Musical Analysis - Schönberg‘s Three Piano Pieces Op. 11

they were the first pieces of Schoenberg that bartok encountered stravinsky supposedly studied them while composing the rite of spring kandinsky had them in a concert and was inspired to make his painting impression 3. the pianist glenn gould said about them "perhaps no other composition was as crucial to schoenberg's future and if one accepts the eventualities of that future then also to 20th century music as the three piano pieces opus 11". after a performance in berlin the composer max reger wrote "i don't know if one can still call this music my brain is too old" he was 37 at the time so in this video i'm going to talk about arnold schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke, 3 piano pieces opus 11. [Music] i chose these pieces because i find them extremely expressive and intense and because they have this strange quality to them which is created through the co-existing of very familiar traditional musical elements on the one hand and very modern and new elements on the other hand and also they were one of the first more modern pieces of music that i discovered and played and my interest for new music basically began with schoenberg and maybe it will be the same for you first of all let's understand how shimbak came about writing these exciting pieces the austrian mostly self-taught composer arnold schumbach was born in the late 19th century he was very influenced by all the traditional germanic composers like bach mozart beethoven brahms wagner mala and so on and learned most of his compositional technique by studying their scores schenbach wanted to continue this germanic musical tradition and saw his work as a logical continuation of that heritage his compositional career can be divided into three periods the romantic period in which he wrote very lyrical and passionate late romantic music the free atonal period in which he wrote pieces without tonality without a tonal center and where traditional harmony rules don't apply anymore and by the way schoenberg and his students rejected the term atonality they thought that it was absurd since atonal means without tones which is obviously ridiculous but it has still become an established term and finally the dodecophonic period in which scherbeck invented and started using the 12 tone which was a new system he felt he needed to organize his pieces as you would expect cherbeck began his musical career writing music of his time so late romantic music pieces from that early period are very much influenced by the lyrical chromaticism of wagner and thermotylic cohesion and inventiveness of brahms among many other things of course and you could compare it with the music of richard strauss or gustav mahler who were near contemporaries of him one of the earliest pieces of that period is the string quad head in d major which actually brahms really liked he even offered to help shimbak by giving him money so that he could go study at the conservatory in vienna let's listen to one of the most beautiful examples of this period for claire de nacht transfigured knight for string sextet i had been a promising when i met peace love embraced drums and fun and soon after i was an addict of the same course no longer that music composed at that time neared the influence of both these masters to which a flavor of bleached brotner and perhaps of was added [Music] in this piece shimmer already goes very far in regards to harmony and there are moments in which there is no tonal center anymore and actually a lot of his romantic pieces like his first string quartet and d minor or pillars and melisandre already provoked scandals during the first performances when gustav mahler was in the audience he would always protect him back but last not least there are already some passages of unfixed tonality which may be considered as premonitions for the future after composing lots of these beautiful late romantic pieces schumacher felt the need to go further in his compositions he felt that tonality had come to an end and that music had become so chromatic that there was no need for a tonal center anymore that dissonances were so frequent that they should be treated like equals to consonances he thought that composers were using dissonance sounds so much that returning to a tonal center a simple consonant home so to say was not appropriate anymore he saw it as a logical step to therefore abandon tonality and traditional harmony overwhelming multitude of finances could not be counter balanced any longer by occasional returns to such donald trumps as represent a key schoenberg went through this evolution gradually pieces which are right in between the two periods right on the edge of tonality are for example his rather strange karma symphony which he saw as the pinnacle of his first period and the famous second string quartet which can be seen as a transition between the two periods both these pieces caused scandals at the first performances in the string quartet a soprano comes in for the last movements and the soprano famously sings and then she sings [Music] filler looft [Music] among other things in these pieces the harmony is very complex and one feels that there is something new building up i recommend to listen to those pieces of the second string bucket which is the transition to the second period face period which announces autonomous sector what is falsely called after night after a lot of thinking and trying things out but also self-encouraging schenberg finally made the decisive step into a tonality that means music where classical traditional harmonic rules are abandoned and where there is no tonal center and basically every combination of notes is possible but that being said it doesn't mean that suddenly everything is forgotten or that every note is random there are still some kind of remains of traditional harmonic principles here and there and schenberg who understood how many incredibly deeply chose every note very carefully some of the first pieces composed in this new manner are the leader the hanging garden or the three piano pieces opus 11 but i want to show you another example and it's the intense five pieces for orchestra opus 16 which actually were composed during the same year as the piano pieces [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] this second period of schenberg is characterized by extreme and direct even violent expression schenbach then felt the need to have some kind of new system since the tonal system had been abandoned it was rather difficult to compose larger cohesive and organized works because basically in tonal works you could always organize your music around harmonic regions and you would begin with your home key and you know the dominant and close harmonic regions and explore more and more distant harmonic regions until you find your way back home and then free atonal music there was no way of doing that there was no such system one sign of that is that many of the free atonal pieces by schumacher and his pupils were vocal pieces since they were based on texts it was easier to structure the pieces but for instrumental music it was difficult to compose larger works