Klarinet Archive - Posting 000893.txt from 2002/07

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] retrograde
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 19:10:46 -0400

--- rien stein <rstein@-----.nl> wrote:

> I remember the theme because, cutely enough,
> it's the retrograde inversion of Rachmaninov's theme from his Paganini piano
> variations.
>
> What do you mean by "it was the retrogade"?

Retrograde @-----. Among all of that fun gobble-degook about set theory
and matrices and rows, theory coursework in an undergraduate music curriculum
also addresses other such mechanical means of composition as taking a line of
pitches and arranging them in reverse order, such that the last note becomes
the first, the penultimate note becomes the second, and so forth. Taking the
retrograde inversion of a line involves first arranging the pitches in reverse
order, and then inverting the series of intervals that makes up the line, be-
ginning with the interval between the first and second pitches. If the inter-
val is a rising minor third from the first to the second note, you rewrite the
second pitch to *descend* a minor third from the first note, and so on for all
subsequent intervals in the line. Do that to Rachmaninov's famous romantic
theme from his Paganini piano variations, and you get the minor, plaintive,
lamenting melody that we hear in the contra-alto clarinet part in the band
arrangement of the Fantasia on a Theme by Paganini.

Neil

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