Group 1
Welcome to the latest TWO WEEK INTENSIVE on tonebase!
For the next two weeks we will be working through assignments given by Ben Laude to improve your playing and understanding of Schubert!
Pianists of all levels are welcome.
More Detailed instructions coming soon!
- Sign-Up : December 1st - 4th
- Course Period: December 4th -15th
- Class Size: ALL are welcome!
- Optional check-In via Zoom: December 12th at 11am PT
Click here to join the meeting!
Assignment #1
ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS (WEEK 1)
- Watch the ABOVE video, which will serve as a crash course in chromatic harmony in preparation for your assignment.
- If you have no idea what Iâm talking about in the video, check out these materials to get up to speed:
- Pre-requisite/review course:
- Course: Music Theory Basics
- Other helpful tonebase resources:
- Livestream: Harmonic Analysis Crash Course
- Forums thread: Improve Your Harmonic Analysis with Ben Laude
- Pre-requisite/review course:
- If you have no idea what Iâm talking about in the video, check out these materials to get up to speed:
- Perform a harmonic analysis on Schubertâs Moment Musical #6 (A Section only; you can stop at the Trio):
- Label chords with roman numerals
- Mark cadences (half cadence: ends on V; authentic cadence: V resolves to I)
- Identify the following chromatic devices:
- Secondary dominant
- Augmented 6th
- Modal mixture
- Chromatic mediant
- Common-tone modulation
- Optional: Perform a harmonic analysis on a Schubert piece of your choice (or target specific passages from pieces youâre curious about)
â Donât expect to get everything right! This is an advanced harmonic analysis. The whole point of the TWI is to dive into the deep end of Schubertâs harmony and formâŠ
â Ask questions in the forum! I will be replying to user questions, and weâll be going over the whole thing in next weekâs Zoom meeting.
â For more experienced users, I do recommend analyzing the recommended study piece (and helping your fellow TWIs); but you may want to spend your time on another Schubert piece youâre already working on.
Schubertâs piano music
The âeasiestâ of Schubertâs piano music are probably his collections of Waltzes, LĂ€ndler, and other dances. These capture the spirit of Schubert the dancer, although they arenât representative of his harmonic/compositional exploration, so I donât recommend them for this TWI. Instead, you should take a look through Schubert's core piano repertoire, most of which is listed here:
Level 6-8
- Moment musicals
- Two Scherzi, D. 593
- Impromptus op 90, op 142
- 3 Klavierstucke
Level 6-10
- Sonatas
Level 11
- Wanderer Fantasy
Feel free to venture beyond the solo piano music!
ZOOM CHECK- IN with Ben!
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This tiny piece is an amazing journey of the soul. How difficult it is to control the dynamics so that they reflect the harmonic complexities without overemphasizing them! And yes, there is snow in Vancouver.
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Monika Tusnady VERY beautiful! I agree with the others: snow is always appropriate for Schubert's. Little things in your playing make it really glow: your voicing, for example, just before the move to E major â the way you show the D in the middle of the augmented 6th chord, but then shift your emphasis to your tops when E major arrives; or when your bass really takes command in bar 66... I could say more. Overall you have a wonderful touch and feel for this music. Bravo!
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Thank you Ben Laude ! you can't imagine how much your careful listening and kind words mean to me . Unfortunately, I have my monthly book club meeting during our Zoom check-in today. Is there any way that it can be recorded and shared?
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Monika Tusnady Yes it's being recorded! Do you have any questions for me beforehand? I can address any specific points in the analysis/interpretation of the Musical Moment â or any other Schubert piece â you might be wondering about.
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Ben Laude That's great! I'm wondering about a few things in this Moment Musical:
1. The rests. In most recordings I listened to, the rests are pedalled over. What are your thoughts on that?
2. The tempo marking - ALLEGRO??? How Allegro is this Allegro? Is this also an indication as to the overall feeling of the piece?
3. I love the physicality of the momentous chord changes, the way the hand pulls together in, say, C major to E flat seventh. In this shifts, how much time do we take so that
a> it's enough time and
b> it does not sound as though you're shouting to the world: LOOK! I did Ben's harmonic analysis!
4. Assuming we do a ritardando in these harmonic aberrations, how soon after do we resume the previous tempo?
There's more, but I'll stop for now.
