Issue 18

Back in my pre-teen youth, I had an undying love for the brand Technics. My uncle owned a Technics cassette deck , the local hi-fi store seemed to stock nothing else but, and I think I had virtually memorized the catalog by the time I turned teenage!

No surprise then that my first real turntable at age 16 was a Technics SL-1200/II. I had read enough to know that anything automatic and linear tracking in the arm department was a no-no, which ruled out most of the Technics range. I could find no word, good or bad, about the ‘1200 in the UK press, so I didn’t realize at the time that it had already been around some seven years. I eventually fitted the deck with an Ortofon MC10/II cartridge (a hefty £60 at the time!) and do you know what? It sounded rather good. Good enough to make the sound of a CD player a disappointment, when I finally managed to buy one of those wretched machines.  I can remember listening to a Madonna album on CD versus the 7” single, and confused was I that the record sounded better. Especially since I had lusted after one of the bloody digital things for several years.

 

The life-changing (for Haden, anyway) Garrard 401.

Over the past 20 years, the Technics direct drive system has been realized to be something. In the UK especially, direct drive was considered something of a joke. Not quite as big a joke as idler drive, but a joke nonetheless. The fact that I feel both are vastly superior to rubber band belt drive is irrelevant.

The deck that started it all, back in 1969, was the Technics SP10, an arm-free motor unit. Built on a square chassis, of quite thin wall aluminium, the deck measures and sounds well. Technically, it offered  noise and wow and flutter levels  superior to any deck previously made. Speeds of 33 and 45 rpm, with electronic pitch control. As with  the Garrard 301/401, the plinth is a critical component, and the original Technics plinth is just as bad as every other design from that era. The electronically- controlled motor, however,  was a revolution in turntable design. On this early deck, an 18V DC supply feeds a central motor hub, which contains all the drive electronics. An oscillator and a three-channel power amplifier drive multiples of windings on the motor itself.

 

When mounted correctly, the deck is a firm rival for a standard 301 or 401. The biggest tweak is to remove the motor unit from the thin and rather ringy, resonant chassis and bolt it in to a solid lump of wood; this goes for the later SP10/II as well. The square shape of the SP10 makes fitting tone arms a bit of a chore.

The original SL1200 and the rest of the pre-1979 range all used some variant of this drive unit. Sadly the SL1200, SL1300, SL1400, SL1700 etc, all had rubbish plastic-y plinths, and pretty crappy arms. But again: rip the heart out of the deck, and you potentially have something excellent.

Direct Drive was Matsushita, Technics’ parent company, baby. The original SP10 I have seen branded National, Panasonic, Technics by Panasonic, and just Technics! By 1980 most Japanese companies had developed their own direct drive systems. Pioneer made an excellent deck in the PLC 590, Sony did a really High-End deck. Less successful (in my perhaps solitary opinion!) are the Denon offerings or the JVC.

But it was the Europeans who really brassed off the Japanese: EMT launched the 950, which started instantly, stopped instantly, and bettered the SP10s specification. Technics counter-offered the rare SP10D, which only seems to have appeared in Canada, ex-broadcast. This has a much bigger power supply and motor drive circuit, and was also capable, with mods, of running at 78 rpm. But this was still no match for the EMT.

The Listening Position:

This series was implemented to assist music-loving audiophiles in gaining much more musical involvement with their systems that feature “full-range” loudspeakers.  As such, it is not about adding subs to monitors to create a sub/sat system, although some of the upcoming info re sub positioning, levels, xover, & phase are applicable.

For this installment, we need to look at being sure that our main speakers are as smooth as possible through the boundary-dependent region (25-250 Hz).  If not, we will never obtain the additional level of musical performance we could have enjoyed with subs – no matter how good they may be.  That’s because the sub/main blend will never be as satisfactory as it could have been. Said another way, if you think you can simply add a couple of subs to your system as it is currently, and they will improve your system, I am afraid that I have bad news… 🙁

The Anchor – establishing your listening position first

Last issue, I said “the negative effects resulting from not addressing this critical issue simply cannot be overstated.”  Basically, our mission is to find the best location/listening position for the smoothest bass in our acceptable listening area (‘acceptable’ due to restraints in décor).

