Musical angst

[ahinton]

Even thinking about them fills me with dread!

Yes, I believe that most of us already knew that. Have you listened to them, though and, if so, did they fill you with more than does merely thinking about them? Just curious...

[ahinton]

While Ahinton has cited examples of what I would have thought of as passages of anxiety in music, my view would probably be that they don't express themselves primarily through melodic utterance, but, rather, epigrammatically, sudden gnawing sensations of chill that won't easily go away; and this is why those who owed or owe so much to Expressionism put them across most powerfully.

I'm not sure that this is always the case, though; Schönberg was, among other things, a great melodist - and just listen to that long and aching string melody that continues for quite some time, slowly ebbing away until it reaches the final "resting"(?) point in Pettersson's Ninth Symphony...

[Serial_Apologist]

I didn't know that Hoffmann had said that - but it touches on something that's interested me since I first prepared the work for a group of "A"-level Music Students 30-odd years ago: why don't I hear those opening bars in Eb Major? I think it's clear that Beethoven wanted to present a similar sort of Tonal ambiguity that he'd also explored at the start of the First Symphony (which elusively defines the home key of C major, by initially avoiding it) and of the Third (where the C# during the opening tonic Eb major harmony gives a fleeting sense of a sustained dominant 7th chord in Ab major, only to whip it away immediately). In any other context, the opening bars of the Fifth would sound like an incomplete Ic - V - I cadence in Eb major, and I'm pretty sure that he wanted his attentive listeners to feel this tonal ambiguity at the start (I made an arrangement of the opening bars in Eb major with a Schubertesque right-hand accompaniment to make the tonal ambiguity clearer).

But, try as I might, I cannot "map" Eb major onto the opening gesture - the work has become so well-known, with the subsequent, very clearly c minor, Music so imprinted on my memory that I cannot hear the tonal ambiguity, even though I'm conscious of its (probably) intended presence. It's like Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde - Stevenson intended the story to be a "mystery" - what is the relationship between the (apparently) two men; what is Hyde's hold over Jeckyll - solved only in the final pages. But. of course, the story has entered into the culture so solidly, that it's become a "horror/sci-fi" story - the solution known even to children who've never read the book, nor seen a film adaptation. There is no mystery any more: I cannot "un-remember" the solution of the mystery as I read the earlier chapters - and I never have been able to. (There a similar case with Dracula, which starts with a chapter which reads like a travel story - the nature of Dracula is revealed as a surprise to its first readers; a surprise that cannot be for modern readers, because images of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee have become a fixed feature of the culture.)

So far, so agreeing with Tom Service. But I don't think (of course, I cannot know this) I would ever have shared Hoffmann's feeling of "apprehensive, restless longing", even if by some freak of fate I had never heard the work before ... I ... erm ... heard it for the first time (clumsy: if I'd heard it for the very first time in my 20s is the sort of thing I mean) - any more than the opening of the First or Third Symphonies, with their similar playing with Tonal ambiguity, evoke such feelings. The second group melody doesn't feel at all "apprehensive" to me - it is the momentary period of respite that makes the return of the "driven" Music all the more effective - as well as making clear how the Symphony will ultimately tidy up the Tonal ambivalence of the opening.

This applies to so many aspects of life that were once so new and even shocking, but which through familiarty have become the norm, doesn't it? The added-note chords of Debussy and Ravel once regarded as unresolved grace notes or appoggiaturas hanging on, surplus to requirements, which quickly became everyday devices of harmony in all forms of western music, including jazz and Tin Pan Alley pop music?

Slightly off-topic, Anthony Payne once drew attention to Vaughan Williams's use of the pitch C as a pedal underpinning harmonies ostensibly in D major at the opening of his fifth symphony, creating a consistent sense of tonal ambiguity that in some ways compares to Beethovens opening to his Fifth - one that lasts for a good 3 minutes until the harmonic root drops down a minor third and the music shifts into a straightforward diatonic A major with the entrance of the second subject. Or is the initial pedal in B flat? - I'd need to check that.

It now occurs to me that maybe one reason why the unresolved French sixths that have become everyday parts of the harmonic lansdcape no longer disturb has more to do with the origins of higher than triadic irresolution residing in the heightened emotional states expressed in much post-Wagnerian Late Romantic music, particularly of the Austro-German school. There the analogy is with unrequited pain, whether physical or emotional - and the Victorian period yearned for happy endings! French Impressionists had ways of disguising their dissonances, much as Wagner said he had in Tristan - "to lead the listener by hand from one chord to the next" I think is how he put it - whereas some of his successors such as Wolf and Mahler wanted their naked emotional impact unmuted by ingenious orchestration, chord voicings, or delicate pianistic touch. Perhaps it is that association that continues to alienate many to this day, even though dissonance has since been incorporated into more flexible ways of creating formal consistency as well as re-defining what we can mean by "beauty" than had been restricted under the old diatonic rules.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

- it is a C pedal at the start of the RVW 5th; held underneath the D major triad it sort-of creates a third-inversion D7 pedal, without ever really sounding like one: there's no feeling (at least I don't get any such feeling) that G major is a possible Tonal centre or resting point - mixolydian on D is very clearly predominant here (to me).

It's like a breath held throughout those 59 bars, isn't it - released only for the soft, Tranquillo "Alleluia" of the Second Group at figure 5 (but it's in E major, not A - the C pedal droops down a minor Sixth to E).

[Serial_Apologist]

- it is a C pedal at the start of the RVW 5th; held underneath the D major triad it sort-of creates a third-inversion D7 pedal, without ever really sounding like one: there's no feeling (at least I don't get any such feeling) that G major is a possible Tonal centre or resting point - mixolydian on D is very clearly predominant here (to me).

It's like a breath held throughout those 59 bars, isn't it - released only for the soft, Tranquillo "Alleluia" of the Second Group at figure 5 (but it's in E major, not A - the C pedal droops down a minor Sixth to E).

Thanks for those clarifications!

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm not sure that this is always the case, though; Schönberg was, amon other things, a great melodist - and just listen to that long and aching string melody that continues for quite some time, slowly ebbing away until it reaches the final "resting"(?) point in Pettersson's Ninth Symphony...

Absolutely. I was thinking of one aspect of Schoenberg's music, and that of his pupils and those influenced by them - but an important aspect.

[jayne lee wilson]

Even thinking about them fills me with dread!

We're all waiting, breathless , to hear why.....

[Bryn]

We're all waiting, breathless , to hear why.....

"I'm not."

[antongould]

Having received the complete Beethoven piano sonatas from Mr K. for Christmas and so far keeping to my resolution to play at least one movement of one sonata each day during this anniversary year (well, originally, it was to be a complete sonata every day, but heck . . . ) I find myself pondering angst in music. Beethoven, it seems to me, was a composer much given to expressing his angst in his compositions. One finds this emotion in numerous other European composers - Mahler, Wagner, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz (I am flinging down names from the top of my head) - but it strikes me that angst is quite remarkably absent from most British composers (setting aside, perhaps, Britten and Tippet). There is, of course, deep melancholy in such as Elgar and Vaughan Williams, but when RVW tried for angst, in his 4th symphony, he merely appears as very cross.
Am I mistaken?

When Skellers interviewed Dame Harriet Walter on EC she seemed in the Beethoven angst school ..... she said before she went on stage as Hedda Gabler she listened to LBV on her headphones .....

[ahinton]

- it is a C pedal at the start of the RVW 5th; held underneath the D major triad it sort-of creates a third-inversion D7 pedal, without ever really sounding like one: there's no feeling (at least I don't get any such feeling) that G major is a possible Tonal centre or resting point - mixolydian on D is very clearly predominant here (to me).

It's like a breath held throughout those 59 bars, isn't it - released only for the soft, Tranquillo "Alleluia" of the Second Group at figure 5 (but it's in E major, not A - the C pedal droops down a minor Sixth to E).

