Debating tremolo and telling jokes at Fargo-Moorhead's BeethovenFest

On Feb. 10, a small crowd of locals and students gathered in Concordia College's Fjelstad Hall to learn about some of what might be called Beethoven's "deep cuts": works without opus numbers, or "Werke ohne Opuszahl."

The gathering was a Fargo-Moorhead "Communiversity" course, called "WoO Beethoven," hosted by Concordia in connection with the ongoing Winter Arts Festival. The festival, also known as BeethovenFest, sees Fargo and Moorhead banding together to celebrate the master composer's life and work all through the month of February. Organizers hope that the month-long festival will become an annual event; Shakespeare has already been slated as next year's featured artist.

The course consisted of three performance-presentations given by music faculty members from area colleges. The first was an analysis of Beethoven's use of musical schema and its development throughout his career, presented by Jessica Narum, a professor at Concordia.

She said that Beethoven had, as a boy, broken the rules a bit by improvising during his practice sessions at the piano. He improvised over musical schema — preexisting themes and changes that could be adapted to any number of interpretations by an imaginative musician. Narum put forth the argument that schema helped Beethoven learn his craft as a composer, and that he continued to apply and alter them in his music throughout his career.

Also, early in her presentation, she told a Beethoven joke:

Narum: "Knock knock."
Audience: "Who's there?"
Narum: "Interrupting Beethoven."
Audience: "Interrupting Beethoven wh..."
Narum: [sings] "Dum-dum-dum DUMMMMM!"

Annett Richter of North Dakota State University gave the second presentation. She offered an analysis of Beethoven's Sonatino in C Minor, and in doing so illuminated the seemingly unlikely trendiness of the mandolin in late-18th-century Europe.

Though the mandolin was never taught in the conservatory, a lot of strong players were coming out of Naples at the time, and the instrument made its way into the popular consciousness, especially in Paris. Richter noted that 85 volumes of mandolin music survive from Paris during the period. Two major composers helped it along: Beethoven and Mozart.

During rehearsals of his Don Giovanni, Mozart saw fit to add a "serenading mandolin" to the opera's first scene, played by the title character. Beethoven wrote several works for mandolin and fortepiano during his time in Prague, of which the Sonatino is one. Four of these pieces survive. They were composed for the Countess Josephine DeClary, who was an enthusiast of the eight-stringed instrument.

Attendant to the mandolin's period of popularity there were, of course, fierce debates over the aesthetics of the instrument, how it should be employed and played. One hotly contested issue was that of tremolo: how much should one use and why?

Richter briefly outlined the argument. Some saw the use of tremolo as superfluous, to be avoided; others had fewer qualms; others viewed the technique through a practical lens, as "a way to loosen the wrist while playing." At Concordia the Sonatino was performed by a mandolinist and a pianist, first with a lot of tremolo, then again with a little tremolo, to aid the presentation.

The third speaker was Daniel Breedon, another Concordia faculty member. He provided an analysis of Sieben Variation uber "God save the king" ("Seven Variations on 'God save the king'"). Breedon handed out photocopies of the score with handwritten annotations. He played a recording of the piece and the audience followed along in the score. "I probably won't fall over, but I may swoon," he warned of the "especially expressive" harmonies in the second strain of the fifth variation, before pressing play.

Breedon noted that the piece seems to walk the line between spoof and interrogation of the patriotic theme. The first few variations get progressively more jovial in feel, before the theme is nearly subsumed in the "brashly self-confident," Beethovenian fourth variation. Then the theme is brought to the fore again in the variation five, written in a style to express "light tragedy." But perhaps Breedon's most appropriate note was one he scrawled in the margins near the end of the final variation, in quotes, as an attribution of Beethoven's mindset at that moment in the composition: "Forget the king, it's all about me."

BeethovenFest events continue throughout the month of February. For a complete schedule, see winterartsfest.org.

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