Example research essay topic: Helpful Book For Music Practicing - 763 words

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Helpful Book for Music Practicing I like to listen to music of Schumann and I was wondering how to perform it better. I had found the book that I needed for this purpose. It is Harald Krebs new book, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann, where the author has put his finger on the pulse of Schumann's rhythm, sensitizing us to a world of rhythmic sensations that theorists normally ignore. And what brings his ideas even more to life is the extraordinary style of presentation Krebs has chosen. This book helps me to understand better Schumann's music and allows those of us who would like to learn how to perform it in better and more touching way, which makes it useful for music practicing. At first, Krebs seems to be taking a lighter turn on the age-old tradition of writing a theory treatise in dialogue.

However, a painful insight into Robert intrudes when we realize that this is really a fantasy within a fiction; indeed the moment of revelation, seen through the eyes of the sympathetically rendered Clara, is one that I found genuinely moving. Further, Krebs gradually makes clear that psychological insight is not irrelevant to his very substantial and wide-ranging musical exegesis. According to Krebs, grouping dissonance is formed of the collision of incommensurable layers; displacement dissonance occurs when congruent layers are offset from each other. Though this takes getting used to, on the whole, Krebs system is a clear and elegant method of labeling a wide variety of rhythmic conflicts. It is also important is that these dissonances can be indirect or subliminal (terms that overlap somewhat), understood because the conflicting layer, although absent, may be retained or inferred by listener.

Krebs convincingly argues that the notated meter is to be heard as referential, even if not at first explicitly expressed. I agree that this sort of notation is not meaningless idiosyncrasy, but is meant to be heard as subliminal dissonance, a kind of unconscious contortion of a more relaxed posture. Indeed, the descriptions of how these and other metrical dissonances are to be heard, and the advice on how they are to be realized in performance is among the best I have read. I would perhaps emphasize more than Krebs the extent to which Schumann's extravagantly imaginative notation confirms his awareness of anti metrical layers. To be sure, Schumann was not the first to beam across barnes, but special placement of beams together with the syncopated eighth notes in the left hand, virtually forces a dissonant layer, displaced by a sixteenth, into existence. Dissonances often remain distinct personae, but they can also be shown to be systematically related in families.

Among the most valuable contributions of this book are the many citations of compositional revisions by Schumann. These lay to rest any question of intentional fallacy: the concern for careful manipulation of rhythm is indisputable, and Krebs persuasively details myriad reasons why Schumann increased or sometimes decreased the level of dissonance. He also addresses questions of form, of text expression, and, perhaps most important, of extra-musical significance. Because of its direct connection with our sense of bodily experience, rhythm and meter can seem particularly rich with meaning, a topic which Krebs does not exhaust. Also quite fascinating, he alludes frequently to a connection between Schumann's pervasive dissonance and his precarious mental condition (and hence, to the books fictional conceit).

Krebs theory highlights some aspects of music and downplays others. Some readers of this book may feel the lack of a real relationship between metrical dissonance and tonal structure (though, to be sure, Krebs shares some fine insights into a handful of pieces). The danger is that metrical dissonance, usually slighted to begin with, might be seen as a kind of underground alternative to the legitimate world of tonal theory. What I find most exciting about Krebs book is its enthusiasm for embracing the possibilities of complex metrical states.

While on the one hand, I would hope that no serious theorist will be put off by the presence of Florestan and Eusebius in this book, I would on the other hand hope that the admirably efficient labeling system does not create the impression that all rhythmic effects have been precisely captured. Fantasy Pieces is a work of remarkable insight into the metrical body that beats within Schumann's music, and into the mind that conceived it, which makes the book to be very helpful in practicing Schumann's music. Bibliography: Krebs, Harald. Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999

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