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oliver sudden
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« Reply #90 on: 10:12:55, 07-04-2007 » |
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I think I put down the MacDonald book for the last time while reading about torches sweeping around the room while the Stalin motive resounded throughout the orchestra, it being a Stalin motive because it had two notes and his name has two syllables.
That was figure 48 in the 4th symphony first movement, apparently. (Tubas growling in the bass, descending major ninths mostly but not exclusively in the treble.) Besides anything else the reason why anyone should be calling out 'Stalin' while hunting for dissident elements escaped me somewhat from a purely dramaturgical point of view.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #91 on: 10:18:05, 07-04-2007 » |
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The revised version of the book drops all reference to two-note motives equalling Stalin, although the torches sweeping around the room are still there in the description of that passage. I don't think the idea was that his name was being called out, it was more that his all-seeing eyes lurked behind the torch-beams. But, yes, that's what I meant by flights of programmatic fancy.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #92 on: 10:27:35, 07-04-2007 » |
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r and Oz,
It's a very simple phrase: four notes played on the viola; a rise of a fourth, followed by an identical rise a semitone higher, which if you like, gives intervals of a minor second, a major third, plus perfect and augmented fourths.....
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #93 on: 21:02:00, 07-04-2007 » |
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Sorry, got called away there: I was just trying to point out the interest Shostakovich seems to have in intervals repeated (particularly when a semitone apart) not just the consecutive rising fourths at the start of the sketch for the Fourth Symphony as mentioned above, but the start of the Fifth, too: a minor sixth going up followed by one a semitone lower going down. Just as I had to leave, I had a couple more examples to hand, which I've now forgotten, but I'll soon recall them again.
Come to think of it, the DSCH motive (D-Eb-C-B) contains two minor thirds a semitone apart (though jumbled up) too.
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #94 on: 09:37:43, 08-04-2007 » |
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Do you mean that minor thirds are not consecuvie, Ron Dogh? From d to Eflat is a minor second, from e flat to c is a minor third and from c to b is a minor second.
Usually sequence is consecutive thirds (with say a second in between). This DEbCB is not a sequence. Perhaps I don't understand something.
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autoharp
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« Reply #95 on: 09:52:27, 08-04-2007 » |
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t-p I think Ron means C-Eb and B-D are two minor thirds - jumble them up and you have DSCH
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #96 on: 09:59:19, 08-04-2007 » |
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Thanks ah, that's it exactly.
As I said, tp, jumbled up: within the DSCH sequence you have B-D, C-Eb: at the moment I'm looking at how Shostakovich plays with very basic cells of notes within his music and how he shapes them: the fall or rise of a tone or semitone seems to be a particularly frequent ploy of his: I'm not for one moment suggesting that it's the magic key to his music, but it does seem to be revealing itself as one of his regular ways of creating material ripe for development.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #97 on: 10:14:15, 08-04-2007 » |
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A junior Dough has just bought a flat which is needing a deal of work done to it: spent most of yesterday there, and it will be the same today, so I'll not be online again until this evening. I will however be carrying an mp3 player with me, so I'll continue the investigations as I'm slaving....
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martle
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« Reply #98 on: 10:49:01, 08-04-2007 » |
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t-p, composers sometimes like to think of their pitches as 'collections' (especially in non-tonal music), which can be expressed lineally - as a line, or melody, such as D-S-C-H - or all together as a chord, 'harmonically'. The 'order' of the pitches doesn't always have to be the same, of course, so the order of intervals needn't either. In the case of DSCH, you have (altogether) two semitones, one whole tone, two minor thirds and one major third. But that's only if they are in 'close position': the thirds could be sixths or tenths etc., the semitones major sevenths or minor 9ths etc. The most logical and consistent way of expressing this particular collection of intervals (DSCH) is numerically: 0134 (where '1' is a semitone).
Interestingly, if you do the same with a minor triad you get 037. And a major triad? 037 again, not 047. Because that's the most 'economic' way of expressing the intervals - which are exactly the same in both major and minor triads, just differently ordered from bottom to top (a minor third, a major third and a fifth)!
Theory ramble over!
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Green. Always green.
