GMG Listening Group — Stravinsky's Agon :: 22 May - 4 June 2011

[DavidW]

I might have lead ears here but I do not hear triads in the prelude.

[karlhenning]

I might have lead ears here but I do not hear triads in the prelude.

Thanks for taking the risk! No, I don't think your ears are lead . . . I don't hear triads, either, not in the harmonies, nor in the melodies (or melodic cells) out of which the Prelude is built.  So how do we argue that the Prelude is "in C"?

[karlhenning]

Without triads, we cannot have the cadences which establish a C Major, for instance . . . .

[DavidW]

Yeah I never felt like we departed from and returned to the home key, which I guess is what tonality is all about.  I have to be careful about associating melody with tonality it seems.

[karlhenning]

The movement is scalar, and seems to imply a tonal center - and is almost entirely vertical, so any triads would be coincidental with the lines converging.  But, I definitely hear a key implied.

Good!

Curiously, almost all my listening to Miles has been since the last time I dug into Agon . . . so (may be wacky of me) but I am imagining a loose synergy between this means of determining a "key" in the Prelude, and "mid-career Miles" with his emphasis on modal improvising rather than playing around chord changes (in the jazz parlance).

The repeated note in trumpet I at the start is C, but the "chord" is (from the bottom up) F, B, C (and each pitch is represented in one octave alone . . . and the minor 2nd is a compound interval, i.e. a minor 9th).  So we've got both the "fifth-ey" sound which is an echo of mediæval (and older?) ceremony, and the dissonance which will permeate so much of the ballet, and will trend towards the 12-tone elements.

Towards the close of the Prelude, when the repeated-note figure comes back (in horn I) it is not C but D-flat (that semitone relation), but in the subsequent imitative play, it sorts out and "resolves" to a "sort of C chord" (C, D, F, G).

[karlhenning]

This is from an earlier post of mine:

It has a galliard in C major built round a strict canon between harp and mandolin with high flutes and double-bass harmonics, propped up by a thick C major chord for solo viola and cellos which breaks every known rule of instrumental voicing. It has an atonal 'Bransle simple' which opens with a rapid canon for two trumpets, and a nearly atonal 'Bransle gay' with a castanet ostinato. It starts and ends in a Stravinskian C major, and its four sections or sequences are linked by tonally fixed interludes which tick over like a car engine while the dancers take up their new positions.

Which was written by Stephen Walsh, and no doubt what I was remembering.

Aye, that canon is in a number during the 'second quarter' of the contest.

[karlhenning]

Well, but in looking at the Prelude/Coda & Interludes . . . I think we should find that diatonic is a shade simplistic!

We certainly find all twelve chromatic notes of the octave in the Prelude (and we have both F & F# in the very first five measures).

[Cato]

Well, but in looking at the Prelude/Coda & Interludes . . . I think we should find that diatonic is a shade simplistic!

We certainly find all twelve chromatic notes of the octave in the Prelude (and we have both F & F# in the very first five measures).

Ain't that the truth!   

Yes, the Prelude may not actually be serial/dodecaphonic (I have come across "Bonnie Jacobi's" essay online, which seems to have been part of her Ph.D. work) but is chromatic in the spirit of e.g. Hartmann.  So yes, Leon,it might have a quasi-tonal feel as a result.

[karlhenning]

And over the course of the Prelude, the overall harmonic arc of the fanfare blocks is (C) - D^b - C

[DavidW]

I think there's a large range of music between strictly tonal and strictly serial.

[karlhenning]

I think there's a large range of music between strictly tonal and strictly serial.

Aye.  And, of course, Stravinsky "trending chromatic" here is not any novelty (viz. Le sacre) . . . even the Prelude, with its deliberate antiquing echoes, is less "white-key diatonic" than many a score from his neoclassical phase (and his penchant for chromatic pungency had frequent play even in those "white-key" days).

[karlhenning]

And over the course of the Prelude, the overall harmonic arc of the fanfare blocks is (C) - D^b - C

I cast that opening C in parens for two reasons:

The harmony underpinning the initial repeated-note tattoo in trumpet I has F in the bass — and while the horn duet that ensues cadences on octave C's, the "closing chord" in the double-reeds has an F in the bass (corno inglese).

[Scarpia]

I cast that opening C in parens for two reasons:

The harmony underpinning the initial repeated-note tattoo in trumpet I has F in the bass — and while the horn duet that ensues cadences on octave C's, the "closing chord" in the double-reeds has an F in the bass (corno inglese).

Why doesn't that make it in F?

[karlhenning]

Why doesn't that make it in F?

Well, is an F in the bass the determining factor?

[karlhenning]

. . . Stravinsky seems untroubled by issues of "integrity of the process" which plagued Boulez almost into inactivity, and kept his hand in the music much more than the strict serialsts would. 

All to his credit I might add.

Untroubled by the the "issues" . . . and the integrity of his work bears out his equanimity.

[Scarpia]

Well, is an F in the bass the determining factor?

The closing chord would normally be the tonic, and so you are proposing the piece closes with a dissonance in the bass?

In any case, I didn't listen to the piece super-carefully, but I didn't get the feeling that there was much in the way of functional harmony there.  It sounded sort of modal to me.

[karlhenning]

The closing chord would normally be the tonic, and so you are proposing the piece closes with a dissonance in the bass?

Your argument were sound enough in Common Practice (and your objection is completely reasonable), but . . .

There is no F major triad.

The opening harmony is (as mentioned earlier) F - B - C . . . which does not establish F major.

The opening trumpet I line starts with a repeated C, and (insofar as we treat it as functioning diatonically) if it goes anywhere, it seems to wind into a minor.

Most of the melodic play in this block lives in C Lydian (i.e. a raised fourth degree, F#, which defeats any assertion of F major).

The double-reed "chord" which I mentioned as closing this opening "period" is a "stacked fifth-ey" vertical, F - G - C.

It looks as if part of the argument for this section being "in C" is the primacy of that pitch in the highest (and timbrally strongest) voice.

[karlhenning]

In any case, I didn't listen to the piece super-carefully, but I didn't get the feeling that there was much in the way of functional harmony there.  It sounded sort of modal to me.

Yes, indeed.

[Scarpia]

Your argument were sound enough in Common Practice (and your objection is completely reasonable), but . . .

There is no F major triad.

The opening harmony is (as mentioned earlier) F - B - C . . . which does not establish F major.

The opening trumpet I line starts with a repeated C, and (insofar as we treat it as functioning diatonically) if it goes anywhere, it seems to wind into a minor.

Most of the melodic play in this block lives in C Lydian (i.e. a raised fourth degree, F#, which defeats any assertion of F major).

The double-reed "chord" which I mentioned as closing this opening "period" is a "stacked fifth-ey" vertical, F - G - C.

It looks as if part of the argument for this section being "in C" is the primacy of that pitch in the highest (and timbrally strongest) voice.

Well, the argument for the piece being in C seems to boil down to C being the most frequently sounded note.  It seems like harmony when it is recognizable has more fourths than thirds, reminiscent of Schoenberg's first Chamber Symphony.   Not much hint of anything resolving towards C, and , which would be my ad-hoc definition of "tonal."

[karlhenning]

Well, the argument for the piece being in C seems to boil down to C being the most frequently sounded note.

Well, I think I've confused you by concentrating (in this post) on mm. 1-7 of the Prelude. I think any of us would hear the final cadence in bar 60 of the Prelude as centered on C.