Modern Flute at its Classiest: My programmatic and score interpretation of Frank Martin’s Ballade for Flute and Piano

Modern Flute at its Classiest: My programmatic and score interpretation ofFrank Martin’s Ballade for Flute and Piano

It is rather hard to characterize the modern flute’s repertoire with one descriptive word:  Be it “representational”, “programmatic”, or merely as “colorful”.  Usually, when I mention modern flute pieces to people, they jump back, assuming that I will play something like Luciano Berio’s Sequenza, or the Boulez Sonatine.  These pieces (and many others) in the modern flute repertoire have made very little use of the full capacity for the instrument’s expressive abilities.# There is one piece in particular that is on an expressive level of its own within the realm of “classical” flute modern repertoire.  In this essay, I will discuss what it is that makes Frank Martin’s Ballade for Flute and Piano so unique, and will provide my own performance analysis on various aspects.  I will also express why it is that it is such a gem in the modern flute repertoire.

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad. -Thanks Wikipedia.

The varying musical styles of Frank Martin betray a number of musical roots, but none can be traced to individual teachers.  Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Martin was primarily self-taught.  At sixteen he studied composition with Swiss composer Joseph Lauber and would later go on to teach rhythmic theory and improvisation at the Geneva Conservatory.  He was a great lover or religious works, and often believed that the performance of music as the realization of a score’s essence, and spoke of the creation of music as incarnation.  In his search for a more profound method of metaphysical expression, he created his own style from a synthesis of twelve-tone serialism, extended tonality, free atonality, neo-classicism and various rhythmic experimentations.  The influences of late German Romanticism, French Impressionism, Baroque, serialism, and jazz can be found especially in Martin’s later works.  He believed that, “One should multiply experiments and technical researches in order to master all one’s potentialities and thus be able to respond materially to one’s spiritual concept”.  

   

He utilizes the serial twelve-tone techniques of Schoenberg, without embracing the philosophy behind it: He experimented with rhythm and the colorful styles of Debussy: He synthesized the counterpoint and rich dissonance treatments of his beloved Bach. (“At twelve he had the chance to listen to a performance of Saint Mathew’s Passion: The impression on the child was so deep that it marked the composer’s life, to whom Bach remained the true master”.#)  In fact, the motivic saturation of the flute Ballade would have even put Beethoven to shame.   Even so, rather than subscribe to any of any one of these, he took what he found to be the best elements of each of them and incorporated them into his own methods of expression.

Martin essentially found the “new language” in Schoenberg’s twelve-tone serialism that his embracing of Debussy and Bach had not quite filled.  In Serialism, he had found the “one that would satisfy at the same time [his] sense of tonality [his] eagerness for functional dissonance, and [his] innate and very keen fondness for the chromaticism in the manner of Bach.  The use of twelve-tone series, as strict as possible but yet keeping [his] freedom, and like-wise a rule [he] observed to avoid or mask all octaves or unisons, helped [him] greatly in shaking off any habits which in [his] opinion are not basic to harmonic music, though they did reign and preside over the whole classic and romantic music”.  He also said, “Far be it from me to criticize these; they produced nearly all the masterpieces we live by.   No. Simply, I felt the need of a language within which I could discover lands that would be new for me”.

Although Martin adopted Schoenberg’s language, he had a philosophically different view as to the “why” of his method. Schoenberg saw his older music as continuing the Wagnerian tradition of a world which could only say of him: "He is a Jew."

For I have at last learnt the lesson that has been forced upon me during this year, and I shall not ever forget it. It is that I am not a German, not a European, indeed not perhaps scarcely even a human being (at least, the Europeans prefer the worst of their race to me), but I am a Jew.#

In short, he took tonality personally.  In contrast, Martin leaves tonality, not out of contempt for the harmonic sublimation of pre-existing decadent Western European philosophies (that Schoenberg appeals to); rather, it is in the spirit of finding a new language.   Where Gershwin took a similar step and sought to meld the genres of Europe and American jazz, Martin was working on taking the what he could from everything that he encountered.

Frederick Chopin once said to a student, “He who phrases incorrectly is like a man who does not understand the language that he speaks”.  This may very well be true, but to be able to say something in a more beautiful, articulate, and affective way is the point of music.  Thus, Martin never forgot the harmonies of Bach when he discovered and used (though not with any strict conventions) the dodecaphonic methods of Schoenberg.