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Monika Tusnady Thanks! Happy to address all of these in the recorded meeting so I can demonstrate. I'll say one thing about #2: it's marked allegretto, not "allegro." That's a significant difference! The most famous Allegretto of all time, which Schubert 100% loved and adored and even used as a compositional model for many of his pieces, is the second movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony. Take a listen: it's not fast at all!
Having said that, I'm probably playing the piece on the slow side. More like an 'andante.' Still viable, but I might try it a little faster in the Zoom call.
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Monika Tusnady How do you ALWAYS know the exact questions I want to ask BEFORE I get ask them? Tu es ma vrai jumelle!
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Gail Starr It is sooo very special to know someone who shares this way of thinking about music! Love having you in my life, musical and otherwise!
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Dear Group 1,
I hope you have a good week studying and analyzing Schubert! Welcome to WEEK 2.
First, a reminder about the (optional) Zoom check-in tomorrow (December 12) at 11:00 a.m. US Pacific Time: MEETING LINK
- In the meeting, I will first go over the harmonies in the study piece and segue into the theme of Week 2: interpretation.
- I'll also field as many questions from participants as I can, including about other Schubert pieces you might be studying.
- If you can't make the meeting but have a question you would like me to address, leave it in this forum thread and I'll round them up before hand and do my best to answer in the meeting.
Later today, I will post "Assignment No. 2" in which I speak to the topic of interpreting Schubert's music at the keyboard, flowing out of our study of chromatic harmony.
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Below, I have attached my own harmonic analysis of the recommended study piece (Musical Moment No. 6). Please take a look and compare it to your own effort. Note that I did not label inessential harmonies, nor did I label repeated material where the same analysis applies. I used colors as follows:
- RED: Diatonic harmony (in the key of Ab major)
- ORANGE: Secondary dominants
- PURPLE: Modal borrowing (parallel minor)
- MODULATION: Analysis in a new key (E major)
- GREEN: Augmented 6ths (labeled as "It+6", "Ger+6", and "Fr+6", for the 3 different flavors)
- BLACK: Cadences (HC = Half Cadence, ending on V; PAC = Perfect Authentic Cadence, ending with a strong V-I)
I also marked in yellow certain chromatic events: accented passing tones (APT), chromatic passing tones (CPT), common tones, and common tone modulations (CTM). Also, be on the look out for an extraordinary use of the Neapolitan 6 chord (bII6).
Again, if you have questions about my analysis (or if you think I made any mistakes), please let me know ahead of the meeting as it will help me focus on the kinds of things you all have questions about.
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I understand that for some (most?) of you, chromatic harmony wasn't just the "deep end" of analysis... it was like throwing you into the ocean with no life jacket. Again, the way I chose to structure the course it to teach to the highest standard (roughly equivalent to 2nd-year college music theory), and provide as many resources/life lines for you to try to grasp as much as you can about harmonic analysis in Schubert from wherever you're starting from.
If you feel like you just weren't equipped to grasp any of the chromatic harmonies in Schubert, please let me know where you feel stuck and I will do my best to help pull you up.
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Otherwise, looking forward to finding beauty and meaning in all of this analysis!
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Two quick corrections on my analysis:
- Bar 35: should read "viiÂș7", not "iiÂș7"
- Bars 45-46: should read "IAC" (Imperfect Authentic Cadence), not "PAC." Good teachable moment here: a PAC is the strongest cadential resolution of V-I, because there's scale degree (sd) 5 moving to 1 in the bass, and also sd 7 or 2 resolving to 1 in the soprano. In this cadence, you do get 5-1 in the bass, but the soprano falls from 4 to 3! IACs are less conclusive than PACs, and that's true of what you see here: the phrase continues with this stern movement to the vi chord.
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Thank you for this, Ben Laude! I've only used your analysis to correct my first few bars, and I feel like I'm already a better musician because of it...haha. Going through it all will be a good learning experience.
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Marc M That's great to hear! I responded to your analysis above, which is very solid. Let me know if you have any specific questions about mine.
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Thank you Ben. I only managed the first 16 measures. I then got stuck wondering what was going on with the two new flats, C and F. Now of course I can see it is in A flat minor.
So yes, I am one of those flailing about in the deep end.
