Quiz: Mystery scores

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Stuff it - I will comment! I can see why you'd think this is opera - the phrase 'in sanfter Ekstase' looks like the sort of thing one might write as an 'expression' direction to a singer, in the gap before, after, or during an aria. And it is that sort of thing - but this isn't vocal music.

Okay. Funny that a composer would mark a passage in an instrumental work in this way...

# 324 is again Janacek, Adagio, if I have researched well (published together with the Jealousy Overture, by Universal Edition)...

# 361 It's Strauss, Alpensinfonie (the operatic link is there after all!)

# 332 Erik (Valdemar) Bergman

[lukeottevanger]

Okay. Funny that a composer would mark a passage in an instrumental work in this way...

See below...

# 324 is again Janacek, Adagio, if I have researched well (published together with the Jealousy Overture, by Universal Edition)...

Research is correct - though UE published them separately too (I have both scores - watch out, because Zarlivost may appear here someday......  ). Adagio is early Janacek, but a really beautiful piece, somewhere between the 'op 3' Suite and Amarus in style. If you know those ravishing pieces, you'll know what an attractive prospect that is. You know where to come if you want to hear it....

# 361 It's Strauss, Alpensinfonie (the operatic link is there after all!)

Certainly is. This extraordinary marking occurs in the horn part at fig 135, in the Ausklang section. For quite a while I was mystified by it. It makes sense in its own way - after all, this is self-evidently a turning-point of the score - but begs the question, why here and not elsewhere? At some point I realised that the tonal structure of the piece is symbolic, and that this attainment of E flat major is the first point at which the music of both 'man' (and his instrument, the horn) and 'nature' appear in 'man's' key. There's a spiritual sense here, a kind of pantheistic transfiguration in the unity of man and nature - expressed also in the dramatic entry of the organ a few bars earlier - and it's in this exalted state that the horn player, who in a sense = 'man', is directed to sit in ecstasy. The tonal structure of the piece is something like:


                                      Summit - Classical C major, midday
              Ascent various keys                                various keys Descent
      E flat major - Day, arrival of man, 'in nature' - man leaves the scene - E flat major
B flat minor     -       Night     -        Nature without man    -    Night again    -     B flat minor

Note that Strauss uses the horn as symbolic of man-in-nature, unlike Wagner or Bruckner who uses it as a pure nature symbol; Strauss's 'nature' is more elemental still - a dense, large-spanning cluster in the strings.

# 332 Erik (Valdemar) Bergman

That's the guy.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Thanks for your excellent exposé, Luke.

One minor quibble - you say "Wagner or Bruckner uses the horn as a pure nature symbol', but - don't forget Siegfried with his horn, a man(child) of nature himself and that most quiet part of the Ring, Forest Murmurs, where Siegfried is at one with Nature and thinks of his origins. Another thing that crossed my mind: Strauss's father was a horn player. Father and Son on the Summit?

[lukeottevanger]

One minor quibble - you say "Wagner or Bruckner uses the horn as a pure nature symbol', but - don't forget Siegfried with his horn, a man(child) of nature himself and that most quiet part of the Ring, Forest Murmurs, where Siegfried is at one with Nature and thinks of his origins. Another thing that crossed my mind: Strauss's father was a horn player. Father and Son on the Summit?

Of course, that's all true, and the symbolism of the horn in German music is a rather complex and interesting issue. Wagner uses it in all sorts of ways! What I was thinking of was only - when Wagner wants to paint 'nature' in its rawest state, undefiled by humanity, he chooses the horn to do so: the endlessly overlapping natural arpeggios of the opening of Rheingold are what I am thinking of, of course. The natural harmonics of the horn used in this way are symbolic of nature's order -  this is how they are used in e.g. the opening of Bruckner 7 too. When Strauss wishes to do paint raw nature here in the Alpensinfonie, he uses a more literally monolithic, inhuman sound, and the horn becomes only (in this work) an instrument for man-in-nature, mediating between the two.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Clear as a bell (horn).

[Guido]

Research is correct - though UE published them separately too (I have both scores - watch out, because Zarlivost may appear here someday......  ). Adagio is early Janacek, but a really beautiful piece, somewhere between the 'op 3' Suite and Amarus in style. If you know those ravishing pieces, you'll know what an attractive prospect that is. You know where to come if you want to hear it....

Me too!

