EDITOR'S KEYBOARD: NOVEMBER 2002 VOICES AND ECHOS


I have been fortunate to do a little casual duet playing with a fine flautist lately. Amateur musicians like me have experience (more than 30 years) with the instrument which exceeds musical skill. Duet playing brings out weaknesses in technique and consistency which have me now working hard to keep up. The flute can either be played like a whistle or in better hands can create a voice with distinct personality. There are some wonderful pieces that bring out this vocal quality and encourage free expression. The problem of guitar duets involving another instrument, from romantic or baroque periods, has been the dullness of the guitar's task. There is the famous joke about Paganini's guitarist being bored with playing repetitious chords and arpeggios in his violin/guitar duets: Paganini then wrote his Grand Sonata in A for guitar with violin accompaniment, and chose to play the guitar himself! Perhaps the old guitars' gut strings were not up to expressive voicing.


All has changed, however, with the kind of diversity of sound that we were privileged to hear in Eliot Fisk's recent Seattle concert. His guitar transcriptions of the Paganini violin Caprices seemed to reveal a new kind of sound or a rainbow of new sounds.   There are real extremes of sound in our new world of the guitar, one being from Kazuhito Yamashita, and his transcriptions, for example of Mussorgsky's  Pictures at an Exhibition (to read more...click). Modern composers begin to write true duets building on the complementary nature of guitar and xxx. XXX can be any of a number of instruments, with much exploration yet to be done. John Williams for a time did some exciting duets with pipe organ and Fisk has many duets with harpsichord. Guitar and human voice itself is of course the staple of folk music. Wouldn't it be good to hear the guitar cast with a classical tenor in something as poignant as Franz Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise , a sad tale of wandering through snowy woods; Schubert's piano accompaniment is very rich. Or, Benjamin Britten's Eight Folk Song Arrangements, which was written for Peter Pears' voice with piano accompanying? My recording on vinyl of Pears with Britten on piano is a real treasure: The Ash Grove, Is My Team Plowing, On Wenlock Edge, The Sally Gardens, The Earl of Moray: many from A Shropshire Lad, poetry by A.E. Housman (1896)*. Back to guitar and flute, Robert Beaser's recent, very vocal, very challenging Mountain Songs are often played by Paula Robison and Eliot Fisk, for whom they were written. They are to be found on many of his CDs, and are available as sheet music.


What I am getting at is the importance of thinking about the musical voice. A friend who plays the cello once said that what we are all trying unconsciously to do with our musical instruments is to sing through them. This simple remark has stayed with me for many years and continually awakens me from episodes of thoughtless, mundane playing. Concentrating on sound production is something our teachers tell us about, but actually doing it is a continuing challenge. The relationship is enhanced by playing music scored for voice and accompaniment; Villa Lobos' famous Bachianas Brasiliaras #5 (1938 and 1945), originally scored for eight cellos and soprano, has versions for guitar alone, and for guitar and voice. The latter I have found wonderfully adaptable to guitar and flute.


I have invented an artificial aid to 'voicing' which I can recommend: echo. Hearing one's own instrument should not be the problem it is. But it is. String players are always desperate for it. Hence the appeal of electronic amplification, where unfortunately the reverb and dial-up electronic moods replace finger-driven artistry and reduce the true voice of the instrument. I remember the shudder in a violinist's voice when he described arriving to play a concert in a heavily carpeted room full of overstuffed chairs and people: the sound 'just disappeared'. Another violinist friend actually used to seek out highway underpasses and play solo Bach in them. Once I sat in Kings Chapel, Cambridge, England, a great, cold stone cathedral in winter, listening to Yehudi Menhuin play unaccompanied Bach on the violin, with ~ 10 second reverberation. Purists around me criticized this as a bacchanalian rather than Bach experience. But it was great, and brought back the memory of the sounds that issued from the young Menhuin on recordings from the 1930s. Guitar makers have experimented with enhancements that can present more of the sound to the player, particularly the sound 'ports' cut in the top/sides, where it meets the fingerboard  (for example, by maker  Kenny Hill or the Thurman soundports in some Augustino LoPrinzi guitars).  Folk/popular music saw numerous kinds of resonators added to guitars and banjos before electricity took over.


But here's the (much simpler) invention: unless you are fortunate enough to have a purpose-built music room or an English stone church at your disposal, try to find a window seat, in which you can sit while playing the guitar. The angled glass will provide a lively reflection and if you're like me, a much enhanced presence bringing out the beauty of your instrument. It is, quite frankly, like taking a consciousness-enhancing drug. If no such fenestration is to be found, try instead simply sitting close in the corner of a room with nice, smooth walls: not facing inward with a pointed cap on, but outward. The effect is similar though lacking the visual pleasure of the window seat. It would be easy to build a sort of 'Chinese screen', a self-standing set of panels that could take your echo wherever you like.


Peter Rhines


* When I was one-and-twenty / I heard him say again, / 'The heart out of the bosom / Was never given in vain; / 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty / And sold for endless rue', / And I am two-and-twenty, / And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true. -"When I was one-and-twenty" A.E.Housman