Of course, if you are fortunate enough to have a dedicated room, and thus you have even more placement (listening & system position) flexibility, it’s even better. Either way, we want to work with our room, not against it (you will hear this statement again & again as I believe that this is critical if we are to enjoy any significant success in getting our music systems to reach a higher, more musically involving level).

Two proven techniques to achieve the smoothest bass response from our main full-range speakers:

1- Play a recording that has bass notes that are rising or falling in frequency – or various bass notes in a complex tune – that have approximately the same volume. Last issue, Paul suggested music from Brian Bromberg’s Wood.  That’s a good one – I also like his Wood II.

While the cut is playing, your mission is to listen through a chosen musical section, then move forward and backwards in the room – each time listening to the same selection of music – in what could be an acceptable listening area.  Whenever possible, using a lightweight seat that you can easily move so that you can listen at a seated position – which will give a bit more accurate results. Walking around can work, but it won’t be as accurate due to vertical standing wave issues. I would suggest not moving more than a foot forwards or backwards before listening to the selection again. The bass will change in its character.  You are listening for the smoothest rendition – no notes booming away or almost missing.  This is NOT about the deepest bass.  We want the main speakers to have no obvious peaks and/or dips in the 25-250 Hz region.  When you locate the position that has the smoothest overall reproduction, that is the place where you will locate your seat for serious listening and definitely for your speaker/room tuning.

As I said in Issue #17, moving your speakers about is important but it is of relatively small importance until you know where in the room you should listen because the bass is smoothest in that listening area.  Then, once you have located that position, you can make other adjustments to speaker location without detrimental effects to the overall bass response smoothness…  This is why I call the results of this step the Anchor Position.  Once you have found it, then you can work on all else – presence, tone, etc…

2- These days, one can obtain a RTA (real time analyzer) or RTA app for very little expense and sometimes none at all.  Why would you want to use one?  Most certainly not for measuring your system’s overall response, and most certainly not for ultimate tuning of your system.

The RTA is great to have because it can save you a lot of time, compared to listening at a number of locations in the room. Although I have an expensive pro analyzer, the latest crop of apps (some free!) for phones and laptops make it easy to acquire and use one.  You don’t need to have a technical background to use it at all.

The inexpensive-yet-more-than-accurate-enough app I use these days is AudioTools from Studio Six Digital.  It is exclusively for iPhones & iPads.  It cost me $19.95. All I ever use from this suite of tools is the RTA and the SPL (sound pressure level) loudness meter.  Although it’s not necessary for our mission, you can purchase a calibrated microphone for your iPhone 5 or 6 or recent iPad from Studio Six/Audio Control for around $200. Their iTest mic has software that automatically calibrates that mic to the iOS device intended for it. I checked it against my much more expensive RTA rig, and it was almost exactly the same!

There are loads of RTA/SPL apps for operating systems other than Apple.  Taking the time to find one on the Internet that you can use will be time well spent.

Note – at this point, it’s useful to determine what the ambient noise level is in your room.  You can measure that with the SPL app.  Set it on flat weighting if available. Measure from the existing listening position.

Once you determine how loud the room’s ambient noise level is, you want to be sure to run the pink nose about 20 dB over that level, so as to be certain that the measurements you will take will not be polluted by ambient room noise levels.

Now, what you’ll do is simply play pink noise (equal loudness per octave – same as music). There are numerous resources for obtaining pink noise.  The Audio Tools app supposedly has a pink noise source, but I have never tried it.

We only want to look at third octaves in the 25-250 Hz band.  They are 25, 32, 40, 50, 63, 80, 125, 160, 200, & 250 Hz.  Be sure to maintain the mic height at or near seated ear height when measuring.  If it is higher, then you may encounter other anomalies in the bass related to the vertical room dimension. Starting at the current listening seat position, slowly move the RTA forwards & backwards and you will see various third octave frequencies rise & fall.  You are looking at the room’s effects on your system.  Obviously, we want to work with the room, rather than against it.

