Tchaikovsky 6 IV Annotated скачать в хорошем качестве

Tchaikovsky 6 IV Annotated

Musical analysis of Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, Finale. Movement IV (Adagio, Ternary form - ABA) As in the first movement, the Finale features two basic contrasting themes, the first in B minor and the second in D major, each extensively repeated and fragmented in their respective sections. The first is considered “anguished and desperate,” the second more “noble and resigned.” (I’m quoting Bernstein, see what you think.) Theme 1 is stated fully as the movement opens and is considered a “composite” theme because it is carried in separately written parts simultaneously by both first and second violins. Neither play the whole theme, and what we hear is comprised of elements from both sections. Amazingly, neither part is a scale, yet the effect of the whole produces a definite downward scale sensation. (The downward scale is an archetypical musical gesture of pathos.) Note in the visual map that the complete phrasing of Theme 1 appears four times, twice in each A section (plus many more times in fragments). In the opening instance it is played straight away. In the second (1:11) it is ushered in first with an upward scale passage, almost as if the “anguished” musical idea of Theme 1 requires a deep breath or inhalation before it can be wept forth. This rushing upward “breath” gets successively deeper the third (4:43) and fourth time (5:39). Theme 2 begins the B section, and while “noble” it is still wrenchingly sad—and likewise a descending scale. It is played in D major here but will return to sink the symphony into blackness in the ending Coda, in B minor. Now Tchaikovsky’s music truly transcends, building with repeated initial phrases of Theme 2 in waves of grief and sorrow towards a moment of maximum pathos. The orchestra attempts a noble climb, fails, then whirls into descending scales before thudding to an abrupt stillness. Emerging are two massive plaintive sobs by the full string section, each an exquisite musical expression of utter pain. Fabulous. As in the first movement when Theme 1 returned in a “hurricane of chaos” in the Recapitulation, Theme 1 returns here in the A section with an unappeasable vengeance. In the area marked “max pathos 2,” Tchaikovsky distills in music an essence of human despair that no other form of communication can match. So I won’t try to put it in words. The utter collapse of this section is indicated, as totem of death, with a single, soft, heavy toll of the gong. A forlorn and fading chorale follows in the brass. The strings carry Theme 2 in fragments through the Coda, dying away until only cellos and basses remain. They will play the final nine measures of the work into receding silence, quadruple pianissimo. See my annotated first movement of this symphony here:    • Tchaikovsky 6 I Annotated