0.11 Time's effect on the material  (Page 5/7)

One crucial issue to examine is whether the return is abbreviated or expanded. When the return is abbreviated,it can contribute to making the music more dynamic, more active. The return is more efficient, it has been reducedto an essence.

For instance, Brahms' Intermezzo in A-Major opens with the following lyrical section:

After a contrasting section, the A-section recurs in abbreviated fashion.

The third movement of Francis Poulenc's Flute Sonata dramatically compresses its return. The opening of the piece unfolds with a luxurious panorama ofideas, beginning with energetic figuration played by the flute and piano and culminating in a more languorous themeintroduced by the piano alone.

At the return, Poulenc presents a dizzying synposis that rushes quickly through the contrasting ideas: Theenergetic figuration and languorous theme now occur much closer together.

From a structural point-of-view, the result is very dynamic and lively.

Compare these examples with Wagner's Siegfried's Death and Funeral March , in which the theme is expanded when it returns. If the reprise is both expandedand presented with great stability, it creates a particularly emphatic and conclusive sense of arrival.

The opening of Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9,“The Great,” begins with a French horn playing alone.

At the end of the work, the entire orchestra plays the theme, powerfully strengthening the return.

In Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw , the narrator recalls witnessing Jewish prisoners being led away to their deaths. As he describes how the condemned started to sing, a disjunct melody is played quietly by a muted horn.

Later in the work, the narrator’s retelling becomes more immediate and detailed. As he describes the prisoners’final march, the muted horn’s melody returns—this time sung forcefully by men’s chorus and prolonged into a complete prayer. Time has strengthened the material, giving it an overwhelming emotional impact.

Time can also weaken musical material. The Scherzo of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 begins with a forceful French horn melody.

Later, this passage returns. But instead of strengthening it, time has weakened the material. Now it is played delicately by the winds, supported by plucked strings:

In Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht is an instrumental work inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel. The poem tells the story of a woman who confesses to her lover that she is carrying another man’s child. The man’s shock and distress is represented by the following theme.

At the poem’s close, the man tells the woman he will love the child as his own. In the music, this is represented by the return of the impassioned theme. But time has had an effect: Only fragments are played, softly in the high register.