Walter Piston - Symphony No. 2

####Bio

- Born 1894 in Rockland, Maine, and eventually the family moved to Boston. 

- Early on, Piston considered becoming an artist instead of a musician. He actual finished his degree in painting at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. He spoke of the transition quote 

> “I went to art school and earned money on the side playing the violin and the piano. I kept getting more and more interested in music, and by the end of the senior year I was entirely devoted to it; but by then I was so near to graduation I decided to finish up school and I got my diploma as a painter.”

- Since the Piston’s didn’t have a piano around until they moved to Boston, Walter picked up the violin and reportedly practiced so much his mother complained. That is ABSOLUTELY not something that would have happened in my house growing up! Quite the opposite...

- One quote of Piston is just funny on its own, but also shows his continuous curiosity. Before he began his studies at Harvard, he seems to have wanted to get ahead of the draft, entering the Navy Band at MIT. He explained quote “when the war cam, the First World War, that is, and it became obvious that everybody had to go into the service, I wanted to go in as a musician. I couldn’t play any band instrument, but I knew instruments and I knew that the saxophone was very easy.” HAHAHAHA! Oh, but he wasn’t done. “So I... bought a saxophone, and stopped by at the public library to get an instruction book. I learned enough to play by ear. In a very short time I was called and I tried out for the band. I didn’t pretend to read the part but just played notes that went with the harmony, and I was accepted.” So that’s it?? Not only, in his own version of the story anyway, did he prove that quote “saxophone was very easy”... really? That was the standard for getting into the Navy Band at MIT in the early 20th century? No need to actually read the music, just play something that sounds like music, based on what they put in front of you... Were I a comedian I’m sure that whole thing would be ripe for material!

- Piston married Kathryn Nason, who kept her maiden name. She was an artist, and though it seems she rarely exhibited her work, she was very involved in the advocacy for her medium.

- The couple had no interest in and never had children. Instead they tended gardens and raised dogs and cats. In fact, Piston actually once confessed “Some of my best musical ideas come to me while I’m spreading manure.”

- Now, Piston and his wife seemed to be of the Bohemian sort, passionate about art and music, preferring life exploration to outright money and security. They were part of a free-living group of people that lived in an un-urbanized area of Belmont, Maine, called “The Hill”. They got drunk often, discussed visual art, and even regularly held nude sketching parties. Since mostly you will only find pictures of the SENIOR Mr. Piston, this is an unfortunate image to have... but I digress. Though it may seem a youthful time, this was Piston’s way of life while he did a great deal of his serious composing.

- While teaching at Harvard, Piston maintained quite a furtive compositional pace. In all, he wrote nearly 80 works that ran the gamut of the art music medium.

####Culture

- If you have ever had life kick you in the teeth, you understand the Einstein quote “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” In a way, Walter Piston had this figured out for himself early on when he reluctantly decided he was going to be a composer. Admitting to a reunion of the Harvard Class of 1924:

> After graduation I spent two years in Paris... I discovered [then] that I would probably become a composer. Now it is not from choice that one becomes a composer but rather, it seems, one does it in spite of everything even against one’s better judgement. But writing long-haired music is not a way to make a living...

- Concurrent with teaching and composing, he wrote four academic texts that are still discussed and argued about to this day: Principles of Harmonic Analysis, Harmony, Counterpoint, and Orchestration.

- The fact that Piston developed, published, and continuously edited his academic texts would suggest that he is by and large of an analytical mindset. However, even in those texts he offers warnings and nuggets of wisdom along the way, cautioning against taking theoretical study too far. In Counterpoint, Piston spends the first chapter discussing “melodic curve”, instructing that “the outline of a melody may be perceived by simply looking at the music” and that “the word curve is useful to suggest the essential quality of continuity”. Then, after giving many examples and explaining his methodology, Piston makes sure to point out “it is important to see that in the process of analysis and simplification we do not destroy or lose sight of those details of a melody which are the essence of its individuality and expressive quality.” This statement is telling of his own philosophy on composition itself. Putting it succinctly, from the preface to Harmony, “[music theory] tells not how music will be written in the future, but how music has been written in the past.” So, as much as Piston wrote about theory, about theories about theory, and edited the books he wrote about those theories on his own theory... he held the perspective that composition is an organic event, not to follow a prescribed path. This concept absolutely plays out in his work, as we will see with his Symphony No. 2.

