Klarinet Archive - Posting 000015.txt from 2002/08

From: "Patricia Danton" <pmdanton@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] retrograde
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 09:32:03 -0400

At 04:10 PM 7/31/02 -0700, you 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
>
>Do You Yahoo!?
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>
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