TONALITY AND BEYOND
GOODMAN, HAL
On Music TONALITY AND BEYOND BY HAL GOODMAN J^used to host a weekly classical music show on radio in Eugene, Oregon. A piece by Arnold Schoenberg was on the turntable one night when a woman...
...and Franz Schubert to induce people to listen to Schoenberg, well and good...
...A piece by Arnold Schoenberg was on the turntable one night when a woman called up with a request and a warning...
...Berceuse Elegiaque is recorded for the first time on this album...
...For his libretto, Orff seized upon a group of songs in Latin, German and French collected by a 13th-century Bavarian monk and discovered in 1803...
...Schoenberg displays his genius for orchestration, particularly in his subtle management of the smooth sound of the harmonium and his use of pizzicato...
...The album is calculated to please even our friend in Eugene...
...Schoenberg was a master of these, and they shine through every bit as clearly in his tonal compositions...
...Vienna, Vienna, only you alone...
...None of its nine selections is atonal...
...No note may be repeated until the other 11 have appeared...
...If it takes Johann Strauss Jr...
...Flute Music of Les Six, a new release from Stolat (SZM 0119), brings together almost the entire solo flute repertoire of the group...
...It is usually next to impossible to identify all the keys in a polytonal chord, but they do produce a definite effect...
...Small wonder: The piece could have been a collaboration between John Philip Sousa and P.D.Q...
...Development is almost nonexistent...
...The first movement starts with a flowing, jazz-influenced theme in the flute, while underneath the piano glides subtly in and out of the original key...
...Milhaud leaves us pretty much on our own...
...A lot of composers do not meet this qualification, but few more than Schoenberg...
...Yet Wien, Wien, nurduallein...
...the only unmistakable resolution is on the final note...
...Rounding out the disk are Tailleferre's enchanting Pastorale, Auric's AriasmA Durey's Sonatine, all for flute and piano, as well as two pieces by Honegger??Romance for Flute and Piano and the exciting Danse de la Chevrefor Solo Flute...
...The request was, "Take that junk off and put on some real music...
...Basically, the system arranges the 12 notes of the chromatic scale in an order that remains constant throughout a composition...
...Schoenberg lovers and haters alike should hear it...
...Philips 6570 811), a new collection of compositions and transcriptions performed by the Schoenberg Ensemble, proves that the Austrian-born composer did not always write the sort of music he is famous for now...
...A composer who rejected any music that lacked some programmatic he would say humanistic component, Orff was attracted to these earthy medieval lyrics celebrating inspirational topics like love and drinking...
...Also included is an unfinished original composition entitled Ein Stelldi-chein (A Rendezvous), based on a poem by Richard Dehmel...
...As Darius Milhaud observedin 1949, "Apolytonalchordis more subtly sweet and more violently potent...
...an extraordinarily brief adaptation of Johann Sioly's Weilia Alter Drahrer Bin...
...the warning, "If the station keeps playing such stuff, nobody in town will listen to it...
...For I am an Old Faithful Companion...
...The score he created for them, arranged for solo singers, chorus and orchestra gives a feeling of deja vu...
...Her tone is pure at every volume, her phrasing sensitive, her technique flawless...
...The virtuosic third movement gives flutist Bonita Boyd and pianist Kimberly Schmidt a chance to show off their formidable technical skills...
...The best example is a sparkling arrangement of another Strauss waltz, Rosen aus dem Suden (Roses from the South), for string quartet, harmonium and piano...
...It is not sophisticated, not intellectual," Orffwrote, "and the themes of my work are themes everybody knows____ There is a spiritual power behind my work...
...Schoenberg's arrangement of the last is lively enough, but despite the best efforts of bass Lieuwe Visser the performance is curiously static, falling far short of the tune's vigorous incarnation on a recent Burger King commercial...
...The exposition is followed by a witty syncopated section, and then a brief return to the opening...
...The second movement starts briskly and works its way down to a moody muttering...
...M\\haud'sSonatineforFluteandPi-ano is an excellent showcase for his two primary interests, tonality and jazz...
...People who know nothing else about him remember that he "composed by the numbers" and turn the dial when his name is announced...
...Although the allowed variations are numerous, giving the composer plenty of freedom, it is easy to see why the method is often rejected as sterile and mathematical...
...Busoni is credited with coining the term "neo-classicism" in his theoretical writings, but most of his music stayed within accepted boundaries...
...Modern composers have pushed, pulled, twisted and mangled tonality, dispensed with it altogether, brought it back, and mistreated it some more...
...Carmina Burana won immediate public acclaim when it was first presented in Frankfurt in 1937, and it remains one of the most performed and recorded works written since 1900...
