Performance: a 1950 recording, with Hermann Scherchen conducting the Vienna Symphony.
In this excerpt you’ll hear more than the initial melody, which in the Mahler movement is the first part of something larger. I didn’t want to cut it off.
Plus, as the music continues, there’s some descending high counterpoint — breathtaking writing on Mahler’s part — which I borrow (or at least the idea of it) in my final variation, my unabashed tribute to Mahler.
Hear my final variation (from the Terra String Quartet recording):
Hear the theme, as it sounds in the quartet:
My variation quotes something in Beethoven, and then takes off in new directions from it.
What I’m quoting is one of his variation movements, the second movement of his Op. 111 piano sonata. I quote the third variation:
Here’s how it starts, in a joyful performance by Andras Schiff:
Hear my variation, taking off from Beethoven, but creating a variation on Mahler’s theme by using Mahler’s harmony:
From the album liner notes:
The Elvis variation…is a melody over a rock & roll beat, evoking some of the songs Elvis sang in the 1950s. It’s built on Mahler’s harmony, which has a longer chord progression than we’d find in any ‘50s rock song. My trick, then, was to make each phrase sound like something Elvis might have sung, even if the full variation doesn’t.
The Elvis song that most inspired me here was “I Was the One,” not one of his famous hits, but a song (a bit perverse) that I like a lot. It was the flip side of his first national hit, “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Hear my variation:
I quote the start of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466.
Here it is, with Mitsuko Uchida conducting the Cleveland Orchestra (she plays on the recording, of course, but we don’t hear her in this brief excerpt):
Hear my variation:
This is a tiny sonata form movement, with the Mozart beginning as the first subject, and part of the Mahler theme as the second. In place of a development section, there’s a cadenza, and the second subject starts the recapitulation.
Rohmer is a French film director I’ve loved. I was thinking here of a scene in his 1984 film Les nuits de la pleine lune (“Nights with a Full Moon,” released in English-speaking countries as Full Moon in Paris). The film might be a bittersweet romantic comedy, or it might (since Rohmer knows the ambiguities of life) be an unhappy film with moments we smile at.
In the scene I took off from, a woman dances at a party while her unhappy boyfriend watches. They’re going to have a fight. I imitated the French pop song the woman dances to, using melodic notes from the Mahler theme, but in a rhythm suggested by the song.
I notice (listening again, as I’m making this page) that I stole the start of the song’s bridge.
The song, written for the film, is “Les Tarots,” by Elli et Jacno, an influential French synthesizer pop group, who created all the movie’s score.
Here I weave three echoes of Bach together. The propulsion of a Brandenburg concerto; the boychoir singing a chorale tune in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion (this is where, in my variation, you hear the Mahler theme); and the intent solo playing in the cello suites.
I don’t need to quote a cello suite, or a fast movement from Brandenburg concerto. They’re well known. Here’s my version of them, from this variation:
Here, from the St. Matthew Passion, is the boychoir in the opening chorus. From the recording by Raphaël Pinchon, conducting his ensemble Pygmalion; the chorus is La maîtrise de Radio France, the choir from the Radio France choir school
Here’s my version of it (with cello interruptions)
And here you can hear the whole variation.
I wanted to quote the Schoenberg Fourth String Quartet, but didn’t have a score in our England retreat. So I rewrote bits of it from memory. Forgive me, world!
Here’s the start of the Schoenberg quartet, which I quoted.
Here’s another excerpt I used, and a third one (in both cases quoting or alluding to from memory).
The performance is the classic 1953 recording by the Juilliard Quartet, from which I learned the piece, many years ago.
The Terra performance sounds slow, next to the Juilliard. But in the flow of my piece, it’s perfect.
Here I was thinking of the first movement of Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21, one of my favorite pieces by any composer. Follow the link to hear it, with Pierre Boulez conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.
Here’s my variation, living (I hope) in the same sound world.
After a silence, this variation quotes, with two hesitations, from Variation 7 of the Goldbergs, starting with its second measure. Hesitations and silences are part of my piece, starting with my statement of the theme, which (unlike Mahler’s original) has a pause before its final cadence. Pauses continue intermittently in my piece, culminating in Variation 21, which is entirely silent.
Hear the part of the Goldbergs I quote (from Glenn Gould’s classic 1955 recording)
In my score, I call this opening section “Phantom Gigue.” After it comes a brief outburst, marked “Faster, in a furious rush,” which I call “Quick Toccata,” a reference to the many Goldberg variations that are toccatas, pieces showing off keyboard virtuosity.
Then, after a brief pause, comes a final section, called “Cadential Aria,” a reference to the lyrical aria that starts the Goldbergs, and that all of Bach’s variations refer to, by building on its harmony.
I don’t quote Bach’s aria, or refer to it in any way. But this section is a melodic line for the first violin, and it’s built (Goldberg-style, if you like) on the harmony of the last part of the Mahler theme, so there’s a Goldberg-like procedure going on in it. So, “Cadential Aria” — “aria,” because it’s a singing melodic line, and “cadential,” because the harmony is an elaboration of Mahler’s final cadence.
This page is in progress…more is coming…