Tonal Refraction for You!

What keeps you up at night?

Nancy Garniez — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:17:11 GMT

Last night it was the Mozart Piano Trio “in the key of E major.” I put it in quotes because that is what it says on paper, in the key signature.

But it begins with the piano right hand alone playing G# and B-natural. What, pray tell, is that?

I think like a composer.

Nancy Garniez — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:59:10 GMT

So I have been told, more than once. At last I get it. Two things - actually one thing in two different guises - keep me up these nights: Making sense of Brahms and putting together my life story. How can they be the same?

Single tones

Nancy Garniez — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:20:05 GMT

A fb memory posted yesterday was about the fixation of so many Classical compositions for and with piano on a single tone, something that would have been unthinkable until the invention of the piano, but which, by way of sympathetic vibration, became the backbone of much composition.

Time, the movies, and music

Nancy Garniez — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:13:53 GMT

Fortunately the small Ohio town where I went to college housed a movie theater in which old movies were played from time to time. Simply out of curiosity I went to see them, becoming increasingly aware of the extent to which time itself and the awareness of time were essential parts of the story line as told by the camera. It was all so new: the idea that a camera “capturing” things in motion might have anything to do with my intake, by definition with its own inherent motion. The experience felt to me deeply musical.

Bar-line tyranny: when and why?

Nancy Garniez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:04:21 GMT

In my understanding (admittedly meagerly informed) bar-lines were introduced solely as a visual convenience, enabling musicians to keep track of coincidence within contrapuntal textures, so that, in case of anyone getting lost, the music could be resumed conveniently.

Left Hand / Right Hand

Nancy Garniez — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:45:40 GMT

Once sight-reading at the piano is established as a matter of bi-lateral coordination combined with alphabetic sequences, the ear-brain is ipso facto irrelevant. Otherwise why would it have taken me so long to figure out some basic musical truths?

Do you get it?

Nancy Garniez — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 12:50:16 GMT

The assumption behind a great deal of music theory training is that you are supposed to get it. (Correct me if I’m wrong in putting this so bluntly.)

A better question: Are you supposed to get it?

Pianists and problems

Nancy Garniez — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:11:57 GMT

Before ever coaching a chamber music session at Mannes I phoned every member of the faculty who taught chamber music for advice. The best advice came from Klaus Adam, newly retired cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet. “You are going to have the most trouble with pianists.” How true that turned out to be!

I would elaborate, in a way that he did not. But how could he, being a cellist, not a pianist; and one who spent most of his musical time dealing with other bowed string instruments?

Counterpoint rules

Nancy Garniez — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:02:09 GMT

The rules are simple: As I put it, “like goes to like.” This makes more sense than isolating individual lines, because this logic carries into every era, every style. It corresponds to the way the ear picks up on continuity.

Masters of the Nope

Nancy Garniez — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:26:02 GMT

Sometimes it takes a while to get the point. Classical music, as currently practiced (!), well deserves its reputation as stodgy. No composers better fit the category than Brahms and Beethoven.

But having just let the E minor Sonata fly off the page in the air-borne company of Dave Eggar on cello, I thought it might be fun to revisit a correspondingly too-long sonata, the Op. 120, No. 2, also blessed with some kind of a fugal last movement.

The question that prevails: Why is it so hard to recognize humor? Why can’t we confess that we don’t get something when obviously we can play all the notes more or less on time?

Live Recording: Brahms with Dave Eggar

Nancy Garniez — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:14:26 GMT

In one of my life’s major achievements, the master of this recording was made available to us yesterday, evidence that Tonal Refraction works.

The essence of Tonal Refraction, made vivid in this recording, is that tone along with one’s perception thereof, is in constant flux, not subject to definition.

Da Capo at Greenwich House Music School

Nancy Garniez — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:53:37 GMT

Does it matter that this outstanding event took place at an off-beat small venue in the Village? I happened to be seated near a young man who helped me scan the program into my phone - twice, because I accidentally erased it, not being adept at managing scans. We got to talking. It seems he was visiting from Denver, his first time in NYC, and that he was enjoying running into music by chance. He plays trombone, but anticipates a career in archeology (!) rather than music.

He very much enjoyed the music, all Nordic-based, as did I, but he noted his surprise that it was not more Classical in its sound. I take that to mean that he is not accustomed to defining music as having perhaps to do with sounds broadly defined rather than with specific pitches.

Repetition is for Sissies

Nancy Garniez — Sun, 31 May 2026 13:21:08 GMT

Ever since I can remember I have been bored to tears by repetition. I recall distinctly my horror at first becoming aware that a Classical composer actually repeated a note.

Why do such an obviously objectionable thing?

Unforgettable sounds: More on the Locrian

Nancy Garniez — Sat, 30 May 2026 15:05:19 GMT

Thrilling as it is to hear première performances - thrilling for all concerned, by the way - it is just as thrilling, if not more so, to hear sounds that remain in one’s memory, even out of context.

Of that same Locrian concert several such sounds continue to haunt me, two by composers totally new to me.

Two Premières in one evening

Nancy Garniez — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:34:27 GMT

World première: Edmund Song: Coded Liquid

A stunning work for flute, violin, viola, cello and piano, composed this year, performed brilliantly by the Locrian Chamber Players. Everything about it held my attention: the excellent matching of timbres between the instruments, including the piano; the dense, lively counterpoint.

I asked him about the source of that counterpoint. To my surprise it stems from the gamelan tradition of his native Singapore.

Mozart / Chopin: Hmmm

Nancy Garniez — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:02:24 GMT

Last night I experimented interweaving the two of them without informing the audience what they were going to hear. I find this frees not only their ear but mine as well.

As it turned out, I was right. I could distinctly hear the same ornamentation in Chopin that I had just played in Mozart, though any connection is rarely, if ever, made. And certain in jest voice leadings that Mozart loved hiding in cadences are there as well.

The Piano is Out of Tune

Nancy Garniez — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:31:19 GMT

It always was out of tune. But the true beauty of the instrument is in the physics of strings. Regardless of how they are tuned in order to fit 12 tones plausibly within an octave with black keys that may serve as either sharps or flats as needed - regardless of this, said strings will vibrate sympathetically with anything.

PhD in Intonation

Nancy Garniez — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:03:49 GMT

A faithful paying (!) subscriber to this Substack site asked what would have been my major had I undertaken graduate study: Intonation.

Find me an institution which provides such a thing.

Unbelievable

Nancy Garniez — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:32:36 GMT

Sometimes we are all unbelievable, usually when we are telling the truth. Did you ever notice? I guess it’s because of the assumption that what seems true to someone must be true for you as well.

But what if it’s not? And what if the basis for your disagreement is not only invisible but also not verbalizable?

In shape at last

Nancy Garniez — Sun, 24 May 2026 19:05:32 GMT

It’s odd being 88 years old and, for the first time in my life, in truly good shape pianistically. I can do things I never dreamed possible.

This frees me to open the Beethoven Sonatas, look at the music, feel inside my brain how it wants to go, and then letting it rip.

And that is what it does: it rips....or is it trips?