Hint – systems in rooms – from 25-250 Hz – almost never look good.  The fact is – all of the rooms of the size that we might use in our homes will have problems.  We simply want to locate the area where the problems are less objectionable.

Regardless of which technique you employ, you will have located the spot in the room where you will listen. If you then have to move the speakers a fair amount due to the resulting listening position, the bass smoothness is not likely to change very much. That’s because of the room dimensions, which do not change.  Congrats! You are working with, rather than against, the room!  However, at this point it is worth a listen to music to see if you want to adjust the seat slightly – a few inches forward or backward – to make the bass even better.

Next issue, we will address subwoofer location (including the critical-but-often-overlooked sub firing angle) as well as making appropriate settings for the most coherent musical reproduction.

Afterwards (the following issue), we will look at the pros & cons of electronic eq & room correction, as well as a well-documented story about that topic.

See you then!

You can read Jim’s work at his website. www.getbettersound.com  

Back in the day, I had many an asthma attack induced by musty old magazines purchased at yard sales and flea markets. I loved car magazines, hi-fi mags, and especially those thick catch-all mags like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated, which managed to cover cars, electronics, and all types of technologies from lawnmowers to nuclear reactors with a sensationalist flair and fast-and-loose grasp of physics that seems quaintly charming in retrospect. Looking at them now, I often feel an involuntary wistful smile come on while reading Tom McCahill’s road tests, in which he measured a car’s trunk capacity by loading in his bird dogs; or stories about home-built hovercrafts or airplanes; or pronouncements from now-long-dead physicists of how lasers would eliminate the threat of Soviet missiles, and so on. If you love swoopy post-war dream-cars and the outer space paintings of Chesley Bonestell, you’ve probably read more than a few of these mags.

The holy grail of those magazines were the stories in which a nerdy guy in a plaid shirt built something in his garage which rendered Learned Scientists Baffled!! and which seemingly Violates the Laws of Physics!! In the automotive world that meant zillion-mile-per-gallon carburetors made out of cast iron pipe and a drinking straw, or engines like the Bourke two-stroke, a tiny two-cylinder engine which Beats Detroit’s Beefiest V-8s!! while going Miles on a Tea-cup of Gas!! (unfortunately, it did neither—I wasted a lot of time in college researching it).

Perpetual motion machines abounded in those magazines, and the audio equivalent of a perpetual motion machine was (and is) the massless loudspeaker, which promises flawless reproduction by moving air without the nasty physical jiu-jitsu of cones, domes, and panels. You might have just now discovered plasma tweeters and the like…but it ain’t a new idea. Not by a long shot.

English physicist William Duddell examined the “singing arc”, an annoying tone produced by carbon arc lighting. Duddell discovered in 1899 that by varying the voltage to the arc, he could produce a variety of tones, creating a Victorian-era steampunk synthesizer.

Other mostly-massless sound-reproducers include Oscar Messter’s Auxtephones from 1903, which used modulated compressed air to terrify listeners and sorta reproduce music.  Along the same lines but even more terrifying was the flame loudspeaker built in the ‘60’s by engineers at transformer company UTC, while trying to simulate the sound of rocket exhaust. Their system used a McIntosh amplifier to drive the flame from an oxy-acetylene welding torch to reproduce Beethoven’s Fifth. —No, really—take a look here.

Getting back to those musty magazines, Hugo Gernsback was as responsible as any single individual for America’s enthusiasm for radio and electronics. His magazines may have featured prose that was a little caffeinated, but they were technically-solid and educational. The long-running Gernsback magazine Radio Electronics ran two articles in the November and December 1951 issues which had been translated from French, following their original appearance in Toute la Radio (“All Radio”).

