The tyranny of the bar lines

I woke up this morning thinking about bar lines, and the quote (that I think I can attribute to Anner Bylsma) about the "tyranny of the bar lines."  I know, geeky place to start, but it's where my head is this morning.  In his incredible book, Bach, The Fencing Master, Bylsma takes us into his eccentric mind and how he's thought about the six cello suites over the course of a lifetime of study and performance.  There's nothing dull in there - poems, angry letters to Bach, analysis, line drawings.... He clearly had a lot of fun putting it all down on paper.

At one point he talks about the tyranny of bar lines, which in my lingo means the way the notes are all corralled in by those lines.  He encourages us to think longer in phrasing, and to remember that bar lines are just a way of organizing the music.  Early music (no, not Baroque music, go way earlier) didn't have bar lines and looked like this:

 Ok, so there are bar lines in there.  But not every four beats.  In fact, you had to learn this music from the chant leader, and follow their phrasing, breathing together, to create the shape of the music.  How long do you hold a note?  Follow the leader.

Modern notation allows the composer almost complete control over the way the phrase will be performed.  At times, this feels like a tyranny to me, personally.  When I look back at Bach and Mozart, there is rhythmic notation and some dynamic indication, but the musician needs to understand style and have good musical instincts to execute beautiful phrases.  Which means you and I won't necessarily play the same phrase the same way. Or even that I will play it the same way every time I work on that piece of music. I like that!  I like bringing my experience and emotion to a work fresh every time I perform it.  Modern composers can dictate the tiniest details to us, and can at times overwhelm the musician with TMI. 

Henze isn't the greatest example of an overly controlling composer, but you start to get the idea

But I'm still not on topic yet - the tyranny of the bar lines.  As you look at your music, look for the greater shape of the phrase.  It may be Classical in nature, which means 4 or 8 bar phrases, usually two phrases that combine to create one longer line - conversational.  But don't let the bar lines fool you into thinking every beat ONE has to be strong, needs to be brought forward.  How does the rhythm flow?   Is it straight forward, or are there syncopations that want to be flourished?  Benjamin Zander gave a delightful Ted Talk about this, and early in the talk he said he viewed music (I'm paraphrasing here) as a crow flying over a field and the fences below zipping by.   To me, that's the image of the bar lines - not herding the rhythms together like so many sheep, but fences below as the melody soars over them.  They may mark our place on the page, but the bar lines themselves are NOT the music.

Last thought on this: Bach 2nd Orchestral Suite in b minor, the Badinerie movement.  It's written in 2/4, but as you listen, can you tell where beat one is?  This will depend largely on the performer.  I've played this with flutists who outright insisted on flipping the beat so beat 2 was the accented beat.  I think that movement is a testament to looking at the shape of the phrase and playing it most naturally.  Sometimes beat 2 will feel strong, sometimes beat 1.  Go with the flow.

Happy practicing!
Gaelen