- Musicologist and biographer Howard Pollack does a great job of getting to the core of Piston’s compositional individuality. In his book _Walter Piston and His Music_, Pollack says “One steady and important aspect of Piston’s music is his ability to give an advanced twentieth-century idiom the sort of motion and direction one finds in eighteenth and nineteenth-century classics, and this he does by asserting such principles as pulse, melodic curve, harmonic rhythm, tonal design, and symmetrical form. In fact, all the musical elements, including dynamics and color, are responsive to form and movement.”

- An interesting thing Piston said himself about what it is like to compose a piece gives us a bit of incite into his thinking. Quote “I used to tell my students, as soon as you put down one note you’ve changed the conditions, and then you have to consider the others in relation to this, whereas before you put it down, you’re free. On the other hand, you’ve got to be ready to throw that away, and that takes courage...” I’m sure this mirrors the writing process quite closely.

- Symphony No. 2, written 1943, premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra in 1944.

- Obviously, the timing of completion and premiere can’t be separated from WWII. Whether or not Piston intended it, this 2nd Symphony draws American patriotic association. Personally, I am not in agreement that the external factors effecting the composer him or herself will by default manifest itself literally in the music. Though, a few musician quotes from early performances show a strong emotional response. Hans Kindler, who conducted the premiere, said “\[The Symphony] is without even the shadow of a doubt one of the half dozen great works written during the last ten years. It sings forever in my heart and in my consciousness, and Dow not want to leave me. Even Erich Leinsdorf wrote “The performance of your Symphony which took place last night was, to me personally, the most gratifying experience with any score that has seen daylight within the last ten or fifteen years.” Well, we have to hear some of it after reviews like that!

###Analysis of piece

####Overall scope

- Piston’s Symphony No. 2 is written in 3 movements: Moderato, Adagio, Allegro. 3 movement symphonies are a less used format. Usually 4 movements is standard, as established by Haydn and Mozart. But, it was not uncommon, and knowing Piston’s knowledge of form we can confidently assume he had strong reasoning to go this route. Even the movements themselves are basically in sonata form, though the sound and inflection is undeniably Pistonian.

####Excerpts

- In the first movement Moderato, the opening theme is a serious, lyrical unfolding from the very beginning, presented at first in unison with little accompaniment.

- The second theme is a dramatic contrast to the first, playful, off kilter, almost tongue-in-cheek.

- In the recap, Piston brings this theme back in a bigger, more filled out capacity adding brass and more percussion to boost the moment.

- However, to close the movement this sort of fanfare becomes a calm brass chorale, ending just with the same seriousness as he began.

- The Adagio movement, on the other hand, has a completely different feeling. Like home, down to earth. After a brief introduction to set the soft texture, syncopated pulses in the strings accompany a gorgeous clarinet solo, crafted and presented with simple delicacy.

- Throughout this movement, even as it expands to climaxes and contracts back from them, the tenor of sensuousness never gives way. Even as the sound slowly builds to the ultimate moment of tension, the feeling is of complete organic overflow.

- Incidentally, it was this 2nd movement that Leonard Bernstein conducted as a tribute to Piston upon his death.

- The final movement, Allegro, begins with a pop, racing energy, and a characteristic Piston horn call, followed by a semi-fugue, all setting the stage for a quick, intense closing.

- When this same material is repeated it is appropriately right at the height of excitement as Piston barrels into the recap.

- Then to close out the whole of the symphony, Piston pushes forward the motion while letting out all the energy. He even pulls back the tempo for one brief moment, and then like a slingshot shoots off to the rousing finish!

###Closing

- Honestly, most of the orchestral pieces in Piston’s portfolio deserve to be heard, analyzed, and enjoyed, most notably including his 8 numbered symphonies, the ballet _The Incredible Flutist_, _Three New England Sketches_, and Serenata for Orchestra. Carrying on his legacy, not only will his theory texts continue to be discussed for many decades to come, after teaching at Harvard for 34 years, his long list students include some recognizable names such as Samuel Adler, Leroy Anderson, Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, and Colon Nancarrow.

- Piston’s music is moving and on the edge of what came to be a new sound in American music. Even now, his pieces have a distinctiveness of both depth and quality. As we continue to perform and hear his music, we will come to know more of the character of this great composer.

Music:

Symphony No. 2

By: Walter Piston

Performed By: Gerard Schwarz, Seattle Symphony Orchestra

Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc.

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