The articles described the creation of French physicist Siegfried Klein, the “Ionophone”, a loudspeaker with no moving parts. The “Ionophone” was an ionization unit contained within a quartz horn-throat, coupled to a large, standard exponential horn. A platinum wire seated in the quartz horn acted as a cathode, and a 10-12,000 volt/400 kHz field is established between the wire and a cylindrical shield surrounding it. The field generates ions—charged particles— and thus heat. An insulated vacuum enclosure which surrounded the quartz horn-throat prevented conductive heat-loss and loss of charge. By modulating the 400 kHz field at audio frequencies, sound was produced…along with UV and heat.

At this point, the prose becomes as purple as the plasma of the Ionophone. A frequency-response graph indicated relatively flat response of +/- 5db from 25-10,000 Hz; the text stated that the speaker could reach “much higher frequencies…however, its output diminishes in the supersonic range.” The articles concluded with the description of a future filled with massless loudspeakers directly coupled to radios, and stated, “the (unidentified) biggest French manufacturer of loudspeakers is tooling up for mass production of Ionophones.”

Sixty-five years later, it’s pretty clear that such never occurred. However, Klein did license his technology in the ‘50’s and 60’s to the DuKane company in America (and through them, to ElectroVoice) and to Fane in England. DuKane made a tweeter unit known as the Ionovac; Fane’s version was called the IonoFane (and was utilized in an early Bowers & Wilkins speaker system). The Stereo/HiFi Directory in 1962 (and 1964, the only issues I have) listed the add-on Ionovac tweeter as $69.00 each, including power supply and crossover (about $550 today); other models ranged from $79.50 each (the tweeter housed in a small enclosure) to full-range systems including the Ionovac tweeter for as much as $246.00 each. Response was said to extend from 3.5-20 kHz, with no mention of the flatness of response.

Interestingly enough, that 1962 Stereo/HiFi Directory featured some pretty advanced speaker technology. Just before the Ionovac listings was the Kelly ribbon tweeter from the UK, marketed by Irving M. Fried under the brand IMF; after the Ionovac listings came Janszen electrostatic models, both add-ons and hybrid systems. Modern-day listings might look a trifle tame, in comparison.

Since the early ‘60’s, a number of companies have made, or attempted to make, massless/plasma loudspeakers. Klein himself developed a spherical ionic tweeter for the German company Magnat; that driver had a large and imposing flame structure, and despite the presence of a platinum screen that was supposed to act as a catalytic converter, was said to produce nasty amounts of ozone. Ozone is always a potential byproduct of a large plasma; the legendary Hill Plasmatronics dealt with ozone by piping in helium from a large tank! Given its Frankensteinian appearance and impracticality, it’s not surprising that only 50 pair were built, each pair supposedly sold at a loss, despite the hefty price ($7,000-$10,000 during the product’s lifetime, about $23-$25,000 today).

In the ‘80’s, the large and imposing French Tolteque plasma loudspeakers appeared at shows; I can’t even find a photograph, or state with certainty if they ever reached production. No less an eminence than Nelson Pass tried building a variant of the plasma speaker known as a corona wind speaker; Pass used electrode grids from copy machines. The device worked after a fashion, and was even shown on the cover of Stereophile (Vol. 6, No. 1). Unfortunately, it also produced large amounts of ozone, which caused some respiratory issues for Pass, who shelved the project.

A German named Otto Braun produced a plasma tweeter called the Corona Acoustic; subsequently, the design was sold to Lansche in Germany, who produces systems using the tweeter. Acapella in Germany also has a tweeter based upon the Braun design (which may or may not be the same as the Lansche unit).

Going full circle: Jim Jordan, designer of  Vaughn Loudspeakers, is now replicating the DuKane Ionovac tweeter.  Jim told me that he’s had molds made for the horn, and is producing new quartz cells and porcelain couplers, and has designed a new power supply. The Vaughn Plasma Signature speakers were recently shown at RMAF with electronics from Wavelength, and Stereophile’s Herb Reichert— a man known for enthusiasm, but not overstatement—wrote, “…it might be the best sound at any show, ever.”