so many of the early atonal works are very short pieces shermak therefore invented the 12 tone technique this technique essentially consists of putting all the 12 chromatic pitches in a certain order this is called the row and then basing a whole composition on this row and variations of it this technique allowed the composer to create larger works again and guaranteed cohesion throughout the work since everything in a 12 tone piece stems out of the initial 12-ton row instead of relating every configuration in a piece to a parallel center every configuration in a 12-ton piece is related to the county style in that it consisted of always the same drawn relation as this country style products schoenberg and some of his students saw this technique as somewhat the ultimate goal of the germanic tradition of composition until then and by that they meant that since the early renaissance music through bach and beethoven brahms and so on there was always a search for cohesion of the musical material a search for interrelation and connection between the musical elements and since in a doricophonic piece everything stems out of one single 12 12-ton row this allows the most coherence possible the 12-tone technique should also make the pieces more comprehensible and intelligible schenberg and some of his pupils often talk about this fastly kite in german which means understandability or graspability and the cohesion which is created through the 12-ton technique should make a piece clearer and more graspable it is in first respect a method ascertaining logical order and organization official comprehensibility should be the main result one example of a 12-ton piece is schembeck's fourth string quartet [Music] so [Music] [Music] before we move on to the piano pieces i want to point some things out first of all that shimak was always very closely connected to western classical musical tradition and never wanted to break with it he wanted to continue this tradition he is often seen as this radical revolutionary composer but himself never saw himself that way of course his music was very new and extreme in some aspects but it was always linked to tradition in many ways and to give some examples i mean he still composed for traditional musical formations like the string quartet he often refers to traditional musical forms in his pieces he still wrote melodies themes phrases he used musical motifs and varied them just like beethoven abrams he was very fond of counterpoint and so on there are many things like that and he once said that he actually just tried to be a better tchaikovsky what about these accusations of anarchy and evolution valid was distinctly evolution no more extravagant than that which always has occurred in the history of music the second thing is that actually shimbak always was a romantic composer in his approach to music and composition throughout his life and by that i mean that he saw music as a form of subjective expression of feelings emotions thoughts musical ideas moods and so on and he always wanted to express himself through his music and many people and also many musicians still say that schumacher's music is brainy head music especially about the 12-ton pieces and that he's a very technical composer and so on but that's actually not the case at all or at least he's not more technical than let's say beethoven and schumacher never wrote music for the sake of a technique so i uh planned to tell you [Music] what painting meant meant to me in fact it was to me the same as making music it was to me a way of expressing myself of presenting emotions ideas and other feelings i never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words the three piano pieces opus 11 were composed like i said right at the beginning of schinback's new period of three eight tonality after going already very far in respects to harmony and the pieces like the camera symphony or the second string quartet this work was a really important step forward it is interesting historically but also compositionally it was shimek's first purely instrumental atonal work in these piano pieces we can observe what schenberg called the emancipation of the dissonance it touches on what i said earlier about atonality and basically means that every combination of nodes is possible and that dissonances are just as valid as consonances or actually kind of more valid but in these early atonal pieces there are also some kind of remains of traditional harmony which we will see later and actually there are also some kinds of rules for example simple consonant triads were not used because of stylistic and formal reasons but these pieces were not only very modern regarding the harmonic aspects but also structurally or candlistically speaking schoenberg composed these pieces in 1999 composed the first two pieces earlier that year and after a couple of months he composed the third one during this year he also composed his five orchestral pieces opus 16 which i mentioned and to give you some examples of other composers in 1999 marla wrote his ninth symphony the bc wrote his first book of preludes for piano and stravinsky wrote his fire blood the three piano pieces opus 11 were actually the first official solo piano pieces by schumacher he often used the piano as an instrument to explore new styles of composition and the piano stands at important moments of his development his piano pieces more or less trace his three periods he started out writing lots of romantic songs for piano and voice then started writing a tonal pieces with the songs opus 15 and the three piano pieces opus 11 and also some of the first 12 tone pieces were for piano it was maybe a way of exploring these new kinds of composition and expression through a rather limited and compact medium shimak's piano writing style is unique and untypical or as glengool said schumacher does not write against the piano but neither can he be accused of writing for it the pianist elzekhaus played shimbak's complete piano works very early on and got to work with him very often in a text about the pieces opus 11 she remembers what was important to him he wanted the temple to be stable and that all the temple variations were in relation to the main temple every voice was to be treated with care none should be neglected every line had to have its own exclusivity dynamic phrasing and so on staccati had to be as short as possible the legati as singing as possible and you should sing wholeheartedly what you could but with as little pedal as possible because it would make the polyphony unclear and furthermore elsa crows remembers that he always knew exactly the characteristics of every instrument that he knew how every musical line should sound and that he was very passionate about the exclusivity of a piece and one last remark is that nothing was soft or lyrical enough for him the title drachlavichtek alludes to brahms various cycles of claviche those piano pieces let's say opus 118 for example were composed not even 20 years before shimbak's what they have in common is the shortness the concentration but also the intimacy and the strong explosivity one thing that chimney pushes further but that is already present