Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Listening to variations...; Does it matter if you can hear the theme
Topic Started: May 7 2006, 06:57 PM (218 Views)
pianojerome
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
I'm working on a theme and variations by Mozart.

("Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman" a.k.a. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" a.k.a. "Baa Baa Black Sheep" a.k.a. "A B C D E F G")


Here is the theme:

Posted Image

(only showing the first few measures)



With some of the variations, it is very easy to hear the theme. With other variations, it is not. Some of the variations just don't sound like the theme!

For example, the first variation:

Posted Image

(only showing the first few measures)

This does not sound at all like the theme! But, look - the theme is there:

Posted Image

See, it's the second sixteenth note of each measure. Probably the reason it is not as noticeable - as far as I can gather from this example - is because it does not fall on the first note of each measure; the first note of each measure actually is something else, and then the actual theme is "hidden" on the 2nd of eight sixteenth notes per measure.


Here is another example - the third variation. It sounds nothing at all like the theme:

Posted Image

(only showing the first few measures)

Where is the theme? Hidden again - here it is:

Posted Image

This one's even wackier (is that a word??) than the first variation: at least with the first variation, the theme notes came at the same place in each measure. In this variation, it's the first note of the measure, and then it's the second note of the measure, and then it's the first note again, and then it's the third note, and then it's the second note... impossible to follow!



So now, finally, here is my question for you: does it matter? Does it matter to you if you can hear the theme in each variation?

These actually do sound really great - it's terrific music, and they are in fact variations on the theme.



Do you prefer variations in which you can actually hear the theme? Or are you completely apathetic, as long as it sounds good?
Sam
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
George K
Member Avatar
Finally
Seems to me that one always hears the theme, if one is serioius about music. One may not know where it is, one may not be able to pick it out, but it's there, and somewhere, on a subconscious level, we notice it. That's what makes great music - those hidden things that we don't even notice - on a conscious level. Look at the Goldbergs. After about 2-3 variations, we stop hearing the ground bass - but it's there, and we're aware of it, without being aware of it.

Just my 1/50 of an uneducated dollar.
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
greg
Member Avatar
Middle Aged Carp
i dont think its necessary to locate the exact notes from the theme in each variation..its more that the shape and arch of the variations resemble the theme.
"What do you think it is, stupid? It's a string for my lute."
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Klotz
Middle Aged Carp
pianojerome
May 8 2006, 05:57 AM
I'm working on a theme and variations by Mozart.



With some of the variations, it is very easy to hear the theme. With other variations, it is not. Some of the variations just don't sound like the theme!

For example, the first variation:

Posted Image

(only showing the first few measures)

This does not sound at all like the theme! But, look - the theme is there:

Posted Image

So now, finally, here is my question for you: does it matter? Does it matter to you if you can hear the theme in each variation?

Actually it does matter and I did exactly the same search for the theme as you did - less the highlighting in red of the theme notes.

So... you are not alone...
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
kenny
HOLY CARP!!!
As just a listener you don't *have* to do anything.
But I think as a piano player you are supposed to bring out the lines by phrasing.
Imagine a 4-voice fugue in which all the notes were just played with equal volume.
:o

You can't phrase what you can't recognize. (Even if you do play all the notes.)

Right?

That said, my ear is not very sophisticated.
I listen to the WTC and I enjoy the music but as the voices get more intertwined and complicated I quickly loose the ability to "follow" the voices.
But I do just enjoy the big mess.
I suspect 90% of the experience eludes me however. :(

I hope in the years to come I'm develop the ear, not to mention the fingers, for this level of music.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Phlebas
Member Avatar
Bull-Carp
One of the most beautiful variations every composed is the 18th variation of Rach's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.

It's a really beautiful melody, but it's really just an inversion of the theme.

That's one of the things composers do in theme and variations.
Other things composers do is change the harmony, use the same theme but change to minor (or major), use the same theme but change the texture, tempo, rhythm, writing the theme in retrograde, etc.

You wouldn't always hear the theme in every variation, but it's interesting to try to hear what compositional device if being used by the composer for each variation.
Random FML: Today, I was fired by my boss in front of my coworkers. It would have been nice if I could have left the building before they started celebrating. FML

The founding of the bulk of the world's nation states post 1914 is based on self-defined nationalisms. The bulk of those national movements involve territory that was ethnically mixed. The foundation of many of those nation states involved population movements in the aftermath. When the only one that is repeatedly held up as unjust and unjustifiable is the Zionist project, the term anti-semitism may very well be appropriate. - P*D


Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Klotz
Middle Aged Carp
Phlebas
May 8 2006, 06:08 PM
One of the most beautiful variations every composed is the 18th variation of Rach's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.


And one of the funniest "invertion" (actaually a spoof) of a piece is Sonatine bureaucratique by Eric Satie !
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply