the regioin from 22 to the end (after Bar 21′s Big Spare Event) is almost entirely consistent 16th note motion, with a few modest 32nd decorations. This can no doubt have some feeling of consequence to it.

• Beethoven Violin Concerto: Soft play-through of first movement. Used to have lots of ideas of how to make it move, but now just trying to tune it up. Which is probably what I did before, too, since I still have the ideas, but would have to spend some real time applying them. Which I haven’t, outside of today.
• Schubert String Trio Movement, D. 471. Puzzling over how fourth bar is a composite of the arpeggio in bar two and the articulation of beats 3 and 4 of bar 1. How is that supposed to feel? And that trill in Bar 10 both easy and not possible, or I suck at trills, or both.

Working to formulate a daily foundation:

1. Carl Flesch – Ur Studien: a way of waking up. Simply physical exercise, and gives necessary results. Including the waking up.
2. Bach D minor Partita: Giga. Bringing analysis to physical gesture, and the reverse.  That’s one point

But I must make an aside here and say I’m a bit confused about how to approach these Bach pieces (not alone in that, I know), and will put forth a few questions which I hope will help direct the way I can approach them on the instrument itself.

• The piece is, in total, 40 bars long. The opening establishment of D minor is 5 bars long. The piano, which could be an echo of bar 10, also happens to initiate the 2nd 10 bars, and should probably be read as more than just an echo effect. The first 5 bars of the second half seem to contain a compressed version of the first 10 bars of the first half. (Indeed, bars 21-30 seem to imitate bars 1-20 at double speed, with something being further developed and worked out in the last 10 bars.) What does the absence of a downbeat mean in bar 15, and how does it help create motion for bars 16-20? Broadly speaking: what, if anything, are these 5′s worth?
• Eighth notes appear consecutively in two spots: 1) bar 1-2 and 2) bar 21 (a sort of compressed, upside down version of bar 1 and 2. How can these bars be used to announce something about the piece in general, something memorable enough to drive it?
• What is the relationship between arpeggios and scales? In the first bars, there is an explicit contrast between stepwise and arpeggiated material. How does this match up with the contrast between slurred and separated figures?
• Why do these sound like final exam questions?
• I wonder if the arched shape of the opening bars can be used to apply to some of the larger shapes of the work. It is, after all, right next to the Chaconne.
• Small-big thing: Wikipedia tells us that there are heavy 3rd beats in a gigue. Since the basic gigue is in 3/8, and less-basic ones, such as this giga (which is in 12/8), are mostly in compounds of that, I’ll take this to mean that the 3rd 8th note of each set can get a small kick. If I think of this in my ear, it seems jiggy to me.

3. Scales from Jamey Aebersold, in circles of fifths.
4. Orchestra excerpts from Zurich Opera, whose audition I can’t attend, but which I’ll look at for sight-reading and whatnot.

The Orpheus Quartet will be in residence in The quartet will be in residence for teaching and concerts in Cervera, Spain, from July 21 to July 31. More information is available at the Curs Internacional de Música Cervera web site. Applications for interested instrumentalists are welcome. We will perform on the evening of the 22nd.

Perfromance at the the Trasimeno Music Festival, run by Angela Hewitt. More information at their web site http://www.trasimenomusicfestival.com/. By Lake Trasimeno in Umbria.

From May 26th to June 6th I’ll be working with the Danish Radio Orchestra as principal 2nd violin… There will be one (season-ending) concert with Sibelius in the first week, and then a recording (very curious!) of works by Per Norgaard. (Thankfully, the visa application has been approved.)

The new Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival Season is now posted… and almost complete. The scheme (all of which can be seen at the Charlottesville web site) goes something like this:

1. Improvised (music from nothing) with David Cossin, percussion; Spasimo from Giovanni Sollima, for Solo Cello, String Trio and Percussion; and the big Brahms G Major viola quintet. The music should move from unstructured (unwritten) to highly (but enthusiastically) structured Brahms.
2. Moving backward through Viennese time: from Berg to Strauss to Beethoven to Mozart. There should be a sort of stripping-away of ornament…
3. Moving again forward in Viennese time with Schubert and Schoenberg, but then skipping overseas (as Schoenberg did) to California and the American vibe. I still need to get the music for the Eric Moe (‘Time will tell’), of which I’ve only heard enjoyable excerpts. The concert should end with a question mark, which I think is okay for a thursday. Except this concert is on Sunday… oh, well.
4. This concert is still a bit up for grabs, but I’d like to center it on the Musical Offering, with some educational/recreational computer models for the canons, bringing out the systems for all to hear. I’d really like if this strictness could be followed by dancing things, after so much musical demonstration. I don’t think we’ll do the whole trio sonata. Too much C Major. If anyone happens to read this and has some fun suggestions for instrumentation of piano, string quartet, and flute, I’d be happy to hear them. That’s why we can leave comments here… let me whisper a generalized call here for works from composers. We want to develop an idiom for improvisation and commissioning…
5. Last, we come back to Vienna from the east, through Janacek and Enescu. I find the last movement of the Mozart String Quartet K.421 to be insanely beautiful, and am curious to end with it… I think it will leave us with a sense of being able to experiment in chamber music without leaving things behind.

Welcome to the new web site of Timothy Summers, violinist.

This site will be based on the word-press default scheme, edited to look plain paper (see also: David Summers — Real Spaces at Phaidon Press).

Like the old site, this site will be updated to include old program notes and content, in addition to new scheduling tools.  The content will begin developing around the placement of the new and old notes, which hopefully will be shared with the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival and the Virginia Chamber Music Foundation.

Thanks for your visit; updates are forthcoming.

Tim