We all understand and experience the Christmas season in a variety of ways. For some it is a significant religious and spiritual event; some see it as a lucrative commercial enterprise; and some welcome this one time of the year for the unparalleled peace and joy that it conveys. Somehow, the season has a unique way of appealing nearly to everyone, regardless of faith, ethnicity, age or gender.
   Christmas can also be a welcome opportunity to explore a rich body of music that we encounter for a brief period of time each year. Christmas is a seasonal celebration, and like all such celebrations the music associated with it is performed almost incessantly during the season and then discarded and forgotten, only to be taken up again with the same intensity and passion the following year. During the four-week period preceding December 25, Christmas music is ubiquitous, performed on radio, television, movies, shopping malls or any venue where music can be heard. By December 26, we are all more than ready to bid a fond farewell to the pieces that have overrun our listening sensibilities, and spend the following eleven months in complete neglect of anything Christmas. In truth, this is one of the advantages of seasonal music, for its prolonged absence gives us fresh ears for it once it returns.
   The carols and hymns of Christmas, for me, are wondrous, and not just during this four-week period. Many of these staple pieces have a fascinating and unique history, particularly those pieces that in some way observe the Nativity (versus those that only celebrate the holiday season, which are generally more recent compositions). Many of these tunes are centuries old, whose music and words often have been updated to accommodate changing styles and tastes. Some originated during forgotten times by forgotten composers and authors, who nevertheless captured and preserved their faith and spiritual sentiments in works that remain popular today. In a sense, this body of music is a significant and vital document of a bygone era.
   For a church musician, such as I am, Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year, and in many ways the most rewarding. Church services are filled with music (vocal and instrumental), and the musician is obliged each year to find pieces that reflect the festiveness of the season, yet have a sense of freshness for the listener. When I began this type of work, I searched in earnest each season for music that was appropriate for the Christmas service: music that would be as pleasing for the musicians to perform as for the congregation to hear. At first I relied on arrangements prepared by others, but in time my personality took over, and I prepared my own arrangements.
   Part of my work in this capacity has been recently published by Carl Fischer Music in a collection entitled Twenty Christmas Hymns for Piano. This is a collection of piano arrangements of twenty Christmas hymns that are intended to accompany a Christmas liturgical service (although they would be appropriate for any Christmas occasion). What is unique to this collection, I believe, is that each hymn is presented in three versions based on difficulty: Easy, Intermediate and Advanced. My intent was to suit the tastes and abilities of a wide diversity of church musicians by providing arrangements of varying levels of difficulty and diverse musical styles. Easy versions are restricted in length to one to two minutes, composed according to fundamental keyboard techniques and are intended to be relatively uncomplicated to prepare for performance. Intermediate versions are somewhat longer in length and incorporate more advanced keyboard techniques; additionally, they may deviate from the character of the original hymn. Advanced versions, lastly, may be considered true concert pieces that demand a greater amount of time for preparation; they are technically and musically more demanding than the other versions and often explore musical styles and techniques not related to the original hymn.
   As an example, I have attached the three versions of God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen, a widely familiar hymn whose words offer hope and reassurance, though, curiously, with music of a plaintive character (click on any image for a larger view). The Easy version clearly poses no problems for the experienced musician. The Intermediate and Advanced versions take a different approach by incorporating keyboard styles of two early piano preludes of Alexander Scriabin. The hymn is thus integrated into a fin de siècle musical context, one quite foreign to the hymn, yet it is still readily identifiable by anyone familiar with this popular tune. Each version becomes progressively more demanding, musically and technically, and thus the musician wishing to perform this hymn may choose among the three versions based on his or her abilities and tastes.
   If anything, this collection should substantiate how astonishingly flexible these hymns are; they can preserve their identities in virtually any musical context. I have also provided written commentaries on each hymn, in which the hymn’s origins and usage over time are addressed. Please visit http://carlfischer.com for information about purchasing this arrangement (cat. no. PL1039).

Note: My special thanks to Subtilior Music Engraving for typesetting the arrangements in this collection.

   Founded in 1901 in Vienna, Universal Edition (UE) rapidly became a music publisher whose catalog was built primarily on the works of contemporary composers. Under the directorship of Emile Hertzga, the firm signed publishing contracts with such now-famous composers as Béla Bartók, Frederick Delius, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern and Leoš Janáček. This philosophy continued under the leadership of Alfred Schlee, who became director of the firm in 1938 during the German Anschluss. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Schlee avidly pursued and promoted music of the leading composers of the European avant-garde, including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Harrison Birtwistle and Mauricio Kagel.
