AOS 2: Exprssionism And Shoenburg - Peripetie Flashcards
Instrumentation of Peripetie
The work requires a large orchestra of at least 90 players - strings, woodwind, large brass section and percussion.
The instrumentation changes rapidly throughout, creating many contrasts in timbre.
Performers are frequently requires to play at the extremes of their range - either very high or very low.
There are some unusual effects used e.g.
Cymbals are played with both a mallet and a cello bow
Double basses play a tremolo very close to the bridge that supports their strings.
Melody of Peripetie
It’s made up of short, fragmented motifs that are combined in different ways. 7 motifs are introduced in the first 18 bars alone.
Melodies are disjunct and often sound angular - Schoenberg uses octane displacement (unexpectedly moving individual notes into a different octave).
Although motifs aren’t really developed or drawn out to form longer melodies (like in the romantic period) they are varied through the use of techniques such as inversion and rhythmic augmentation.
It’s disjunct, unpredictable, angular, dissonant, imitative, uses hexachords, fragmented and is a klangfarben melody.
Context of Peripetie
Early 20th century movement
It was composed in 1909
It was considered quite shocking and was hard to perform since it required such a large orchestra and due to its experimental nature.
It’s the fourth of five orchestral pieces.
The title means ‘a sudden reversal’ or sudden changes.
Schoenberg is considered the pioneer of atonal music.
He was born in Austria.
He founded the Second Viennese School
Rhythm, metre and tempo of Peripetie
It starts 3/4 and the metre changes to 2/4 and 4/4, building tension.
The tempo is Sehr Rasch - very quick
Rhythms are complex and varied and change quickly in some parts, Schoenburg layers a number of different rhythmic patterns on top of each other to create a complex contrapuntal texture.
Triplets and sextuplets have been used.
Tonality and harmony of Peripetie
The piece is atonal.
It uses lots of dissonant harmonies.
Chords are often built from hexachords - groups of 6 notes/pitches. The other 6 notes note used make up the compliment. (Compliment harmony)
Texture of Peripetie
The texture is largely contrapuntal / polyphonic with monophonic and homophonic moments.
Complex textures are built up through the use of techniques such as imitation, inversion and canon e.g. The final climax of the piece is created from 3 different canons that are all heard at the same time.
Dynamics of Peripetie
There are frequent sudden changes in dynamics.
Extreme contrasts are used - from ppp to fff
Structure of Peripetie
It is in free rondo with 5 sections (ABACA).
It’s called free rondo as it is very difficult to the traditional type of rondo heard in the Classical period, when different sections were clearly contrasted. It’s hard to distinguish the different sections.
