Undercurrents, Scriabin – Etude opus 2 nr. 1

May I draw your attention to a maybe not so unknown but in my opinion underexposed topic?

When teaching, I mostly make a clearcut difference between polyphonic and homophonic music. Depicting polyphonic music as horizontal, consisting solely of equally important melodic lines. Homophonic by contrast as vertically organized, one melody on top with accompanying chords beneath.

As often in life, things aren’t that black and white.

Being a huge fan of “sound coloring” pianists like Horowitz, I like it when in this so-called homophonic music they make inner tones or voices stand out instead of always making a sharp division between melody and accompaniment. It creates different, more adventurous sounds.

But isn’t there more to it than that?  

Thinking of the piano as “an orchestra for two hands”, playing different instruments at the same time, be it the main melody or the accompaniment, shouldn’t we treat these accompanying lines equally horizontal as the main melody?
Not only as sound coloring effects to the vertical sound? But as lines with melodic quality?

Just think of the cellist playing an accompanying line: doesn’t this line become a kind of melody on his own? Which he or she whistles or hums on the way home from rehearsal.
When thinking of the real orchestra, we probably say “yes, of course”.

Then why do we pay so little attention to this phenomenon while playing the piano?
Attention for the “undercurrents”, the melodic quality of accompanying lines.

The analogy with the sea comes to mind.
Vertically: the visible waves on top. Beneath it, undercurrents not always going in the same direction. Together making up the sea flowing horizontally.

No, as pianists we are not supposed to accentuate all undercurrent lines, quite an impossible job besides. Being aware of them while playing makes a difference to how you hear the music inside, realizing the aspect of interweaving. And maybe we sometimes accentuate one or two lines “à la Horowitz”.

Obviously, for compositional and piano technical reasons (how much can our two hands handle?), the undercurrent lines are not structured throughout an entire composition like the main melody. They come in and disappear. That’s what makes them appealing for what I call “improvisational attention”: sometimes you make them stand out, sometimes not.

Great advantage to me of the horizontal undercurrent thinking is that it makes it easier to play the music more moving forward. Melodic thinking has a moving forward quality.

In the above recording of Scriabin’s Etude opus 2 nr. 1 the undercurrents are quite clearly audible, sometimes even competing with the main melody. That’s why I chose this piece 😊.

_{Undercurrent – by Trixie Pitts.}