   It is this period that is of particular interest in the firm’s history. What is remarkable is that hundreds, if not thousands of scores of these post-World War II composers were engraved and published, many scores, in fact, of exceptional notational complexity and originality. No work seems to have been refused because of its complexity. Scores such as Stockhausen’s Gruppen, Boulez’s Pli selon pli, Berio’s Coro and Sinfonia attest to UE’s willingness to engrave and publish that which might have met with instant rejection elsewhere. Profits from the sales of these scores most likely did not outweigh the production costs at the time, but presumably Schlee regarded these publications as financial investments for a future time.
   Who were the persons who were responsible for engraving these formidable scores? Their names are not known, their works bear no signatures, but the high craftsmanship of these scores clearly shows that they must have been engravers of extraordinary standards and inestimable patience, who spent years in apprenticeships to develop their skills. As was the case with most music publishers at this time, they would have worked in teams: A division of labor would have been established, in which senior engravers would have been responsible for the actual engraving work and junior engravers or apprentices for other peripheral responsibilities.
   I am not entirely certain what engraving techniques were used at this time. Judging from the appearance of many of these scores, I believe that they used a technique known as “plate engraving,” or more specifically “punch engraving.” In this technique, a variety of tools are used to “punch” musical characters into copper or pewter plates. This was a slow, time-consuming process, which must have been dreadfully difficult with scores of such complexity. To add to the difficulty, the engravings were produced from right to left in mirror-image form, such that the image would be produced in its correct form when transferred to paper. Imagine the difficulty and the mental strain in typing a document in MS Word from right to left, instead of the customary left to right.
   Inevitably, technology put an end to much of this labor. In the twenty-first century, music engravers are fortunate to have computers and software that can manage these tasks more quickly and efficiently and often with a cleaner, more elegant look (depending, of course, on the skill of the user). One person with a computer and engraving software can accomplish what a team of engravers did just as quickly, if not more quickly, since many of the cumbersome tasks of plate engraving are now automated (although a fair amount of mental work is still required). This ultimately means greater speed in production and lower costs.
   As a means to understand some of the challenges these engravers faced, I thought it would be informative to engrave a segment from a UE score; more specifically, to typeset it in digital form, since my engraving career began long after the days of plate engraving. I chose one system, an intentionally challenging one, from the third page of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke No. 8, composed in 1954–55. The first image at the bottom of this blog entry is this system as it appears in the original publication. 
   The notation is highly complex, but the complexity can be justified by the musical intent. The piece is structured from three- and four-part counterpoint, with voices crossing between the hands and often crossing wide registers. Stockhausen’s notation clarifies the identity of the voices for the performer largely through beaming; hence, the need for an eighth-note beat. Additionally, the spacing of the beat (in non-reduced size) is nearly equidistant at 1.5 centimeters over the course of the system. No doubt this was the composer’s stipulation to the aid the performer in reading the music in the absence of bar lines. This engraving is elegant, clean, finely proportioned and admirably clear; it is aesthetically pleasing to the score-reader’s eye, despite the fact that certain notational conventions are no longer in use.
   My rendition of this system, prepared in Score and duplicating as much of the original as possible, is the second image at the bottom of this entry. 
   The entire process for me from start to finish, including note input, editing and proofreading, required 90 minutes, an astronomical amount of time for typesetting a single system of piano music. Inevitably, the look is different in a variety of ways. For example, the horizontal spacing in the original cannot be matched exactly, since the wider shaped noteheads in the typeset version demand slightly more space. Given that the software freed me from handling numerous factors and calculations, it seems highly likely that the time required by the UE engravers to produce the original engraving would have been far greater. Days or weeks may have been needed to complete this relatively short piece comprising nine such systems.
   This undertaking certainly extended my appreciation and admiration for the work of these engravers. The next time you study a score prepared by Universal Edition, or any music publisher for that matter, spare a moment to appreciate the fine work of the engravers who prepared the score. Many of them were first-class artisans, whose fine attention to detail was partly responsible for the success of the scores and their composers. And they all remain anonymous.

Postscript: Of course, I realize that I have committed a copyright infringement by including the example from the original publication. But I hope that amnesty is granted, since no profit will be made, and its inclusion here is a means of paying homage to those who produced it.

   Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande contains a wealth of moments that are musically stunning and dramatically exhilarating. Act IV, Scene 4, in particular, offers one such moment that should be appreciated for its effectiveness as well as its simplicity. This scene, curiously the first part of the opera that Debussy began to compose in 1893, is a climactic moment in the drama, representing the instant in which Pelléas and Mélisande declare their knowingly illicit love for one another, followed by Pelléas’ violent death at the hands of Golaud. Taking place by a well in the park, the scene depicts a clandestine meeting between the two characters, in which Pelléas informs Mélisande that he must leave forever. Rather than explaining the reason for his departure, he repeatedly insists to her that she knows why, to which she responds that she does not (the reason, of course, is their mutual and forbidden love). This insistence, combined with the obvious anxiety that the two characters are experiencing in the wake of their secret tryst, creates a moment of heightened nervousness and tension, quite different from anything that has preceded it.
