Klezmer phrasing

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Hi y'all,

Matt Jaffey sent me this list of queries and suggested posting it, so brace
yourselves for more nebbish prattling:

Matt wrote:
> Once upon a time, I wrote:
> <<Some time back, you wrote to the Jewish music list that your intent vis a
> vis Klezmer was to start from the period of the earliest recorded examples
> and work your way backward.>>
>
> You responded:
> <<Actually, I meant that I started from an earlier period and worked
> FORWARD, the difference being that Im not concerned with  reconstruction
> as I am with re-creating from a point further back in time.>>

> Well, I've been meaning to ask you more about that. Some of your other
> messages at that time, with sci-fi like mentions of historical time as an
> illusion and what not, made me wonder what alternative parallel universe
> you imagined Budowitz to be traveling. I was reminded of the notes in Brave
> Old World's Beyond the Pale: "Imagine the Holocaust never happened. You're
> on a cruise ship on the Danube. Erik Satie on piano and Joseph Moskowitz on
> cymbalom are the house band. It's the last waltz of the evening..."

Gee I wish I were half as laconic as Michael Alpert. For the work with
Budowitz, I would rephrase that as: " Imagine the revival never happened.
You're on a horse driven cart in Galitsia. Belf on clarinet and Yankele
Fajerman on tsimbl are the shtibl band. It's the last korohod of the
evening..."
>
> But fortunately, in your recent Homeopathy and Budowitz infomercial you
> provided an interesting and illuminating narrative that I think very
> clearly states what your intent and activities have been. I'm looking
> forward to listening to your new cd.
>
> 2) The main thing that interested me about your response when I attempted
> to define various Klezmer ornaments on the Jewish-Music list was your
> stating that a large part of your practice time when learning a new melody
> was devoted to experimenting/improvising with micro-level ornamentation. I
> was wondering if you have any practical advice for how I can go about doing
> that myself.

Yes. Sing the melody before you play it, until you've memorized it. Then
sing each phrase separately, repeating only that phrase, but each time
varying one or two notes - here a diddly, there a chipchik until you come up
with a nice variation. Then find some more. Do this with each phrase. Then
pick up your axe and play. It will all gel pretty fast after that.
>
> This relates to something you said in the Budowitz - Mother Tongue cd
> notes. You were referring to 19th c. parameters of klezmer improvisation
> being in the areas of "phrasing, articulation and ornamentation"; a
> sentence later you refer to the parameters as "embellishment, note
> grouping, and inflection" - close to, but not identical to the first list.
> Then you stated: "In our workshops, our students have the most difficulty
> varying their phrasings. But once they start to 'shuffle and deal' their
> groupings around, they can't stop, and we actually have to remind them not
> to become too wildly assymmetric."

Okay here's a secret, but don't tell anyone: The phrase structure of Klezmer
music is usually symmetric, but the phrasing (and sometimes motivic)
structure is not. One easy way to cultivate assymetry in your phrasing is to
be aware of the "uneven division of eight principle" You may recognize this
in the bulgar rhythm, whereby an 8/8 meter is divided as 3+3+2 in the rhythm
section. Everyone who plays klezmer music knows this rhythm. But very few
apply it to the smaller rhythmic level of playing, which is the phrasing
level. There are only 3 permutations of this rhythm:

1)3+3+2,
2)2+3+3,
3)3+2+3

If we take, say, a16th-note melody which uses 8 notes in a phrase, like
this:

G A Bb A   G F E D

 and apply the above groupings, we get the following groupings:

1) GABb   AGF   ED
2) GA   BbAG   FED
3) GABb  AG   FED

Presto!! Brandwein phrasing!

Close, but not quite. Coupla things are missing. Don't forget that
SYMMETRICAL phrasings are also a possibility:

That means:

1) 2+2+2+2
2) 4+4
3) 2+4+2
4) 4+2+2
5) 2+2+4

In melodic terms:

1) GA   BbA   GF   ED
2) GABbA   GFED
3) GA   BbAGF   ED
4) GABbA   GF   ED
5) GA  BbA  GFED

Enough??

Not quite. When you split up your motifs into units of 4, there are still 2
more possibilities:

1) 1+3
2) 3+1

1) G   ABbA  GFE  D
2) GABb   A  G  FED

Now you're ready to mix and match. You will find yourself accenting the
first note of every sub-group of your phrasings. This is good. It gives your
playing punch and should make it possible for you to get folks dancing
without accompaniment if your feisty enough about it. One of the things
which people may not understand is that playing for listening and for
dancing will bring out different degrees of punchiness. When I play a doina
or the likes, my phrasing is not as clipped as when the dances get let out
of the bag.

