A level Music Revision - Hermann Flashcards
Melody
Motifs
Repetition
Sequence
Development
Marion = Rising, falling perfect 5
Diminished 5th, Perfect 4th
Prelude = Ostinato, Inverted melodies, Augmented melodies, Major 7th widely spaced chords, Verticalisation
Fugal textures = Cellar
Melodic inversions
Harmony
Atonal at points
Chromatacism and dissonance
Non-functional harmonies
“Hitchcock chord” minor chord + major 7th
Dissonant chord clusters
Augmented 4ths
Dim 5th: Finale
Parallel chord movement: Toys + Discovery
Tonailty
Avoids tonal centers and key schemes
Atonal at points
Chromatacism and dissonance
Structure
Leitmotifs
Prelude – played under the opening credits:
Built up of four ideas, assembled into a flowing, driving whole:
1. Bars 1–3 ‘stabbed’, syncopated ‘Hitchcock’ chords (see harmony).
2. Bars 3–20 busy, obsessive ideas made up of short ostinato.
Note: These set works guides are Pearson’s interpretation of the set works and every effort has been made to
ensure these are appropriate for use in the classroom. There may be other interpretations which are also valid and
any such differences would not be considered errors, or require any updates to the guides.
3. Bars 21–24 repeated dotted rhythm block chords answered by an off-beat
low bass pizzicato.
4. Bars 37–48 a more conventional melodic line, moving stepwise.
These ideas are played in various orders (1 always precedes 2, while 3 and 4 are
interpolated into the texture more unpredictably).
All ideas undergo some variation, either of idea or by transposition.
The City – played as the camera pans over Phoenix and down to the hotel room.
Based on varied repetitions of the opening three bars (see example 2 above).
Bars 4 and 5 reverse the music of bars 1 and 2 in a literal retrograde.
Marion – played during Marion and Sam’s clandestine meeting in the hotel.
Simple AABA structure, based on four-bar phrases.
Rounded off with a paused ‘Hitchcock’ chord.
The Murder – played during the shower scene.
The famous ‘slashing’ chords build up over eight bars.
These are repeated, with glissandi up to each note.
The rest of the cue consists of repeated two-bar phrases before a more sporadic final
five bars.
The Toys – played as Lila (Marion’s sister) explores Bates’ bedroom.
Descending parallel chords over an ostinato double pedal – three-bar phrases in the
upper strings
The Cellar – played as Marion descends the cellar stairs.
Builds up a fugal texture from eight-bar units, beginning at bar 5.
Four (related) contrapuntal ideas eventually combine.
o Bars 5–12 ‘subject’ cellos/basses
o Bars 13–20 ‘subject’ violas – countersubject 1 cellos/basses
o Bars 21–28 ‘subject’ violin 2; CS1 – violas; CS2 cellos/basses
o Bar 28 violin 1 ‘subject’ – NB enters a bar early, overlapping
o Bar 29 CS1 violin2; CS2 violas;
o Bar 32 CS3 cellos/basses
o Bar 40 CS4 violas (based on CS3 but metrically displaced)
o Bar 45 CS1 gradually becomes downward chromatic scales
o Bar 47 ‘subject’ shared among all instruments, with bass/cello sustaining first
note of each phrase
o Bar 68 final chord builds up.
The Discovery – played as the figure in the chair is revealed to be Bates’ dead mother.
Repetitive highly rhythmic idea in homophony and homorhythm (bars 1–18) then
disturbed by cross-rhythms in the cellos and bass.
Descending chords followed by a final chordal gesture.
Finale – played at the end of the film as Bates sits in the police station, with his mother’s
voice heard on the soundtrack.
Recaps material from the ‘Madhouse’ cue (not part of this study).
Makes prominent use of the ‘Madness’ motif – F–E♭–D in the last four bars.
Texture
Finale:
Monophonic
Prelude:
Homophonic
Prelude:
Homorhythmic
Cellar:
Polyphonic, Fugal
Prelude:
Ostinato
Rhythm and Metre
Prelude:
2/4.
Strong rhythmic drive fuelled by incessant quaver movement.
Interrupted by the syncopated rhythm (ex. 1) of the ‘Hitchcock’ chord.
A nervous Bartok-like triplet semiquaver figure (Idea 1 first violin bar 5).
