Orchestration Tip: Tchaikovsky's Interlocking Phrasing
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.พ. 2013
- A video installment in my daily series of tips. Please follow me on Twitter for the Orchestration Online Tip of the Day at #OrchestrationOL, or join the Orchestration Online Facebook group for feedback, resources, and advice.
Tips of the Day for this week:
Monday, January 28: Shaping Orchestral Phrasing
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Tuesday, January 29: Defining Themes by the Principles of Communication
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Wednesday, January 30: Instrumental Color Defining Thematic Development
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Thursday, January 31: Orchestral Texture Dependent on the Character of Thematic Instruments
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Friday, February 01: Using Inflection to Match a Phrase to the Right Instrument
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Saturday, February 02: Considering Basic Technique in Phrasing
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your short and sweet description is so professional and clear to understand. Thank you for sharing your knowledge for free.
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@Izaiah Mathew instablaster =)
@Miller Stetson Thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site thru google and I'm trying it out atm.
Looks like it's gonna take a while so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Miller Stetson It worked and I finally got access to my account again. Im so happy!
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@Izaiah Mathew Happy to help :)
I once tried this very passage using 2 string parts sequenced separately on synthesizers & it was pretty convincing. By the way I have a book by Tchaikovsky & I seem to remember reading a comment he made that even to write sad music you basically have to be in a good enough frame of mind. He seemed to imply that a person who is truly depressed can't have the creative spark, or at least would struggle more to be capable of writing any kind of music. This is in keeping with your point about his success during Pathetique's creation.
Omg, there goes my creative spark, I thought I was just mediocre so, yeah, I agree, a good mind is a creative mind
What book? I need to read this
I havent heard this symphony past few months. So fresh, so beautiful..
I am profoundly grateful for you. What you provide is intrinsically healing for so many. The study of music is a salve like no other and through your wisdom and ability to articulate you apply it much like a physician. Peace and gratitude. Paul
I've heard the symphony before, and I'd never known that the phrasing was interlocked that way. Fascinating!
A very educational video.
This has and will always remain the peak of musical expression for me personally
Who else listened to the entire Pathetique right after watching this video?
Just about any contrast of position and timbre is possible and has been explored - I wouldn't know where to start. But I would suggest that you learn about seating arrangements and watch many orchestral rehearsals to see how musicians interact. In the case of the woodwinds, though, be aware that the four principals of clarinet, oboe, flute, and bassoon will all be sitting in a phalanx of four neighboring chairs - so separation of position wouldn't be very clear - but timbres would be distinct.
Woodwinds seem often to be all in one row though (depends on stage size partly I suppose). The idea of having the firsts all in a square as it were makes so much sense
Another great video. Thanks Thomas.
Thanks Thomas. This is very helpful. Keep on keeping on!
I especially recommend Wilhelm Furtwängler's 1938 Berlin Philharmonic recording of this Symphony: incredible interpretation!
Thank you for posting this! I have been given my first opportunity to play in an orchestra this year and we are playing this. You have given me a whole new appreciate for this work!!!
Sort of. In ancient music, hocketing was a process by which a melody was shared between two instruments - but the practice was more about one instrument playing their part while the other rested, or played a supporting fragment. If you extend the definition, as some have done, to include interlocking patterns and phrasing, you could say this was hocketing. Good notion - I approve - but I suspect Tchaikovsky was thinking more about stereophony than trading off the melody.
This is certainly one of my favourites!
Opens my eyes. Thanks. Very interesting.
Such a powerful work - and a powerful explanation. Thank you for all of your wonderfully superb videos.
Thanks, Emily!
Superb work! You comtinue to expand
Thanks for making these videos, Thomas, they're really informative. I'd be interested to hear how you might take these ideas and use them in your own music, not just an occurrence of them in an already-existing work.
It's good to see Tchaikovsky getting his due (expert commentary here from Thomas, as always), having been dismissed by the snobs for such a long time. More intelligent musicians - Schoenberg and Ebenezer Prout, to take two disparate examples - have always admired and respected him. Indeed, Prout explicitly recommends this very symphony for close study in his two-volume textbook "The Orchestra".
Getting his due?
