Saturday, 9:00 am–12:00
pm
Schumann's lyrically dissonant counterpoint is explored in the first two movements of Kreisleriana, Op. 16. Composed in 1838, the Kreisleriana is an exemplar of Schumann's empathy for and kinship with the foundations of German Romanticism. Schenkerian voice-leading graphs will reveal a use of chromaticism in extremis, as well as rhythmic disruptions of an extraordinary nature.The work poses unique problems for the musical analyst and to the pianist/interpreter. A close reading of the opening of the first movement reveals that the four melodic strands of the highly figurated texture necessitate a highly individualized polyphonic piano technique. This opens a discussion into performance and analysis issues, particularly, the art of transforming analytical understanding into manual motion. Whereas Schumann's works are acknowledged as belonging to the virtuoso tradition of the nineteenth century, in many respects they are not "pianistic" in the usual sense. (Several editors, notably Harold Bauer, have injudiciously rewritten, or revoiced the music in an attempt to smooth it out somewhat.) Nevertheless, as I will show, a suitably graceful technique can be achieved with the help of a sufficiently informed analysis.
In addition to his fame as a composer, Schoenberg is well-known for his method of analyzing music wherein one explains all developments in a piece as outgrowths of its opening material. Given this empirical, individualistic, and compositionally-inspired approach to analysis, it is perhaps fitting that Schoenberg placed few terminological constraints on the "Grundgestalt," the word he coined to encapsulate that opening material. A fluid or vague definition of this word may have worked for Schoenberg, but it has caused problems for modern analysts. Those interested in exploring a work's linear organicism by means of the Grundgestalt have had to cobble together non-generalizable definitions of the term and to rely awkwardly on associative analysis (i.e., selective highlighting of pitches; loosely-aligned staves) for showing findings.
This paper will advance ideas concerning the proper form and use of a Grundgestalt. I begin with a discussion of a model proposed by Patricia Carpenter recognizing the Grundgestalt as a three-voice polyphonic complex. Using Brahms’s op. 76, no. 5, I extend her model by increasing the duration of an acceptable Grundgestalt and by building in a means to capture a piece’s rhythmic, harmonic, contrapuntal, and contour content. I will then show how an expanded Grundgestalt leads to a deeper understanding of some aspects of the Capriccio – notably its motivic and rhythmic/metric narratives – but at the same time leaves issues of form and harmonic structure unaccounted for in analysis.
This paper explores how certain anomalies in Brahms’s sketch material for the Haydn Variations may pertain to the work’s complex network of motivic relationships, what Tovey once called “a nervous system of melodic connections.” Specifically, the sketches suggest that Brahms drafted variations 3 and 8 and iterations 1-9 in the passacaglia concurrently. The paper thus examines how common motives unite these, in the work’s final form, disparate events and in turn how these relationships pertain to Brahms’s decision to conclude the variations with a passacaglia that would ultimately cycle back to the theme. As befits the nature of the sketch material, the conclusions offered will be tentative. Yet it is hoped that the analytical results will prove substantive enough to stimulate further study and investigation.
In Brahms Studies 3 (2001), Peter Smith explores motivic-metric process in the opening movements of the Horn Trio, Op. 40, and the Clarinet Trio, Op. 114, and discovers significant relationships among metric displacement, tonal organization, and formal design. In each of these movements, the concluding section provides substantial, if not complete, resolution of previous metric dissonances. Brahms’s oeuvre contains many similar trajectories from motivic-metric instability to stability; probably the most celebrated one involves the opening neighbor-note motive from the first movement of the Second Symphony. The analytical literature on Brahms’s instrumental music has comparatively little discussion of dissonances that do not resolve within a movement.
This paper will explore such metric dissonances in the second movement of the Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 101. The paper will demonstrate that the second movement of Op. 101 sets metric periodicity in continual opposition against the metric placement of the movement’s opening motive. This conflict results in either frequent reinterpretation of the motive’s metric identity or in metric irregularities not only at the level of hypermeter but often at the level of the tactus. These conflicts create the possibility of radical discontinuities in the meter, and temporal disjunction becomes a defining feature of the movement. The metric conflicts remain unresolved at the end of the movement, and this supports the movement’s role as a spectral interlude between the stormy first movement and folk-inspired slow movement of Op. 101.