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Re: Passacaglia for Bernhard
At 04:49 PM 11/19/00 +0100, Jost Ammon wrote:
The term "ostinato" derives from latin obstinatum (participle to obstinare)
which means persist or insist and refers in music to a steadily repeated
short theme or harmonic figure. A particular meaning has the term "basso
ostinato" meaning the continued repetition of a theme or an harmonic pattern
in the bass.
A particular derivate of the basso ostinato is the "Passacaglia", an italian
term deriving from spanish "pasar" - to pass by - and "calle" - lane or
alley - describing the musicians walking through the lanes, playing and
therefore having a pacelike rhythm.
In the early 17th century the theme was in a 3/4 bar and was developped into
a composition of variations, mostly built on the four-bar-repeating bass
theme.
The psychic impact of ostinato is often obtaining an ecstatic mood (well,
that's at least what I happen to experience listening to passacaglia
c-minor).
Indeed. I was thinking the same thing yesterday while listening to a
passamezzo by Samuel Scheidt. These pieces set up structures where the
harmonic motion is absolutely predictable, as is the length of time
allotted to each event, but the surface texture of the music is always
changing. And it gets really mesmerizing. Things change, but they also
stay the same, but they also change, but they meanwhile stay the same. You
know that a few seconds in the future the harmony is going to move in a
specific direction, and another few seconds later it will move again...and
a minute in the future you will be back where you are now, going through
this again. But you don't know how the journey to get there is going to be.
These pieces can have that ecstatic effect on the performer, too, not just
the listener. Some years ago I played a harpsichord recital where every
piece had that structure of repeated harmonic motion. William Byrd's
passamezzo pavan and galliard, Purcell's Chacony, a passacaglia by Louis
Couperin, Ligeti's Hungarian passacaglia, and the Hassler variations on
"Einmal ging ich spazieren" (30 variations, a little-known predecessor of
the Goldbergs). The regularity of the structure leads to an altered mental
state. Once a piece of this type gets going, everything becomes
inevitable. And the effect is even more pronounced if the instrument is
tuned in meantone temperament (pure major thirds)...that sound really gets
into the psyche as if coming from a different world. The intervals within
the scale are irregular, but after a few minutes the ear knows where those
irregularities are and they become a vital part of the harmonic structure
as well. The purity of the major thirds "locks in" each harmony very
firmly. During and after that recital I remember feeling carried along by
those ostinatos and progressions. It's difficult to describe that euphoria
in words.
I suppose it's like the euphoria that marathon runners say they experience.
Yesterday I also found some of the same effect in listening to the way GG
played Beethoven's 6th symphony. The regularity of the [often very slow]
tempo and the repetition in Beethoven's harmonic patterns can get to be
mesmerizing. For me it's not as strong there as it is in 16th and 17th
century ostinato works, but it's present. (It's there in the way GG played
his piano transcription of Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll," too.) The medium is
monochromatic enough that the listener's brain focuses on structures, while
listening also to the foreground events.
Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl or http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
clavichord CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl
trumpet and organ: http://www.mp3.com/hlduo
"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot