The Wild Horseman: A Section: Right Hand

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we're going to begin learning a piece by composer Robert Schumann. Schumann was born in 1810 in the town of Zwickau in the kingdom of Saxony, which today is a part of Germany. He developed a love for piano and composing from a young age, beginning piano lessons at seven years old. By the time Robert was twenty, he had decided he wanted to be a concert pianist. So he started practicing very hard and studying with one of the best piano teachers in Leipzig. Now, it so happened that his piano teacher had a very musical daughter named Clara. Clara was a virtuoso pianist, and she and Robert fell in love. For a long time, they had to keep their love secret since Clara's dad did not approve of this match at first. But eventually they married, and the two of them traveled all over Europe sharing their music. Together, Robert and Clara had eight children, and Robert composed some delightful and imaginative piano pieces for three of his daughters. These pieces were published as Robert Schumann's Opus 68 Album Fur Die Jugend. Or in English: Album for the Young. We've been listening to Number One, "Melodie." The piece we're going to start learning today is Opus 68 Number Eight: "Wilder Reiter," which is German for "Wild Rider", or how it is most often translated, "The Wild Horseman." One thing that Schumann was known for was taking a character or scene from a story and writing music that paints a musical picture of that character. In "The Wild Horseman" as you listen, I want you to see if you can picture a wild rider in your imagination. What is this wild horseman doing? Where is he riding to? Is he chasing someone, or is he being chased? There's no one right answer just see where your imagination takes you. Let's have a listen. Here's the score for "The Wild Horsemen". Let's do our usual checklist. The things I like to always check before I even start playing a piece. I want to check out the tempo indication: allegro con brio. Fast, con is Italian for with, brio means vivacious; with a lot of energy. Then we want to see what key we're in. Well, we'd normally find a key signature right here before the time signature, but I don't see any sharps or flats there so, that tells us we'll be in the key of C major all white keys, or A minor also all white keys. So how do we tell which it is? Well we've got to look at the first note or chord that we play and the last. First note here is an E, well that doesn't tell us much because E could be a part of C major or A minor. So let's go a little bit further. What chord do we see here if we take that E and then add in these next three notes? Forms an A minor chord. Let's also check the ending. We have an A, a C, and an A, also which could form a part of A minor chord. So, we can feel confident that we're in the key of A minor. What is our time signature? We're in 6/8 time. So that tells us what? The top number tells us how many beats per measure. That bottom 8 tells us what kind of note equals 1 beat. So we'll know that we'll have six eighth note beats because of the 8 tells us six eighth note beats per measure. I should also check the clefs. Treble clef for right hand, bass clef for left hand. And now right off the bat you may notice that, huh, why do we only have one eighth note before this first bar line? You may recall from a previous unit, learning about pickup notes. Remember, a pickup note or notes are one or more notes that come before the first downbeat of the song. Remember, after every bar line is always beat 1 so here's a beat 1. Here's a beat 1, here's a beat 1. Every bar line tells you a new measure is beginning, and inside every measure we should have 6 beats 1 2 3 4 5 6, but every once in a while a composer doesn't want to start on the strong beat. It's like ready, set, and go. Go is the first strong beat, but this is kind of like an and to get you ready for the go. And go! What beat is it? Well we count backward from 6, and since we only have this one eighth note, it's going to be beat 6. So if we're getting ready to play this song, we might count 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1. 6 remember won't be as strong as 1. Schumann did that because he wanted the first strong beat to come right here. 6 1, 6 1 6 1, it's like and go. Now do you see any new or less familiar symbols on the first line? I think we've had one of these before, but let's review. This is a sforzatto, which is a kind of musical accent. It means we're going to play this one note extra loud. Louder than the notes right before or after it so it pops out. Dynamic markings like mezzo forte, mezzo piano, apply to all the notes you see after them. So all of these notes will be mezzo forte. But forzato is just for that one note. You're going to suddenly get louder on just that one note. Sometimes it's written with a z, sforzando. I think we've seen in one of our sonatinas a forzato with fz. These three symbols all basically mean the same thing. Different composers might use them slightly differently, but essentially they're all an accent for just the note to pop out that you get right there. See, you want that note to just zing! Pop out, and kind of surprise you. Now, before we try to play this we're going to do a littl ...