in brahms music is the idea of developing a variation it is the idea that in a piece you have few basic motifs build everything out of them but never exactly repeat them you vary and develop them all the time with sherbeck's music everything is constantly changing the work as a whole has traces of a classical sonata with a complex first movement which even has a form resembling the sonata form a slow second movement and a grand finale as a third movement the first two pieces are still based on traditional forms are very elaborate concerning the motivic work and also have a lot of tonal illusions the third one which is the most extreme of the three pieces on the contrary tries to break free from any form motific work harmonic relationships and any traditional piano writing style in this video i'm going to focus mainly on the first piece but i'm still going to say some things about the other two let's start and look closely at the first piece i mostly base my analysis on the whole book about these pieces by reinhard brinkmann because i think that he just does a great job and understands this music very well so again quote glenn gould opus 11 number one is a masterpiece judged by any criteria this glorious vignette must rank with the very best of palms into mezzos what's characteristic of this piece is that it's very concentrated you must imagine all the exclusivity of these massive pieces like the guru leader that is condensed into these few piano notes it is motifically very elaborated and has lots of strong contrasts these are created through outburst moments like sudden eruptions where everything in the music changes we will soon see an example of that its form reminds us of a three-parted form with a thematic exposition a middle section and a crease at the end and basically the whole piece consists of a conflict between the thematic motific clearer more grounded or seemingly more organized parts and these contrasting eruptive disruptive output moments the analysis of brinkman focuses mainly on this aspect of conflict and contrast i will first show you the overall form of the piece then we're going to look at the bars 1 to 11 in which the thematic material is exposed then we're going to look at the first outburst moment beginning at part 12 and finally we're going to look at the whole piece referring to these first bars so let's look at the overall form i marked the thematic parts in blue and the contrast in outburst moments in red as you can see there are four outburst sections and in between there is always thematic material where motifs of the exposition are used the climax of the piece beginning at bar 49 is a combination between the thematic material and outburst material after it comes to the crease with a little surprise at the end and we will look at this closer moving on now let's examine the bars 1 to 11 before the first outburst the first 11 bars are structured in an a b a prime form which consists of an opening first section where the main theme is stated a contrasting middle section and a concluding section which reuses the material of the first one so we have three measures of a five measures of b and then three closing measures of a slightly varied a again a and a prime clearly consists of a melody with accompanying chords while b consists of three different entangled lines the melody of a is the main theme of this piece it is a very clear descending almost traditional opening phrase with even a closing suspension at the end it clearly articulates the 3 4 time signature and that the most important notes are on the heavy beads this theme has a span of a perfect fifth it starts on b natural and ends on e natural also note how the note g is in the middle of this fifth this g is introduced chromatically by the note above g sharp same goes for the final e which is preceded by f as a suspension this combined with the decrescendo makes the theme lead towards e natural with the perfect fifth and the g and g sharp plus the suspension we have many elements reminiscent of tonality the accompanying chords join this melody on the second beats of measures 2 and 3 and create dissonances notably the bass note is strongly dissonant to the melody note and these chords go in contrary motion to the melody so while the melody goes down the chords go up now let's look at the construction of this main theme you can divide the theme in various motifs and this will be important for the later analysis for recognizing which motifs get varied throughout the piece so we have a which is the whole main theme then we have the main motif of this theme which consists of a descending minor third and the minor second that we will call m for main motif and this motif is immediately followed by a variation of it and so we actually already see the principle of varying motives right at the beginning after only three notes and we can divide this further more in little one bar motif cells which i will mark with m c for motif cells and there we have mc1 consisting of the first two nodes [Music] mc2 consisting of the following three notes which is in the center of the theme [Music] and mc3 consisting of the final two notes [Music] so we have all these different motifs plus their inversions and retrograde forms which can be taken out by themselves and used varied and combined in many ways we will see what shermak does with them later on so the main theme ends with this e-natural but it doesn't feel close it feels more like a half cadence than a perfect one and this is due to many reasons and you could look at harmonic details but what's important is that it feels like an open end which is understandable since in the three-parted form it is the first segment and not the closing one after this theme a comes theme or section b which is different in many ways it is more polyphonic so you don't have a melody and an accompaniment anymore but three distinct lines together the theme b does not articulate the three four type signature clearly as the theme a did it consists mostly of ascending gestures it is not one single phrase or line but consists of various mini sections and so the three different lines that i talked about create a little motif group which is like a little unit and this unit is then immediately repeated with variations so b consists of three little sections or motif group units in these three sections there are three motifs which we call b1 b2 and b3 and they keep the same nodes and register but are always combined differently b starts with an e natural in the highest voice so it begins where theme a ended and this is a fifth underneath the beginning b natural of the main theme if you look at the tone disposition of a and b you can clearly see that b is related to a so theme b begins where theme a ended with an e natural has g natural as its main node with a b natural underneath just like in theme a and ends with a b natural with which theme a begin now let's look at the motifs of theme b we have these two closely connected motifs b1 and b2 which get varied and stretched [Music] and then we have the motif b3 which stays the same but shifts if you look at the beginning of team b we can see that the motif b1 consists of a rising minor third which is the inversion of the opening interval furthermore we can see that through the combination of b1 and b2 there is a variation of the main theme m that is created instead of a minor third and a minor second we here had both major intervals [Music] through these varying motif group units the different motifs get always more independent and separated from one another and this happens through the lengthening of the note values but also of the pause values so in total the motif group units get longer at the same time you can see how the emphasis point gets always blurrier so the g natural is the main focus in the first unit and then gets blurred throughout the process so in the motif group unit 2 it is already less prominent because it doesn't come simultaneously with the other motifs and in the third unit the g doesn't stand out anymore in the third motif group unit the different motifs are so separated from one another that the motif b3 is now like an answer to b1 and b2 and the added motif b4 plus the decrescendo give this third motif group unit a closing character inside this whole b section as you saw here in section b we also have a lot of motific material and this tool will be varied throughout the piece and the motifs of section b will be combined with the motif of section a and we will see examples of that later so we had theme a theme b and now comes a prime as a conclusion the metric ambiguity of theme b is re-stabilized by the returning main theme and it is even more stable in a sense because the tempo gets slower the theme now has varied and augmented intervals and also has a crescendo that leads towards and reinforces these larger leaps it starts on f-sharp which is a perfect fifth above the original theme and this is again a remain of traditional harmony it's like a response on the dominant the main motif m is here augmented to a major third and a major second and actually this was somehow prepared by theme b we also have an inversion of the last minor second that we called mc3 for motif cell 3 and this adds to the conclusive effect of this three-parted a b a prime form so if the semitone downwards indicated a half cadence now we have the perfect cadence and interestingly this ends with the b flat we would expect to be natural because we had this perfect fifth relationship between b natural and e natural and f sharp and also we would return to the first note of the piece but instead we have this b flat at the end and we will see how we can explain this later but so we have this a prime and now we have a closed a b a prime structure the whole piece is constructed with these motifs that were presented in this opening section and it is meticulously motivatingly organized the motifs are strongly varied and combined in very creative ways continuously throughout the whole piece [Music] so although most of the piece is motifically organized there are also a motific sections these are the eruptive outburst moments which i mentioned brighmann also calls these disintegration dissolving or disorganization fields these stand in complete contrast to the strongly motilic and thematic parts of the piece we will now look at the first one of these moments or fields which follows the a b a prime opening of the piece and it's the outburst in bar 12. so suddenly every musical parameter changes abruptly with this fast rising figure which quickly falls back down again firstly let's look at the expansion of the register while the opening had a rather limited and fixed register we now have a gesture that goes all over the keyboard [Music] then we have the dynamics so suddenly we are in pianissi sisimo plus the left dampening pedal which makes it even softer schenberg didn't choose the more obvious contrast of changing the dynamic to fortissimo but instead went in the other direction and made this outpost as quiet as it could possibly be then the tempo changes too so schwimberg adds the marking field schneller so a lot faster and the note values also get a lot shorter in the opening section the shortest note value was an eighth note and now it's a thirty-second these two things combined make this outburst feel like a sudden acceleration then of course the metric feel is completely lost there is absolutely no pulse anymore and schubeck does that by not accentuating the heavy beats of the bar but instead we feel different notes being accentuated at different moments which are not at all on heavy beats but feel like one and this creates rhythmic confusion and already as a combination of these different musical parameters that have changed together we have an overall new and different sound quality a completely different texture and color as before if we look further within this first outpost section after this sun gesture we can see that it stays within a larger range it's still in pianissi sesimo there are still fast note values and the rhythm is still confusing in addition to that schenberg uses a piano technique that was very unfamiliar at that time to really explore the different colors of that instrument it's the so called pianoflagella in which you silently press keys and play the same notes some octaves lower with short and louder tag so that the overtones of the strings of the health keys can sound [Music] in this case it is this f a c sharp e chord which is held down and the left hand plays the same notes in forzatto in the lower register of the piano the main notes of this figure so f c sharp and e can be traced back to the main motif it is actually the main motif inverted [Music] so out of this moment re-emerges thematic material it slowly goes back to the main theme which is again interrupted by the forzato figure in the base this figure is quite singular in that it doesn't return during the whole piece in addition to creating this colorful flashlight effect it has the role of creating contrast between the eruptive and the thematic that is re-emerging so it's like a little remain of the outburst that doesn't let the theme return again so easily [Music] so another point of contrast between the thematic opening and this first outburst moment we can look at is the harmony we had seen that the thematic section functions with a lot of thirds and now in contrast to that the outburst gesture starts with stacking of force the fundamental note of this fourth stacking is e flat same goes for the base figure in the next bar and schenberg consciously didn't use the note e flat until this point and now it is the central note of this whole outburst section and this contrasts of course with the main theme and the whole opening which like we saw was leaning towards e natural the aemotivic aspect is the last contrast between these two sections so we had the motific beginning in which we had clear and recognizable motifs and now we have this aomotiv outburst which starts with this unexpected gesture and it is not a motif it is a gesture and a movement and while everything is constructed with the same few motifs in the thematic sections the outburst fields are unbounded and function more with gesture and color so you see that this outburst or disintegration field brings with it a sense of freedom the music is not bound