I was asked by Peter, sometime ago, to give some musical examples. In response to that petition goes the following:
I knew this work from my childhood thanks to Stanley Kubrick and, despite its ostentatious introduction, I have always liked it.
These are the first bars of Also Spracht Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss. Here is how it sounds:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9QxaJLt7EA[/youtube]
Composers were always fond of playing with the third and sixth degree of the scale. They are the colour degrees, so to speak. Bach used to terminate some works with what is called a Picardy third. It consists of ending a movement written in a minor key with a major tonic chord. In C minor, for instance, C-Eb-G becomes C-E-G. That is precisely what Strauss is doing here, though it is not a Picardy third, a device long ago obsolete by the time Strauss was writing this. With a little difference: he goes from C-E-G to C-Eb-G. Only later, after the second trumpets call, he does it the other way around: C-Eb-G, C-E-G. In fact, whereas composers of the Baroque Era used to play with the Picardy third device, in the 19th century musicians still played the same game, but in several combinations. Thus in Liszt, Les Preludes:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEem_aEttE[/youtube]
Listen from the beginning up to 2:20, where the orchestral masses fight against each other. Here the music is written in the tonality of C, while he goes through Ab-C-Eb to A-C-E. And it is written thus:
No responsibility is taken for the possible inaccuracies found here.
I knew this work from my childhood thanks to Stanley Kubrick and, despite its ostentatious introduction, I have always liked it.
These are the first bars of Also Spracht Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss. Here is how it sounds:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9QxaJLt7EA[/youtube]
Composers were always fond of playing with the third and sixth degree of the scale. They are the colour degrees, so to speak. Bach used to terminate some works with what is called a Picardy third. It consists of ending a movement written in a minor key with a major tonic chord. In C minor, for instance, C-Eb-G becomes C-E-G. That is precisely what Strauss is doing here, though it is not a Picardy third, a device long ago obsolete by the time Strauss was writing this. With a little difference: he goes from C-E-G to C-Eb-G. Only later, after the second trumpets call, he does it the other way around: C-Eb-G, C-E-G. In fact, whereas composers of the Baroque Era used to play with the Picardy third device, in the 19th century musicians still played the same game, but in several combinations. Thus in Liszt, Les Preludes:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEem_aEttE[/youtube]
Listen from the beginning up to 2:20, where the orchestral masses fight against each other. Here the music is written in the tonality of C, while he goes through Ab-C-Eb to A-C-E. And it is written thus:
No responsibility is taken for the possible inaccuracies found here.
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