I've been stuck in a bit of a creative slump block thing lately for the past lateness, it kinda sucks. So to give myself some ideas, I'm going to be doing this wall of text thing. Mostly for my own sake to get my thoughts out, but it may be very useful and/or interesting to other music doing people here.
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The piece I'll be (loosely) analyzing is Rachmaninoff's etude-tableaux op. 39 no. 8. I've been coming back to this piece a lot to listen to among everything else he's done for awhile now for some reason. I just like it I guess. Link to the piece is
here. Conveniently, the video comes with the score. Also it's probably one of the best interpretations available to listen to on youtube.
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First things first, we're in the key of d minor here (and I may be wrong, but technically I think this might actually be in the D aeolean mode). Roughly speaking, the piece divides into about 4 sections: the A section, the B section, the climax/transition section, the recapitulation, and a final short coda/ending section. The first climax occurs at the end of the B section, while a second, bigger climax occurs in the climax section (obviously).
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The first section -- the A section -- introduces us to the mood of the piece. It starts at
0:00 and ends at
1:00. To describe it really unsubstantially, it's a very dreamy mood. It just kinda floats around peacefully, like fuzzy nostalgic memories of a safe, nurturing place. I'm going to bring this up a lot, but this piece is very non-pushy, it's non-demanding to listen to. These, are, again, kind of a vague unsubstantive description, but Rachmaninoff manages to create this effect wonderfully through harmonic means. And this is more or less one of the main points I want to analyze in this whole post, how he creates this effect. The answer is harmony, he uses very 'non-demanding' harmony. What do I mean by that? One of the first interesting things I noticed throughout the entire piece is the proliferation of root motions by thirds in the harmonic progressions. To put it another way, there's not very many motions by fifths. The dominant harmony (ie: the chord of the fifth) is named aptly, since it is and has always been the most dominant harmony in many many many songs and pieces. It strongly leads the ear towards wanting to return to the tonic harmony. One of the ways he achieves a watery, non-pushy, sort of effect is by avoiding these strong, tense harmonies.
The piece also opens up very still-like -- the first 7 measures are all harmonized by the tonic d minor harmony. This is actually pretty typical of rachmaninoff to introduce a piece by sticking to the tonic harmony, but here it works to the advantage of the mood by making a lot of motion in the right hand without actually changing anything or actually going anywhere (harmonically speaking). Kind of like swishing your hands over the surface of a pool of water or ripples in a puddle, there's motion but no motion. And it may seem rather insignficant, but it's very quite effective. Because the harmony remains static, the ear isn't at all being pulled around in any direction. In the consant cycle between tension and stability in music, the lack of any tension means that the mood that we create instead becomes a directionless, lofty cloud sort of thing.
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The motion by thirds is very motivic, it's everywhere. Even in these first eight measures and it's not even exclusive to the harmony. The initial melodic phrases end on an E, this small phrase repeats twice, and then the phrase is repeated two more times, this time falling lower to the C below it, a distance of a major third.
Before I move on, I must mention the second, somewhat hidden motif in the right hand melody. I refer to the lower notes of the right hand. Taking the first measure for example, the secondary motif is the descending scalar line of G-F-E. Here, it skips every other eighth note. Note that this scalar motif is also the distance of a third between its highest and lowest notes (G and E).
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I can't be talking about the first eight measures forever so I'll move on (but there's so much to discuss ><). The short consequent phrase on measure 8 (@
0:15) is harmonized by F major, then a f minor. From the initial harmony of d minor, we have here another motion by a third, this time in the harmony.
The short two measure utterance falls back down on the initial E that the first melodic phrase from before ended on. From here (@
0:20), we have four measures of a variation on the initial theme that transitions back to the initial theme, but as another variation of the whole first section. This transitionary passage is harmonized by a minor, another motion by the distance of a 3rd from the f minor we had previous. My skepticism about the key being in d minor stems from this harmonisation, and because of the noticeable avoidance of using the major 3rd in the 'dominant' harmony, ie: using the minor dominant instead of a regular dominant harmony (which uses the leading tone).
