Gcse Music Analysis Peripetie-Schoenberg
Peripetie- Schoenberg
STYLE: Expressionism
Features of expressionism: * Atonal (all notes have equal importance) * Expresses one intense emotional * Full use of the pitch range of instruments. * Timbre is regarded to be just as important as melody * Extremes in dynamics * Pieces are quite short
CONTEXT: * Schoenberg was an Austrian composer who founded the Second Viennese School- a group of composers (including Berg and Webern, who were taught by Schoenberg in Vienna) who wrote Expressionist music. * Peripetie is the fourth of his Five Orchestral Pieces, and this set work was of an experimental nature, and required a large orchestra. * First performance was given in 1912 in Proms, London. * The title means ‘A sudden reversal’- refers to the fact that ideas from the start of the movement return in reverse order towards the end. * A new edition of the work Schoenberg wrote in 1922 * Schoenberg later developed serialism- 12 tone technique using a tone row. * This tone row can be transformed in 3 ways- retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion.
MELODY * Angular or disjunct melodies, Schoenberg uses octave displacement, unexpectedly moving individual notes of a main melody into a different octave. * Made up of short, fragmented motifs, that are combined in different ways. In the first 18 bars alone, 7 different motifs are quickly introduced. * Large intervals * No predictability * Melodies are short and motivic developed in cell-like fashion * Many short motifs often played simultaneously * The full range of the orchestra and its instruments is used
HARMONY/TONALITY * Dissonant harmony * Atonal * Use of hexachords * Clashes within harmonies * No sense of key- non functional
METRE * Metre changes from 3 4 to 2 4 to 4 4.
TEMPO * Sehr rasch- very quick * Varied- some long, slow parts while
STYLE: Expressionism
Features of expressionism: * Atonal (all notes have equal importance) * Expresses one intense emotional * Full use of the pitch range of instruments. * Timbre is regarded to be just as important as melody * Extremes in dynamics * Pieces are quite short
CONTEXT: * Schoenberg was an Austrian composer who founded the Second Viennese School- a group of composers (including Berg and Webern, who were taught by Schoenberg in Vienna) who wrote Expressionist music. * Peripetie is the fourth of his Five Orchestral Pieces, and this set work was of an experimental nature, and required a large orchestra. * First performance was given in 1912 in Proms, London. * The title means ‘A sudden reversal’- refers to the fact that ideas from the start of the movement return in reverse order towards the end. * A new edition of the work Schoenberg wrote in 1922 * Schoenberg later developed serialism- 12 tone technique using a tone row. * This tone row can be transformed in 3 ways- retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion.
MELODY * Angular or disjunct melodies, Schoenberg uses octave displacement, unexpectedly moving individual notes of a main melody into a different octave. * Made up of short, fragmented motifs, that are combined in different ways. In the first 18 bars alone, 7 different motifs are quickly introduced. * Large intervals * No predictability * Melodies are short and motivic developed in cell-like fashion * Many short motifs often played simultaneously * The full range of the orchestra and its instruments is used
HARMONY/TONALITY * Dissonant harmony * Atonal * Use of hexachords * Clashes within harmonies * No sense of key- non functional
METRE * Metre changes from 3 4 to 2 4 to 4 4.
TEMPO * Sehr rasch- very quick * Varied- some long, slow parts while