to anything it is impulsive and full of colors and new gestures but still we can look at ways in which this eruptive moment is prepared and constructed it is very carefully done so firstly brinkmann says that the rhythmic ambiguity in theme b is already a kind of preparation to the outburst moment the rhythmical destabilization is announced so to say he also sees the stretched interval in a prime as a preparation too it's like a distortion that announces the more important distortion that's going to come we also saw how the opening section ends with this ascending half step a natural to b flat this b flat is the fifth above e flat and leads to this central node of the disintegration field and interestingly this fifth fall is interrupted by b natural which would lead towards e natural furthermore just as the opening section had central notes the outburst section has its central notes too in this case they are e flat and c sharp and if we look further we can see that in the right hand we have notes that can be associated with the main theme if we place them differently in the left hand we have this gesture which slowly rises and starts on e flat and then on e natural and this leads to the flagellate which ends with the coming back to the main theme and here also those forzata figures leads to e natural so you can clearly see how schmeck led us from the opening section which had e natural as its central node to the outburst field with e flat as its central node back to thematic material again with e natural as its main node and progressively we come back to the main theme in its a prime form so this eruptive disintegration field which when listening feels like an outburst of exclusivity something impulsive and uncontrolled or unorganized is still part of a larger structure and is very skillfully and carefully put together by schenberg and he himself said in my first works in the new style i was particularly guided in both the details and the whole of the formal construction by very powerful expressive forces not to mention a sense of form and logic acquired from tradition and well developed through hard work and conscientiousness so i think we understood the first page of this piece a bit better now it contains the most important ideas of this piece and it will be easier to understand the rest now so we can continue and i will get you through the whole piece after the main theme a has returned we have a variation of the theme b that follows and by 19 in langsan which means very slow and we again have a complex of three distinct motifs that interact with each other and again we have two varied repetitions of a motif group unit this time the rhythm is more stable and the meter is clearer the different elements are more clearly separated from each other than the first time and the motifs b1 and b3 are easily recognizable from before but the motif b2 is changed more heavily as we saw in the first appearance of theme b the third motif b3 was getting more and more separated and became like an answer to the motifs b1 and b2 in this varied form of theme b this is immediately the case the ascending line that is the motif b3 is like an answer to e1 and 2. the dynamic contrast between b1 and 2 and b3 also reinforces this and so does the different articulation the third motif group unit clearly marks an ending again first the direction of the motif b1 changes and now goes down a minor third then the motif b3 follows and falls down a major third and an augmented triad plus there's ritardando arduino [Music] so [Music] the next section begins a bit faster in message which translates to moderate and is the main tempo again you can often recognize the different formal section of the piece by the different temple marking this section consists of a fugato which is a polyphonic imitative play between different voices with one same motif and in this case we have a falling motif it is connected to the very b3 motif we just had in the right hand and then it begins with the following augmented triad starting on e flat it then morphs into a variant of the main theme so you already see how a and b motifs are combined [Music] the main notes of these motifs are f-sharp e-flat and b-flat and so they outline an e-flat minor triad the final notes of this passage are e natural a natural and d natural which form a fourth chord and so this harmonically prepares the second very short outburst moment which comes in the next bar this is marked by the tempo change russia which means faster plus the 16th notes so we are again suddenly faster furthermore the gesture is contrasting to what just happened while we had falling motifs in the fugato we now have strikingly rising figures furthermore we are left with only two voices here the first begins with a rising gesture based on thirds which could be associated with b3 motif and i know i said the outburst sections are amortalic but we will see that this is actually ambiguous and then the second voice turns in with the rising gesture based on force similar to the first outburst in the bar 12. this is emphasized by crescendo and also the range is again a little bit more expanded and the metric feels lost through the tempo changes but also the different accents [Music] this outburst moment is very short and we then return to a thematic polyphonic section which reminds us again of theme b and this is marked again by the change of tempo the dynamic is now forte and we only have intertwined ortivic material from the themes this is actually a good example to show how the different elements from theme a and theme b are combined and how certain motifs can get confused for one another and so we have a varied form of motif cell one in the upper voice so the falling major third then we have a very motif cell 2 and the lowest voice [Music] and finally a very retrograde form of motif cell 2 in the middle voice [Music] this motif group unit is then repeated twice so it reminds us of theme b and actually you could see some of these motifs as coming from team b so the repeating major third in the upper voice is an inversion of the motif b1 the resulted major third c natural and e natural also makes this relationship clear and then the three falling chromatic notes in the middle voice could be the inversion of the ending of the motif b3 the repetitions of these motifs lead us to a conclusion cadence-like ending we have the crescendo that leads us from forte to pianissimo we also have a change in register and jump to the lower edges of the piano and here we have the inverted motif cell 3 in the upper voice so the rising half step [Music] underneath that we have the last part of the theme a [Music] and if we take the f sharp and d natural from the upper voice in the preceding bar we even have a complete varied form of theme a this is followed by the last part of theme a in octaves in pianissimo and in the low register and this clearly indicates an ending of a section so we basically had varied forms of the themes a and b and i think you could see the complexity of the motific work here this was the larger first section of the piece now begins the large middle section which is more agitated and which is characterized by