# Jeremy Denk: c.1300-c.2000



## isorhythm

Has anyone listened to it? I discovered it on Spotify a few days ago and will probably buy the CD. Really unusual and interesting concept. Any thoughts?


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## Quartetfore

isorhythm said:


> Has anyone listened to it? I discovered it on Spotify a few days ago and will probably buy the CD. Really unusual and interesting concept. Any thoughts?


He is an interesting pianist, I heard him play several years ago at Hamilton College. Except for his Debussy which sounded like Bartok, I enjoyed the concert.


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## Larkenfield

Beautifully recorded with considerable depth of feeling and thoughtful interpretations:

https://www.nonesuch.com/albums/c1300-c2000

Denk is well known for his Bach Goldberg Variations, which are excellent.


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## isorhythm

Hearing all of this music played on a modern piano really underlines some surprising continuities and similarities.


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## Mandryka

I heard him do it in concert. I must say I thought the piano reductions of the medieval music were naive. It felt like just a gimmick to get bums on seats.


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## premont

isorhythm said:


> Hearing all of this music played on a modern piano really underlines some surprising continuities and similarities.


This is probably more due to the character of piano than to the music itself. I haven't heard the CD though.


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> I heard him do it in concert. I must say I thought the piano reductions of the medieval music were naive. It felt like just a gimmick to get bums on seats.


Don't know. Bums may differ. It just makes Medieval music fans like me avoid it.


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## isorhythm

Mandryka said:


> I heard him do it in concert. I must say I thought the piano reductions of the medieval music were naive. It felt like just a gimmick to get bums on seats.


Curious what you mean. I'm not sure it's right to call them reductions - I think it's just note for note transcription.


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## Mandryka

isorhythm said:


> Curious what you mean. I'm not sure it's right to call them reductions - I think it's just note for note transcription.


I don't think it's that simple, but you may be right -- let's explore. See if you can find a manuscript of the Machaut or the Bincnois or the Ockeghem, I'll look too.

Also maybe worth listening to some performances of the originals.


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> I don't think it's that simple, but you may be right -- let's explore. See if you can find a manuscript of the Machaut or the Bincnois or the Ockeghem, I'll look too.
> 
> Also maybe worth listening to some performances of the originals.


At IMSLP one can find the Ockegem, the Binchois and the Dufay.

His "arrangements " of these are just note for note transcriptions.

I do not think they add anything of interest to a period performance.


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## Mandryka

Here's the Ockeghem, starting at 106v

https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Chig.C.VIII.234


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> Here's the Ockeghem, starting at 106v
> 
> https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Chig.C.VIII.234


But this is a part book. At IMSLP you can see a score.


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## isorhythm

premont said:


> At IMSLP one can find the Ockegem, the Binchois and the Dufay.
> 
> His "arrangements " of these are just note for note transcriptions.
> 
> I do not think they add anything of interest to a period performance.


Yes, they're all note for note.

They're not supposed to add anything of interest to a period performance - the interest is in the juxtaposition with the other works in this program, also played on the piano. But of course not everyone is going to find this idea compelling.

(As an aside, speaking of "period performance" of medieval music is deeply suspect - we have almost no idea how this music was performed - but I take it you just mean performed by voices and/or medieval instruments.)


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## Mandryka

One thing I learned from what Denk does with the Ockeghem is how much the music is changed by having it on an instrument which decays like a piano. Also it made me appreciate the impact of tuning, the piano’s close to equal and when I listened to Sound and Fury sing that Kyrie it was obvious how much they’re embellishing the harmonies.


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## premont

isorhythm said:


> Yes, they're all note for note.
> 
> They're not supposed to add anything of interest to a period performance - the interest is in the juxtaposition with the other works in this program, also played on the piano. But of course *not everyone is going to find this idea compelling*.


I rather find the idea pointless.



isorhythm; said:


> (As an aside, speaking of "period performance" of medieval music is deeply suspect - we have almost no idea how this music was performed - but I take it you just mean performed by voices and/or medieval instruments.)


Yes, performed by a convincing period ensemble.

Surely period performance of Medieval music is suspect, but hardly equally suspect as a note for note performance on piano.


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## isorhythm

To each his own. I would, of course, never choose to listen to a program of medieval music played on a piano - that would indeed be bizarre.


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## arpeggio

I met Mr. Denk a few years ago at Ojai. He was the organizer of the festival that year. Nice man and a great pianist. At the various panels he participated was interesting to hear what he had to say about music.


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> One thing I learned from what Denk does with the Ockeghem is how much the music is changed by having it on an instrument which an instrument which decays like a piano. Also it made me appreciate the impact of tuning, the piano's close to equal and when I listened to Sound and Fury sing that Kyrie it was obvious how much they're embellishing the harmonies.


Yes, the tuning makes the piano arrangement even more unconvincing.

And if one wants to arrange the Missa Prolationum for instruments it is obvious that this(e) instrument(s) must have more sustaining power - like singers have. Organ might even have a grain of inbuilt authenticity.


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## Mandryka

isorhythm said:


> To each his own. I would, of course, never choose to listen to a program of medieval music played on a piano - that would indeed be bizarre.


You should definitely try this, some people really love it


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## isorhythm

Evaluating those performances in terms of fidelity or authenticity seems totally beside the point to me...that's not what they're going for.


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## Mandryka

isorhythm said:


> They're not supposed to add anything of interest to a period performance - the interest is in the juxtaposition with the other works in this program, also played on the piano.


Does he talk about this in the booklet? (I don't have it, I don't own the CD) I wonder what he intends to show by the juxtaposition.

Some people think that there's an aesthetic continuity between early and modern music, other people don't, they think that pre-modern music is quite alien, as alien as oriental music. I'm trying to get clearer about what Denk is



isorhythm said:


> going for.


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## isorhythm

I don't have it. I plan to buy it though. I don't think he's trying to make any big point. It's just interesting to hear.

I gather there's an objection that it doesn't make sense to play medieval and renaissance vocal music on a piano, so in case I wasn't clear - I agree, it doesn't make sense. But that's not the point.


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## Mandryka

I found the booklet online, which makes me think that Denk's heart's in the right place



> I chose to begin with a short song by Machaut-Doulz amis (Sweet Friends)-not because of any particular musicological primacy, but because it seemed to capture some of the haunting beauty of medieval counterpoint. The simplicity of two voices allows us to hear the intervals contract and expand, and to meditate on the building blocks of a language. In the first few seconds, Machaut visits many of the essential combinations (octave, fifth, third), the same that will govern musical structure hundreds of years later. But the sense of things-why one pair of notes comes after another-is subtly alien. Sounds, and the grammar of sounds; feelings that are familiar, recurring, intensely personal, love and loss, but experienced and expressed at a remove.
> 
> The Binchois lament Triste plaisir adds one voice, to get to three. In the text of this song, the lover expresses himself in a sea of paradoxes:
> 
> Sad pleasure and grievous joy,
> Bitter sweetness, painful discomfort,
> Laughter in tears, forgetful memory
> These are my companions so long as I am alone.
> 
> The voice of the poem's speaker dominates, on top. The two lower voices work discreetly behind the scenes, casting the lover in changing lights. Irreconcilable notes in the melody reflect the poem's impossible conjunctions, creating a web of contradictions and tensions in a compact musical space. But the final sonority is an open fifth-a G and a D with no note in between. I like that word "open" (unusually communicative for musical jargon) to refer to an interval that feels neither light nor dark, major nor minor: just pure sound, empty of connotation. . .


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## isorhythm

For all the focus on the early music, the one arrangement that just doesn't work for me is the Tristan excerpt.


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## Larkenfield

I feel it's a worthy companion to Gould's delightful recording of the early music of Byrd and Gibbons with its lovely counterpoint.


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> I found the booklet online, which makes me think that Denk's heart's in the right place


When played on piano - and particularly true of the Ockeghem Kyrie - I find it difficult to tell the voices apart. Instead the pieces get rather homophonic, which seems inauthentic. What he - according to the quote - wants to show- namely the tension between the different intervals, is displayed very much better when the pieces are sung, enabling us to tell the voices apart, so there are no arguments for using piano, other than he himself wants to play the music. But what does it matter to us?


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## Mandryka

premont said:


> When played on piano - and particularly true of the Ockeghem Kyrie - I find it difficult to tell the voices apart. Instead the pieces get rather homophonic, which seems inauthentic. What he - according to the quote - wants to show- namely the tension between the different intervals, is displayed very much better when the pieces are sung, enabling us to tell the voices apart, so there are no arguments for using piano, other than he himself wants to play the music. But what does it matter to us?


He can talk the talk but he can't walk the walk.


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## isorhythm

It's true that a piano is not an ideal instrument for performing a 15th century four-part vocal mass. Glad we've worked that out.


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## Mandryka

There’s an old tradition of making keyboard transcriptions of polyphonic sacred music including mass movements. These are these days most often played on pipe organs, for obvious reasons, and occasionally on harpsichord type instruments too. 

However, René Clemencic has recorded several of these transcriptions on clavichord. And so has Ilton Wjuniski. Not mass movements as far as I can see, but transcriptions of polyphonic motets. 

That gives me hope that a piano performance could be feasible without too much harming the music. But maybe Denk’s not the man, and maybe Denk’s instrument isn’t the best type of piano for the job.


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> That gives me hope that a piano performance could be feasible without too much harming the music..


If this is going to make sense, the musician must at least be highly historically informed. And such a musician would probably not choose to play this music on piano. And I still miss the point of doing so.

In Parrott's book "Composers intentions?" (a most interesting book, thanks for the recommendation, Mandryka) there is a quote from Taruskin(quoted from memory): _The most important task of the performer is to find out, how the audience wants the music played, and then do it _.Really a depressing anti-HIP consideration.


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## isorhythm

Talking about this album in terms of HIP is both irrelevant and deeply tedious. Time to let it go.


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## premont

Well, maybe I am unclear, but I didn't address this album in my last post at all, but the more general question of the piano as a vehicle for Early music.


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