Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Last night: a long — stretching over three hours of sleep, with a whizz break in the middle — and vivid story dream in which Ellen Kaisse (an old friend and a frequent character on this blog) and I were holed up for an entire night in an elegant hotel — much like the actual Beverly Hills Hotel — where we had a suite in which we were expected to produce a script for a film. The place looked like your ordinary luxury suite, except that it was dominated by a huge desk. Which, at the pressing of several buttons, converted magically into a fully functioning office, with computers, printers, phones, paper files, assorted office supplies, and of course a coffee maker. (But no staff, not even assistants to take things down for us. If we got hungry, we were to order food from room service.) Our work site for the long dark night.

We were expected to hack out an entire draft script, as well as suggestions for casting for the parts, costumes, and sets, plus a sketch of a score for the movie (I suspect that the score was especially significant to my having this dream; details to follow).

Somehow the actual subject of the film, which Ellen and I labored over, elaborately, for all those hours of my sleep, has dissolved, as dream material often does on awakening.

We didn’t question being put to work at the Hotel De Luxe through the night; apparently, that was a regular thing in Hollywood, just the way things worked there.

The dream was not at all unpleasant, sometimes actually delightful. Well, Ellen is wonderful company and an excellent person to exchange ideas with.

Buxtehude trio sonatas. And now for something completely different. Though Ellen Kaisse is the link.

From Ellen on the 25th, in e-mail with the header “Buxtehude trio sonatas” and a link to

a YouTube video of Trio Sonata No.4 of a set of 7, Op.1 (BuxWV 255), by Dietrich Buxtehude, for Violino, Viola da gamba and Cembalo, performed by Ton Koopman (harpsichord) and members of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Catherine Manson, violin and Paolo Pandolfo, viola da gamba), on the recording Buxtehude: Opera Omnia XIII: Chamber music vol.2 (Challenge Records, 2011)

Saying:

How did I not know these? Fell down the rabbit hole listening to them yesterday. Haven’t found one that isn’t beyond delightful yet, so this link is just a sample. First movement is beyond delightful. ‘a bop’ is, I believe, the current term.

Definitely danceable. But I think this is where the idea of Ellen and me writing a film score together came from. In any case, I replied:

Oh my. First, they are indeed delightful, and I haven’t listened to them for a very long time. Second, they bring memories of a musical friend of my Princeton days*, who maintained staunchly that Brahms should be dropped from the three Bs and replced by Buxtehude, offering these trio sonatas as evidence. I believe I argued that we just need more Bs, because I wasn’t willing to cede Brahms. In particular, I would stand my ground [bad musical joke**] on Brahms’s Haydn Variations***.

Here things veer wildly in several different directions, which I’ll take up one by one, starting with Buxtehude, then the three asterisked notes in my message, then wrapping things up with the topic of piano trios in music from Mozart on, of which trio sonatas (by Buxtehude and others) were a precursor.

Buxtehude. From Wikipedia:

Dieterich Buxtehude (born Diderich Hansen Buxtehude, c. 1637 – 9 May 1707) was a Danish organist and composer of the Baroque period, whose works are typical of the North German organ school. As a composer who worked in various vocal and instrumental idioms, Buxtehude’s style greatly influenced other composers, such as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Buxtehude is considered one of the most important composers of the 17th century.

*My musical friend: George Boolos, who later went on to fame in philosophy and mathematical logic; and who was one of the few incandescantly brilliant people I have known. From Wikipedia:

George Stephen Boolos (4 September 1940 [AZ: two days before me] – 27 May 1996) was an American philosopher and a mathematical logician who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Boolos was of Greek-Jewish descent. He graduated with an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton University after completing a senior thesis, titled “A simple proof of Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem”, under the supervision of Raymond Smullyan. Oxford University awarded him the B.Phil. in 1963. In 1966, he obtained the first PhD in philosophy ever awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the direction of Hilary Putnam. After teaching three years at Columbia University, he returned to MIT in 1969, where he spent the rest of his career.

**The musical joke, a play on ground in stand my ground vs. in the musical term ground bass, Brahms’s Haydn Variations being built on a basso ostinato, aka ground bass — ‘a short theme, usually in the bass, which is constantly repeated as the other parts of the music vary’ (NOAD).

***Brahms’s Haydn Variations. From Wikipedia:

The Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn (German: Variationen über ein Thema von Jos. Haydn), now also called the Saint Anthony Variations [AZ: because the theme is clearly not by Haydn] is a work in the form of a theme and variations, composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1873 at Tutzing in Bavaria. It consists of a theme in B♭ major based on a “Chorale St Antoni”, eight variations, and a finale. The work was published in two versions: for two pianos, written first but designated Op. 56b; and for orchestra, designated Op. 56a.

I adore the two-piano version. Even though the St. Anthony theme is an earworm, and the basso ostinato is one of the stickiest earworms I’ve ever encountered (just because I’ve mentioned it, it’s inhabiting my mind relentlessly as I write this).

Piano trios. From Wikipedia:

A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in classical chamber music. The term can also refer to a group of musicians who regularly play this repertoire together; for a number of well-known piano trios, see [the long list appended to the main entry, which contains many delicious compositions; I am extraordinarily fond of the musical conversations in piano trios].

Works titled “Piano Trio” tend to be in the same overall shape as a sonata. Initially this was in the three movement form, though some of Haydn’s have two movements. Mozart, in five late works, is generally credited with transforming the accompanied keyboard sonata, in which the essentially optional cello doubles the bass of the keyboard left hand, into the balanced trio which has since been a central form of chamber music. With the early 19th century, particularly Beethoven, this genre was felt to be more appropriate to cast in the four movement form.

… In the Classical era, home music-making made the piano trio a very popular genre for arrangements of other works. For example, Beethoven transcribed his first two symphonies for piano trio. Thus a large number of works exist for the arrangement of piano, violin and violoncello which are not generally titled or numbered as piano trios, but which are nonetheless part of the overall genre. These include single movements as well as sets of variations such as Beethoven’s Variations on ‘Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu’ Op. 121a and Variations in E flat major Op. 44.

Note the pre-Mozart trio sonata (a keyboard sonata with cello largely doubling the bass line of the keyboard), as in Buxtehude’s works.

Meanwhile, piano trios were in my head last night, since I wrote — in my 3/24 posting “Johann Nepomuk Hummel” — about some of JNH’s charming piano trios.

I wonder if the (vanished) movie score that Ellen Kaisse and I blocked out in last night’s dream had a piano trio in it, or a Baroque-style trio sonata, or dare I hope, both.

 

 

 

This entry was posted on March 28, 2024 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Earworms, Language play, Mathematics, Music, My life, Philosophy, Princeton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.