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PERENNIAL QUESTIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2003

Michael Graubart
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Extract

What are twelve-note rows really for?

‘…I don't need to use serialism to…achieve a unity between the motifs’ says David Matthews in his interview with Mark Doran (Tempo, Vol. 57, No. 223, January 2003, p.11); and most composers would say the same. After all, the motifs and themes of the first movement of Schubert's Third Symphony are so integrated that even the accompanimental cliché of repeated quaver chords turns out to be motivic and the whole of the ‘Unfinished’ is based dialectically on the tonic and dominant versions of a single three-note motif and their sublation. And in his Ninth symphony, Beethoven manages to base not only themes but key-successions, too, on a basic group of four notes and finally even creates that shattering dissonance at the start of the finale out of a simultaneous sounding of its notes. Or is that already proto-serialism?

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Volume 57 , Issue 225 , July 2003 , pp. 32 - 36
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

‘Perennial Questions’ is an occasional series by different writers on broad issues of concern in the fields of performance, aesthetics, comprehension and silent assumption. The Editor will gladly consider topics and submissions for, and responses and answers to these PQ's from all quarters.