In the ‘Twilight Zone’: Beethoven's Unfinished Piano Trio in F Minor

2006 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-286
Author(s):  
Nicholas Marston
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Twilight Zone ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Piano Trio ◽  
Principal Source

Although it has long been known that Beethoven began composing a piano trio in F minor in 1816, scholarly examination of the extant sources for this unfinished project has only recently progressed beyond Nottebohm's brief remarks in the 1880s. The present article reveals the existence of numerous new sources evidently unknown to Nottebohm, including a leaf which forms the continuation of the draft score (Concept) of the first movement, the principal source for the trio. (Transcriptions of this score, including the new continuation, and of a newly identified draft which preceded it, accompany the article.) The trio project is contextualized in relation to other compositions, in particular the String Quartet in F minor, op. 95, the ‘Archduke’ Trio and the Piano Sonata in A, op. 101, and an attempt is made to understand the failure of the trio project in relation to Beethoven's limited compositional activity at this much-discussed point in his career.

Schubert's Self-Elegies

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
James William Sobaskie
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Franz Schubert ◽  
String Quintet ◽  
Piano Trio ◽  
A Minor

The later music of Franz Schubert confers a remarkable blend of impact and intimacy. Some masterpieces, such asDie schöne MüllerinandWinterreise, capture striking images of despair and loneliness. Others, such as the String Quartet in A minor, the Piano Trio in E major and the String Quintet in C major, carry stirring impressions of struggle culminated by success. Yet all captivate us with sensitivity and sincerity, the products of considerable self-investment.

scholarly journals Telefantasy’s Conflicting Verisimilitudes: Composite Genre and The X-Files

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven John Gil
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Present Article ◽  
North American ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Twilight Zone ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
American Cultural History ◽  
Constituent Elements

When discussed as a genre, Telefantasy may be regarded as a hybrid category because it subsumes existing labels. Although Telefantasy is a composite genre, the characteristics of its constituent elements - namely Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror - are often in conflict, requiring an appraisal of the tensions between them. This article explores the prospects of using Telefantasy as a generic classification by showing the collective presence of these different genres within The X-Files (1993-2002). It traces the historical interaction between the three genres that make up Telefantasy through a series of examples from Edgar Allan Poe to H.P. Lovecraft and The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), thus providing a historical grounding for generic interaction. The present article forms part of a larger project concerning the interaction of generic motifs in North American cultural history. Here, the focus of that project is directed at examining Telefantasy and the utility of the composite genre to the study of television programs.

The Expanded Caesura-Fill and Transcendental States in Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-413
Author(s):  
Andrew Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Sonata Form ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Piano Trio ◽  
Late Style ◽  
Development Section ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Transcendental State

Anticipating Beethoven's late style, his Piano Sonata Op. 106, "Hammerklavier," contains distinct passages that serve to suspend formal time (noted by numerous scholars, including Adorno, Dahlhaus, Greene, Kinderman, et al.) and disrupt the forward progress of thematic zones within a sonata form. In this essay, I tie this suspension of time to a specific formal space introduced by Hepokoski and Darcy (2006)—the "caesura-fill"—which serves as a venue for compositional exploration throughout Beethoven's sonata oeuvre. Because caesura-fill music occurs between two thematic zones (transition and secondary themes), it has the potential not only for expansion but also for establishing a state of transcendence. In part 1, I investigate the presence of expanded caesura-fill in the exposition of the "Hammerklavier", which enters a transcendental state and postpones the secondary theme zone; harmonic and textural effects in the music underscore this aesthetic. In part 2, I draw comparisons to early- and middle-period works, most significantly the Eroica Symphony, Op. 55, and the "Archduke" Piano Trio, Op. 97. Finally, in part 3, I illustrate how the exposition of the "Hammerklavier" provides a script for the development section to again enter a zone of transcendence, using sharp-side keys to postpone and ultimately undermine the recapitulation.

