Peripetie, Schoenberg - Music GCSE

Peripetie, Schoenberg - Music GCSE

1. Facts

   • Expressionism.
   • He was an Austrian composer.
   • He founded the Second Viennese School - a group of composers (including Berg and Webern who were taught by Schoenberg in Vienna) who wrote Expressionist music.
   • Peripetie is from the 'Five Orchestral Pieces' and was written in 1922 (the early twentieth century).
   • It is the fourth of Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces.
   • Peripetie means 'A sudden reversal'.
   • It was completed in 1909. The first performance took place in London in 1912 .

2. Texture and Dynamics

   • Largely contrapuntal, occasional monophonic and homophonic moments.
   • Textures built up by using imitation, diminution and inversion.
   • The final climax of the piece is created from three different canons that are heard at the same time.
   • There are frequent sudden changes of dynamics, leading to extreme contrasts between ppp and fff.

3. Instrumentation

   • Requires a large, full orchestra.
     • Strings, woodwind, brass and percussion.
   • Changes rapidly throughout, creating many contrasts in timbre.
   • Instruments are played to the extreme of their range either very low or very high.
   • Cymbals are played, unusually, with a mallet.

4. Rhythm, Metre and Tempo

   • Metre changes between 3/4, 2/4 and 4/4.
   • Tempo is sehr rasch - very quick.
   • Rhythms are complex, and varied, and change quickly in parts of the work.
     • A number of different rhythmic patterns on top of each other to create complex contrapuntal textures.

5. Tonality and Harmony

   • Atonal - has no key or mode.
   • Dissonant harmony chords and melodies, often built in hexachords (set of six notes).

6. Melody

   • Made up of short, fragmented motifs.
   • Octave displacement is used - unexpectedly moving individual notes of the main melody into a different octave.
   • Motifs are varied through the use of inversion and rhythmic augmentation.
     • Rhythmic augmentation - the notes become twice as long.
     • Inversion - melody is turned upside down.

7. Structure

   • The piece is free rondo form, with five sections A B A C A.
     • The piece is called free rondo because it is very different to the traditional type of rondo heard in the Classical period, when different sections were clearly contrasted.