GCSE Music Analysis - Schoenberg - Peripetie
Peripetie General Points
- Composed by Arnold Schoenberg
- 4th piece in a set of 5 orchestral pieces composed in 1909.
- First performed in 1912.
- Schoenberg was very important in the expressionist movement and was the pioneer of atonal music.
Instrumentation
- Performed by a large orchestra with all the sections.
- Instrumentation changes rapidly throughout creating lots of contrasts in timbres.
- Performers are required to play at extremes of ranges.
- Use of unusual effects, such as the cymbals being played with a mallet and a cello bow.
- 90 people are needed to perform the piece.
Melody
- Made up of many short fragmented motifs combined in different ways to create interest.
- Melodies are disjunct and often sound angular.
- Octave displacement is used in the main melodies.
Rhythm, Metre and Tempo
-The metre changes between 3/4, 2/4 and 4/4.
-The Tempo is 'Sehr Rasch' which means very fast.
- The rhythms are complex and varied and change very quickly. In parts of the piece schoenberg layers a number of different rhythmic patterns on top of each other to create a complex contrapuntal texture.
Tonality and Harmony
- The piece is atonal (it has no key).
- Uses lots of dissonant harmonies.
- Chords and melodies are built up from hexachords (a group of 6 notes).
Texture and Dynamics
- The piece has a largely contrapuntal texture, but does have occasional homophonic moments.
- Complex textures are built up through the use of imitation and inversion.
- There are frequent and sudden changes in dynamics which leads to extremes in contrasts.
Questions & Answers
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Comments
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- AUTHOR
That's interesting, thanks for letting me know! Glad you find these hubs useful and good luck in all your exams!
Thank you so much for all of your GCSE music pages. They're just brilliant :) Also to add to this one, this probably applies to instruments mainly but 'Klangfarbenmelodie' is something to add. It's basically about timbre, literally translating into 'Colour-Sound Melody'. It's on wikipedia ;) Anyways thanks again for all your help!
Wow this helps a lot thank you so much I will carry on checking this out and also Alex s. Thanks for help on structure you guys are amazing
this has really helped :)
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Oh, you missed out Structure! Luckily it's not hard. The piece is in FREE RONDO FORM for anyone who wanted to know. The basic structure is ABA1CA2, so the idea is that it starts with A, new idea, return to A and develop, new idea, return to A and develop and so on... Hope that helps a bit :)
Thank you so much!
Ahhh that's fair enough, thanks anyway :)
- AUTHOR
It has been a year since I did my music exam so I don't know if I could remember enough to write a hub about extended writing. However I do remember my teacher telling me that because it's worth 10 marks, if you choose 2 points from each of the 5 topics - tonality, melody etc. then you should be fine!
Your GCSE music pages are proving very helpful for my extended writings and I was just wondering as an idea if you could do a hub on what to write for each section of an extended writing e.g what to write for tonality, instrumentation, melody etc. It would be very helpful!!
- AUTHOR
No problem!
This was unbelievably hepful. Thankyou!
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