The third and fourth repititions of the initial theme in this short transitionary passage (@
0:25) introduces a variation on the second, somewhat hidden motif that I talked about earlier, this time as an actual second voice in the upper staff. The difference is that the scalar descend is now at the time interval of a eighth note (as opposed to eighth note + eighth 'rest' = quarter note), and that it lasts until the beginning of the next measure this time. But we still keep the distance of a third, from the C in mm12 to the A in mm13 for the third repitition, and the C in mm13 to the A on the 'and' beat of the downbeat of mm14. The use of more chromaticism allows Rachmaninoff to keep the final distances the same while halving the time intervals between the descending notes, while also introducing more tension/ambiguity from the dissonance inherent in chromaticism.
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The transitionary passage leads us back into familiar territory, repeating the first section again. We fall harmonically from the a minor down back to the initial d minor. Which is the minor dominant to the tonic, so I'm guessing this really is d aeolean. This may be just my opinion, but the use of 'unconvincing' harmonies and pepperings of chromaticism is starting to build some tension that isn't being fully discharged even by the return to the initial theme. I'd say it's Rachmaninoff's clever use of harmonies and actual strategy, so that he can exploit that buildup of tension later in the climax. I'm a bit late in mentioning this, but note that the counter melody in the left hand is prominently intervals of thirds, more so here at the repeat. There's not much to say here (@
0:29) beyond that, so I'll skip to
0:44 so come join me when you get there.
We're back (@
0:44) at the little rising passage that we're familiar with, but here instead of sticking to d minor like last time, we go up a bit, a 3rd, to F major, before going back down to d minor again at the end of the rising passage, just before the short consequent phrase. Note that the F major that we rise to is the same harmony that we rose to earlier (@
0:16) at the part we're currently rising up to. Instead, we add more harmonic motion. We fall from this F major to a d minor before going one more third lower to the Bb major in this next short segment (@
0:48). Harmonically speaking, we're currently lower than we've yet been and also the melodic notes are higher than any other yet encountered. This short segment itself follows the same harmonic progression that's been established earlier, going from Bb major to bb minor to mirror the F major to f minor progression from before. Note that in going from a Bb major to bb minor, we necessary lower the third of this chord and obtain the Db tone, which is the first time this tone has been used in this piece as of yet. I'll get to the significance of this tone in a bit, but until then let's move on.
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Next we have yet again another short transitionary passage that is initially similar to the first one, but the latter half is quite different as it transitions into the B section of the piece. Again, we're a 3rd away from the previous bb minor harmony at d minor, which is the tonic. The 'unconvincing' returns to the tonic again add more invisible tension to the piece. Note the scalar descent in the LH in the latter half of this passage, which somewhat mirrors what the latter half of the first transitionary passage did, but this time instead of starting over again in its descent, it just continues downwards. And also note that the notes that aren't part of the descending line in the LH in this latter half are prominently placed the distance of a 3rd apart from each other.
Remember how I mentioned earlier that the Db tone is significant? Well it's significant because it's the enharmonic equivalent of the note that is actually very very structurally significant, C#. And this C# shows up for the first time in the piece here at the last two measures of the whole A section (@
0:57). Why is it structurally significant? Well I'll get to that even later, but just note that C# here appears alongside a G#, and they both here play the rather humble role as passing tones between C and D, and G and A, respectively, serving to add some chromaticism to an otherwise diatonic, ascending scalar line.
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Meanwhile, the scalar descent in the LH from the previous passage has managed to descend (albeit an octave lower) to a low G in this new B section (@
1:01). The new melodic theme is still quite remniscent to our initial A theme - very 'fluttery', though much more active and primarily downward moving. However it's much more romantic. We enter the new section on the harmony of g minor and very soon move on to a C harmony, which in turn falls again very naturally to the harmony of an F. It's much more harmonically lively, not to mention that we're finally moving in intervals of 5ths! This is what ushers in a fresh breeze of life in this new section.