One feature of this tonally ambiguous opening is its remarkable - albeit obviously coincidental - resemblance to a passage in the long drawn out coda to the finale of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony written a few years earlier but which RVW almost certainly had not heard played on two pianos (and of course it wasn't performed by an orchestra during RVW's lifetime).

[Serial_Apologist]

One feature of this tonally ambiguous opening is its remarkable - albeit obviously coincidental - resemblance to a passage in the long drawn out coda to the finale of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony written a few years earlier but which RVW almost certainly had not heard played on two pianos (and of course it wasn't performed by an orchestra during RVW's lifetime).

I've often felt there to be an inadvertent convergence of the later musical languages of these two composers - Shostakovich turning more and more to a modern form of modalism, as exemplified in his 10th symphony, though I don't suppose he had heard RVW's Fifth, composed roughly 10 years earlier. The second (scherzo) movement of Vaughan Williams' Eighth even has a Shostakovichian feel to it. Later it would be Britten with whom Shostakovich would form a strong friendship, but that was a few years after RVW's death; nevertheless I've always been struck by the stylistic similarities between DS and RVW, particularly in their bleaker moments, whereas I hear very little similarity between Shostakovich's and Britten's music.

[ahinton]

I've often felt there to be an inadvertent convergence of the later musical languages of these two composers - Shostakovich turning more and more to a modern form of modalism, as exemplified in his 10th symphony, though I don't suppose he had heard RVW's Fifth, composed roughly 10 years earlier. The second (scherzo) movement of Vaughan Williams' Eighth even has a Shostakovichian feel to it. Later it would be Britten with whom Shostakovich would form a strong friendship, but that was a few years after RVW's death; nevertheless I've always been struck by the stylistic similarities between DS and RVW, particularly in their bleaker moments, whereas I hear very little similarity between Shostakovich's and Britten's music.

Interesting - and agreed!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

- RVW #5 was an "A"-Level set work for 3-4 years, replaced by the Board by DSCH #5. I was astonished by the similarities in their adaptations of the old "Church" Modes.

[Serial_Apologist]

- RVW #5 was an "A"-Level set work for 3-4 years, replaced by the Board by DSCH #5. I was astonished by the similarities in their adaptations of the old "Church" Modes.

Indeed - probably a matter of correlation rather than causation; but it's striking how often 20th century composers of widely diverging aesthetics turned to modalism as an alternative to atonality and serialism - either through some unspecific change in thinking (Goehr's statement that he just got tired of the soundworld associated with 12-tone music for example) or some perceived need to draw on a distant past; or through turning to folk music forms. Over the past 60 or so years, modalism has probably effected a greater influence on the other area of musical interest for me, jazz, than the increasing chromaticism that had crept into the post-Swing era idiom by way of Bebop in the 1940s, or the attempted confluences with Modernism in the 1950s termed Third Stream by the American composer and teacher Gunther Schuller, which have since all but merged into the fields of Experimentalism and Free Improvisation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Goehr wasn't the only one to think this way about "the soundworld associated with 12-note serialism" (Ligeti, Birtwistle, Xenakis, Carter, among others voiced similarish comments) - something which strikes me as strange, considering the variety of soundworlds created by many composers who worked with Serialism (I'm currently listening to a lot of Krenek, whose Music is as different from Schoenberg, Berg, Stravinsky, Babbitt, Searle, Gerhard, Wuorinen, Lutyens, Boulez, Stockhausen etc as they are from each other).

But yes, working with Modes, old and new, was a powerful driving force of so much Music of the 20th Century, beginning with Debussy (or even earlier, with Musorgsky) and taking in so many disperate creative minds (Coltrane has to be mentioned - but so much Jazz from the '50s & '60s - and a quick mention of Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns due here, I think).

In fact, with the six hexachords that are internally complementary by inversion, which was what fuelled most composers who were attracted to serialism, one could argue that 12-note Serialism was itself a development of Modal thinking - though Schoenberg would vociferously object to such a notion! Hauer's "Tropes" - and Berg's adaptation of them - would help point out the similarities, though.