Title: Will the turn ever return? Post by: guest54 on September 19, 2015, 08:29:38 am (https://picload.org/image/prpwdda/turn2.jpg) Many of the greatest composers' greatest and most expressive moments involve at the crucial point a turn. Where turns are concerned we think for instance of Bach, Liszt, and Wagner. But since around 1908 there has been a great paucity of turns and indeed consequently a great paucity of great and expressive moments in music. Why do modern composers not realize how impoverished their technique has become in the absence of turns? Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: ahinton on September 19, 2015, 03:26:42 pm (https://picload.org/image/prpwdda/turn2.jpg) Many of the greatest composers' greatest and most expressive moments involve at the crucial point a turn. Where turns are concerned we think for instance of Bach, Liszt, and Wagner. But since around 1908 there has been a great paucity of turns and indeed consequently a great paucity of great and expressive moments in music. Why do modern composers not realize how impoverished their technique has become in the absence of turns? Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: guest54 on September 26, 2015, 09:19:35 am Here is the famous and riveting "Parsifal turn" from Wagner's third act:
(https://picload.org/image/pdawrwl/parsifal.jpg) Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: guest54 on September 26, 2015, 09:22:39 am This is possibly the most beautiful melody written in the nineteenth century - the third movement of Brahms's third symphony. Note how the cellos execute their turn in two slightly different rhythms.
(https://picload.org/image/pdawrwr/brahmss3.jpg) Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: guest54 on September 26, 2015, 09:25:11 am And Bach of course constructed entire movements out of his turns. Here is the Gloria from the Mass in F. No composer has equalled him since.
(https://picload.org/image/pdawrwa/gloria.jpg) Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: Neil McGowan on September 26, 2015, 12:17:02 pm Ah yes, 'old Kllingsor' was fond of a turn, now and again :)
Indeed, he makes listeners wait the whole 5+ hours of TRISTAN & ISOLDE for the series of them in the Liebestod :) There's also another Wagnerian turn that becomes a motivic figure in the main aria (and thus in the overture too) from RIENZI. I'm not at my full-size computer today, so uploading musical examples will have to wait for another time... Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: ahinton on September 26, 2015, 10:11:49 pm Ah yes, 'old Kllingsor' was fond of a turn, now and again :) That's very much the point (or at least mine in response to the OP); whilst it is just one of so very many expressive devices in music, has it ever really "gone away"? I've certainly used it when necessary, although I've not thought about it consciously...Indeed, he makes listeners wait the whole 5+ hours of TRISTAN & ISOLDE for the series of them in the Liebestod :) There's also another Wagnerian turn that becomes a motivic figure in the main aria (and thus in the overture too) from RIENZI. I'm not at my full-size computer today, so uploading musical examples will have to wait for another time... Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: autoharp on September 28, 2015, 08:48:59 pm A modern example - sort of . . .
Opening of the Inspector Montalbano theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lNsc0zqxC0 Not its classical usage, of course. Title: Re: Will the turn ever return? Post by: ahinton on September 28, 2015, 09:35:27 pm A modern example - sort of . . . No, but originating in / deriving from it nonetheless, surely? - on the grounds of which it might still be said that the great big world continues to turn (pace Nathaniel Davis Ayer [1887 – 1952] / Percival Davis aka F.[?] Clifford Grey [1887-1941]).Opening of the Inspector Montalbano theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lNsc0zqxC0 Not its classical usage, of course. Also, for another example of the turn in 20th-century action, try the "Beedle dee-dee-dee-dee" figure in the song Two Ladies from Cabaret (John Harold Kander [1927- ] / Fred Ebb [1928-2004]) as musically victimised in the unpronounceable (if not quite unplayable) piano work Cabaraphrase, described by its composer as less of an operatic transcription and more of an apoplectic transgression... |