Badinage: The Great Godowsky (1870 - 1938)

Leopold Godowsky was incomparable. To me, he was the greatest of the great; at five-foot three, the giant of the giants. But I introduce him here, in this post, because I was thinking of one of my favorite words, and want to introduce that word, badinage--and the richness of the associations that I have with it--to my students. The great masters of compositional badinage of the Modernist era (I'm not claiming that there were not other masters of that era whose badinage delights) were Leopold Godowsky and James Joyce. In this post I wish to introduce "badinage" and Godowsky. (An in-depth biographic introduction to Godowsky is here; read it in awe....)

The word badinage is flaccidly defined in Webster's as "playful repartee : BANTER".

OK, lets track that down a bit: following Webster's lead, what are the definitions of "repartee" and "banter"?

Ah, now we are getting somewhere:

repartee : ... 1a : a quick and witty reply b : a succession or interchange of clever retorts : amusing and usually light sparring with words 2 : adroitness and cleverness in reply : skill in repartee syn see WIT

banter ... (verb) ... 1 : to speak to or address in a witty or teasing manner ....
(intransitive verb) : to speak or act playfully or wittily

banter (noun) : good-natured and usually witty and animated joking

So, overall, we get a feeling of "badinage" as being a quick, clever, light-hearted interplay of dialogue. A sort of fencing jokingly with words; a witty sequence of back-and-forth, a conversational thrust-and-parry, a quick volleying of ideas and plays on words. But to me, there is more to it; it is rooted in responsorial or antiphonal play. The word badinage, at its best, connotes a fast, light counterpoint of thought and wordplay.

The words I just used and highlighted, responsorial and antiphonal are terms from musicology [the scholarly study of music]. The word "responsorial" refers to a leader in singing a line of a psalm and a chorus or the church/congregation singing the next line in response. (A phrase sometimes used to describe this in chant or song, particularly in a church/temple setting is "call and response".) The word "antiphonal" refers to an interactive alteration between choruses; think of the singing of crickets on a summer night in the country. However, language carries meaning with words and memes, and so the witty interplay of dialogue will incorporate a counterpoint of ideas, too. And this is my conception of "badinage": A playful countrapuntal dialogue in quick, witty interplay--the key distinction being contrapuntal play with words and thoughts.

An exemplification of this conception, carried to the highest level, is in Leopold Godowsky's piano composition entitled Badinage. The linked recording is by David Saperton, one of the forgotten treasures of pianism; Saperton was Godowsky's son-in-law, and was highly respected by Godowsky, Hoffman, and the others. As Godowsky's son-in-law, he was in a unique position to have a deep comprehension of the Godowsky paraphrases. In addition to Saperton's recording, here is a performance of Badinage by Marc-Andre Hamelin, a contemporary Canadian pianist who specializes in piano works of the greatest technical difficulty. Other recordings: Francesco Libetta; Boris Berezovsky (this last shows the original Chopin etude followed by Godowsky's Badinage.

[I will no doubt be fleshing this out more. Please return. There is much more to say about the great pianist-composer Leopold Godowsky, and there are some wonderful recordings to link to....]