Less common keys

[ahinton]

When I first encountered Michael Finnissy's work at the age of 19 or 20, around the time that he was writing pieces like that, my feeling was "Good grief! Aaaaarggghhhh! This is some of the most intensely liberating music I've ever heard, and I need to hear and see as much of it as I can because it makes almost all the other music being produced in the UK sound insipid and conservative." So it was and remains infinitely more important to me than perfect or plagal cadences. Just saying. (Don't try to analyse it, you'll get nowhere)

I must listen to this performance as I have only previously heard the work played (brilliantly, I might add) by Jonathan Powell who was soloist in Finnissy's Fifth Piano Concerto in the same concert; I can't recall the entire programme now but I do remember that Jonathan also played Scriabin's Ninth Sonata and other piano works and there was some Grainger with another pianist. I've never quite forgotten those killer trillers at the end of PC6!..

[ahinton]

Interesting to note how this way of restless modulation differed from Reger's in that the latter's seemed more to arise from his chromatic manner of note-leading - using voicings to free up the harmonic sphere, leading to passing ambiguity, and often to an unexpected resolution or false resolution. It's always struck me how Schoenberg drew on both approaches, especially around the time of the move away from tonality - some of the songs (in particular) being vertically conceived, ostensibly, others horizontally, using that post-Wagnerian way of resolving through expanding suspensions and appogiaturas. I often wonder of AS's cryptic remark about having himself forgotten as much as he had learned from Strauss reflected his later attitude, conditioned (obviously, it seems to me) by his preference for the 12-tone serial method of composition.

Anyway, slight diversion from thread topic - or sideways movement!

Interesting indeed - and yes, Schönberg's admiraton for Reger is well known, likewise Strauss' championing of Schönberg in the early days before Strauss turned against him (the "shovelling snow" remark having stuck in the craw forever, it seems); I don't doubt that Schönberg drew on both composers for a time but suspect that his "cryptic remark" had at least some of its origins in his understandable response to Strauss's disgracefully expressed volte-face about him and his work. Schönberg was, after all, invited a few years theeafter to contribute something in celebration of Strauss' 50th birthday and refused on the grounds that it would not be required or appreciated. Strauss and Schönberg never seemed to reconcile in later life as Boulez and Dutilleux seemed to do much more recently following the former's open contempt for the latter at the time when his first symphony received its world première. I'm not sure that Schönberg's adoption of serial dodecaphony represented a wholesale negation of whatever it was that he felt that he had learned from Strauss.

Whilst an aside to an aside here (for which all due apologies!), Strauss' orchestral skill has long been widely admired, as has Mahler's - and both composers were, of course, distinguished conductors - in Gurrelieder and Pelleas und Melisande and then a little later in Erwartung and the Five Orchestral Pieces Schönberg displayed a facility with the orchestra that I believe to have been at least their equal.

[ardcarp]

If it helps, I don’t particularly mind if the topic meanders into other areas.

Thanks to ahinton, I’ve just looked up Michael Finnissy on You Tube. His PC No 6 came up here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PRWQk4bbQs&t=48s

Good grief! Aaaaarggghhhh! Where do you start to analyse it, listen to it, appreciate it, ahem… enjoy it?

Back to resolving Perfect and Plagal cadences for me, I’m afraid!

I’ll humbly bow out now. I’ve learnt much from this thread, and I really must stop before biting off more than I can chew.

Mario

Not many of the excellent vocal groups around these days (eg Polyphony, Voces8, Stile Antico) tackle what we used to think of as difficult music. The only one I know of is Exaudi which makes a point of doing so. It has indeed performed and recorded some of Finissy's works:

https://nmc-recordings.myshopify.com/products/michael-finnissy-exaudi-sing-finnissy

[CallMePaul]

The only other piece that springs to mind ( aside from cycle of keys keyboard works ) is the Marcia Funebre from the AFlat Beethoven piano sonata . Hopefully yours will be less gloomy….

There aren't too many pieces in the enharmonic G# minor either. Apart from preludes (with or without fugues) in sets in all keys, I can only think of the 2nd sonatas of Skryabin and Bax, plus a mazurka by Chopin.

Schubert was also fond of remote keys in his piano music - Impromptu D899/3in G flat major and the Sonata in B major to give just two examples that immediately spring to mind. However, I remember reading that Brian Newbould had a theory that Schubert may have left the 8th Symphony as 2 complete movements plus sketches for a third because of the difficulty for brass players of a movement at least partly in B major, as the finale would likely have been.

[Tapiola]

There aren't too many pieces in the enharmonic G# minor either. Apart from preludes (with or without fugues) in sets in all keys, I can only think of the 2nd sonatas of Skryabin and Bax, plus a mazurka by Chopin.

Only other example I can think of is the brief 6th movement of Beethoven's string quartet op.131.

[Ein Heldenleben]

There aren't too many pieces in the enharmonic G# minor either. Apart from preludes (with or without fugues) in sets in all keys, I can only think of the 2nd sonatas of Skryabin and Bax, plus a mazurka by Chopin.

Schubert was also fond of remote keys in his piano music - Impromptu D899/3in G flat major and the Sonata in B major to give just two examples that immediately spring to mind. However, I remember reading that Brian Newbould had a theory that Schubert may have left the 8th Symphony as 2 complete movements plus sketches for a third because of the difficulty for brass players of a movement at least partly in B major, as the finale would likely have been.

That Rachmaninov G# min Prelude , so often and beautifully played as an encore by Horowitz , is a minor miracle and it’s eminently playable by amateurs. The Chopin G #min is a bit of a ‘mare.