chill319
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« on: March 02, 2013, 12:41:30 am » |
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An interesting question. I've thought about it, off and on, for a few weeks without coming to any particular insights.
I think of two characteristic and possibly influential VW sound strategies, having two contrary characteristics: (1) pre-Baroque counterpoint used as a permeating texture that is not confined merely to certain sections of the form (as with a fugato); (2) massed strings joining together, from the lowest registers to the highest registers, in organon, often using first-inversion chords. VW combined both of these strategies with a very personal mix of Renaissance-modal and third-related minor harmonies.
PaulP's discussion of Schuman's Symphony 3 is quite intriguing, and I can see the broad kinship between Schuman's contrapuntal textures in Symphony 3 and textures champoined by VW. I might even go further and suggest both a compositional and aesthetic kinship between the two composers' symphonies 8 and 9.
On the other hand, given the remarkable scoring of Schuman's Symphony 2 and his clear debt to Harris in the earlier published symphonies, I wonder whether the VW angle is indirect. Does anyone hear any trace of VW in Harris's first three symphonies? Did Schuman write about VW somewhere?
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