Klarinet Archive - Posting 000894.txt from 2002/07

From: Alexander Brash <mactrek@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] retrograde
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 19:45:46 -0400

Ummmm,
Isn't that how Rachmaninoff got that melody in the first place? The
begining original theme of Pagannini up a minor third, down a half,
down a whole, up a fifth...Rachmaninoff's tune is DOWN a minor third, UP
a half, UP a whole, DOWN a fifth. right?

~Alexander
On Wednesday, July 31, 2002, at 07:10 PM, Neil Leupold wrote:

> --- 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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