However, in an age where so many questions are answered in the score, it is left up to the individual flutist to render meaning through her/his rendition of rhythm, tempo, harmony, melody and dynamics, tone color, and phrasing.  Yet, a problem with “modern pieces” as Katherine Warkentkin points out in her dissertation#, is that “modern” music is stereotyped as very analytical and precise.  Basically, the composer “gets what he wants” out of the performer. However, as flute virtuoso Paula Robison puts it, “[Martin] delighted in, and depended upon, the almost mystical bond between composer and interpreter, believing that the interpretation of a score is not something just added on but is rather the realization in sound for the score’s essence.”  Thus, the oxymoron of free form is translated from Western European tonality to the new world (i.e. “form”) of Schoenberg.

Frank Martin’s Ballade itself was composed as a competition piece for 1939 Geneva International Competition and is one among six of Martin’s ballades.   He wrote one for flute piano, trombone, alto saxophone, viola, and cello. Although his Ballade for flute was originally composed for flute and piano (and is still most often performed as such) the edition for flute, piano and string orchestra is the most commonly recorded.

I think that Robison captured the double-negative juxtaposition emote of this work through the words of François Villon:

Stanza 1

I die of thirst beside the fountain           

I’m hot as fire, I’m shaking tooth on tooth

In my own country I’m in a distant land

Beside the blaze I’m shivering in flames

Naked as a worm, dressed like a president,

I laugh in tears and wait without hope

I cheer up in sad despair

I’m joyful and no pleasure is anywhere

I’m powerful and lack all force and strength

Warmly welcomed, always turned away
      

These types of juxtapositions and contradictions are all over the ballade: The harmony and organization contradict what Martin indicates in his dynamics markings: In m66-76, the flute is told to play forte and leggiero (meaning light, delicate, and graceful) are over the piano’s insistent ostenato thumping, which itself has the oxymoronical markings of  piano  and marcato (marked, pronounced) and secco (dry).  These contradictory instructions might (in a German, phrase-obsessed, unified way) seem to be

But again, it is important to recall:  this piece is all about showing the performer’s abilities and interpretation:  this passage can be played heavy  and war-like

One way of seeing the form of Ballade is to call it a ballade mixed with a sort of variation on the ABA sonata stricture:  Warkenski suggests that the piece’s structure can be explained as:

A  -B  -A1   -b  -C  -b  -A2  -B  -A3

1. Sections which begin slowly or moderately.
2. Fast, rhythmically animated sections
3. Unaccompanied cadenza 
   D.  Short thematic reference to material from B sections

But a less musically analytical interpretation of it could be as thus:  the introduction of the Ballade is that of a medieval ballade. It has the quality of a voice speaking:  The continuous eighth note rhythm is stretched beyond a talking quality when the flute starts to jump octaves: switching from the human to a more inhuman, unnatural timbre of voice.  The opening can be said to invoke the medieval ballades: a voice telling a folk story.  (In fact, the trombone Ballade itself is an allusion to folk:  The trombone is the voice of Ossian, who is a legendary Gaelic hero and bard of the third century A.D.)  Another tool that he utilizes in this Ballade is that of the repetitive figures in the bass line.  He frequently establishes a rhythmic ostenato over which rhapsodic melodies and changes in tempi allude to different characters.    The ballade can be said to share the desperate narrative structure of Chopin’s Romantic piano ballades.  

The form itself is romantically dramatic, and follows thus as a narrative ballade.   The poetic verse form for a ballade has three stanzas of eight or ten lines.  Each is followed by a brief envoy.  (An envoy is a short closing stanza or refrain which dedicates the poem to a patron or summarizes the main idea.)

The first “stanza” of the flute Ballade spans from m.1-43.  It is characterized best by the gypsy-like, undulating line of eighth notes that become an important forward-moving tool. The opening phrases expand by increments:  the intensity increases and expands systematically, just as the piece as a whole will.  The first phrase spans only four measures (m 1-4): the second; six (m. 5-10): and third lasts nine measures (m. 11-19) and with a slight coda with the ascending four-note theme that can be also seen throughout the work. The first stanza ends with the start of the first “envoy” (identified most easily as starting with a chromatic, strong-beat, descending triplet) obtrusively in what might be thought to be the beginning of the next stanza in m.44-47. The second stanza starts at m.48 and lasts through the cadenza, only coming to an end just before the second envoy, which occurs the six-bar Lento section (m.194-6).  The third stanza starts at 197, but can arguably end at either 314, 319, 323, or 346.