   The point at which Pelléas and Mélisande declare their love is astonishing, yet remarkably simple. In the measures preceding this declaration, Debussy composes a breathtaking build-up in the orchestra—an exceptional happening in this mezzo-piano opera—that cuts off abruptly when Pelléas suddenly kisses Mélisande:

This build-up is accomplished in a variety of ways. Harmonic tension is provided by a series of ninth and seventh chords (dominant seventh chords, minor seventh chords and even a Tristan-chord), all of which, despite being harmonic dissonances, are denied any type of resolution. Loudness contributes to this build-up as well. In the above example, Debussy specifies molto cresc. leading to forte and beyond, one of a handful of instances in the entire opera in which anything of this loudness may be found. Lastly, the marking Animez peu à peu, notated seven measures before the kiss, establishes a gradually quickening pace that continues until the indication Librement.
   What makes this love declaration following the hair-raising build-up so dramatically effective is that it is accompanied by an abrupt silence in the orchestra. The tension accumulated from harmony, dynamics and tempo simply stops, leaving the vocal parts alone in silence. As a result, the declaration is set in relief. Additionally, the silence restores calm and eases all tension once the declaration has been made, as if the two characters, for the first time since meeting in Act I, can finally relax. Of course, this is Debussy’s dramatic expertise at work, but quite possibly part of his strategy was to avoid the expected Wagnerian (and verismo) procedure of accompanying such a pivotal moment with a furor of orchestral volume and grandeur. This moment is one of many instances in the opera, in which silence is used to underscore the dramatic significance of a passage, and is perhaps the most effective as well.
   A subtlety may be seen in the different way in which Debussy set the words “Je t’aime” in each part. Pelléas’ setting, immediately following the orchestral crescendo and the rash kiss, is high in his tenor register and is clearly one of great excitement. The metric accent is placed on the word “t’aime.” By contrast, Mélisande’s setting is at the bottom of her register (“in a low voice,” as Debussy indicated) with the metric accent on “Je” and “-si” (of “aussi”). The character of her declaration is withdrawn and subdued, seeming more like a well-mannered response to Pelléas (but presumably is not). Moreover, Mélisande’s “t’aime” is set to a single note, rather than divided into syllables as in Pelléas’ part. In effect, the settings of these critical words are “I love you,” followed by “I love you, too.”
   I have wondered if there is any significance to Debussy’s different setting of these words, yet can only speculate that it could be a way to emphasize differences in the personalities of the two characters: the heightened emotional character of the impetuous Pelléas as opposed to the subdued and reserved character of the enigmatic Mélisande. Differences notwithstanding, Debussy introduces another musical subtlety to suggest an emotional kinship between the two characters. The notes in Pelléas’ part (E and D) lead directly by stepwise motion, in an almost cadential way, to Mélisande’s repeated C’s; in effect, the declarations, though audibly different, interconnect in terms of pitch.
   This moment is merely one of many remarkable musical/dramatic instances in Debussy’s opera. I would be hard pressed to think of other examples in the opera repertoire, in which love is declared so effectively and so simply, with such intense drama and such ingenious musical design. Tension and release, in which silence plays a critical role, make this declaration of love one of the most moving and dramatically effective instances in this opera.

   I recently heard a radio broadcast of the 1957 recording of Pierre Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître (made just two years after the premiere performance), featuring Boulez as the conductor, Severino Gazzelloni as the alto flute player and Jeanne Deroubaiz as the alto singer. This was the first recording I had heard of this piece many years ago during a time of impressionable adolescence, and it indeed made quite an impression on me at the time. Having been conditioned since then by later recordings of the piece made by Boulez, I was initially skeptical of the worth of this premiere recording of this seminal piece, since later recordings would obviously be superior in every possible way.
   On the contrary, the 1957 recording was absolutely electric, in many ways revelatory, and completely renewed my initial zest for this masterpiece. Merely one engaging feature of this recording was its way of clarifying structural design, in particular the subtle and complex relationship between René Char’s often impenetrable surrealistic poetry and Boulez’s music. One of the many innovations of this piece is a technique that Boulez has called “center and absence,” a means of incorporating the structure of a poem into the structure of the music, while the former is absent (used also in the later Pli selon pli). This recording somehow clarified the significance of this technique in this piece, revealing how the words and the voice act as commentaries on what is essentially instrumental music structured from poetry. As a result, form became audible: The teleological progression over the course of the piece, in which the voice is gradually absorbed by the instruments, became an exhilarating phenomenon.