Contrasting dotted quaver/semiquaver figure (bar 21) always concluded by a
syncopated pizzicato accent in the bass.
Moments of relaxation in Idea 4 (bars 37–48).
City:
4/4, slow tempo.
Equal note values throughout (every note happens on a crotchet beat), so it creates
a feeling of pulse rather more than of rhythm.
Marion:
4/4, slow tempo.
Syncopated rhythm, with an anacrusic start.
Murder:
3/2, fast tempo.
The downbow accents in bars 1–16 create a vicious pulse.
From bar 17 onwards the regular upper string chords are counterpointed by the
rhythmically displaced bass/cello notes.
Toys:
4/4, slow tempo.
Three slow phrases (an augmentation of the rhythm of Marion).
Heard against a ‘throbbing’ viola/cello/bass crotchet pulse.
Cellar:
2/4, fast tempo (Allegro molto).
The contrapuntal ideas here maintain a moto perpetuo stream of continuous
quavers in order to build up the tension. This excitement is heightened by the use of
tremolandi.
Rests are inserted into the third and fourth ideas here, to vary the rate of progress
through the material
The much longer note values in the concluding bars ‘settle’ the end of the extract,
dissipating some of the tension
Discovery:
Opens in 2/4 Allegro feroce, driven forward by off-beat accents and rests.
3/8, fast tempo (one beat in a bar) (bar 26).
Rushing semiquaver figures against two-bar bass notes.
Finale:
3/4 and 4/4, slow sad tempo Adagio e mesto.
‘Bleak’ and rather ‘directionless’ rhythms, avoiding a sense of metre.
Syncopated viola idea bars 12–14.
Madness motive heard three times (bars 15–18), with the third statement
rhythmically displaced to begin on the third beat.
‘Heavy’, slow, off-beat chords in the last two bars – perhaps referring to the opening
bars of Prelude.
Sonority
Prelude
Opening ‘hammered’ chords (see example 1 below).
‘Obsessive’ quaver ostinato figures (bar 3 onwards).
Pizzicato cello and bass notes, sometimes as a pulse (b5-14) and sometimes as syncopated punctuations (Bass in bars 21-24)
Fingered tremolo (bar 41).
The City:
Lush, eight-part bowed string writing, very romantic in style, with octave doublings
and very high writing in all instruments (see example 2 below). Played pp.
Marion:
In some ways the most conventional of all the cues.
Straightforward, mid-range, between three- and six-part arco string writing.
Opening melody repeated an octave lower in the second violins.
Dynamics important here.
The Murder:
‘Shrieking’ ultra-high notes towards the top of each instrument’s range.
Played sffz and senza sordini for maximum impact.
Texture builds from the top note downwards, each of the eight divisi parts coming in
after the other to create a complex eight-note chord cluster.
As a complete contrast, from bar 17, the upper strings (violas/violins) alternate arco
and pizzicato low cluster chords, while the cellos and basses play sinister off-beat
figures, also low in their registers (starting in octaves and ending with a diabolus
Diminished 5th).
The Toys
Violins (divisi) play downward parallel seventh chords.
Underneath this, an ostinato double pedal operates – viola plays arco F crotchets
(using down bows), underpinned by pizzicato Es a ninth below in the cello and held E
pedals a further octave below that in the double bass.
The Cellar:
Begins with D octave doubled trills in all instruments.
Bars 5–46 tremolando passages moving in quavers, building up a fugal texture.
Musical phrases here are shared between ten divisi parts, with each half of the
section overlapping the other by a quaver each time.
Bar 47 tremolando continues, but now with a change of sound by playing sul ponticello (near the bridge) in half of each part, while the other half play arco normale
and senza tremolando.
At the same time the cellos and basses begin to play longer notes, again splitting the
section between normal arco and sul ponticello bowing.
The cue finishes with contrasting sustained chords, building a chord from the cellos and basses and ending with a high, unresolved chord in the first violins.
Discovery:
Aggressive, highly rhythmic dissonant chords, with accents strengthened by pizzicato
in the double bass.
Rapid downward parallel seventh chords in the upper strings
Finale:
‘Bleak’ string texture beginning with a lone viola line, joined by high violins in a
chromatic, polyphonic texture.
Viola introduces three-note ‘Madness’ motif at bars 15–16, taken up in octaves by
cellos/basses bars 17–18.
Concludes with dissonant ff low register chord combination