A structurally poetic way of reading this dissolve of the envoy’s function overall structure would be to say that the “envoy” triplet motif has performed a hostile –albeit passionate- take-over.  The quarter-note triplets in the flute line at 319  “ritard slightly”, but mathematically, the harmonic rhythm takes over.  Because of the new tempo change at the Meno Moso (m.324), the piano’s (octave-double) dotted quarter notes will equal the speed of the regular quarter notes in m. 223.  The rhythm has accellerando’ed on its own.  Thus, a seamless change from m. 223 to 224 “sounds” like a change from 3/4 meter to 6/8, and thus (aurally) recalls the eighth-note melodic material that permeates the entire piece.  Also, depending on the “tempo”, the piece itself can be read in virtually any of the 3/4, 3/8/ 2/4, and 6/8.  Often, the meter becomes so convoluted and constant for the listener that it becomes hard to ascertain where any divisive downbeat is. To the listener, this confusion eliminates any sense of metric (or mental) stability. The meter and expression are just as the oxymoronic as were the words of Francois Villon.   The double-negative contradiction evinced through the contradictory notations, markings, meters, dynamics, articulations, inspire an ironic feeling of  being senseless and lost in a piece whose rhythmic complexities and design have been engineered to give the feeling of freedom and improvised virtuosity.

The ending of this piece is essentially orgiastic in nature:  akin to the swarming of locusts or the rising of some inevitability. Of course, another interpretation of this very same section can be that of joy; a triumph of something positive.  (Of course, this can more easily be heard when the piece is recorded in the original version, since more colors can be done (audibly) when there is less string color and accompaniment to overpower.)   Standard Flute repertoire consists of what might be called that of the “French School”.  Since, at the time of the genesis of the Boehm-system flute, the flute (right along with the violin) has become somewhat of a musical acrobat in orchestral literature.  Because of its technical abilities and colorful timbre, however, it is often used purely as a device for orchestral “color” or for affects.

The rhythmic complexities of this piece are astounding.  Each time I look over the score, I discover new minute details such as what I just analyzed.  Also, because of the harmonic character of the piece, it is a virtuosic piece unparalleled in the flute repertoire:  it exposes the flutist to her/his very greatest artistic aspects, as well as their weakest.  It is one of the most technically demanding pieces in that not only its level of mechanical articulation and technique required for execution is very high, but its capacity to show the musical intensity of the flute is without limit.   The Ballade is different from other pieces in the flute repertory in that it allows the flutist’s individual style to interpret the piece itself.  The flute is no longer a representation of something like a bird or a mere invocation of color: it is used as a vehicle of communication of some other meaning.    It is because of this that no two performances of the Martin flute ballade are the same.  The message that the performer sends out depends entirely on her/his style of playing and choices of interpretation and performance.  

“Martin delighted in, and depended upon, the almost mystical bond between composer and interpreter, believing that the interpretation of a score is not something just added on but is rather realization of the score’s essence”. 

Bibliography

Bridget Castillo with Joy Kim. Frank Martin's Ballade for flute
and Piano. Rec. 11 Feb. 2005. CD. UCLA Music Department, 2005.

Celia Chambers with The London Philharmonic. Frank Martin Ballade
for Flute, Piano, and Orchestra. CD Rec. 4 Jan. 1994. Chandos Records,
1995.

Robison, Paula . Paula Robison Masterclassses: Frank Martin
Ballade. Vienna: Universal Edition, 2002.

Rosenschein, Bob. Answers.com. 1999. GuruNet Corporation . 2005
<http://www.answers.com/envoy>.

Schoenberg, Arnold.  Letters, ed. Erwin Stein, trans. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser, London, 1964, p. 88.

Toff, Nancy. The Flute Book: A Complete Guide For Students And
Perfrormers. New York: Charles Schirbner's Sons, 1985.

Warkentin, Leonora K. "On The Performanance of Frank Martin's Ballade."
Diss. U of California, Los Angeles, 1978.

Wassermann, Jakob  “Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude", Deutscher und Jude: Reden und Schriften 1904-1933,