\t\t\t\tFor several days last week it seemed all I did for 5 or 6 hours each day was play the Liszt arrangement of Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”). It is an addictive little piece which I find to be more theatrically dramatic in the piano arrangement than in its voice-with-piano original.<\/p>\n
I usually hear this piece with heavy pedal, but as I rambled through the song yesterday I began thinking that the opposite — a chunky staccato sound — more evocatively summons the sound of a spinning wheel. As an alternative to the traditional pedaled sound I had fun imagining I could literally evoke the sound of the spinning wheel.<\/p>\n
But wait. What do I know about spinning wheels? I don’t think I have ever heard one. My childhood was not filled with countless hours of slave labor spent churning fabric out of the spinning wheel.<\/p>\n
Regardless, today I let myself imagine that such a contraption would sound something different from smooth and burbling.<\/p>\n
Playing the piece pedal-free makes it more difficult, but today I found that it made the melody sing in a different way. I think the word for the sound was “troubled,” a word which also characterizes the text of the song. The traditional way of performing this song is not exactly un-troubled, but absent the river-like flow of sound I think the troubles become more exposed, and tremulous.<\/p>\n
Any time I get to measure 97 I think “holy s*** this is strong stuff.” Liszt adds a crushing minor 9th to the left hand in M.97 and again in M.99. This stays true to the Schubert original on one level: the first notes of those measures in the original are literally A and B-flat. But Schubert softens that dissonance by safely spacing it 2 octaves apart, summoning nowhere near as much war-like thunder as Liszt brings to the passage.<\/p>\n
There is so much good stuff in this song.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For several days last week it seemed all I did for 5 or 6 hours each day was play the Liszt arrangement of Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”). It is an addictive little piece which I find to be more theatrically dramatic in the piano arrangement than in its voice-with-piano original. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-piano-music","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}