this new dotted rhythm which will be present throughout the whole section it begins with yet another tempo a bit faster fleecened and then pianissimo we have a new gesture and rhythm which at first seemed kind of unrelated to what had just happened before but if we look closely it is again derived from the main theme it's actually a canon with the main theme if you look at the right hand the lower voice on the thumb plays the slightly varied theme a without the repeated note at the end [Music] the upper voices in the right hand played very shortly afterwards on parallel thirds and these thirds are more prominent so you don't really perceive a cannon because of the shortness of the lower notes which act more as grace notes a minor ninth below the highest voice and if you put the notes of the lower voice and the parallel thirds together you end up with the inverted motif as a chord if we look at the range of the theme we see that it spans perfect fourth in the lower voice from e natural to b natural and the perfect fifth in the higher parts from f natural to b flat so the fifth range of the main theme that we had at the beginning is still present in the left hand we have a fast succession of minor knights which could be derived from various motifs [Music] this whole thing is then immediately varied and basically we had a very very canonic form of theme a now follows something that is related to theme b again as we saw at the beginning of the piece theme b began with the last note of theme a this is also the case here in bar 38 the varied theme a ends with the major third g natural b natural and then the varied theme b begins with the same third this varied theme b is very short and very changed but what reminds us of theme b are the three voices the minor 9th grace notes remain from the bars before the middle voice is the nearest from the middle voice of the original theme b it is a combination of b and a motifs trim back basically morphs one into the other so the first three notes stem from the motif b2 and the last three notes from the motif cell two in the highest voice we have again only two notes but the interval and the direction is changed and the lower voice is only related in that it's rising this be related section is as i said very short because it's interrupted by another outburst and disintegration moment this time it's a bit less sudden because it's introduced by crescendo but again everything changes and is contrasting it begins again with this rising gesture which we remember from the first outburst moment in bar 12 and here again we came from a motific and polyphonic texture to this outburst which is more about gesture and color again the register expands and we have faster note values we even have the returning node motif before the rising figure exactly like in bar 12. and this motif also retraces the perfect fifth relationship we had before the little motif starts on f sharp and leads to the rising gesture starting on b natural this little motif is then augmented which means that it is in longer note values and starts on an e natural and leads to an a natural at this point the gesture changes and we have this very fast and disorienting moment in which the range is even more expanded to the low register so here we have two voices one in each hand which basically play the same motifs in shifted contrary motion so the right hand is descending while the left hand rises these motifs consist again of mainly minor knights and are similar to the lower voice we had in the bias before what makes this so disorienting is the rhythm and the displacement between the two voices and furthermore this very fast moment is in pianissimo which creates this strange overall texture this is followed by yet another gesture which is related to the returning node motif we just saw and the rising gesture which is more or less compacted into an arpeggiated chord this moment reminds us a little bit of the bars 14 to 16 because of this forzato juxtaposed with the pianissimo and also because in both cases it brings the disintegration field back to thematic material but of course it is only loosely related and as you could see in the last couple of bars shimbak always comes up with new textures new gestures and movement the next section begins with the same notes we had in bar 36 which were the variant of theme a but it continues with the very very form of theme b we had before we have again three distinct voices and again the minor 9th is very prominent the dynamic is very agitated and goes from 40 to pianissimo very quickly [Music] we have an overall descending gesture which leads us to bar 45 in which we are in the very low register of the piano and in pianissimo here we have the same gesture and the right hand that we had from bar 34 onwards in the left hand starting from bar 46 we have the main theme again separated by short little rests starting from b flat and spanning again a perfect fifth to e flat [Music] and it's not a coincidence that we have the main theme and e flat here and we have again contrary motion between the lower voice and the upper voices the right hand is rising as the left descends and we have a crescendo at the end of the section which leads us to the build up to the climax of the piece [Music] we have here again the same notes as in bar 36 and 42 which i remind you stem out of the main motif [Music] [Applause] the middle voice has the motif that is a mix of b and a elements again and in the highest voice we have a retrograde of the main motif with major third but there's also a connection to the theme b with the major third c natural e natural and g sharp it's like retrograde following that in bar 49 in the left hand we have the motif cell 2 similar to what we had in bar 29. this is already in 40 and we have a big crescendo at the same time at the end of the bar we have an arcelerando and new elements join in the right hand plays this jumping rising gesture [Music] well the left hand plays syncopated three-note chords rising in big octave jumps which are based on e flat [Music] if we examine that we can see that the right hand plays the same thing we had in bar 13 extended by two notes the left hand also plays almost the same thing as in bar 13 but in chords [Music] and the notes of the first chord put in different order also form the main motif we then reach the climax of the piece in which the left hand plays the outburst rising gesture from bar 12 almost with the exact same notes this time with the first e flat doubled with an octave before and in fortissimo and martellato which means hammered and with accents so it's really the extreme brutalized version of this gesture that first appeared in pianissimo and with dampening pedal this gesture is then varied two times the dynamic is quickly changed and contrasted to pianissimo and the lowest notes of the gesture get a bit higher note how the lowest notes following the flat are g natural and b natural so notes associated with the main theme and with the central tone e natural so you can really find these kinds of details everywhere while this valid gesture began with e flat and was in the foreground it now becomes softer and gets more space to the