But it is a good start for me and hopefully I can put it to good use in the future.
I have just finished your Music Theory Basics and it is a fantastic course, so thank you for that!
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Richard Littlewood I hope you're finding this rewarding! I want to send out as many life-vests to the folks I've thrown into the deep end. Even from your "aha!" moment with Ab minor, I can see you're puzzling over this music in the right direction. Even just making it 16 bars deep is worth a lot in Schubert's music. Let me know if you have any specific questions about my analysis, or music theory in general
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Richard Littlewood OMG, I am SO down in the deep end with you...despite wearing little "floaties". Still plowing through Ben's Basics videos, so I'll have to circle back to this TWI and watch everything again.
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I donât know if my scribbling will be clear or if the files uploaded correctly.
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Harriet Kaplan Very very good! Mostly correct, or at least as far as I have analyzed and understood the piece. You even spotted the suspension at the beginning (note that, because the C is suspended into the first bar, it led me to call that a "ii6/5" chord instead of IV, but that's less important... I understand why it might look and feel like IV for a moment there). I only have little comment, which you might find useful more generally: always keep in mind the context in which a chord is happening, and how it might be functioning. For example, you label the C major chord in bar 12 with a big fat "III" â which is only true in isolation. In fact it's a secondary dominant that never resolves. This is tricky, but if you really listen to that part, you'll realize that the C major chord sounds like an unresolved dominant because of that juicy French Augmented 6th chord that comes before it. Even though you didn't identify the augmented 6th chord, you could revert to using your ear and hearing that that kind of sound tends to come before a dominant.
But that's a small thing, and a tricky/advanced one, so don't worry about it. Overall, this was excellent!
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Dear all,
As promised, here is a video in which I speak about this week's assignment on applying your analysis to interpreting a piece by Schubert.
I then spend most of the (rather long) video walking through the study piece (Musical Moment no. 6, A section). I go into a great amount of detail on how I constructed my own interpretation, which you might find more or less compelling. But most importantly, this can serve as a model of how you might apply analytic tools to achieve your own musical/expressive results in this and other pieces by Schubert.
If you're interested, you may look through these study notes I took while analyzing the piece and developing my conception.
Don't forget about the Zoom call tomorrow at 11:00 am Pacific (Meeting link here), and if you can't make it don't worry, we're recording it. Again, feel free to leave questions ahead of time and I'll be happy to address them on the call.
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Ben Laude Such a beautiful analysis! Thank you, Ben!
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Ben Laude Thank you for helping to translate the analysis into thoughts about how to play the piece. Super helpful!
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Ben Laude Absolutely fabulous! A lot to think about. Thank you so much.
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Ben Laude It's super helpful to hear all of the whys behind what makes your interpretation so effective. Thanks for sharing!
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Alright, here's a go at the first page or so of the Eb Impromptu. I'm still getting comfortable with it, and I slow down a lot right at the point where things start getting more interesting (need more practice). I couldâve sworn I was playing a bit faster than this video, but the video doesnât lie--funny how listening to a recorded performance sounds so different compared to listening to myself when I'm playing. Also, working dynamics into the right hand is taking a surprising amount of effort. Maybe it needs to be louder when it becomes forte? I'm not sure.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
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Marc M Great job! And already memorized! I wouldn't worry about dynamics too much until you see what dynamic level you end up in as the piece develops more. I think maybe that kind of thing falls into place over time?
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Gail Starr Thanks! I think it will eventually fall into place as you say. It's easy for me to do a rising scale, but to make it start p and go to f in a short period ends up tiring out certain forearm muscles quickly. I suspect I'm inadvertently doing the "play louder by flexing harder" method, and I just need to pay closer attention to what I'm doing.
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Hi Ben and everyone!
Here is my video of second assignment. I've tried to point out the key moments in the video following the contractions (HC, CTM...). I'm sure I missed a lot of interesting details and made mistakes. But, I'm now aware of the complexity of Schubert chromatic harmony, the incredible flexibility of his writing of moving between "parallel universes". In this particular piece (the second KlavierstĂŒcke D 946), which I love, the harmony journey has almost an existential meaning in the always beautiful and emotional sense of Schubert music. Thank you so much for this insightful course (these videos are a real treasure to learn the secrets of Schubert harmony).
