Product Description
I have written a programmatic, neo-romantic/post-romantic
prose and musical fragment/miniature based on Schlegel's writings about a Hedgehog. Fragment in the sense that it is not fully developed, yet, in another
sense, it is overdeveloped for its length. There are several modern
elements in that it is bitonal at one point. At another point, I pit Scriabin's
mystic chord, which is his synthetic mode, against what I feel is its nearest
aeolian mode, c-minor, which is modernistically dissonant.
It is written in 'classicized' AABA popular song
form, which is perfect for a miniature. It revolves around the programmatic,
free verse' Prayer,' a plea to God for sleep, elusive due to the mourning of
lost love and the associated emptiness and grief felt deep in the night.
It is motivic in that there is a repeated augmented 6 to a half-diminished
cadence that introduces the theme and then serves to transition each small
section, in a secondary dominant style repetition until reaching tonic.
-A1 is a simple statement of the linear theme
and harmony in 6ths, and 9ths, almost in keeping with the introductory and
transitionary cadence, at least intervallically.
-A2 is a restatement of that theme with an added
countermelody (which becomes the subject of section B) woven between the upper
linear melody and the altered bass accompaniment.
-B begins with a short statement of the
countermelody bi-tonally, the left hand in c minor, the right in g minor. There
is a brief transposition between several keys, bitonally, while the sostenuto
pedal holds a pedal tone until it attenuates completely. The two measures build from repressed
despondency to rage, as strong emotions often do, quickly turning to dissonant
chaos. The dynamics and intensity build to a diminished chord whose top note
moves up half a step to a Scriabin mystic chord arpeggio. The held sustain pedal melds the dissonance
together with emotional tumult, which fades as quickly as it came, as outbursts often do.
-A3 starts with the motivic cadence and a deep
bass pedal tone. This section is the crowning moment in the piece. In sixths,
the macabre accompaniment moves to the right-hand upper tessitura as the more
developed 'A' melody moans below in the bass and baritone as the music ebbs
away.
A simple c-minor arpeggio strains against a very
similar Scriabin mystic chord arpeggio, an octave or a minor seventh apart,
ending on an A major and A flat in sweet, gentle, unresolved dissonance against
a dying root pedal tone, the final teardrop.
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