right hand this leads us to the right hand which plays the varied main theme in the highest voice starting from g-sharp mostly with thirds and the middle voices the right hand also begins in fortissimo and quickly goes to pianissimo [Music] if we look at the notes of the first chords the right hand has we have the notes e natural g natural and d-sharp which are associated with the main theme and this is put against the outburst gesture in the left hand centered on e flat [Music] this climax is really the direct confrontation of these two fighting elements reinhardt brinkmann talks about this conflict between thematic and the outburst and that this climax is the final integration of the outburst moment schwimberg gives this climactic moment a lot of importance and that the essential idea of the piece that is the conflict or the tension between the thematic and the outburst is in the main focus here there is a reminiscence of the sonata form in the conflict between these two opposing poles after this climax we have the rupees in which the main theme returns starting on the original note b natural for the first time since the very beginning of the piece the theme is still varied though nothing gets repeated exactly the same way in this piece it starts in octaves and is prolonged and also there are other things going on in other voices in bar 54 the left hand plays the motif b3 but at the same time it now appears as being closely related to the outburst gesture that just happened some bars earlier this is partly because of the faster note values and because the first two notes are played successively for the first time so this means that the outburst is really finally integrated into the thematic fabric it is confusable and the conflict is more or less solved you could say and in retrospect you could say that the motif b3 is related to the first outburst moment in bar 12. ringman talks about the sonata form being in the background of this piece in that there is an exposition of the themes which serve as material for the development and this is evident through the simplicity of the main theme which cries out to be varied and developed then there is the development which is the core of the piece and has a direction it leads towards something and then finally the request is the result of this development it's a consequence of the process and if here the process was to carry the conflict between thematic and outburst and to integrate the outburst then the process has reached its goal in the ruprise but this is discussable of course so but let's look further into the piece in the right hand we have chords joining the main theme the left hand plays these thirds and octaves which could be associated with the motif b1 we have a crescendo and then the b2 motif joins in the middle voice with accents on every note [Music] it gets repeated and a little varied intensifies and then we quickly arrive at the dynamic of piano we saw how elements from theme a and theme b were combined all the time after the opening section but here we have really the clear main theme a combined with the motifs from theme b which didn't happen before so this could also be seen as a result of the interplay or the different combinations we had of a and b motifs in the development the final togetherness of the two so to say and finally we have a short coda we are in the lower register of the piano in the right hand we have a three note chord in swazato that resembles the chords of the climax and is associated with the outburst in between the two upper voices the varied main theme appears in piano with diminuendo it is then passed to a lower voice and then goes back to the highest voice and this passing around of elements of the main theme through different voices is a typical way of ending a piece you can find that in piano pieces by beethoven and so on so the last varied a motifs are left out to a single line in pianissimo which falls down to this e natural and octaves this single voice left alone the various of dynamic the diminuendo and the falling gesture of the line creates a clear feeling of an end and this would actually be a solid ending in that the main theme that had e naturalized its central note now descends to it at the end of the piece but schenberg decided to then unexpectedly descend to an e flat [Music] with this last e flat we have a sudden chord that appears on top of it this chord consists of the fourth we had in bar 12. so the first outbursts moment is really re-emerging as a surprise and makes this ending a lot more agitated and if we look at the first outburst moment again we can see that it's really connected to the very ending of the piece as i said before in bar 11 we had the a natural going to be flat which should lead us to the upwards moment starting on e flat this trajectory is shortly interrupted by b natural which would lead us to e natural so as you see there's this harmonic play between these two poles of e natural and e flat which kind of represent the thematically organized sections and the chaotic outburst sections and this is present at many moments during the whole piece and now at the end we have something similar again we have a natural which goes to b flat or in this case a sharp but then it goes to e natural before we have the sun shift to e flat so this last flash of the outburst really makes us wonder if the conflict is really solved or not it gives us a sense of instability and insecurity [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so so concluding we could say that in this piece schoenberg really confronts order and chaos that is thematic motifically organized parts and eruptive outbursting aimothetic parts a conflict is presented and it's like these hyper-expressive outburst moments try to break the organized fabric but we also saw that the seemingly chaotic parts of the piece are very carefully put together to oppose these two poles we saw how schumacher contrasts everything he even uses some kind of traditional harmonic principle of contrast in that he uses different central notes for the two poles so e natural for the thematic and e flat for the outburst during the piece the conflict is dealt with and we end up in this ambiguous position of integration of the outburst or integration of the chaos into the order but which is still not clear at the end of course we also saw how elaborated the motific work is in this piece how almost everything stems out of few small motifs like in beethoven or browse so but anyways let's just quickly look at the other two pieces now the second piece is like the slow movement of the whole thing it is not as rich and contrasts as the first piece and it's characterized by this ostinato in the left hand which occupies a large part of the piece like the first piece it has three larger sections which are again like a thematic exposition a long middle section and a sort of recapitulation the piece has many different smaller sections which are clearly recognizable there are clear breaks or cadences between them like the first piece it is motifically elaborated and many of the things can be traced back to the main motifs that are presented at its beginning what is unusual