   The recording offers much more. Boulez has gained ample attention, and rightly so, for his ear as a conductor. His recordings, particularly those of Debussy and Stravinsky, have received accolades for their precision of pitch, orchestral balance and textural clarity. What is often overlooked is the magnificence of Boulez’s ear as a composer, perhaps because this side of his work has been overshadowed by his conducting activities. The acuity of his ear is especially apparent in the opening movement of Le Marteau (“avant l’artisanat furieux”) composed for an unorthodox instrumental quartet comprising alto flute, vibraphone, guitar and viola. In the 1957 recording, the listener can hear a remarkably original, yet remarkably coherent fusion of these four disparate instruments: They occupy and traverse a unique polyphonic nexus organized around an alto tessitura. Ultimately, the musical ear necessary to maintain cohesion and logic with four such disparate instruments, to compose a clear polyphonic texture with a firm harmonic basis, must surely be extraordinary.
   Much of what is special about this recording, I believe, is the timing and tempos; specifically, fidelity to the tempo markings in the first published version of the score. For example, the tempo of the opening movement approximated the indication in the first published version, a blistering 208 quarter notes per minute. One of several revisions in the subsequent 1964 edition is that the tempos of the “l’artisanat furieux” cycle were reduced; the tempo of the first movement was reduced drastically to 168 quarter notes per minute, and the other movements in this cycle reduced proportionately. Boulez seemingly drew lessons from repeated performances of this piece that demonstrated that some of his initial tempo markings were simply too fast. Paul Griffiths, in his usual eloquent and observing way, has remarked that a sense of ease and breadth, resulting partly from a gradual slowing of tempos, has been introduced in the four recordings of this piece that Boulez made in the four decades between 1957 and 1984 (Paul Griffiths, “Le marteau de son maître, or Boulez selon Boulez”). This may be attributed to lessons absorbed from performance experience or even a certain inevitable mellowness that results from advancing age.
   Despite the probable need for this tempo reduction from a practical standpoint, the drawback is that slower tempos and a feeling of ease detract the music from the power of Char’s poetry. The three poems used in this piece are characterized by a peculiar mixture of brevity, violence and vagueness. Symbols in the poems are incorporated to suggest an imagery that, although deeply expressive, is often difficult to comprehend. Contemplate, for example, what is implied in the opening line of “l’artisanat furieux”: “The red caravan on the edge of the nail.” Additional symbols, such as a corpse, a horseshoe and a Peruvian knife, are invoked in the three remaining lines of the poem and abandoned. The relationship of all of these images to the whole can be perplexing, and few analyses of this piece successfully address this crucial matter.
   Boulez’s exceptional ear has captured the expression of this verse and translated it into a musical imagery that is likewise violent and oftentimes vague, featuring stops, starts and pauses that seem to disrupt the musical continuity. This discontinuity can be especially apparent and problematic with slower tempos. What is astonishing about the 1957 recording is that the bumps in the musical road are not jarring or disruptive, but logical, effective and in line with the character of the poetry. The question becomes was it correct to modify the music to ease performance if it sacrifices the logic of the musical design (Boulez seems to believe so).
   Additionally, this recording was made at a time when the piece was new and its performance practices still unfamiliar. Performance indications in the score are numerous, at times accompanying each and every note. Changes are multitudinous and can happen instantly. The performers in this recording, magnificent by any standard, must have suffered great apprehension when presented with their parts, and later when recording the piece in the composer’s presence. Surely, this recording must suffer from a variety of inaccuracies (I would need more hearings to affirm this). Decades later and with great advancements made in contemporary performance practice, the piece is no longer the fearmonger that is once was; the tension and anxiety that once resulted from performing it are no longer there, or no longer as severe, and the piece will most likely enter the standard repertoire as pieces that in their own day were regarded in this way.
   This is not to lament the fact that the piece will become be a part of future musicians’ repertoire; it has certainly earned that privilege. However, the 1957 recording presents us with a unique opportunity to experience a certain anxiety in the early days of the piece’s history, an opportunity that could prove revelatory with many pieces now in the standard repertoire. (Regrettably, this recording is difficult to find; Amazon.com offers it on vinyl LP only, meaning that it has never been transferred to CD and is seemingly no longer in issue.) Much of the power of this piece stems from the demands it places on the performers through its detail and its inexorable insistence on ability. Yet it only reaffirmed for me that Pierre Boulez should be ranked as one of the (perhaps the) greatest composers of the second half of the twentieth century.