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autoharp
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« Reply #99 on: 10:54:19, 08-04-2007 » |
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Must try this with my telephone number.
martle not armlet
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martle
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« Reply #100 on: 10:57:58, 08-04-2007 » |
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tramel
ratlem
I feel a symphony coming on!
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Green. Always green.
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autoharp
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« Reply #101 on: 11:06:08, 08-04-2007 » |
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Go for it, elm rat !
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ahinton
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« Reply #102 on: 12:15:57, 08-04-2007 » |
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The sort of neo-McCarthyite tribunals that Taruskin and others set up for Shostakovich (was he or wasn't he a communist?), and then listen to the pieces through whichever lens one chooses in that respect, are rather pointless. Shostakovich's music is much more important than Shostakovich the person, and whilst some of his works (and those of other Soviet composers) obviously, through their titles, claim to evoke certain things associated with Soviet patriotism (and that surely affects perceptions every bit as much as does Vivaldi describing scenes in Le Quattro Stagioni, and can't be totally ignored as a result), if one is to look at the resultant ideological attributes of the works, it should come from the relationship between these express intentions and the actual sound of the music, not from biographical material.
Indeed so - but as Shostakovich's music is, as you rightly observe, much more important (for us today and for anyone else who did not know him intimately, I assume you to mean) than Shostakovich the person, why is the same not the case for Sorabji, as far as you are concerned? I do not wish to hijack this thread, so perhaps your response might better be provided in the Sorabji one! Best, Alistair |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #103 on: 12:26:26, 08-04-2007 » |
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The sort of neo-McCarthyite tribunals that Taruskin and others set up for Shostakovich (was he or wasn't he a communist?), and then listen to the pieces through whichever lens one chooses in that respect, are rather pointless. Shostakovich's music is much more important than Shostakovich the person, and whilst some of his works (and those of other Soviet composers) obviously, through their titles, claim to evoke certain things associated with Soviet patriotism (and that surely affects perceptions every bit as much as does Vivaldi describing scenes in Le Quattro Stagioni, and can't be totally ignored as a result), if one is to look at the resultant ideological attributes of the works, it should come from the relationship between these express intentions and the actual sound of the music, not from biographical material.
Indeed so - but as Shostakovich's music is, as you rightly observe, much more important (for us today and for anyone else who did not know him intimately, I assume you to mean) than Shostakovich the person, why is the same not the case for Sorabji, as far as you are concerned? I do not wish to hijack this thread, so perhaps your response might better be provided in the Sorabji one! Well, when those issues come up in the context of Shostakovich, they are almost exclusively to do with compositional intent (did he mean this work/passage as an expression of support for the Stalinist regime, or as an ironic dig at it, subverting it from within by the use of hidden codes, and so on?). A large amount of work (following Volkov) found much to praise in Shostakovich by asserting the latter; Taruskin, Fay and others have attempted to refute this reading. Both schools of thought seek to make a virtue or vice out of intention rather than so much its manifestation. I would rather pass judgement based on what is communicated in this respect by the sounds. In the case of Sorabji, almost all the positive material I've ever read on him invokes his cranky and dangerous ideas; when I invoke those when arguing a rather more negative interpretation, I don't see why it is any different. But I don't think one needs to know those ideas to arrive at some notion of the world-view presented from the music alone. But at this point I need to ask you something I've meant to for a while: in one of your essays in Rapoport's book, you say something about Sorabji's adhering to racial theories (I don't have the exact quote in front of me) but then have nothing critical to say about this. Don't you find such things at all disturbing? |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #104 on: 17:36:52, 08-04-2007 » |
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I think this technique (numerology) are as good as any in providing impetus for composition and pushing it forward. Bach did it. Schumann too. I love Abegg variations, think the theme is beautiful.
Shostakovich's mind is amazing. May be his mind is like Bach's. I do think he could be compared to Bach in the number of complex compositions.
There is intonations and their development. DSCH has interesting intonation that reminds me how Russians would intone in their speach his name (beginning of it).
It is interesting to know more about his personality. Was he religious at all? I did not hear that he used any ratio or any other numbers for his forms. I always thought that he was more or less traditional with his musical forms.
Many thanks for your explanation, martle and autoharp. The way I was thinking I would not understand Ron's point.
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