THE UNDISCOVERED FLIGHT PATHS OF THE ‘MUSICAL BEE’: NEW LIGHT ON HUMMEL’S MUSICAL QUOTATIONS

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROHAN STEWART-MACDONALD
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
Performance Tradition ◽  
Explicit Reference ◽  
North Germany ◽  
Goldberg Variations ◽  
The Relationship

Hummel’s quoting of music by other composers has been mentioned briefly in a number of studies. While some of these quotations are explicit, others are a good deal more problematic. This article investigates explicit quotations that appear in two of Hummel’s string quartets dating from 1803–1804 and the finale of a piano sonata from 1807. The fourth movement of the String Quartet in G major, Op. 30 No. 2, twice quotes J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV988, the slow movement of Op. 30 No. 3 refers to Handel’s Messiah and the finale of the F minor piano sonata cultivates a complex relationship with the last movement of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony. My objective is to demonstrate the sophistication and subtlety with which Hummel manipulates the quoted material in these three cases.Hummel’s obvious quotation of Bach and Handel in particular is related to a multi-faceted preoccupation with archaic styles and earlier works that had taken root in the later eighteenth century and that continued to expand into the nineteenth and beyond. Although England was the first nation to develop a performance tradition around the ‘ancient’ musical repertory, it was the accumulation of a didactic tradition around the keyboard works of J. S. Bach in north Germany and its steady migration to centres like Vienna that is of more direct relevance here. And when one surveys the (supposed) quotations by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Clementi of works by Bach and Handel and compares them with Hummel’s, Hummel’s remain outstanding in their exactness and also in their frequent lightheartedness of tone. Whereas many straightforward quotations or instances of modelling appear reverential or seek to exalt the basic idiom, Hummel’s either are humorous or seem calculated to reduce the potency of the original in order to assimilate the earlier idiom into the later one. The three pieces considered here illustrate the spectrum of techniques used by Hummel to manipulate quoted material in his works. The quotations in the two quartets have drawn very little comment; the references to Mozart’s ’Jupiter’ Symphony in the finale of Op. 20 have been remarked on more frequently, but the relationship between the two finales is a good deal more intricate than has previously been shown. The ‘contrapuntal deconstruction’ that takes place late in the third movement of Hummel’s Op. 20, between the most explicit reference to the ‘Jupiter’ finale and the coda, is lighthearted in character – amusing, even – and is in some ways the most ingenious and vibrant episode in the movement.

Berthold Goldschmidt: String Quartet; Piano Sonata; Clarinet Quartet

1992 ◽  
Vol 133 (1797) ◽  
pp. 588
Author(s):  
Eric Roseberry ◽  
Mandelring Quartet ◽  
Ib Hausmann ◽  
Kolja Lessing
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Piano Sonata

Genre, Romanticism and Female Authorship: Fanny Hensel's ‘Scottish’ Sonata in G Minor (1843)

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Head
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Vital Force ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn ◽  
Own Name

The year 1846 was a watershed for Fanny Hensel: in that year she published collections of music in her own name. Felix Mendelssohn, withholding personal approval of his sister's decision to go public, nonetheless acknowledged a change of status when he offered his ‘professional blessing upon your decision to enter our guild’. This much is well known, but the decision to publish was one of several signs that in the 1840s Hensel sought to set her life-long cultivation of composition on a more formal and professional footing. With her Piano Sonata in G minor (autumn 1843) she tackled a genre largely off-limits to earlier female composers in northern Germany. The genre involved extended instrumental forms and Hensel was alternately confident and full of doubts about her abilities in this area. In a letter to her brother concerning her String Quartet, she pictured herself trapped in the ‘emotional and wrenching’ (‘rührend u. eindringlich’) style of late Beethoven. Countering her brother's criticisms of the quartet she asserted, ambivalently, that she did not lack ‘the compositional skill’ (‘die Schreibart’) to succeed so much as ‘a certain vital force’ (‘ein gewisses Lebensprinzip’) and the ‘strength to sustain my ideas and give them the necessary consistency’.

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