GygesringtoneMar 23, 2024

The first piece by Clara Schumann I'd ever heard is her Prelude in G minor from "3 Preludes and Fugues", and it blew me away, and still does. It says so much with so little, and really rewards close listening.

She pulls this neat trick in the first phrase of music that might not be obvious if you're not really paying attention to the music. I blatantly steal it whenever I can. She uses the fact that g min and Bb Maj:
a) are closely related
b) have the same pitches in their vii°7 chords
To mask the key.
Until we get to the end of the phrase the key is just as likely (aurally) to be in Bb maj as g minor. Just give this piece a listen. You're listening for the first 2 bars and then when the melody begins to repeat itself a couple of bars later.

https://youtu.be/mXvj37_IqSA

#WomenComposers #ClassicalMusic #ClaraSchumann #PianoMusic #MusicTheory

3 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 16: I. Prelude in G minor

YouTube
Show threadGygesringtoneMar 23, 2024

2/5
Fully diminished chords, generally only show up in minor keys, but can be borrowed by major keys. They are based on that 7th note of the scale, and are a stack of 3 minor thirds. There's two very cool things about this chord, one is that it's totally symmetrical, you can put any note of the chord on the bottom and still just have a stack of thirds. There's no way of telling (by ear) which note is the root of the chord outside of a larger harmonic context. Also if you stack four minor thirds, you get a set of two tritones.

#ClassicalMusic #MusicTheory #FullyDiminishedChords

Show threadGygesringtone

3/5

Tritones are these funny little beasts of an interval, they're exactly half as big as an octave, and if you invert them (take the bottom note and put it on the top) it's the distance between the two notes doesn't change. They're also super important to Classical Western harmony, because they only happen once in a major scale, between the 4th note of the scale and the 7th note, and they have a very strong resolution they pull to. The 7th scale note ALWAYS pulls up to the tonic (1st note of the scale), and the 4th will often pull down to the third. That pull of the 7th note is so important to Western harmony that we had to rework the minor scale to include it. Which is why you'll see lots of F#s in a piece in G-minor.

#ClassicalMusic #MusicTheory #Tritones

Mar 23, 2024 at 2:24pmWeb
Show threadGygesringtoneMar 23, 2024

4/5
So, anytime you hear a fully diminished chord there are 8 different ways it could resolve. One for each note in the chord actioning as the 7th scale degree in both a major and minor scale. By using the same chord to resolve to g minor and Bb major before the key has really been established Clara Schumann's introducing uncertainty as to which way this piece is going to go. Also because the those triads are just one note different the melody she wrote works over both, and she's able to keep the harmony similar enough that the change between the two is mostly masked by the addition of an inner voice so it's not even obvious to the listener that they don't know the key yet.

#ClassicalMusic #ClaraSchumann #PianoMusic #MusicTheory #RelatedKeys

Show threadGygesringtoneMar 23, 2024

5/5
All of which is to say Clara Schumann's clever as hell as well as writing amazing sounding compositions.

#ClassicalMusic #ClaraSchumann #PianoMusic #MusicTheory