# Your favourite pieces based on a single idea



## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

I'm fascinated by Bach and Liszt in the way they use one or two melodic ideas to make an entire long piece e.g. The Art of Fugue or Sonata in B minor (you know which one I mean). Which other composers/pieces do this well?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Berio Piano sonata -- the single idea is called B flat






Christopher Tye's _Sit Fast_, where the idea is the antiphon _miserere mihi Domine, een exaudi orationem meam _


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> Mozart's Requiem is a kind of a cyclic mass, with the Lutheran hymn motif, "When My Final Hour is At Hand" (D-C#-D-E-F) permeating the entire work. (This is how we know; Mozart's sketch of the Amen fugue ,which was discovered later, was actually intended for the Requiem, and not other works like Kyrie in D minor K341.)


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Of course, virtually all of Bach's music does this. But I always felt that Sibelius was one of the greatest masters at integration of musical ideas. Take the first movement of the 2nd Symphony- it starts with a sunny, pastoral, goodhearted drone tune which is then expanded into a sort of theme-and-variations/sonata-form hybrid. There are unifying themes, but you have to listen for them because they're concealed and expounded on so well. All within 8 minutes, too! And the whole 7th Symphony is centered around 3 simple ideas- an ascending C major scale, a lyrical woodwind phrase, and a tonic triad. Sometimes his music reminds me of a disassembled series of puzzle pieces or building blocks that Sibelius plays around with until he finds just the right combination of pieces to produce the perfect end result.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Sweelinck was a master at forging the two major keyboard genres of his time into an improbable unity: the monothematic ricercar invented by Andrea Gabrieli, and the wide-ranging, virtuoso "fancies" of the English virginalists. His famous _Fantasia Chromatica_ is just one example among many.


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## Jayden Fung (Jan 20, 2020)

Vivaldi wrote such a piece. This concerto for strings' first movement develops the theme presented at the beginning brilliantly!


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Glinka - Kamarinskaya
Gliere - Russian Sailor's Dance


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## Fredrikalansson (Jan 29, 2019)

RVW: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Does the Hebrides Overture count?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

No, The Hebrides has several themes and rhythmic ideas going for it.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Probably not what you had in mind, but I'd say Elgar's Enigma Variations.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Rachmaninoff's Corelli Variations.


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