for schumacher is that we have some sections which are almost identically repeated during the piece so we have constant variation of motifs but at the same time these variations sometimes reappear if you look at the opening we have again two themes a and b the second theme is expanded and then we have the first theme re-emerging so like the first piece it's an a b a prime form then starts a long middle section which consists of different smaller sections in which the material of the opening is strongly changed and transformed it consists of little sections of different types to me it almost feels like collage of different moments this middle section leads again to a big climax which is using material from theme b the music then calms down and after everything stands still the last section begins [Music] [Music] bring brinkman points out that this is not like the rupees in the first piece in the first piece the crease seemed like a necessary result of everything beforehand culminated directly out of the climax in this second piece first the climax comes down and leads to a static moment and after that the last section seems more like a like a memory or recapitulation of everything that has occurred during the piece it is more like an attachment and not a necessity of a process the piece ends with an e flat again and if you would analyze the harmony you could see that this makes sense krinkman actually shows how this whole piece tends towards e flat partly because of sections which are centered around b flat which leans towards e-flat and actually schenbach's pupil anton wilbon also talked about this you can look further into that if you like to now lastly to the third piece which is probably my favorite one so i wouldn't pretend that young number three looks similar to a string for that of head it was composed a couple of months later than the first two pieces and schenberg was composing his big orchestral pieces of 16 at the same time like i said earlier and the orchestral colors and the many polyphonic layers he elaborated in these pieces are evident also in this last piano piece it is the big finale of the piece the wildest most violent piece but also the one with the most contrast so besides the loud almost brutal moments there are also incredibly tender passages unlike the other two pieces there is no apparent use of traditional forms like the aba form we saw basically this piece consists of short moments which are very different from each other and which convey a feeling of freedom and of constant change and movement and newness shoemak's pupil anton viven said about this piece once presented the theme expresses everything it has to say something new must come it's almost like the outbursts of the first piece are now everywhere in this last piece but here they aren't really outburst moments since they constitute the whole piece basically each moment is a very clear unit and is very distinct in its shortness its overall construction and its character among the three piano pieces the third one is the most radical and extreme one regarding the form but also regarding the harmony and that there are no harmonic poles and also there are only remains of motific connection so it doesn't have this clear connection to tradition that we saw in the first two pieces it actually functions mostly with gestures dynamic tempo register and color new characters had emerged new moves and more happy changes of expression had been created and new types of beginning continuing contrasting repeating and ending had come into usage rickman divides the piece in these different moments or zones as he calls them he says that you could differentiate between zones which have more of a thematic contour and zones which are more nebulous and blurry like a field of sound but he insists on treating every moment as individual and recognizing its particularities for example the zone from bar 19 to 20 is a more thematically controlled one and so is the one from my 11 to 13. but they differ in every other aspect the first one is in fortissimo while the second one is in piano and the azad which means very tender first one has big compact chords and many layers well the other one has only two simple voices and so on in general this piece is remarkably polyphonic if you look at the opening you immediately notice that there are three staffs and in each one there's at least one voice [Music] but anyways more blurred zones or field-like moments are for example the one from bar 16 to 18. [Music] we have the left pedal plus the very soft dynamic to that we have the right pedal which is held down where we have these chords in the lowest and very highest register so everything is blurry and we don't recognize clearly what is happening in between those chords it is so quiet in pianissi sisimo i think and there are no clear shapes it is more like a field of sound as brighmann says after this moment comes the powerful thematic zone that we just talked about so you see how the principle of direct contrast is really the most important thing in this piece schenberg constantly juxtaposes moments which are different in almost every way [Music] so let's come to an end now as i said in the beginning the whole work is somewhat remembering the classical sonata the first piece being very complex and motifically very elaborated and even being somewhat reminiscent of the sonata form the second piece being the slow movement with less contrast and the third piece being the grandiose finale we also saw how schoenberg used lots of traditional musical elements while still being very modern and new especially in the last piece but anyways this video is already long enough and i guess you could make your own conclusions and i want to say again that i got almost everything from reinhardt brinkmann and that if you speak german and are interested i recommend this book in my next video i'm going to try to analyze a piece more by myself and i think it will probably be about legacy so i hope this video was clear and informative let me know what you think about it i am still not sure about many things since you know i'm just a young student i would be very happy to discuss some things in the comment section especially if you don't agree with things and yeah thanks for watching and i will try to do this more often 40 years have since proved that the psychological basis of all these changes was correct music without a constant reference to atonic was comprehensible could produce characters and moods could provoke emotions and was not there of being gay or humorous

Channel: Mattia Aisemberg-Pham

Views: 11,288

Keywords: Music, Classical music, contemporary music, classical contemporary music, new music, analysis, musical analysis, Schönberg, Schoenberg, Arnold Schoenberg, Arnold Schönberg, Piano, Piano Pieces, Klavierstücke, Three Piano Pieces Op.11, Drei Klavierstücke, Atonal, Atonal music, Wiener Schule, Piano music, composition, contemporary composition, modern composition, austrian composer, german composer, music history, musical history, music composition, music theory, musicology

Id: pur6E9LKXtU

Length: 74min 48sec (4488 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021