Of course you're not going to use all of the above phrasing possibilities.
In fact beware of repeating any patterns as you will begin to sound
mechanical. You need to try them out though, so that you know which ones you
like best. Or better yet, sing them before you lay a hand to your axe. Basic
principle:

"What comes out of your mouth goes into your fingers."

That's just a reversal of what we did in our oral stage of development,
which was:

"What goes onto your fingers goes into your mouth."

Freud aside, this is the most effective learning method I know. Generations
of north Indian classical punjabs couldn't be that wrong. This principle of
learning music was around milleniae before the Kodaly and Yamaha methods
ever graced the planet.

Of course, some will argue that this method is intellectual. My answer: If
you can get that number of possibilities through an instinctive approach, go
ahead. But I ain't never known one who could. Besides, you gotta do what
Dizzy said, or was it Bird? Anyway, it was something like, "learn your
scales, learn your chords, then forget all that stuff and blow."

> So, I'm wondering how you get people to the point where they are
> successfully experimenting in the first place.
>
> More thoughts on this:
>
> a) When I first started playing Klezmer music, I meticulously transcribed
> from old 78's every little ornament that I heard and I would pay close
> attention to variations in rhythms in the melody line. I figured, you can't
> very well invent your own thing if you don't know the language. Some time
> after that, Kurt Bjorling started telling me that, hey, even the guy who
> did the recording might have done it completely differently the next day,
> so I should too. But I still didn't feel like I knew the language well
> enough to be inventive.
>
> b) Andy Statman, on his instructional video, quotes Dizzy Gillespie as
> saying, "he beeped when he should have bopped" (i.e. anyone who knows a
> style can tell if you don't know what your doing). Andy said something like
> "there are definite rules for placement and choice of ornamentation in
> klezmer music, but I'm at a loss to tell you what they are. You just have
> to listen to the old recordings and learn the language."
>
> c) O.K., so one can learn by osmosis, just absorbing the feel of the music
> by listening a lot. And I see that happening for me gradually. Ideally, it
> should be possible to experiment quite spontaneously, without much
> intervention by the intellect in the choice making process - maybe it's
> good if the intellect can discriminate what you do that sounds good, so you
> can remember it for the next time, or so you can try combinations that
> aren't part of your ordinary habits.

Where did we ever get the idea that creativity, emotion and intellect are
separate things??
>
> d) In my own case, I find myself doing improvisational things with a melody
> in my head at times when I'm not playing the violin. Yet it doesn't seem to
> translate readily to violin. Once I get that fiddle in my hands, habitual
> patterns seem to take over. Do you have any suggestions for how I could
> better integrate these two levels?

Three words can solve your problem; Sing. Sing. Sing.

> e) You seem to like an intellectual approach as an aid to improvisation. I
> recall some interchange that you shared with the Jewish-Music list having
> to do with tools for analyzing Klezmer and Klez mixed with other stuff. One
> point you made was, there has to be a reason for doing this analysis. In
> your own case, you said, it was as an aid to improvisation. Now that kind
> of analysis, it seems to me, has to do with the structure of melodies and
> harmonies and with modulations of mode, rather than with the parameters of
> 19th c. Klezmer improvisation that I quoted from you above. On the other
> hand, your response when I tried to define a few Klezmer ornaments, was to
> say that no one had ever tried to compile anything like this, it's an aural
> tradition, what people did was regional, or even local in its character
> etc. That was a response just to the ornaments, let alone any logic for
> their placement or variation. So, in your own mind, have you discovered any
> definable rules for micro-level ornamentation, or do you just go by feel.
> And if you have found rules, can you share any ideas in that area? Along
> these lines, do you have any kind of systematic approach for trying out
> options when you are experimenting with a new melody?

Most of the above portion about permutations answers these questions, but
this is more a teaching method than an actual portrayal of my own methods,
which are often not very methodical. Occasionally I do look at what I'm
doing and say, "This sounds like crap. What's wrong with it?" Then I do a
3-point check on my spark plugs, file off the tips, then clean the valves.
After that I usually get frustrated, end up junking the whole set-up, prop
up some pillows, slink onto the sofa, crack open a can of beer and watch bad
sit-coms to cheer myself up with the reminder that there's worse forms of
entertainment than klezmer music. Or I write to the list.
>
> I know I may be asking for a bit much here, but any good ideas that you
> have along these lines would be welcome. Even just places to start, or
> where to put my attention, given limited time to devote to this. If you
> feel like putting any of this, along with your response on the Jewish-Music
> list, that's fine with me.
>
> Be Well,
> Matt

Genug haynt? be well, Josh
  

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