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Area of Study 2
Schoenberg:
‘Peripetie’
from
Five Orchestral Pieces
Expressionism and Serialism
Expressionism
1900’s
This is a style developed in the early 20th Century as a reaction to the late Romantic era and
composers such as Brahms and Wagner. Both composers were moving further away from the more
classical ways of writing music, by using more chromatics (#’s & b’s) and less cadences which signify
a key leading to the breakdown of tonality toward the turn of the century. This was making the
music more emotional, and full of suspense.
Composers therefore wanted to react against the direction Wagner, Debussy et al had taken their
music. Composer therefore went one way or another. Revisiting classical styles, forms and
structures from before the breakdown of tonality or pushing forwards into atonal music.
Music developed quickly through the 20th Century, and was largely based on exploration and
experimentation, leading to new trends, techniques and sounds
The Expressionist movement was strongest in Germany at the end of the 1 st World War. There was
a strong feeling of disillusionment and discontent regarding living conditions and restrictions
imposed on the country. Artist, writers and composers wanted to express their emotions through
their art form as intensely as possible. Rather than trying to create life-like and realistic paintings,
Expressionist artists would use unnatural colours and distortion to portray their emotions.
Expressionism is often dark and moody but it can also communicate feelings of happiness and joy.
Atonal music therefore allowed them to create dark intense feelings through music.
KEY FEATURES
 Expressionist Music is Atonal – meaning not using the original Key signatures and chords, making
each of the 12 semitones equally important
 Each piece of Music usually only expresses one very intense emotion
 The pitch range of instruments is used fully, using the difference in sounds and colours that can
be heard.
 Timbre is as important as melody – the sound of the instrument contributes as much as pitch
 Extremes in dynamics area very common, as with the extremes of having minimum instruments
playing to the full ensemble playing loudly
 Pieces are generally quite short, it is difficult to write a long piece of music without the template
or key structure, or recognizable themes as heard in ‘traditional’ music
Influential figures
Arnold Schoenberg was an extremely influential figure in expressionism, experimenting with new
ways of expressing themselves, producing atonal music. He had two pupils, Alban Berg and Anton
Webern. The three of them became known as the ‘Second Viennese School’. They were known for
using the ‘Twelve Tone Technique’, which later developed into Serialism.
Listen out for,
 Clashing / dissonant harmonies
 “jumping” from instrument to another instrument
 Frenzied, disjointed melodies including wild leaps and violent explosive contrasts with instruments
being played to the extremes of their ranges.
 Most of this music will not have recognizable phrases as like ternary form or Baroque style pieces
 Large orchestras
 Atonal – music in no particular key
 Complex rhythms
Famous composers
Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
‘Peripetie’ is the fourth of Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces. The title means ‘A sudden change’.
Listen to the music and, using the following terms: rhythm; metre; tonality; melody, describe
how Schoenberg creates the feeling of sudden changes.
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What do you think of this style of music?
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Schoenberg - 1874-1951
•
• Born in Vienna, Austria
Founded the Second Viennese School – a group of composers who wrote Expressionist music
• Taught Berg & Webern.
• Was a Jew (but adopted Protestantism for a few years)
• His music was condemned by the Nazis as being decadent
• He started writing atonal music when his wife left him for his friend an artist.
• Developed a technique known as serialism or twelve tone system
Five Orchestral Pieces: Peripetie (1909)
Written in: 1908-9 for Richard Strauss, also a 20th Century composer, who didn’t like it! It was
written in the style of Expressionism and is a set of atonal pieces for full orchestra. They are
not connected to each other through any themes.
Stylistic features
 Large orchestra – although used sparingly
 Wide ranging dynamics / detailed dynamics
 Wide pitch ranges of all instruments – pitches and harmony used for effect
 Atonal – Not in a key
 Melodic material moves quickly from instrument to instrument
 Frequent use of techniques / devices, altering the basic timbre – e.g. pizzicato, mute etc
 Complex rhythms
 No traditional harmonic relationship
Homework:Write a paragraph of information about these orchestral pieces. Your work must be
word processed and include details about when and where it was first played; the history behind
the title of the individual pieces and why Schoenberg found it difficult to get this work
performed.
PERFORMANCE MARKINGS
Look at the following signs/abbreviations. List one place where you can find them in the score and
write down what they mean:
Definition
a2 or a3
divisi
pizz
arco
bell up
1 solo
tutti
+
Bar
INSTRUMENTATION
This work is written for a very large orchestra of about 90 players; however there are very few
places in which the orchestra plays together. Schoenberg changes the instrumentation rapidly
throughout creating many contrasts in timbre. He felt that the combination of instrumental
sounds, or ‘tone colour’ was just as important as the melody and invented the term
klangfarbenmelodie which means tone-colour melody.
The instruments play at extreme their extreme ranges in terms of pitch. Look at bar 2, what do
you notice about the double bass part?
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Now look at the final 2 bars and you will notice that the instruments playing here are all playing at
opposing pitches and at their most extreme ranges.
How does Schoenberg create different timbres on the cymbal?
