# Unity in music



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Again, suggested by a chance remark elsewhere: How "unified" are the great multi-movement works we love? Does anything really make them hang together, other than our expectation that they *should* hang together?

A reminder that even Beethoven sometimes yanked a complete movement from one work and stuck in another...and the old story about the late-night classical DJ who "rolled his own" Haydn symphonies for years by mixing and matching movements, and nobody noticed!

To me, this is one of those ambiguities at make CM such an enjoyment. What do you think?


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

KenOC said:


> and the old story about the late-night classical DJ who "rolled his own" Haydn symphonies for years by mixing and matching movements, and nobody noticed!


I never heard that story. That's awesome!


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

They seemed to get more into the whole 'unity' business in the Romantic era, what with circular form and shared motives among the movements.


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Yes, definitely: the Romantic period was the golden age of "unity," largely under the influence of Beethoven, though as you mentioned it is debatable how important unity was to Beethoven himself. Certainly there are lots of Beethoven works that are intricately motivic, but there are plenty of others that are not.

There are lots of unity-obsessed scholars who have purported to find unity in all major Beethoven works, which does seem like wishful thinking to me. Just a few years ago I attended a lecture by a distinguished Yale professor who was defending unity--apparently he was troubled that unity is not being sufficiently valued in today's classical music culture--and he went so far as to claim that a piece without unity is a failed piece.

Personally, after listening to a lot of motivically driven Romantic works, I start appreciating "non-unified" pieces much more. Liszt's _Les preludes_, for example, is so obsessively fixated on its opening motive that listening to the piece starts to feel like listening to a monologue from _Atlas Shrugged_, and listening to a piece like Stravinsky's _Petrushka_ becomes a much-needed breath of fresh air.


----------



## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

It's a good point, that our expectation makes it so. But really, if Beethoven took a movement from hither and moved it to yon, then to me this says he thought it belonged properly in its new slot. We can listen to _roll your own_ movements  and it's interesting, but that's like having your stereo on shuffle. It's still not a guarantee that we're hearing the composers' intentions. In fact, most likely we're not.

If I listen to a symph, I think of the movements as being connected. It's one work. And perhaps this is familiarity at work, but I also think that composers write them that way, too, that the correct movement should follow the one before it, to maximise the effect of the music.

But I could be wrong!


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

We should also distinguish between different types of unity. There's unity in the sense that different movements of a piece feel like they belong with each other, and there's unity in the sense that different movements are motivically related to each other. It's the latter type that can get tedious after a while, in my humble opinion.


----------



## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Eschbeg said:


> Yes, definitely: the Romantic period was the golden age of "unity," ....


Actually, Renaissance polyphony and above all a Bach Fugue is about as unified as it gets. Not to mention the works of the 2nd Viennese School.
No, unity has been one of the most fundamental necessities of 'good' art for ever.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Stravinsky's Petrushka is 'held together' -- to be simplistic, by the harmonic premise of the polytonality generated by two major triads at a distance of a Tritone apart, layers of activity based upon one or more of the relationships between key, and that in place, is peppered throughout a work which is more episodic by nature, but unified, it is.

Later, the serialist Viennese school works are often unified by the continual presence of one pitch as a sort of tonic, and it was found that each Schoenberg, Berg and Webern had a 'preferred interval' which consciously or no, tended to have a high rate of occurrence in their overall body of works. All three of those, Berg, and Webern most especially, were enormously strong, also, in form, as in the old classical forms and 'formality.' That too, 'holds their works together.'

Bartok just loved the major second, and as a conscious motif, it is threaded throughout his Bluebeard's Castle.

Spectralist composers use an orchestral texture as a compositional element of structure.

One way or another, the vast majority of composers, whether the style of the harmony or the form are far from the common practice era, have used many devices and formats to give the works 'unity.' I prefer the word COHESIVE, which I think implies less expected 'symmetry' or a patently apparent and audibly repeating motif, etc.

There is another sort of composer, Poulenc, and Kodaly especially, who do not 'outwardly' use a lot of these known devices and tricks, but have some innate genius for which follows what, that makes their works seem quite logical to the listener.

And the listener will, without prompting, find some way to 'unify' a series of any sort of experiences -- included unrelated experiences - into a whole, no matter what the input, pleasant or other; because, well, that is what the brain without any training at all seems more than wont to do... find order in any and everything it perceives. (I'd go so far as to say the brain, free of our direction, is _compelled_ to 'make order' of anything it takes in.)

