Do You Hear Voices?

 

When you hear about someone who "hears voices," it might make you a little worried. However, in music is essential to hear voices.

What I am referring to here is the phenomenon that virtually all of our music is made up of several lines, or voices, at least to some degree. The term "voice" comes, of course, from vocal music, which was the earliest music. In the middle ages almost all music was vocal -- largely religious music sung in church. As instrumental music began to be more prevalent, it still imitated vocal music to a great degree. Our music evolved as separate lines woven together. Melody preceeded harmony; harmony grew out of the fact that some tones, when occuring at the same time, were very pleasing, very "harmonious," and began to be viewed as entities in and of themselves. If you are a singer or instrumentalist on a single-line instrument, you will only have one "voice" to play or sing; but if you are a part of a choir or ensemble or symphony, your voice is one part of the greater whole. This is, hopefully, fairly obvious. If you are a pianist, however, you are very rarely just playing a single line melody, that is, one note at a time. You will be playing the whole gamut of melody and harmony. That is the beauty and the brilliance of piano.

When a new student comes to me who has studied with other teachers or is self-taught, I am still amazed that they don't seem to have any awareness of the concept of voices. They learned simply to "play the notes" that they see on the page. But piano music is never just monolithic. Let's consider a simple example. If you are playing a Bach two-part invention, you have two separate but complementary lines, one in right hand and one in left. One is not more important than the other. Yet I hear some people play it as if right hand has the melody and left hand has an accompaniment. This is not at all correct; instead it needs to be played as a dialogue between the two voices. Of course the same thing goes for a three-part invention. When you have a four-part piece, it could be a fugue (but not necessarily). You can't possible play a fugue well if you don't have understanding and awareness of the voices. Your practice should include playing each voice separately, so you can hear it clearly and "trace its path." Then play different combinations of two, and then three voices, and finally all four. Now you will more clearly hear the interweaving of these lines, and you will hopefully know which one(s) to bring out at any given point. If you can't hear each voice clearly, your listener will certainly not be able to either.

We call these voices soprano, alto, tenor and bass, just like actual voices in a choir.

How can you tell which voice is which? For one thing, the music is written in a way to indicate the voices very clearly. If it is a four-voice fugue, you may have two voices in the right hand and two in the left, although there may very well be a few spots where this isn't the case. On the treble clef, the soprano voice will mostly have the note stems (on quarter notes, eighth notes, etc.) pointing up, and the alto voice will have them pointing down. In the bass clef, tenor voice will be up, and bass voice down. Be aware that the voices can cross, with the alto being higher than the soprano, for example, at some point, just like in an actual choir. But regardless, the stem direction always identifies one voice versus another. In a piece such as a fugue, which is 100% polyphonic (multiple voices), this should be pretty clear. 

After the Baroque era, music became less polyphonic. An early Mozart piece, for example, could consist of a melody (in right hand) with a chord-based left hand. It may or may not be this way the entire piece, but if it is mostly that way we would refer to it as homophonic, not polyphonic. But in the more complex pieces of the Classical era, and most definitely by Beethoven, piano music is more often than not a combination of both. Take two examples of pieces by Beethoven that piano students love to play: the first movement of the so-called Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven did not name it this), and the second movement of the Pathetique sonata. In both cases there is a top-line melody, an inner voice of broken chords, and a bass line of single notes or octaves. In Moonlight, the broken C-sharp minor chord (the triplet) begins the piece, and the melody starting on G-sharp comes in a few measures later. In the Pathetique, the top melody is in quarter notes, with the middle voice in sixteenths. Together they make a complete chord, but they are still intended to be heard as two entities. In both cases, the stems of the top voice point up, and in the middle voice they point down. More to the point, the two voices have different rhythmic values, so they are clearly two things happening simultaneously. In both cases, if the notes of the top voice are not held for their full value, the middle voice will interrupt and will be indistinguishable from the main melody. Similarly, if you play both voices at the same dynamic level, the middle voice will compete with the top melody; the middle voice must be softer, more subdued. Another great example that students love to play (often before they are ready, in my opinion) is Traumerei by Schumann. This is essentially a four-voice composition, though in a few spots the alto and tenor split in two, making six voices. I recommend you make several copies of this piece, and in each copy, use a colored highlighter to trace the path of each voice. Sometimes the alto and tenor go from one hand to the other, so you have to look closely. After you've played each voice, play them in combinations of two, such as soprano and bass, then alto and tenor, and so on. I guarantee you will hear the piece differently than if you don't do this.

You would be hard-pressed to find any piece of Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Ravel, and just about any composer in the last 300 years or so, that isn't multi-dimensional. I've actually had many people tell me they had no idea these pieces had separate voices. If I hear someone play these compositions, I can tell immediately whether he/she is even aware that these are multi-layered compositions.

If you just play all the notes without this awareness, you essentially have a one-dimensional picture rather than a three-dimentional (or more) picture. It would have no "depth." Or, I make the analogy that you have a beautiful gourmet dinner on your plate, with several items, each with distinct taste and texture, and you take your fork and mush it all together. Theoretically you still have all the same flavors, but you can no longer taste each one, and the mushed-together flavor is very different from tasting each one by itself.

First you must understand that your pieces are multiple voices. Then you must learn to practice in such as way as to hear each voice. Then your technique must be advanced enough to enable you to play at different dynamic levels, even within one hand. If this is new information to you, and/or has never been mentioned or taught by your current teacher, it is imperative that you get a different teacher. If you are trying to learn on your own (not ideal, in my view) and this is new to you, take a fresh look at all the pieces you are working on in this new light. You can also listen to recordings (of professional pianists only) and direct your listening to the differentiated voices to refine your listening in this way.

You want to become one of those people who hears voices -- at least in music!