The Plasma Signature model from Vaughn Loudspeakers, using their replica DuKane Ionovac tweeter. Photo: Lee Scoggins/Part-Time Audiophile, Vaughn/Wavelength room, RMAF 2016.

Given the advancements in materials science that have appeared during the 65 years since Klein’s papers, I have no doubt that we will continue to see further improvements and developments in massless tweeters. I can’t wait.

What is the biggest, most fundamental difference between Mathematics and Physics?  I would say that it is the fact that Mathematics is absolute.  Let me put it this way, our present understanding of Physics allows – in principle – for there to exist an infinite number of parallel universes, and for the laws of Physics in each of those universes to be different.  However, in each of those universes, the exact same rules of Mathematics would still apply.  Bizarre notions like these cause many people to look askance at hard science and prefer a simpler home-spun approach to life.  It is perhaps more comforting to simply dismiss Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the many mind-bending paradoxes it entails, while at the same time being prepared to rely unquestioningly on your GPS system, which would not work at all if not for a strict implementation of relativistic principles.  At least Mathematics tends to avoid the apparent paradoxes of advanced Physics.

The Fourier Transform is a nice example of a simple, yet powerful mathematical proof.  It arose from the realization that many continuous functions (a description that applies perfectly to an audio waveform) can be perfectly decomposed into a sum of individual pure-tone sine waves.  The Fourier Transform provides the exact mathematical relationship between the continuous function and its sine wave frequency components.  It is a relatively simple equation, but its use requires analyzing the continuous function over all time, from the infinite past to the infinite future, which clearly introduces some practical limitations.  For this reason, Fourier Transforms on real data can only ever be done in the digital domain.

The digital version of a Fourier Transform is called a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), and requires that the continuous function is sampled at regular intervals – which is good for digital audio.  However, the underlying principle still applies – the continuous function (the waveform) must still be processed over all time, including the infinite past and infinite future.  The way the DFT gets around this is that it takes a single finite snippet of the waveform and makes the assumption that this snippet is repeated ad infinitum into both the infinite past and future.

If this snippet does in fact repeat infinitely, then it must follow that any individual frequencies which comprise the waveform must also repeat infinitely.  In fact, they must more than just repeat.  Their phase relationships must also repeat.  In other words, during the specific duration of the waveform snippet, each frequency must go through an exact integer number of oscillations, so that the frequency component is at exactly the same phase of its oscillation at the end of the snippet as it was at the beginning.  That way, each repeating snippet, extending into the infinite past and future, must be exactly the same.

The lowest frequency F1 that fulfills this criterion is given by F1 = (Fs/N), where Fs is the sampling frequency, and N is the number of samples in the snippet.  All of the other frequencies that fulfill the criterion are its harmonics:  Fn = nF1.  Now, if we set n= N/2 then we get Fn = Fs/2 which is the Nyquist frequency.  Finally, I must add F0 =0 to the list, because we need to account for a DC component.  Therefore, in summary, a waveform comprising N data points at a sampling frequency Fs, and repeating infinitely, can comprise ONLY (N/2 + 1) frequencies given by:

Fn = (n/N)Fs,  where n = 0, 1, 2, 3, … N/2.

And this is exactly what a DFT delivers.  It transforms the N waveform values into (N/2 + 1) equally spaced frequencies from DC to the Nyquist frequency.  For each of these frequencies it tells you both the amplitude and the phase of the original waveform’s component at that frequency.

But can we relate what the DFT tells us about the waveform to the actuality of the waveform itself?  Can we relate it to what a proper Fourier Transform would have told us?  Are they the same thing?  Well, not quite.  Remember that the snippet of waveform we selected is assumed to repeat ad infinitum.  The problem is that where the end of each of those repeating segments joins up to the start of the succeeding segment, there is no guarantee that the join with be smooth.  In fact, it is almost assured that there will be an abrupt discontinuity at each of those boundaries.  Those discontinuities are not part of the original waveform, but they will by definition be fully represented within the DFT analysis.