We hear another repeat of this new theme at
1:15, this time harmonized by c minor. The progression from C major to c minor, ie: going from a major harmony to a minor harmony, is already something we have encountered before. Likewise, this repeat soon falls to F major (@
1:19), the descent of a fifth.
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The repeat follows in the footsteps of the original in again rising upwards, but harmonically we take a step into an unexpected direction at
1:26 by falling a major 3rd instead from F major to the harmony of Db major. Hey, Db again! And it is precisely this Db harmony that leads to our first big climax of the piece at
1:28. But what awaits us at this very climax is a G major flat 9 chord, which is the distance of a tritone away from our precious D flat. Not only have we not yet encountered this interval jump yet in our harmonic progressions, we just moved away from our critical D flat harmony! What gives? I haven't explained yet why our D flat/C sharp is so critical yet, and just taking my word for it isn't quite sufficient, nor is it really useful in analyzing stuffs at all. Turns out, this G harmony is also very important! But why, why? Please just tell usss. But hold on still, I'll get to it surely enough. For now, let's just satisfy ourselves by observing more occurances of scalar/chromatic ascents and descents, more movements by intervals of a 3rd, etc.
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We move out of the first climax at
1:39 to take a little breather before out next, bigger, harsher climax. Somehow we've made it back to being harmonized by G major again. Which, if you remember, is the unexpected harmony that I noted above at the first climax and, if you remember even further back, is the same G harmony that we encountered at the beginning of the B section (@
1:01) -- although that one was g minor. It may be different, but we've encountered this "G" enough times for it to have to have some kind of significance right? This next passage infact is all anchored on top of a low G pedal point. The first two measures of this transitionary passage into the climax is tame enough, being harmonized by a G major, and, despite the numerous accidentals, is still prominently featuring notes from the G major chord. Note that C# has crept its way in here, in the RH, but this time as part of the primary melodic line. But it is still acting as a passing tone, this time between the descending D and C line. Note that this is material that we've encountered before. It is infact the descending scalar line that we've seen in many places, but also in the very beginning as what I called somewhat hidden, the time interval/speed is even the same, descending at the speed of a quarter note, or every other eighth note. The phrase itself is a paraphrasing or variation of the variated initial motif, the one we heard at
0:29, or the repeat of the initial theme way back in the A section.
As the transitionary passage travels onward it becomes more and more increasingly chromatic in its descending line, but still anchored by the low G, which even drops an octave lower as if needing more weight to counterbalance the increasing dissonance weighing down from above. The chromaticism escalates, and by the third measure of this passage (@
1:46) we can observe the formation of a distinguishable chord in the RH, a C# diminished 7th chord. With this information in mind, we can look back at the previous two measures and see that, indeed, the random-seeming chromaticism can actually be rationalized as a C#dim7 chord slowly invading into the sonic space of the anchoring harmony of G major.
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But... wait, you say. C#? Where have I heard of that recently... oh wait!
That's right, remember that tone I told you was quite structurally important? That C#/Db? Well here it is again, being rude and slowly invading our harmonies. Perhaps you can take a gander at why this tone is significant now, and then extrapolate that to guess where this piece may be going at this rate. If you think back to the first climax, you will remember that we fell from a Db major harmony to a G major harmony. This time, we are in a G major harmony, and the C# harmony (which is enharmonically equivalent to Db) is invading our harmony. In a way, you can think of this buildup to the second climax as a sort of parody of the first climax, where instead of going from Db to G, this time we're going from G to C#. Kinda. "Kinda" as in the G isn't going anywhere -- it's anchored right there. The C# is creeping in and entangling itself with the G, that's what I mean by "kinda" and "parody".
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As we build up, the piece starts to develop another scalar ascent in the RH. The notes of this scalar ascent are taken from their respective diminished 7th chords, which you can see preceding them. Here they alternate between the C# dimished 7th chord from before and a Eb dimishined 7th chord (hey another third). The LH on the other hand slowly abandons its scalar descent and abbreviates it into a repeating pattern of (G)-(F#)-(C Bb). By the very end of the increasing dissonance, our anchor, the G, loses out and all we hear is just this repeating three-note repetition of (G)-(F#)-(C Bb).
