Schoenberg - 'Peripetie'

A strong movement in Germany following the First World War.

Artists felt disillusioned and discontent and expressed this through music and art that made people feel uncomfortable.

In music

The music is often atonal - there is no tonal centre. Each of the twelve notes is equally important.

Timbre is often seen as important as melody - Schoenberg invented klangfarbenmelodie (literally tone-colour-melody) where fragments of the melody are passed around the orchestra.

Extremes of dynamics for added drama.

Pieces were often short. It is difficult to sustain a longer piece without the framework of keys and traditional melodies.

Why use a hexachord at all?

The parts are very challenging to play

A lot of wide leaps, use of the lowest to the highest register of all the instrument

• Atonal
• Wide range of dynamics and pitch.
• A lot of wide leaps, use of the lowest to the highest register of all the instruments
• There is no conventional structure – although it is like a ‘free’ Rondo with contrasting textures & tempo
• Use of melodic fragments (very short melodic ideas)
• Use of complicated fragmented rhythms
• Use of a hexachord (a group of 6 unrelated different notes) which create dissonances, either played at the same time like a chord, or one after the other like a short melody. (The remaining 6 semitones are called a compliment)
• The melody is passed around different instruments. This is called klangfarbenmelodie
• Sudden changes in timbre, dynamics and texture which make it exciting.
• Texture – polyphonic, contrapuntal & sparse solo sections
• Quick changes between instrumental families.

Questions

• Which word best describes the tonality? major, minor, atonal or modal
• What does 'peripetie' mean?
• What is the structure of the piece?
• Can you describe the dynamics?
• What is a hexachord?

• What does 'hauptstimme' mean?
• What is the secondary melodic line called?
• The hexachord is used to organise the choice of notes. What are the remaining six notes called?
• When was the piece written?
• How can you tell that the piece is expressionist?

Harder questions...

Serialism

Schoenberg

Prime order (the original row)

Retrograde – (backwards)

Inversion – (prime order upside down)

Retrograde inversion – (backwards upside down)

Prime order transposed – (order moved up or down by a certain interval)

After 5 orchestral pieces,

Schoenberg created a new

compositional style called the

tone row, in which he would

use all 12 notes available and

put them in a random order

creating a prime order.

To vary the order of notes

within the piece the composer

could use a number of

techniques

• Born in Vienna, Austria 1874.
• Played the violin.
• Taught Berg & Webern (collectively known as the Second Viennese School)
• Was Jewish (but adopted Protestantism for a few years).
• His music was condemned by the Nazis
• His music was not very popular, he often tried to convince major composers and conductors of the time with little success.
• He started writing atonal music when his wife left him for an artist friend. The friend later committed suicide.

Expressionism

Extreme and vivid art that seemed unrealistic but expressed emotions

Schoenberg

Peripetie

Performing task

Group improvisation on a hexachord

These are the six notes of the recurring hexachord used in ‘Peripetie’.

A Bb C C# E F

The six notes which are not used form another hexachord, known as the compliment.

B D Eb F# G G#

• Decide which six notes will form your hexachord
• Practise playing the notes in different octaves on your instrument
• Agree on an overall structure (e.g. ABA with A uses loud short notes, B softer and longer notes)
• Listen carefully to each other. You are performing as a group!

Peripetie

Tasks

From Five Orchestral Pieces Op.16 (1909, revised 1922)

Structure

Composing tasks

• The piece is in five sections - A B A C A
• This is rondo form
• This particular piece is referred to as being a 'free rondo'. This is because the A sections do not return to a recognisable theme

What is Peripetie?

