0.3 Musical emphasis  (Page 3/3)

In Francis Poulenc’s Dialogue of the Carmelites , a group of nuns are sentenced to death during the Reign of Terror. As the nuns are marched to the guillotine, they sing a chorale over a march-like rhythmic accompaniment. As each nun is executed, one singer drops out, finally leaving a single voice alone. The march-like rhythm and final female voice drop out with the fall of the blade: Once again, music and narrative are in perfect alignment.

Rhetorical reinforcement is frequently used to highlight the beginning of a new section or the return of an important passage. Listen to the main theme of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 .

We will now fast forward to later in the movement. Do you recognize the return of the opening? What rhetorically reinforces it?

After an intense flurry of activity, the rhythm suddenly stopped. The texture and dynamics changed. The musical dimensions shifting in coordination signaled that an important formal arrival was taking place.

The Finale of Bartok’s Concerto No. 1 begins with the following explosive theme.

Once again, we will fast forward to later in the movement. Once again, do you recognize the return of the opening? What rhetorically reinforces it?

Once again, a compounding of emphases marked the return: The rhythm stopped; there was a loud cymbal crash, followed by a dramatic change in volume and texture. Rhetorical reinforcement has created an unmistakable formal landmark.

In his Symphony in D , Cesar Franck uses extremes of volume and density to emphasize two appearances of his main theme. The theme is initially played softly and sparely.

It returns later, this time played loudly by the full orchestra.

Similarly, in Rituel , Pierre Boulez introduces his primary theme in the solo oboe, with a sparse accompaniment.

Later, the theme echoes between different instrumental groups, in a prolonged statement made powerful by is massive density and loud volume.

The Finale of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird begins with the following theme:

Stravinsky brings the work to a close by using maximum repetition, volume, density and speed—both fast and slow--to create a majestic emphasis.

In Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck , the beleaguered soldier Wozzeck becomes convinced of his wife’s infidelity. He lures his wife to a deserted lake and stabs her. Throughout the scene, as Wozzeck is contemplating his wife’s murder, a fixed pitch hovers perpetually in the background. After Wozzeck has slain his wife, Berg creates one of the mostspectacular and climactic rhetorical reinforcements in music history: The fixed pitch swells in intensity until it consumes the entire orchestra. Emphases of duration, volume, register and density are all joined together. That which is most essential is given its strongest emphasis.

Listen to the opening of Schubert’s Quintet in C for two violins, viola and two cellos .

Once again, we will fast forward to later in the movement. Do you recognize the return?

You may have hesitated this time. Why? This time, the rhetorical reinforcement is much less emphatic.

At the opening, the strings move together in very slow values.

At the return, the instruments should change speed, texture and dynamic together. But the first violin does not cooperate! Instead, it continues with its pattern from the previous section. Thus, a united emphasis does not take place: The first violin is out-of-phase with the other instruments, creating a weaker acknowledgment of the form.

Whereas strong rhetorical reinforcement promotes clarity , weak or absent rhetorical reinforcement creates ambiguity . The degree of rhetorical reinforcement is one of the strongest measures of compositional intent. Schubert could have created a strongly articulated return. However, he chose to maintain a “poker face,” making the return less obvious. Why? This question can become a point-of-entry into a more in-depth study of the piece.

Climaxes depend on coordination between the musical dimensions. As a result, highly unrhetorical music will tend not to have a climax: The different dimensions are too out-of-phase from one another to create a clear structural alignment. In Morton Feldman’s Why Patterns? , the three players—flute, glockenspiel and piano—are instructed to proceed independently through the score. The synchronization of the players varies from one performance to the next; each time, the combination of the parts is unique. Under such conditions, rhetorical reinforcement and a reliable climax are impossible to produce. Feldman related this to the absence of perspective in Abstract Expressionist art: He wrote of “flattening the aural canvas” so that it lacked rhetorical peaks.