Music, History, And Ideas by Hugo Leichtentritt

Author:Hugo Leichtentritt [Leichtentritt, Hugo]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
Published: 2013-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

G minor is heard at the beginning, in the middle, and at the close. B flat major occurs twice in each half, shortly before G minor in the middle and G minor at the close. C major has the same relation to E minor in the first part as F major has to A major in the second part. C — B flat — e in the first part corresponds to F — E flat — A in the second part, the second complex being a fourth higher than the first one. Moreover, in each part an entirely foreign, distant key jumps in, E minor next to B flat major in the first part, and A major between E flat and B flat major in the second part. These strikingly distant tonalities are carefully chosen for the purpose of giving especial and definite emotional expression and coloristic effect according to the demands of the dramatic situation. Melissa sings of her amorous grief in the elegiac key, E minor, Amadigi of his amorous delight in A major. The recitatives between the arias lead over in modulation from one key to the next one, besides living their own harmonic life in themselves.”

In the same book, acts from Handel’s Siroe and Orlando are analyzed with regard to tonal architecture. Surprisingly, we find that there is no fixed scheme but that in every dramatic score the master devises an ingenious new ground plan of tonalities. How clever and inventive he is in combining the logical constructive outline of whole acts with the emotional expression of single keys in individual parts can only be hinted at in the present essay. Here, too, we can only raise the question whether this system of tonal architecture and its relation to the emotional, expressive, and color values of the single keys is entirely Handel’s own property, or whether part of it was inherited from the Italian opera of about 1700. What prompted Handel in this systematic, subtle, carefully planned use of keys and tonality? It was certainly the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, the rationalistic trend of thought characteristic of the eighteenth century, the inclination toward systematic, subtly thought-out workmanship. The mathematical and philosophical progress of the earlier eighteenth century, slowly pervading the entire mental atmosphere of the age, at last reaches music, and its influence becomes manifest in various ways: in the impressive, clear, well-proportioned, and strikingly effective construction of Handel’s music, in his systematic treatment of keys and tonality, and in his method of psychological synthesis in opera, of which some illustrations will be presented in the latter part of this chapter.

In Bach as well, the mathematical and philosophical tendencies of the age are plainly evident, though in a somewhat different manner. They lie in the convincing logical power of Bach’s music, in its delight in complicated problems of construction, in the masterly elegance, the crystal clearness, with which the greatest complication of counterpoint is presented. In a word, Bach’s fugues show, as nothing else in music does, the inner relationship of mathematics and music.

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