Tchaikovsky has been one of the top 5 most played and celebrated composers for the past hundred years....
@@FreakieFan You've missed a point that I made explicitly in my previous post. Tchaikovsky remains justly popular among the general musical public while still being dismissed by most of the pundits of recent decades.
@@neilsaunders9309
That is absurd and completely untrue. Stop being condescending, I didn't "miss" anything. What you're saying is simply false.
@@FreakieFan A bit thin-skinned, aren't you, Guido? A bit brittle and overly self-defensive.
@@neilsaunders9309
You're hilarious. Nothing screams "brittle ego" more than your baseless projections.
Sorry, I was saying that you continue to expand my comprehension of the trade, Thanks, Thomas!
Thank you!
No worries, ask any orchestration question, happy to help.
You make a very imjportant point that whatever the circumstances of the composition of the 6th, Tchaikovsky didn't drop his standards one iota. However, I can't help wondering what the message of the adagio lamentoso is, given that we know there are autobiographical elements to both the 4th and 5th symphonies. I'm sure we'll never be certain, but it would not be surprising to learn that something tragic was going on in Tchaikovsky's life at the time of its composition.
4:43 simply rips my heart out
That interview question at 7.52 is interesting.According to my limited knowledge on Carl Jung as it translate to crafts people he is a left brain judgmental type that loves routine,or at least people who adhere to strict craft routines fall into left brain dominant.Im also left brain dominant of sensation thinking and a massive introvert but my right side is perception which when it comes to crafts routines and me spur of the moment.I find routine craft hard and need to work alone.Good video :)
Actually this interlocking phrasing was a frequent resource used by Tchaikovsky. For example on 5th Symphony first movement second theme horns do a brief but similar phrasing like showed on the Pathétique second movement.
The phrase repeats itself withouth interlocking later in the movement. Which kind of let's you decide how much of it's value is in the mentioned interlocking. I think not much.
謝謝！
After 8 videos about Sibelius have you thought about making one on Sibelius the composer?
Ive found myself on Wiki over the last 3 days and as with anything on Wiki 1 subject is connected with another subject in another field and is very time consuming.It all started with the harmonic series then integers and modes then physics of sound,before i get to side tracked how much knowledge of this is needed for orchestration,do you need to know all the harmonics of each instrument like clarinet has even overtones.It seems never ending.How much do i need to learn?
When the time is right.
Chung did the opening of the 4th movement best in my opinion
Beautiful........How about his fourth....Wasn't that his real masterpiece?!
Could this be called hocketing? Technically the same thing?
Haha it's still Sat, Febuary 2nd here in North America :)
Do you live in New Zealand??
Unfortunately not many orchestras use this seating. One of them is Vienna philharmonic.
It's slightly difficult - not really difficult. A semipro might get it 9 times out of 10. It's easier than the Strauss excerpt I mentioned in one of my tips a couple weeks ago.
38 GB sibelius sounds?!?! 3:46
Not sure what “intellectual credibility” means in music.
You need to put the term in the context of the sentence. Tchaikovsky wasn't trying to conquer the audience with an intellectual perfection of form, but an emotional statement.
@@OrchestrationOnline Ah, form-yes, that helps. Thanks!
Continued-my question apply,s just to orchestration not effects and synthesizers.Its a pretty silly question because obviously the more you know the better you will be at a job,but im concerned with how deep a knowledge of how sound is made with sine waves and maths is needed because i left school early and dont know squat about science and maths(im basic on it).
His colleagues told him to kill himself??? You mean the orchestra???
Nobody told him to kill himself. It's a BS legend. But the claim is that his fellow aristocrats and composers ordered him to. It's complete and utter nonsense.
@@OrchestrationOnline Ah, I thought that didn’t sound like something performers would do-they need new music to play!!
@@OrchestrationOnline Personally I always heard the governement ordered him to kill himself due to his homosexuality.
@@normalvinegarghost2646 As I said, this is a BS rumour. Tchaikovsky was at the top of his game, and then he suddenly got sick and died. That is what the historical record says. The conspiracy theories I will leave to the theorists.
@@OrchestrationOnline Never said I believed it, just that that was the version I heard. By the way, I loved the video.
Is this the Pathetic symphony? Lol