Oxymorons in Music: When Titles Contradict Themselves

Many items of music have names that, on deeper reflection, are actually oxymorons: the 2 phrases contradict one another. Some acquainted oxymorons embody jumbo shrimp, deafening silence, awfully good, unique copy, and bittersweet, giving us a approach to specific the massive model of a small factor, the emphatic silence that follows a noise, and so forth. Collectively, the phrases create one thing greater than the person phrases can.

In music, we now have works comparable to Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. If a concerto is a soloist (or group of soloists as in a Triple Concerto), who’s the named soloist right here? Every part of the orchestra turns into the soloist at completely different occasions. This turns into clearest within the second motion, the Sport of Pairs (II. Giuoco delle coppie: Allegro scherzando), the place pairs of devices, beginning with the bassoons, take turns as soloist.

Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra, BB 123: II. Giuoco delle coppie: Allegro scherzando (Belgian Radio and Tv Philharmonic Orchestra; Alexander Rahbari, cond.)

The identical may be stated for Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Whenever you consider a dance social gathering, you hardly ever invite a symphony! On this case, Rachmaninoff supposed the items for a proposed new ballet by the choreographer Fokin, however his loss of life ended that concept. Rachmaninoff then pulled all the fabric collectively in what’s a symphony in all however identify. Moreover, the three actions had been supposed to symbolize completely different occasions of day: the primary as Mid-Day, the second as Twilight, and the third as Midnight. To strengthen the night time theme, the work pits the forces of Demise, represented by the Dies irae melody from the Requiem, in opposition to the forces of Redemption, represented by the triumph of the ultimate Alleluia, taken from the Russian liturgy.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45: III. Lento assai – Allegro vivace – Lento assai – Come prima – Allegro vivace (Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Leonard Slatkin, cond.)

We are able to at all times rely on Erik Satie for titles that puzzle: Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three items within the type of a pear). Debussy had been telling Satie for a while to pay extra consideration to musical kind, so Satie created these items, which he stated had been ‘pear-shaped’. In English, we hear the title as ‘3 Items within the type of a Pair’, which isn’t what Satie meant. The pun comes not solely from the concept of a pear as a musical kind (when what Debussy meant was sonata kind, or rondo kind), but additionally from the French pun on the phrase ‘poire’, which may imply ‘nitwit’. Apart from, there are 7 items, not 3, with 4 items framing the center three actions, numbered I., II., and III.

Erik Satie: Trois Morceaux en forme de poire: II (Enleve) (Olof Höjer, piano; Max Lorstad, piano)

We may additionally take a look at Felix Mendelssohn’s many Songs with out Phrases. Songs, by their very definition, have phrases. Mendelssohn wrote almost 50 of those lyrical works, and, collectively along with his sister Fanny, they invented a brand new style of music. Felix Mendelssohn by no means supposed the music to be set to phrases, saying ‘What the music I like expresses to me, isn’t thought too indefinite to place into phrases, however quite the opposite, too particular’ (Mendelssohn’s italics). He knew what he was expressing in purely musical phrases and didn’t want phrases so as to add something to that concept.

Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte (Songs with out Phrases), Ebook 7, Op. 85: No. 41 in A Main, Op. 85, No. 5, MWV U191 (1847 model) (Christopher Williams, piano)

In fact, we may at all times add the American Quartet written by Antonín Dvořák, a Czech, Beethoven’s elimination of the dedication of his third Symphony and its renaming to its much less private title because the ‘Eroica’.

The ultimate motion of Haydn’s Joke Quartet (Op. 33/2) performs a joke on the listener’s expectations with a grand pause on the finish…or is it the tip? The silence is adopted by a sudden, loud sixteenth word, then the violin performs the A theme, however with rests added that break up the music each 2 measures. The rests develop longer, and also you’re by no means fairly positive when the piece ends. Actually, the music ends abruptly and leaves the listener hanging in mid-phrase – is the joke that Haydn has fled the room? The oxymoron lies within the non-musical elements of a string quartet!

Joseph Haydn: String Quartet No. 30 in E-Flat Main, Op. 33, No. 2, Hob.III:38, “The Joke”: IV. Finale (Kodály Quartet)

It might be the title, or it might be hidden within the music, however oxymorons are in all places!

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