# How do you create a sense of unification to a multiple movement piece?



## WavesOfParadox (Aug 5, 2012)

I'm starting my first multiple movement piece, and I'm trying to figure out how to bind together each movement. I've had a couple of ideas: create a melody and use the same type of motion but on different scales and scale degrees on the different movements, a similar chord progression, and a set theory motif that is transformed throughout the work. How do the real composers do it?


----------



## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Classical composers kept their keys close together to help unity. Also they have related themes and motifs, and later styles go in for cyclic forms and the like.

One thing I've noticed is that often there will be significant parallelisms between the structures in different movements, particularly the first and last. Mozart's 40th symphony is a good example. I've never come across an explanation why.

I know you're probably not after such specifically Classical techniques, but that's all I know; someone else can tell you more. Personally, I generally use similar ideas in different movements dressed up in different ways, but I don't think I achieve enough unity in my multi-movement pieces. I will be watching this thread closely.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Romantic composers used motifs across movements, so called "cyclical structure", where, like in Berlioz's Sinfonie Fantastique, you have a theme that shows up in multiple, sometimes in all of the movements. This theme could potentially be a rhythm.

Classical composers, as Ramako said, kept to a short range of keys, usually have a movement in the subdominant, dominant, or, at most submediant (like Beethoven's 9th). The rest of the symphony will stick primarily to the tonic and dominant key areas.

Modern composers tend to use similar material across movements, which may or may not adhere to the romantic conception of a "motif". Tone rows generating an entire piece, a certain sequence of notes or intervals divested of rhythmic and other implications, a particular mode...any of these things can give a unity to a piece that is subconsciously apparent, even if it isn't consciously grasped.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Rather like the maxim, "If you need to ask...."

It is impossible to other than generalize, since there is no first movement to look at 

I truly feel near despair, and a lot of frustration, when I hear someone say, I am going to compose, and then have them giving out a near laundry list of technical devices and aspects of theory. [Add: or talk about 'melody' or 'chord progressions'... if you want to write a short tune, perhaps a pop song, or a simpler 'stirring' film score, ala the theme to 'National Treasure' then go with 'melody and / or a chord progressio' End Add] All that speaks to the person having No Musical Idea with which to work, and unless it is to be an academic exercise, one needs first 'The Musical Idea.' From that, then, one can see 'what theoretic' devices are inherent in it, or well applicable to manipulating that idea further.

Please do not start with an arbitrary list of technical devices and then try to 'fit an idea' to those. Please.

But, before more categorical 'theory,' I would advise following scores and listening, to see if you can detect a working premise which will hold, generally, in good stead towards your particular goal. Mozart's Symphony No.40, g minor, is really unified by the constant, pervasive presence of one interval (which borders on an obsession or 'fetish') -- the minor second.

Instrumental gestures, instrumentation, timbre are other elements of 'organization.' One does not have to be a spectralist to use them. Honegger's Symphony No. 5 'Di Tre Re' has each movement ending on a 're' in the tympani; Debussy, La Mer, each movement ends with an included single strike on a cymbal -- not that these alone will 'unify' but they can be one more element which further unifies.

If you have found, while writing, all 'those other ideas' which spring up, often appear in the score at the time, and have discarded them, or put them aside as 'not part of this movement / piece' -- then there might just be your additional material from which to build, or extract, the following movements.

There is also, all theory 'down' and 'absorbed' that old saw, of _relying upon your intuition and your ear_. No analysis I've ever seen has disclosed exactly why, other than a few non-informative theoretical elements, exactly that a particular adagio following the allegro, for example, seems 'so right.' A familiarity with the work which precedes is often enough to help you 'find your way.

If you do have any clear idea on even a few bars of a certain nature for the following movements, by all means write them down. If you have a finale in mind, go straight to it. Having any part of a piece or movement will help guide you to 'building' the rest, knowing either where it is going to, or coming from.

One bit, aspect, set of intervals, harmony, can be 'picked up' from one movement, and after playing with it a bit, yield something else which is still not a literal transport of one element from movement one to another, i.e. a generated variant is 'related' without being audibly, or visibly the same thing, and that can be 'enough' to make the connection.

I would somewhat trust your ear - if you are writing, and writing, the odds you are going to switch either a sense of motor habit, rhythmic impulse, or vocabulary -- at least not much or drastically -- is slight. Then trusting 'what was on your mind' as being relatively cohesive has some merit to recommend it.

Other than that, keep it relatively simple and relatively brief. If you get lost in the middle of an ambitiously large work when you have no practice or experience, you will more than probably get truly lost, and crash or meander.

Break a leg, so to speak.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Adding a bit on key areas. As per Some Guy's, "It is not your grandpa's tonality, anymore." that:

Stravinsky, Piano sonata, if memory serves, the first movement centers on C, the second on A, the third on Eb, a symmetry of i, vi, and iii, then. This key format is a 'wedge' shape.

Barber, Piano concerto, (short-cutting to Wiki here) the movements....
1.) "begins and ends in E minor."
2.) "predominantly in C sharp minor"
3.) "mostly B-flat minor"

Again, a relationship of minor thirds, this scheme, instead of the 'wedge' format of the Stravinsky sonata, a straight descent down in minor thirds. The contour is then one of 'falling.'

In other words, we aren't expected to always go home after heading out the door


----------



## paulc (Apr 18, 2011)

What PetrB said. 



Mahlerian said:


> ..similar material..


That 'similar material' could be a repeated motif, harmonic progression, rhythm, timbre. A phrase, period or form. Little elements combined to make larger ones. Perhaps a contrapuntal followed by a homophonic section. Loud followed by soft. Some identifiable, intellectual or emotional element that develops while keeping the listener's ear. A sense of 'we've been here before' without 'I'm tired of being here' stretched out over forty minutes+.


----------



## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

What if you listen to some of your favorite composers' multi-movement works while looking at the score, and write down the strategies you notice?

For example, I like Beethoven's piano sonatas, so I might listen to the Pathetique and notice:
1. Key relationship: first movement C minor, second movement A flat major, third movement C minor with an A flat major section.
2. Character: first movement alternately heavy/grave and motoric, second movement transcendently peaceful with a middle section reminiscent of the heavy/grave material from first movement, third movement light and energetic
3. Shape of melodies: first movement mostly chord-related, second movement single-note line with lots of stepwise motion, third movement some stepwise and some chord-related

Analytical listening (with a question in mind that you're trying to answer) is different from listening for pleasure and you will notice different things.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Listening through all of Mahler's symphonies recently with the scores, I noticed that in the ones where the starting and ending keys differ, as in the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th symphonies, the "final" tonality plays an important role in earlier movements.

In the 7th, for example, the first movement in E minor spends a lot of time in C major, the key of the 2nd movement (well, C minor/major) and finale.


----------

