 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Robyn
Date: 2004-02-16 06:44
I know how you guys feel about homework questions, but I believe this one is valid, so I would appreciate some help (the paper is due Tuesday and because of the long weekend I won't have access to my professor in time).
For my Form & Analysis class, we are doing our first formal analyzations, one of which is a serialist piece (Variations for Piano Op. 27 Movement 2 by Anton Webern, in case it matters at all). Identification of the row forms seems to be straightforward, but I am a little bothered that there doesn't appear to be any instance of the prime row (the row was given to us ahead of time so we didn't have to derive it ourselves). Is it possible to have a serialist piece without P-0? I've never seen one, but I can't find one anywhere in this piece.
Thank you!!
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Author: Mark Pinner
Date: 2004-02-16 10:38
I wouldn't think so. In order for any inversions, retrogrades, retrograde inversions, transpositions etc. to be analysable there must be an original row. I would have thought that it could be contended that the very first statement of 12 different notes could be held to be the actual row. From this row, all other permutations need to be analysed according to this first statement. Check with the teacher but be able to, with some knowledgability, question the validity of the given row if it differs from the opening statement. Could be a typo!
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Author: Robyn
Date: 2004-02-16 17:19
Thanks, Mark. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!) I'm pretty sure the given row is not a typo. Our professor computed the whole matrix for us and said he did that because the row would be too hard for us to find ourselves. Also, using the given matrix, identifying the row forms was very simple and straight forward (for the most part, the right hand is one row and the left is another). The only thing I can figure is maybe the entire piece is built off of the same row (we are looking at movement 2) so P-0 was introduced earlier. Thanks for your suggestions.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2004-02-16 18:42
I don't know the piece, but my guess is that, because it's real music and not an academic exercise, rules will be broken. It's what keeps things interesting.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Douglas
Date: 2004-02-16 18:49
It is absolutely possible to have a serial piece without a statement of the PO, the "reihe" in prime form, esp. with Webern who liked to be a bit different in many of his actions ( have you read about how he died?). In a very oblique sense, writing a piece with the PO statement is a bit like Elgar's Enigma Variations which never state the theme on which the variations are based. This is probably the only time Elgar and Webern could be compared!
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Author: Douglas
Date: 2004-02-16 18:56
Please correct a mistake in what I have posted: should be "writing a piece without the PO statement"...etc. Sorry.
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Author: msloss
Date: 2004-02-17 13:39
It has been eons since I looked at that piece, so I can't comment specifically, but I can offer a few ideas. In 12-tone music, the prime can show up as clusters (maybe three four-note chords in progression), as a sequence of rows where the first note of each row is the next note of the prime, or sometimes the prime isn't stated until the very end of the piece. My favorite, though, is when the prime is implied but never stated. Build the matrix from the prime that your prof gave you and something may jump off the page.
Good luck.
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Author: Robyn
Date: 2004-02-18 01:55
Thanks everyone for your ideas. Thankfully this piece was not as complicated as I made it seem. As I said, the rows were quite easy to identify. I was just confused that there was no prime row. In my admittedly limited experience, I had never seen a serialist piece without a prime row. As it turns out, the answer was what I suspected...because this was the second movement, the whole piece was based on the same row and therefore the prime row was introduced in the first movement.
But it is very interesting to know that composers don't necessarily introduce P0 right off the bat...
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