Musica Pulchra

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) composed his Ode between 19 May and 25 June of 1943. This three-movement orchestral work was commissioned by conductor Serge Koussevitzky as a memorial for his wife, Natalie (the Koussevitzkys’ firm published much of Stravinsky’s music). The first performance of the work was conducted by Koussevitzky in Boston on 8 October of the same year. The movements are titled Eulogy (Lento), Eclogue (Con moto), and Epitaph (Lento).

Without question, humour is an important aspect of the music of Joseph Haydn. Mozart felt that Haydn could “amuse and shock, arouse laughter and deep emotion, as no one else” (Paul, 116). Between 1772 and 1781, it seems to this writer that humour became increasingly important in Haydn’s music. These years respectively marked the publication of his Opus 20 and Opus 33 string quartets.

The quartets of Opus 33 were written, in Haydn’s own words, in a “quite new and special way” (Grout, 478); in fact, they foreshadow the role of humour in many of his mature works. The year after their publication, Johann Friedrich Reichardt wrote that “[Haydn’s Opus 33 quartets] are full of thoroughly original humor and the liveliest wit” (Paul, 450). This paper will argue that humour plays a more significant role in Opus 33 than it plays in Opus 20; the humour becomes “built in” to Haydn’s compositional style and form, becoming indispensable rather than gratuitous. I will discuss three aspects of Haydn’s new “original” humour: his refusal to meet musical expectations; new tempos, titles, and forms; and novel humerous devices.

Following is a mostly harmonic analysis of the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 3 (Opus 18, No. 3), which was published in 1801.

In this paper, I share my own thoughts and observations on the interpretation of four of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, by performers Malcolm Proud (harpsichord) and Glenn Gould (piano, the 1955 recording). This work makes up the fourth part of Bach’s Clavierübung and consists of thirty variations on the ground bass of the theme. After a short discussion of the qualities and advantages of the respective instruments, I will compare the two recordings beginning with the theme (the Aria) and continuing with variations 14, 16, 25, and 28.

Schumann’s three piano trios were completed within a decade of his so-called chamber music year of 1842. The Opus 63 trio, in D minor, was composed in 1847, and was immediately followed in the same year by the work in F major, Opus 80. The G minor trio, Opus 110, was written four years later, in 1851. (I have decided to concentrate in this essay on these three full-scale works to the omission of the Opus 88 Phantasiestücke for the same scoring; the latter work, though perhaps still conceived as a unit, is a cycle of short character pieces rather than a “typical” Romantic piano trio in form.) All three piano trios consist of four movements and use exclusively German tempo and character markings. They were also all composed after the start of Schumann’s in-depth study of counterpoint, and it shows; contrapuntal writing technique in these works is the main aspect that I will be discussing in detail in this paper. In addition, I will briefly note some of my observations and research on the issues of tonality and of form.

The following is a very simple chart outlining the key schemes of J.S. Bach’s fifteen Two-Part Inventions. Some random observations also included.