I have nothing to venture I'm afraid, but this made me lol(!):

Interestingly, this piece is practically the only instance of D minor in the composer's output - he was obviously aware, as we all are, of the tawdry nature of that key and its aficionados, and he had personal key preferences a little way flat of this

[lukeottevanger]

I have nothing to venture I'm afraid, but this made me lol(!):

It's true, of course, that Janacek's favourite key was D flat. That's a well-documented and easy-to-observe fact, and important to an unusual degree in his music as he tended to write empirically and to allow his music to veer towards that key - it becomes part of his principle of capital-I Introspection, in a way. A far as D minor goes, the editor's note at the front of the score of Adagio says that it's his only piece in D minor! I find that hard to believe, but it's true that I can't think of another...

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Me too!

And me too.. I forgot to ask. 

(I have listened to Tippett's Triple Concerto by the way - on the Listening thread I wrote: 'a ravishingly beautiful work, but not in a singalong way. Wonderful sonorities.')

[lukeottevanger]

Glad you liked it! It is singalong, though, I think - especially the slow movement. Tippett never wrote a more flowing, singing line than the main melody here, and the subsidiary themes (there are lots of them) are equally potent, I think. Note that the first interlude, in which the soloists are silent, is like a formless pre-echo of the slow movement it precedes. The solo wind instruments appear in the same order as they do in the main slow movement, but, not yet being paired with the string soloists, are deliberately rather amorphous and unfocussed here, though incredibly sensuous in texture and timbre. The arrival of the strings, therefore = the arrival of singing melody (Tippett marks them exactly thus - see my mystery score 190)

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I meant 'singalong' in the sense of 'tuneful', of course. But you are absolutely right - the work is 'cantabile' to the highest degree, even a bit of an aural sweetshop, touching on sublime kitsch... Or am I going too far? Don't get me wrong - I love it! I was reminded of RVW's Eighth, by the way, with all those 'spiels and 'phones. The Triple Concerto sounds like a very feminine successor...

[lukeottevanger]

I meant 'singalong' in the sense of 'tuneful', of course. But you are absolutely right - the work is 'cantabile' to the highest degree, even a bit of an aural sweetshop, touching on sublime kitsch... Or am I going too far?

Well, I think it's extraordinarily tuneful too - in fact, like no other work of its decade in the direct, pronounced nature of its melodic writing - but I think you are right when you say it 'touches on sublime kitsch'. In the very best of ways, of course. The difference between this work and something like Takemitsu's From me flows that which you call time (my mystery score 54), which is an even more lavishly-bedecked work in terms of seductive sonority, is enormous. Tippett's music is strong underneath the surface beauty, whereas if the Takemitsu were stripped of its timbres there would be little left. (NB - I don't think this is true of all Takemitsu; this work is a special case and so sheerly beautiful one can forgive it anything)

Don't get me wrong - I love it! I was reminded of RVW's Eighth, by the way, with all those 'spiels and 'phones. The Triple Concerto sounds like a very feminine successor...

That's an interesting angle on it - something to that, I think.

[rappy]

Hey luke (and others),

given those very obscure pieces you're asking for here, this little game I've written two days ago should be very easy for you (as long as you understand a very little bit German): http://www.dgsp-rheinland-pfalz.de/musikspiel/index.php

Enjoy 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Hi rappy. I tried to play, but my right answer is rejected...

[rappy]

Hi Jezetha,

in the second field, only the number is asked for. No KV/D/BWV etc. in front of it.
Might that be the mistake?

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Hi Jezetha,

in the second field, only the number is asked for. No KV/D/BWV etc. in front of it.
Might that be the mistake?

Yes. I put in one of the KV/D/BWV... I'll try again...

It works!

[rappy]

Nice! I'm sure you'll beat the current highscore   

Ah, and what I forgot to say: for the Russian names, you need to look in the German wikipedia how they are spelled: Prokofiev = Prokofjew, Shostakovich = Schostakowitsch etc.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Nice! I'm sure you'll beat the current highscore   

Don't count on it. That 3rd 'Motiv' is so well-known, it's almost too difficult to remember!

Edit: remembered!

[lukeottevanger]

Hi Ralph! Fun game - two questions: 1) how many rounds are there? It would be nice to know how near (or far!) one is to the end and 2) is there no way to save your score if one wants to close the window? Otherwise it's necessary to re-enter all the previous answers when one next tries.....

[rappy]

Wow luke, Level 16! 
I think the game is more exciting if you don't know how many rounds there are...  But I can give you a clue, you have not even attained have the goal 

2) is there no way to save your score if one wants to close the window? Otherwise it's necessary to re-enter all the previous answers when one next tries.....

Give me half an hour...

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Wow luke, Level 16! 
I think the game is more exciting if you don't know how many rounds there are...  But I can give you a clue, you have not even attained have the goal 

Give me half an hour...

OMG - I fell at the 7th hurdle...