Standard practice is to artificially fade out the signal at the start and the end of the snippet so that there is de facto no discontinuity at the join.  What this achieves is to replace an uncontrolled discontinuity with a controlled one.  This process is called ‘windowing’, and there are a large selection of useful windowing functions that can be gainfully employed.  Each of those different windowing functions will affect the way in which the resultant DFT relates to the original waveform itself, but other than introducing the concept, it is beyond the scope of this article to elaborate further.

Bear in mind that what the DFT tells us about the data snippet is not merely an approximation – it is a full and complete representation.  It tells you everything there is to know about the data that you feed it with.  In particular, anything that is not in the DFT is not in the data.  Similarly, anything that cannot be accommodated within the DFT representation cannot be encoded or captured within the data.  Despite what you might think, the data contains only the frequencies which the DFT spits out, and no others.

So, what happens if the original waveform from which we took our snippet contains a frequency which lies between two of the permitted frequencies spat out by the DFT (whose frequencies, you’ll recall, are determined by the number of samples in the DFT)?  Well, such a frequency will not fit neatly into the repeating DFT snippet with an exact number of cycles.  Therefore it will produce a discontinuity at the boundaries, and will therefore result in spurious data appearing within the DFT.  Managing this issue is the reason why windowing functions are important.  They control how that spurious data is distributed.  Those characteristics of windowing functions have been thoroughly analyzed, and are well understood, although it is a deeply technical subject.  Depending on what you are using the DFT to achieve, one windowing function may be a better choice than another.

I want to conclude by clarifying the relationship between a DFT and a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform).  The DFT is a transform – a relationship between two sets of numbers governed by a set of equations.  On the other hand, FFT is an algorithm, a methodology for implementing a DFT in practical terms by breaking the DFT down into progressively smaller pieces.  There is nothing, for example, that limits the number of samples on which a DFT can be performed.  But the most efficient FFT algorithms rely on the number of samples being an integer power of two, which is a limitation imposed only by the algorithm itself, and not by the underlying theorem.

Franz Liszt (1811–86) practically invented the showbiz end of classical music. He was the first touring pianist to give solo concerts in large halls. He was the first to play entirely from memory—absolute showbiz!—and then flip the trick, flawlessly sight-reading the music of fellow composers as a “favor” to them. (When he pulled that in Leipzig, using Robert Schumann’s Carnaval, its composer was both irked and embarrassed.) Liszt was the first to mix his own, contemporary music on programs with that of past greats like Bach and Beethoven, unsubtly suggesting that his works were of equal value. Sight-reading aside, all these practices caught on and are still used today.

The main tool in Liszt’s bag was his formidable technique. He could play more notes per second than anyone else on the planet. He wrote some of his music on three staves, implying that its ideal interpreter would need three hands, although for Liszt two was plenty: he had very long fingers, each hand spanning an interval of a tenth at the keyboard. As a young man he had been mesmerized by violinist Nicolò Paganini, who combined absolute command of his instrument with charismatic stage presence. (Like bluesman Robert Johnson, Paganini was reputed to have struck a deal with the devil. Pure showbiz.) Liszt developed similarly innovative piano skills. Those, and his striking good looks, generated hysteria among his fans.

But Liszt was also a creative genius. For years his formidable technique overshadowed his contributions to the development of musical language itself. Critics couldn’t help dismissing him as a charlatan whose finger-wiggling brought him more attention than he deserved. The truth is, he also extended the boundaries of chromatic harmony, producing richer, more varied, surprising harmonic and tonal progressions. He pioneered thematic transformation, a way of unifying longer pieces around a single continuously morphing idea. Finally, he came to recognize that the apparent conflict between program music and absolute music was a superficial distraction. We can observe how this played out in two masterpieces, the symphonic poem Les Préludes and the Sonata in B Minor for piano.

