By its nature, music offers a great wealth of ways to explore this month’s theme of Neighbor. As a social experience, music helps rally people around a cause or celebrate as a community. Performance brings people together in song, and the creation of sonic harmony gives us ways to join our individual voice (be that vocal or instrumental) into a tapestry of beauty. There is structure that allows the realization of the harmony, while also leaving room for improvisation and individuality. It really is the quintessential expression of true cooperation, respect, and love.
Our prelude today is a solo keyboard piece, but it embodies all the important qualities of cooperation. Bach wrote many of these so-called “Inventions,” which are pieces created by the intertwining of 2 continuous and fully independent melodic lines.
In this particular piece, each voice (one starting high and one starting low) begins with a step-wise melody, voice 1 moving on the beat and ascending, and voice 2 on the “in-between” beats and descending towards voice 1. The 2 melodies are in contrary motion for 2 full measures, then one breaks into a quick little set of light-hearted 3-note turns while the other accompanies with its own smoother little running notes. Then they switch roles, with voice 2 doing exactly what voice 1 started with and vice versa. After that, each voice becomes more differentiated, but always complementary to the other.
After 10 bars, the opening material begins in another key, and now voice 2 is on the beat, and voice 1 on the in-between beats. And now their contrary motion takes them apart, while the ensuing role switch brings them together. Throughout the piece, each voice has some independence, yet within bounds, and both low voice and high voice get to play on-beat and off-beat roles equally. It’s something to aspire to in our real-life relationships!
Both of today’s cello/piano duets incorporate aspects of the Bach “Invention,” yet in freer ways. In the “Romanze,” the roles are not so egalitarian (the cello has the melody almost exclusively, and the piano the accompaniment) but are completely interdependent. It is like the ship on the sea: our focus is on the ship, but without the sea, the ship is going nowhere…and the sea is beautiful even by itself.
Schumann’s “Fantasy Piece” is much more of an interaction of 2 very identifiable individual characters with their own personalities, but they comment on each other, they listen, they initiate, they react, and they cooperate in a constant flow of intertwining energy. What a rich and wonderful way to be together.
—Shaylor