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We reach our second climax at
1:55, where the tone of C# has now managed to completely entangle itself with the G tone, amalgamating as as maximally dissonant C#-G-C#-G-C# chord. And finally we can understand the significance of these two tones, G and C#/Db, they are the very two tones that define the second, greater climax! With the abundance of preparation and foreshadowing, this climax is as satisfying and non-arbitary as an expertly foreshadowed event or plot-twist in a novel.
The RH carries out an intensely chromaticized mockery of the familiar initial motif while the LH takes the logical extreme of the ascending scalar motif by chromatically ascending the scale. We the climax at
1:58 but we are yet far from escaping from the aftershocks caused by its intense dissonance. This next retransitionary passage into the recapitulation serves as a sort of recovery phase from the trauma the dissonance applied to our sense of tonality, which is in total shambles at this point. This recovery period is notably about twice as long as any transitionary passage before it.
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Here in this retransitionary, recovery passage, we start by soon establishing a stable anchoring point of G, once again. The inner notes of the RH traces out the familiar descending scalar motif, here as F#-Fnatural-E, still chromatic as we are still recovering from the aftershocks of chromaticism. The upper notes of the RH are a paraphrasing of the tail of the variation on the initial theme we heard in the buildup to the secondary climax (@
1:39). Though chromatically altered, the notes are still C-B then a jump up to E (specifically, E5). In a way we are treading backwards from the climax by prodding along similar ground, like a retreating of the waves on a seashore after overreaching too far on the sand, a sort of mirroring effect.
Slowly the notes readjust themselves over the stable G note until they've finally aligned themselves as notes diatonic to the initial tonality of d minor. As the notes have now recovered a little from the chromaticism and back to diatonicism, we can even see that the descending scalar line from the inner notes of the RH have now changed (@
2:05) from F#-F-E to F-E-D, falling down to the tonic D which will help allow us to welcome back the tonality of D again after we retransition over back. By
2:12 we have now recovered as much as possible from the climax, unfolding here as a long diatonic scalar descent down to the downbeat of the recapitulation on a D. Note here the interval jumps of 3rds returns, emphasizing the D by jumping downwards from the F to the D.
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The recapitulation starts at
2:15, and though we have managed to salvage our tonality, the mood has changed. The aftershocks of the climax remains, this time as restless energy, for the initial theme is now placed within a very active accompaniment, blocks of chords flood the RH while the LH jumps up and down the keyboard in a very spaced out arpeggio. As though freed from a long dream, the harmony now freely moves around richly, perhaps enabled by the climax.
The last memory of the climax returns in as a wisp of a movement upwards at
3:06, alternating the D minor tonic chord with a chord of C# major. The one measure here at
3:07 is a paraphrase of the dissonant, repetitive three-notes heard at the buildup to the second climax at
1:48. The piece ends finally, as though exhausted, in a whisper, as though to allude back to the dreamy mood long forgotten from the beginning of the piece.
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Wow, phew, what a piece! I love it a lot, it's so beautiful. As a final little observance, note how the prominent notes between the sections of the whole piece is itself reflective of the universal fluttering motif of the piece. The first base tones/harmonies of sections A, B, and the recapitulation are, respectively, D, G, and D. Then comparing the tonality of the piece with the chord in the climax, we have D and C# respectively, which then resolves back to the D in the recapitulation. Both of these are rather evocative of the little three-note figure littered all over the piece, aren't they? The jumping forward and jumping back sort of fluttering, that motif. I find these little details really exciting and awe-inspiring.
To wrap things up, I hope this can be inspiring or helpful to someone here, I was really excited doing this and had a lot of fun, I hope you do too. But as a little disclaimer, I don't have much musical education, so this is all based on amateurish observation that I had to pick up from self-studying.
Till next time, ta-ta~