[Smt-talk] Pieces with improvisatory openings

[Stephen Jablonsky]

My favorite example is the first movement of the Emperor Concerto.


On Oct 23, 2011, at 11:52 PM, Charles J. Smith wrote:

> List folks,
> 
> Two more suggestions, both a bit more hare-brained:
> 
> 	The Adagio movement to Mahler's 10th—yeah, a whole viola section can hardly be improvising, but they play as one and the effect is as if that one is thinking up that melody on the spot...
> 
> 	Rhapsody in Blue—specifically the clarinet lick, of course.
> 
> Hmmm...pondering this leads to the almost inevitable question: why would a passage that we know well and have heard dozens (or hundreds) of times still strike us as "improvisatory"? Is it just the absence of obvious conventional form? The preference for small-scale figurational patterns over larger-scale patterns of thematic recurrence, reprise, etc.?
> 
> Gotta think about this some more.
> 
> Cheers,
> Charles
> 
> 
> 
>> Hello Collected Wisdom and Beloved Scholars,
>> 
>> I’m interested in studying the emergence of tempo from the perspective of the listener. One viable case study for this phenomenon is the class of pieces that begin with short, improvisatory passages that precede more temporally patterned movements proper. 
>> 
>> This is slightly different than the phenomenon previously discussed on this list in which the most salient level of time-span organization is initially obscured in preference for a faster or slower rate (i.e., London’s “metric fakeout”).
>> 
>> A paragon of what I’m looking for would be Chopin’s G-minor Ballade, Op. 23. I’ve also been directed to Schumann’s String Quartet No. 3, Op. 41, no. 3.
>> 
>> Do you know of other tonal examples like these? I’ll take responses off-list unless they’re of general interest.
>> 
>> Thank you for your thoughts and I look forward to seeing many of you at our Annual Meeting next week.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Mitch Ohriner
>> 
>> mohriner at gmail.com
>> Assistant Professor of Music Theory
>> Shenandoah Conservatory
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> Charles J. Smith
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Prof. Stephen Jablonsky, Ph.D.
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The City College of New York
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