A

B

A''

A'

C

0:00 - 0:31 (CD timings)

0:31 - 1:00

1:50 - 2:09

1:16 - 1:50

1:00 - 1:16

• Every instrument gets to play in families e.g. all strings. Only for a few bars
• Flutes & clarinets play a short motif – made up of a hexachord
• The horns play a fanfare marked ff
• Tempo & rhythm- sehr rash (very quick) contains mostly triplets, sextuplets and demisemiquavers
• Clarinet plays an expressive melody
• Instrumentation/Texture – full orchestra, homophonic & solo sections. Use of mutes on brass to create different timbres
• Pitch/melody – Atonal and dissonant. The melody has angular leaps. Full pitch range heard
• Dynamics – sudden loud bursts. Extreme range of dynamics from fff to pp

• Instrumentation – builds up from clarinets & strings to the full orchestra for the final climactic chord. Double basses play a high tremolo chord
• Tempo/rhythm – rhythms from the opening bars return
• Dynamics – crescendos very quickly from pp to fff. Then immediately dies away to finish with a pp chord

• Begins with the bassoon playing the principal voice before quickly passing it to the double bass
• Tempo – alternates between ruhiger (calmer) & heftig (passionate)
• Sparse texture – with solo instruments overlapping
• Dynamics- range from pp-fff.

• Every instrument plays alone
• Melody snakes through the orchestra, demonstrating klangfarbenmelodie
• Has a very thick texture
• Starts off very quietly but change frequently and dramatically
• Different rhythms which overlap
• A more frantic section emphasised by high cellos and busy textures in percussion & wind

• The horns play a hexachord marked pp
• This section is relatively calm, but feels more menacing than tranquil

• ‘Peripetie’ is the 4th movement

• It was written when Richard Strauss (another famous composer) offered to take a new piece to fellow composers – they didn’t like it!

• Schoenberg did not want to give his works titles – he thought the music should speak for itself. His publisher made him.

• ‘Peripetie’ is Greek for ‘sudden changes’. The sudden changes are in Timbre (instruments) and Texture.

Compose a short overture for a modern ballet entitled Clowns & Nightmares. Use a twelve tone row to create contrasting ideas so as to set the scene for a dance – perhaps a strange waltz or circus polka with dissonant, spooky interludes. You could begin by listening to examples of expressionist writing in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Luniere.

Instrumentation

Piccolo

Flute

Clarinet

Cor anglais

Bass clarinet

Bassoon

Contrabassoon

‘Peripetie’ was written for a large orchestra so he could produce contrasts with texture, dynamics & timbre.

It is written for quadruple woodwind (4 per section)

3 flutes & piccolo

3 clarinets & bass clarinet

3 bassoons & contrabassoon

3 oboes & cor anglais

A large brass section, with and without mutes.

A large percussion section – cymbals, timpani, xylophone

Strings

Oboe

Hexachords

Make some incidental music for a theatre drama using serial techniques; e.g., the Witches’ scene in Macbeth or a fight scene from Romeo and Juliet.

Harmony

The notes of the hexachord can be played in a number of ways.

A hexachord is a set of six different notes.

These are the six notes of the hexachord used in ‘Peripetie’.

• All of the notes or a selection could be played as a chord
• The notes could used to create a melody
• The notes can be played in any octave

The piece is atonal.

There is no tonal centre - each note is equally important.

This means there are no diatonic melodies

This can sound dissonant and many find it difficult to enjoy

A Bb C C# E F

The six notes which have not been used are known as the compliment. Schoenberg uses this set of notes as well.

Melody

B D Eb F# G G#

Key facts

Although the piece is very dissonant and does not appear to have a melody, there is a melodic line.

Schoenberg revised the score to show which instrument has the main melodic line (principal voice) and which has the next most important line (secondary voice).

Example of hauptstimme and nebenstimme in Schoenberg's fourth string quartet

These are shown on the score as:

Hauptstimme - principal voice

Nebenstimme - secondary voice

Other ways of developing the melody

Imitation – where a motif in one part is repeated a few notes later in a different part overlapping the motif in the first part

Diminution – where the note values are made smaller (usually halved)

Melodic inversion – where the melody is turned upside down