Originally posted by Serial_Apologist
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Then. 
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Fantasy-Prom, SA? See #13 above..... -
Good question! Then, I think it might have been the Brahms. Now, probably the Bach in its original guise. It was a helluva long time ago (nearly 60 years)! I have never got to grips with the Schoenberg.Originally posted by cloughie View PostComment
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SHame, that; I think it to be one of the most approachable of his dodecaphonic works.Originally posted by rauschwerk View PostComment
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I greatly prefer the dodecaphonic music of Schoenberg's pupil Roberto Gerhard.Originally posted by ahinton View PostComment
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Gerhard was a wonderful composer too, but very different to his teacher!Originally posted by rauschwerk View PostComment
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I like 'em all - Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Eisler, Skalkottas, Gerhard, Dallapiccola, Petrassi, Lutyens, early Goehr, to name just a few - clear demonstrators of the breadth and potential length of variety in the musics that have been composed using the method. Atonality, let we forget! expanded the realms of expressibility in music, holidays from the enslavement of cadential inevitability; dodecaphonics structured them.Originally posted by rauschwerk View PostComment
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Passacaglia alla St Pancras Concours:
Sadly my nearest community piano (the one at Herne Hill station) has now been on lockdown since the beginning of the Covid outbreak. I would always have a wee tinkle on my way to or from Brixton.Comment
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At your convenience, obviously.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostPassacaglia alla St Pancras Concours:
Sadly my nearest community piano (the one at Herne Hill station) has now been on lockdown since the beginning of the Covid outbreak. I would always have a wee tinkle on my way to or from Brixton.
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I've written one for solo piano, my Piano Trio contains one and the last movement of my 1st Symphony is a Passacaglia. Elements of the form are also present elsewhere, often combined with other forms.Originally posted by gradus View PostComment
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"I don't follow the fashion in which the variations have about as much in common with the theme as the moon has with a pickled herring."
So said Camille Saint-Saens. I do myself like to spot, even if not instantly, links between a theme and the variations that follow but sometimes I'm quite stumped. Case in point: Britten's Frank Bridge set. I have heard this piece many times over the years, but even after hearing an episode of Discovering Music in the hope of finding out how the piece 'works' I was none the wiser! As for the Schoenberg Op.31 set, I suppose it would help if I memorised and analysed the theme, but even then I'm not sure.
What are the views of boarders on this issue?Comment
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Well, those are two of the greatest Variations ever composed, (as is the whole of Schmidt's 2nd Symphony - the ne plus ultra of Variations, an incredible tour-de-force on one theme; the Frankfurt/P-Jarvi cycle is the Gramophone Orchestral Award Winner 2021)...Originally posted by rauschwerk View Post
I wouldn't worry too much if you can't always hear the theme against its variants, but its never a bad idea to familiarise yourself with the theme....... remember too, that these and other great Variations tend to create a more symphonic overall design, a through-composed structure....
Some works are indeed "Symphonic Variations" (cf Brahms 4 or Beethoven 9th finales) without actually being called that....Last edited by jayne lee wilson; 25-10-21, 13:17.Comment
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Diabelli variations travel so far from the original theme difficult to detect it in some even most of them. But Beethoven was doing that throughout his long experiment with the form e.g. the piano variations in f major or C minor. They are more an exploration of the musical potential of the theme. In the case of the C minor variations it’s barely a theme more a bald harmonic statement.Originally posted by rauschwerk View PostComment
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Well the Schoenberg theme is only 4 notes long, and has been used numerous times by other composers, so there should be little difficulty there! To me the composer was usefully illustrating the clarity with which form is capable of being heard using 12-tone methods by way of a musical signature which would have been relatively familiar to serious listeners.Originally posted by rauschwerk View PostComment
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Three modern works which immediately come to mind are ones in which the composer refrains from stating the theme until the very end of the piece: the first movement of Vaughan Williams' Symphony No 8; and Britten's Lachrymae, Meditations on a Theme of Dowland, and his Nocturnal for solo guitar, which also concludes on a Dowland theme if my memory serves me correctly. All these works serve in a way, by making anticipatory the provenance of the inspiration, to negate Saint-Saens' view that variations should in effect cling to their source, like a child unable to loosen the apron strings. There are works I have listened to probably hundreds of times, which only now are revealing the coherence of their inner connections. This is part and parcel of the fulfilment derived from music which does not reveal all of itself in one hearing. I rather like it when the composer loses me in thematic workout in developing his or her germinal materials, just letting the organic association operate on a subliminal level, one which will gradually become conscious through greater familiarisation.Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View PostComment
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Another interesting type of variation form, is to combine it with elements of sonata form, whereby the 'theme' although continually varied, is also developed and some of the variations recapitulated but varied somewhat from the variation as it was first presented.Comment
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