...Schmidt provides a most able accompaniment...
...The seven pieces on the album illustrate both the differences in the composers' individual styles and the similarities that gave them their unwanted nickname...
...Still, numerous hints of what was to come can be found in this and the other works...
...M?_, 21st century are likely to name tonality or, more accurately, the things that were done to it as the major contribution of the 20th...
...One memorable section has the piano playing bugle calls while various (mercifully anonymous) members of the ensemble contribute shouts, singing and animal noises...
...The third movement opens with a lively flute theme hopping above a complicated web of piano...
...The primary effect of atonality is to remove the crutch of conventional melody, forcing both listener and composer to concentrate on aspects of music that a pleasant tune can hide??structure, texture, arrangement...
...For better or worse, Schoenberg is inextricably linked to 12-tone music...
...The latest of them, an arrangement of Johann Strauss Jr.'s Kaiserwalzer (Emperor's Waltzes) dating from 1925, four years after Schoenberg published his Twelve Note System of Composition, is also perhaps the most traditional...
...The label stuck anyway...
...The captivating eight-bar opening theme provides a magical moment when the piano takes over the melody as the flute flutters above it...
...The Schoenberg Ensemble does its finest work on this piece, scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano...
...This lady's was something with a tune she could hum after she turned off the radio...
...Milhaud's complex chords add depth to what could have been a trivial little melody and make the resolution, when it finally comes, all the more satisfying...
...the listener is seldom without a reference point, but is kept slightly on edge by the unexpected harmonies crawling around inside the piano...
...Milhaud was one of six young French composers dubbed Les Six by a critic after a concert in 1920...
...A constant ambiguity and tension is maintained...
...The 12-tone system he pioneered was the antithesis of conventional melody and the epitome of atonality...
...The intertwining wind and string lines remain pure and distinct, even when the texture of the music thickens, and they are effectively set off by the soft yet ominous growl of the piano...
...Thus as Schoenberg was delving into atonality (though he preferred to call it pantonality the use of all keys at once), others were experimenting with polytonality, writing in three or more keys simultaneously...
...Here they are...
...Cari Orff, the German composer and teacher, died March 26 at the age of 86...
...The most spectacular, and probably the best known work on the record is Poulenc's Sonata for Flute and Piano...
...After an ingenious middle passage, where the flute repeats a 10-note melody, leaping from octave to octave within each repetition, the Sonatine closes with a vigorous, syncopated recapitulation of the first movement's theme...
...London has re-released a 1976 recording of the work that will almost surely be his monument, CarminaBur-ana, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Antal Dorati (JL 41006...
...Similarly amusing is Die Eiserne Brigade (The Iron Brigade), a march of sorts for string quartet and piano that Schoenberg wrote while he was in the Army during World War I. The composer presented the original manuscript to a first lieutenant, and the title page bears the comment, "He wasn't able to appreciate it...
...This album is excellent as an introduction, and even better considered on its own terms...
...But the power is awesome, especially in Fortuna ImperatrixMundi, used by the composer to open and close...
...an airy, restrained version of Schubert' s Stand-chen (Serenade), sensitively sung by soprano Wendela Bronsgeest...
...Bach...
...there is far more of Johann here than of Arnold...
...In Schoenberg's hands, the dance becomes a study in tempo, phrasing and dynamics??full of quirky little pauses and downbeats, and dramatic flourishes in the piano and strings, all handled with humor and obvious affection...
...Everybody has their own definition of "real music...
...In a more serious vein is a 1920 arrangement of Berceuse Elegiaque (Elegiac Lullaby), written by the Italian-German composer Ferruccio Busoni after his mother's death in 1909...
...the themes are stated and repeated, then Orff moves on to the next...
...Schoenberg arranged the Berceuse as Busoni might have had he practiced what he preached...
...Milhaud complained that although he liked and respected his five companions, he did not particularly want to be lumped with anyone...
...So are four other works: Schoenberg's own 1897 Scherzo for siring quartet, which reminds one irresistibly of Brahms and runs through an astounding range of textures in eight minutes...
...That's whyit is accepted throughout the world...
...Set for flute, clarinet, string quintet, harmonium, and piano, it is a brooding, somber piece, with long wind lines floating over a ghostly string background...
...The lady in Eugene, one suspects, would agree...
...In all seven compositions Boyd is superb...
...This effort, and the overall high quality of their playing, makes it easy to forgive the Ensemble their lassitude in Funiculi-funicula...
...for a surprise, a rendition of Funiculi-funicula, the immensely popular Neapolitan song by Luigi Denza...
...The others were Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Francois Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre...
...the melodies are instantly familiar whether or not one has heard them before...
Vol. 65 • June 1982 • No. 12
