Taught by renowned instructor
Eric Wen
Join Curtis Institute and Juilliard music theory professor Eric Wen as he engages with perhaps the most significant questions a pianist can ask: how to best understand the compositional design of a piece of music so that its inner drama may be effectively realized in performance? Hosted by tonebase Head of Piano Ben Laude, the two utilize Heinrich Schenker’s graphic notation as a tool to show the multi-layered form and inner connections of piano masterworks. Wen and Laude use these reverse-blueprints in order to engage deeply with iconic pieces by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and Brahms.
Introduction: Schenkerian Analysis at the Piano
Whereas in the 18th century, a single musician like J.S. Bach could embody diverse professional roles as composer, performer, music director, teacher, and instrument technician, these would fragment into individual identities in the 19th and 20th. A creature emerged: the professional music theorist. It was the most astute and controversial among these theorists – Heinrich Schenker – whose writings and analyses urge us to recover the connection between performer and composer by shining a light on the true essence of tonal compositions. Join tonebase Head of Piano Ben Laude as he hosts one of the leading Schenkerian Analysts of the 21st century, Eric Wen. By way of Bach’s C major Prelude, BWV 846, Wen introduces Schenker’s theories of harmony and counterpoint and gives an overview of his innovative analytic notation.
Analyzing Bach: Prelude in C major, BWV 846
Join Eric Wen and Ben Laude as they examine Mozart’s heavenly Andante from the Piano Concerto K. 467, applying Schenkerian techniques to understand its intricate design and discovering connections in the music that may be brought out in performance to great effect. While this piece is famous for its heavenly melody, Wen reveals how Mozart employs polyphonic lines within the theme that diverge and converge over an extended phrase. Through a daring chromatic maneuver in the opening tutti, Mozart transforms an ordinary cadential 6/4 progression into an anguished outcry, setting up a dramatic interplay between piano and orchestra that rivals his greatest operatic scenes.
Analyzing Mozart: Andante from Piano Concerto, K. 467
Join Eric Wen and Ben Laude as they examine Mozart’s heavenly Andante from the Piano Concerto K. 467, applying Schenkerian techniques to understand its intricate design and discovering connections in the music that may be brought out in performance to great effect. While this piece is famous for its heavenly melody, Wen reveals how Mozart employs polyphonic lines within the theme that diverge and converge over an extended phrase. Through a daring chromatic maneuver in the opening tutti, Mozart transforms an ordinary cadential 6/4 progression into an anguished outcry, setting up a dramatic interplay between piano and orchestra that rivals his greatest operatic scenes.
Analyzing Chopin: “Revolutionary” Etude, Op. 10 No. 12
Join Eric Wen and Ben Laude as they turn to an iconic piece of virtuosic piano writing, Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude in C minor, Op. 10 No. 12. While the foreground of the work scales the keyboard in impassioned outcries and swelling tension, Wen utilizes Schenker’s insights to uncover the ingenious voice leading at work under the hood and inspires Laude to rephrase his interpretation. At once a purely musical analysis and a programmatic interpretation, Wen and Laude move back and forth between analyzing the contrapuntal origins of Chopin's novel harmonies and speculating on the emotional and political significance of a work penned amid the Polish uprising in 1830-1831.
Analyzing Brahms: Intermezzo in E-flat minor, Op. 118 No. 6
Join Eric Wen and Ben Laude as they broach one of Brahms’s most tragic works, the E-flat minor Intermezzo, Op. 118 No. 6. Wen believes that analytic techniques can actually explain the music’s tragic nature in terms of unresolved dissonances, and Laude responds by attempting to realize the music’s stark sadness at the piano.
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Unlock Course →Professor, author, and lecturer Eric Wen is recognized as one of today’s preeminent experts in Schenkerian analysis.
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