Chapter Twelve Outline: "Instrumental Music and Meaning"

 

Outline

            Program music tells a particular story, but program-less music has frequently been thought to suggest meaning as well.

            Some music, such as Šárka, requires foreknowledge of the underlying story in order to understand the work.

 

Program Music: Telling a Story

            Although the music suggests the general outline of a story, most people require a written-out explanation in order to hear it in any detail.

            The changes in instrumentation and the use of meter and melody in Šárka enhance the drama of the program.

 

Focus on the Orchestra

            Generic term for a large grouping of instrumentalists. Flexibility of size and instrument composition means that orchestras vary considerably in sound.

 

Types of Musical Meaning: Can music tell a story?

            Conflict between music-as-only-music and music-as-story has raged for at least 150 years.

            Absolute music: music which has no specified meaning—absolute music was the most prestigious type of music in the early 20^th century.

                        Even absolute music can be understood as story-telling without requiring a specific program.

            Symbolic Meaning: particularly prevalent before the late Renaissance, symbolic meaning in music relies on commonly understood melodies and practices

            Meaning Through Musical Gesture: music is able to convey meanings in ways analogous to that of speech by employing strong contrasts and vivid imagery

            Personal and Accrued Meaning: individuals can understand music in different ways due to personal circumstances, but pieces can also accrue commonly accepted meaning through performance and association

 

Across the Arts: Movies and Famous Music

            Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey uses Richard Strauss’ tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, which added layers of associative meaning to the work, which can then be imitated and parodied in other contexts.

 

Musical Form and Meaning

            Form often suggests narrative contours and thus influences our perceptions of a work’s meaning.

            Ternary Form:

                        The structure of the Romance from Mozart’s Gran Partita suggests that the relaxed, dreamy music of the A section is permanently changed by the agitated B section: “Trouble in Paradise.” Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance suggests a reversal of this contour that moves from a minor key to a major key and then back.

            Theme and Variations Form: A Character’s Many Moods

                        Most sets of variations do not tell any explicit story, but may suggest an archetypical plot of a character progressing through many different moods. Even when programs are not specified by the composer many listeners imagine stories that fit the musical outlines.

            Sonata Form: The Musical Essay

                        A broadly flexible structure that resembles the structure of an essay, or a narrative that introduces a character, and presents some challenges which are later resolved.

 

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

            The musical connections between movements suggest a single story laid out on a grand scale. This has traditionally been conceived as the record of a triumphant struggle.

            Reveals Beethoven’s mastery of form in that each note seems inevitable

            The expressive contour is deeply affecting and the transit from painful, negative emotions to the intensity of victory is a story people have identified with throughout history.

 

In History: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

            Marks a unique historical moment in which the ancien régime in France had fallen and revolution in the New World shook the British Empire. Beethoven witnessed Napoleon’s campaign against Austria from the occupation of Vienna to Napoleon’s eventual defeat.

            Nevertheless, aristocratic patrons supported Beethoven financially and influential figures like E.T.A. Hoffmann helped solidify his position as a creative force.

 

Beethoven’s Fifth: A Guided Tour

            Four movements in a fast-slow-moderate-fast format; the third and fourth movements are played without break and music from the third movement returns at a strategic point in the fourth movement.

            The First Movement: the insistence of the opening motive and the dramatic oscillation between periods of intensity and period of stagnation are distinctive features of this movement, while the intensity of the coda beings the tension to a breaking point.

            The Second Movement: more relaxed character, contains the first truly lyrical tune of the work; movement is a combination of theme and variations and rondo forms

            The Third Movement: return to the intensity of the first movement, an unusual step for what is traditionally a dance- or joke-like movement; ends with a ghostly parody of the beginning before ending inconclusively.

            The Fourth Movement, Finale: every instrument plays a fortissimo transition to a victorious C major; although darker echoes of previous movements reappear. The victory is never truly in doubt and the movement rolls on to the rousing conclusion.

            Legacy: later composers have frequently imitated the pattern of per aspera ad astra, including Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler.

 

Narrative Contour and Gender

            Classical music has sometimes been interpreted in sexual or gendered ways, on levels ranging from individual themes to entire works.

Many have argued that the “struggle” metaphor in which a theme emerges as dominant is not the only valid narrative for music, and may in fact represent a distinctively masculine conception of the world.

Genesis II juxtaposes the traditional Western goal-oriented music with a more circular conception of musical time.