Schoenberg Analysis 2

Schoenberg:
Peripetie from ‘Five
Orchestral Pieces’
Opus 16 (1909)
Analysis section by section

Score reading task
 Find 4 examples of hexachords on your scores
(you should have notes on this).

 Annotate them to tell me whether they use verticalisatoin or melodic treatment

 You only have 3 minutes to do this

Expressionism so far
 How did WW1 impact the way artists, composers, poets etc created their work?

 Composers started to use lots of chromatics in their pieces. What are chromatics?

 What does atonal mean?
 What are the dynamics like in an expressionist piece of music?  How do expressionist composers explore pitch and timbre?  What is a hexachord? What is the compliment?

 ‘Peripetie’ was written for a large orchestra to produce contrasts with texture, dynamics & timbre.  It is written for quadruple woodwind (4 per section)

Flute

Piccolo

clarinet

 3 flutes & piccolo
 3 clarinets & bass clarinet
 3 bassoons &

Bass clarinet

bassoon contrabassoon contrabassoon

 3 oboes & cor anglais
 A large brass section,

with and without mutes.

 A large percussion section
– cymbals, timpani, xylophone  & of course strings

Oboe

Cor anglais Important features
 The parts are very challenging to play
 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
 Atonal
 Use of hexachords and compliments
 The melody is passed around different instruments.
 It is made up of 5 sections
 Peripetie is Greek for Sudden Changes

Section A: Bars 1-18
 Begins with a bang!
 Clarinets and flutes begin with 2 hexachords
- Bar 1 Clarinets
- Bar 3 Flutes

 Leads to a fortissimo (ff) horn motif marked principal line
 Variations of the hexachords appear throughout the piece as they are a basis for most of the melodic