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Walter Piston - Symphony No. 2

Walter Piston - Symphony No. 2

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 ####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 ...
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