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Describe the instruments below:
Piccolo
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Cor anglais
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Bass clarinet
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Contrabassoon
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Tam-tam
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STRUCTURE
This piece could very loosely be described as a Rondo, however not a traditional Rondo due to the
lack of tonality and changes of rhythm. Therefore it is referred to as “free rondo”. The whole
piece is built on the idea of using hexachords and is split into 5 sections.
Section 1 (A)
Bars 1 - 18
All main items or
motifs are
introduced here
Section 2 (B)
Bars 19 - 34
New ideas are
combined with
original motifs
Section 3 (A1)
Bars 35 - 43
All main ideas
return in reverse
order
Section 4 (C)
Section 5 (A1)
Bars 44 - 58
Bars 59 - 66
More new ideas
Earlier motifs lead
are combined
into a loud climax.
with original ideas
TONALITY AND HARMONY
The piece is atonal and uses a lot of dissonant harmony.
The chords and melodies are often built from hexachords – a set of six pitches. This is one of the
unifying features of ‘Peripetie’. We first hear them in the opening woodwind fanfare, if we write
them in scale order you can see the intervals between the notes:
Note name
Semitone interval
C#
1
D
2
E
1
F
G#
3
1
A
Now look at the sustained chord in the horn chord in bars 8-13, Schoenberg has transposed the
first hexachord to a new pitch level. It still however creates the same type of dissonant chord.
A
Bb C C#
E
1 2
1
3
F
1
He uses this same chord again in bars 37-39 in the horns.
Finally, look at the chord in the last two bars of the piece:
E
1
F
2
G
1
Ab
3
B
1
C
It’s the hexachord again transposed to another pitch level! This happens throughout the piece
though some of the hexachords have different sets of pitches.
MELODY
Dissonance – you will hear allot of dissonance in this piece, which generally appears when there is
no key. It is where more than one note is played at the same time that do not sound pleasing
together – e.g c and c sharp.
The main idea of this piece is the Hexachord (see above), a Compliment is also used, which is the
other 6 remaining pitches being put together. The hexachord is played and portrayed in many
different ways – played one note after the other, all at the same time like a chord, or shared
between instruments. It can also be transposed, Inverted played in Retrograde.
Octave displacement, Klangfarbenmelodie and canon are also used.
Write bar number where you can find each of these techniques.
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There are seven different motifs that are short and fragmented. Write down the features of each
of the motifs below including the following key words: disjunct; octave displacement; augmentation;
triplets; sextuplet; chromatic movement.
Motif a
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Motif b
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Motif c
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Motif d
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Motif e
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Motif f
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Motif g
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RHYTHM, METRE AND TEMPO
The metre changes between _________________________________________________.
The tempo is Sehr rasch, what does this mean?
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The rhythms are very complex and include triplets, syncopation, demisemiquavers, sextpulets
and dotted rhythms. He changes them very quickly and often layers the different rhythm
patterns on top of each other to create a complex contrapuntal texture.
TEXTURE AND DYNAMICS
The texture changes constantly throughout this piece, so you cannot describe it as being a certain
type, however it is often contrapuntal/polyphonic. There are times where the texture becomes
more sparse and is monophonic. Can you find an example of this?
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Remember, Schoenberg uses allot of instruments, but very sparsely. When he uses allot of
instruments, it is usually for dramatic effect and to create atmosphere.
To create the contrapuntal texture Schoenberg uses imitation. In the final section you will see an
example of three different canons that are all heard at the same time.
A main feature of Expressionist music is the use of extreme contrasts in dynamics. There are
more performance directions than ever. Schoenberg was obsessed with dynamics and such like, to
get the balance to be perfect and the exact sound he envisaged.
Look through the score and write down the two most extreme dynamics that Schoenberg uses:
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Serialism in Modern Music
Kandinsky
Serialism was created in the 1920 – 1940’s by German composers who were trying to move away
from the traditions of ‘classical’ music in terms of melody, harmony and tonality. Serialism allowed
the composers to write longer pieces of music without “drifting towards a key”, by its very design
all 12 notes had exactly equal importance, and therefore there was no chance of moving towards a
key or tonal centre. Serialism abandoned the idea of major, minor or modal tonality altogether.
Melodies and harmonies were created using a mathematical principle where each note of the
chromatic scale is used democratically, in order.
The composer arranges the 12 notes of the chromatic scale into a certain order known as the:
The Prime Row (P):
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The Prime is then changed to get 3 more versions:
The Retrograde (R):
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The Inversion (I):
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The Retrograde Inversion (RI):
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Having got the different rows, the composer can then transpose each row, 11 times, becoming P1
through P11, I1 through I11 etc.
Transpose each Row:
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The composer now has up to 48 different 12 note rows to choose from to create the melody,
countermelody and harmony with.
He will use the elements of music and a number of melodic techniques to create mood and contrast
in the piece.
Canon, Imitation, Sequence, Pontillism, Verticalization.
Terms
Chromaticism
Atonal
Klangfarbenmelodie
Hexachord
Principal Voice
Secondary Voice
Serialism
Prime row
Inversion
Retrograde
Retrograde inversion
Enharmonic
Verticalisation
Dissonance
Canon
Pontillisism
Definitions