I’m spending three weeks teaching at Interlochen Arts Camp, and I can’t help but think how much young Agnes would have loved it here, as one of those brilliant, ridiculously talented kids all hanging out and inspiring each other. I like to picture her wearing the light blue polo shirt of the camp uniform. I played her third Impromptu on the piano faculty recital last week, and it’s been so gratifying to have people come up to me and say “that piece was so beautiful—where can I find the score?” (Answer: the Kapralova Society).
I’m learning the notes to her etudes, and it’s really fun to practice them in the piano/percussion building (how lucky am I to be in a place where there’s a whole building for piano and percussion?) while other people are practicing pieces by famous composers in other rooms. I love hearing other people practice and being reminded of ways I can practice too; hearing someone else play sixteenth notes slowly with the metronome reminds me that maybe I should make sure I include the metronome today. I can hear bits of famous licks by Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Liszt, Prokofiev, Schubert, masters not just of musical composition but also really good keyboard writing. You can tell when you’re in good hands with those composers, that someone is writing who can really play and is writing for their own hands. I feel that with Agnes. She makes lots of difficult technical demands, but it’s definitely the feeling that she’s writing it because she can play it. And I absolutely feel that her sounds fit in among all the famous pieces I’ve known for so long. I keep waiting to feel impostor syndrome on her behalf—that her music somehow might not be quite up to the level of the famous composers—and I don’t at all: her pieces really do belong in the same building as all the other pieces. It’s fun to practice them in such good company.
I’m learning the etudes from photos of her manuscripts, and I’m really enjoying the process. I haven’t learned music from manuscript since before music notation software became common in around 2000; I played handwritten music by composer pals before then, but now everyone typesets everything on the computer. Fortunately, Agnes has absolutely gorgeous, incredibly clear handwriting, and she gives a lot of indications about style: which finger to use on which note, when to get louder and softer, and exactly when to use the sustain pedal. Sometimes she writes her pedal marking below the staff, which is the usual format, and sometimes she puts it between the two staves; I’m 98% sure that she doesn’t mean anything different by her vertical placement of the pedal markings, but that 2% is making me wonder. I don’t think there will be a reason to copy the vertical placement in the printed edition, but I also want to be sure there’s not before I ignore it. It’s great that she’s so clear about when to put down the sustain pedal and when to lift it up: I can tell she’s really thinking about the whole sound world of the piece.
I’m also really thinking about the “games” of her etudes; an etude is a piece that demands and develops a specific technical skill, and often etudes will include a secondary skill too. A lot of times Agnes is showing that secondary skill (or maybe it’s even the primary one) in her indications besides the notes: in her g minor etude, for example, there are lots of fast notes in the right hand…that are much easier if you use the thumb for some of them. But she specifically tells you not to in the beginning, so the piece becomes not just about playing lots of fast notes but playing fast notes with the weaker fingers. Later she tells you to use the thumb in a different passage, so she’s being really specific about when you do and don’t use the thumb, and that becomes the main technical point of the etude. She also sometimes gives different fingerings for similar music in different passages, and I’m sure it’s not an accident: in the thirds etude, the very first one, she gives one fingering at the beginning and then later, when the same music is an octave higher, a different one. It’s an etude: she’s wanting the student to learn how to do it both ways.
I’m still working with my research student on the lieder; she may have only a few done when her fellowship ends in a couple of weeks. We did meet with the librarian to talk about the possibility of AI reading Agnes’s handwriting in her songs, and that was both exhilarating and disheartening: the AI can read the old handwriting, which is magical, but for now it has trouble distinguishing between written words and notated music. It looks like the process of teaching it to tell them apart may be slow and frustrating. I do think it will be able to read her handwriting in her letters someday—maybe that’s for my next visit to the archive next year—but I’m not sure it will be able to decipher her lyrics just yet. Maybe I can collaborate with someone else who is teaching AI to see the difference between music and words.
Meanwhile, there’s music to learn. The notes are just one step—I can tell they came easily to Agnes, and that I’m going to have to play the little notes fast so the longer notes can make the broad strokes of the tune. But I’m trying to make sure I learn not just the notes but also the pedal markings and dynamics, so I can have the whole shape clearly in mind from the very beginning.