St Paul's Music

Schoenberg - Peripetie

 

Background

Peripetie means sudden change and this is reflected in the musical features of this piece. It is an example of music from the expressionism style and later became know as serialism due to its use of tone rows. It was written by the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg from Vienna in 1909.

 

Stylistic features

Atonal, large orchestra, sudden changes, use of extremes in dynamics and pitch. Use of tone rows and klangfarbenmelodie.

 

Instruments

Large orchestra - strings, brass, woodwind, percussion.

There are three flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons (instead of the normal pairs) plus piccolo, cor anglais, clarinet in D, bass clarinet and contrabassoon. There are extra horns, trumpets and trombones plus a tuba. The percussion section includes xylophone, cymbals, tam tam (a large gong) and bass drum.

Instruments often play at the extreme of their registers. There are many performance directions in the score. Schoenberg was looking for very specific tone colours or timbres.

 

Structure

Rondo form A B A C A

 

Texture

A - Homophonic,   B - Polyphonic,  C - Starts homophonic becomes more polyphonic as section progresses.

 

Melody

Uses tone rows (prime row, retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion) These are all 12 notes put in sequence the retrograde and inversion develop the prime into a different order.

Klangfarbenmelodie - passing melodie around different instruments

Below are german words written on the score/notation telling you which instrument is playing the lead and second part

Hauptstimme - Principal voice

Nebenstimme - secondary voice

Changes from very high to very low pitch

 

Rhythm/Metre

3/4

Sehr Rasch - very quick is the tempo directions given. The piece uses some very fast rhythms such as demisemi-quavers and also more complex rhythms like sextuplets (6 notes accross 2 beats)

 

Tonality

Atonal - no tonic note, every note is equal.

 

Harmony

Chromatic

Use of hexachords - six notes played as a chord or in a sequence

Dissonant - sounds clashing, horrible

 

Dynamics

Sudden changes from very loud to very quiet