Liszt invented the symphonic poem as a genre, composing thirteen such works with titles like Prometheus, Orpheus, Battle of the Huns, Hamlet. These one-movement orchestral showpieces attempt to evoke a picture, person, play, poem, etc.—i.e., an extramusical program. Their titles alone provide a sense of their composer’s gargantuan (and very Romantic!) ambitions. Liszt couldn’t escape criticism for that. Champions of so-called absolute music, like the critic Eduard Hanslick, believed that great music possessed “self-contained” beauty and was “in no need of content from outside.” In time Liszt sought to reconcile this view with his own preference for linking human experience across media.

Consider the purely musical way in which he unified Les Préludes. There is a program, of course. Liszt chose a poem by Alphonse de Lamartine and attached a summary preface to the score so that no one could be confused about the “message.” It’s basically a Seven-Ages-of-Man thing; I’m going to spare you its flowery, dated language, although you can read it here.

Musically, Les Préludes consists of an introduction followed by five distinctive sections and a coda. They’re all based on a single three-note motive: one pitch, then another pitch a step below it, then a leap upward by four steps, e.g., C – B – E. You can hear it at the very beginning (low strings, echoed by flutes):

This repeats and “develops,” which leads to a brassy, martial statement (“man as mortal being”) by low brass and strings, giving way to an extended lyrical passage about a minute into this clip:

The best-known reworking of the motive occurs in the “happiness in love” section:

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t hear anything like the original motive. 

The X’s above the G, F, and B show the motive; all those other notes provide the melodic gestalt. In disguising this transformation, is Liszt somehow “cheating”? Not at all—you are meant to sense these motives’ unity subliminally, so that the sublime will enter you in a subconscious manner.

This music may even be more enjoyable if you don’t know the program at all. Liszt admitted as much in an 1855 essay he wrote with the help of his mistress, the Princess Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein:

It is on the one hand childish, idle, sometimes even mistaken, to outline programs . . . and thus to dispel the magic, to profane the feeling, and to tear to pieces with words the soul’s most delicate web, in an attempt to explain the feeling of an instrumental poem which took this shape precisely because its content could not be expressed in words, images, and ideas. . . . [On the other hand, unlike the specifically musical symphonist,] the painter-symphonist [sets] himself the task of reproducing with equal clarity a picture clearly present in his mind. . . . Why may he not, through a program, strive to make himself fully intelligible? (Adapted from Burkholder et al., History of Western Music, 8th ed.)

So: “programs” can get us into the emotional ballpark of a work, but we shouldn’t try to decipher programmatic details in the music as if it were a crossword puzzle. (Yes, I know the spot in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique where a severed head apparently plops into a basket. Crude fun, maybe, but not a great moment. See here; search “fatal blow.”)

The essential need for listeners to balance the programmatic with the absolute, the script with one’s individual fantasy, became clear to me years ago when I heard Alfred Brendel play the Sonata in B Minor at Emory University. In his recital notes—reprinted in his 1991 recording and in his book Music Sounded Out—Brendel made a compelling case for the Sonata as “a work of absolute music” that “exemplifies total control of large form.” Paradoxically, he also described its six (!) distinctive themes as “characters.” Familiar characters, in fact.

Here is the first theme. Note its resemblance to the first bars of Les Préludes:

And the second theme, in which “an actor makes his grand entrance on stage, his attitude a mixture of defiance, despair and contempt. May I call him Faust?”

The third theme, “instigating subversion, is Mephistophelean. Faust and Mephisto join . . . to produce what could be called a symphonic main idea.”

And with those themes, you know almost everything you need. Later on, will you hear the fifth theme “as a lyrical variant of the third,” i.e., “Mephisto turned into a vision of Gretchen”? Musically that’s valid. The metaphor is pretty good too.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Much more will occur. As you listen, you’ll construct your own program. The sixth theme eventually takes things, as the kids say, to the next level. Brendel has given us his take on it, as have many others. Your turn!

(Recordings excerpted:  Les Préludes, Berliner Philharmoniker, Karajan, DG; Sonata in B Minor, Kirill Gerstein, Myrios Classics MYR005.)