We are hard-wired in that way. Since we are hard-wired that way, those seemingly 'arbitrary' switches we know composers made prior the romantic era, may not have been such 'arbitrary' choices on the part of those composers: those composers being so occupied with music, the choice perhaps less 'arbitrary' than it may outwardly seem to those reading the history of such an action.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I've always thought this idea of unity is overrated. Yes, it's a huge help in my enjoyment of the work if a theme recurs unexpectedly in different movements, and it may induce a few more goosebumps when I become aware of it, but it is more like icing on the cake than the cake itself. In this digital age I do as much listening to movements out of context as I do entire pieces, and neither they nor I suffer for it. 

I realize there may be other more subtle indications of unity besides recurring themes or motives. There may be something about the way the modulations of the different movements take us somewhere and back again, as described in the above posts. But this gets a bit arcane and scholarly. While I may appreciate it on a subconscious level, or appreciate reading about it, I think it's impact on the actual perception of the music is minimal at best to the journeyman listener.


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Petwhac said:


> Actually, Renaissance polyphony and above all a Bach Fugue is about as unified as it gets. Not to mention the works of the 2nd Viennese School.


A fugue is a single-movement work, though. It can't help but be unified!


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ahammel said:


> A fugue is a single-movement work, though. It can't help but be unified!


Works from the same source / hand tend to have the 'unity' of having come from that one sensibility as the driver.


----------



## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

The idea of a unified symphony is primarily a Romantic development but...

When the Classic composers were writing their symphonies, they wrote them as a single work divided into separate, discrete, sections. It was unified by key relations between movements and general tone and character. Being as it was the Classical period, there were specific things to be expected from the symphonys movements and the audience was well enough educated in music to know what to expect. This was a big help in creating a unified work. And it is always important to remember that the symphony was almost never played from 1-4 in one sitting. The movements were almost always broken up with other musical works played between the movements. 

Something that the Classical didn't have as a unifying element is the idea that the symphony must be "about" something. That is also a Romantic concept. It is one of Beethovens accomplishments that symphonies became more "profound" works that are "about" something. That seems to start with the Eroica. So no he had not just the key relations, tone and character but also a subject to help provide the unity. He still had to contend with the movements being played at different points in the concert and he was also faced with the problem of his audience being increasingly middle class and not as well educated in music as the aristocrats that Mozart and Haydn wrote for. One solution to this is the 5th. It is "about" something (man and fate), it has the proper key, tone and character similarities and two new unifying elements. The rhythm of the opening da-da-da-daaaaaaaaaa is repeated throughout the entire symphony. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes hidden but it's pretty much everywhere. The second innovation is the bridge between movements 3 and 4. That bridge makes sure that those two movements will be played in succession. This serves to help unify the entire work because that rhythm is blatantly exposed in the opening of the 3rd movement, forcefully reminding the hearer and it is the only real rhythm in the bridge to the 4th so that the opening theme of the 4th is so much more triumphant and victorious. 


These unifying elements and the greater respect the Romantics gave to artists made it unthinkable to break up the symphonic movements. From Beethoven onward we can see these elements being used to produce the unified symphony that it's developers never quite intended.


----------



## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Weston said:


> I've always thought this idea of unity is overrated.


Definitely. Having some variety in a piece and going on a journey with a change of landscape throughout naturally gives a piece a sense of development. It's the style and general feeling that gives the unity and that can be more subtle than too overt unifying mechanisms.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

science said:


> I never heard that story. That's awesome!


You see there is a sort of sameness with WIG music, now try and do that with Avant-garde on the radio.....


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> You see there is a sort of sameness with WIG music, now try and do that with Avant-garde on the radio.....


Again, nobody would hear the difference. But this time, because nobody's listening... :lol: Couldn't resist!


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Ah, that's what you say now- wait till I evade the airways with total control Glass, Cage, Berg on heavy rotation.................. ut:


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Ah, that's what you say now- wait till I evade the airways with total control Glass, Cage, Berg on heavy rotation.................. ut:


I can see it now. "Martha, what's this music? It just goes on and on and nothing happens." Or, "Martha, I think the station is off the air. I'll switch to that classic rock station you like." But Berg may have a chance...maybe.


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Petwhac said:


> Actually, Renaissance polyphony and above all a Bach Fugue is about as unified as it gets.


In addition to what others have mentioned, we should also note that a lot of unity one finds in the Renaissance--say, in a cyclic mass--is partly functional. Since the sections of mass are interspersed throughout a service with sometimes long stretches of talking/praying in between, the recurring cantus firmus was mostly a way of reminding the congregation what the previous section sounded like. In motets or non-cyclic masses where the voices imitate each other, there is rarely a common motive that is sustained throughout the entire composition. Rather, a motive will be passed from one voice to the next, and then they move on to another motive, and then another, etc. The overall effect is in fact much more episodic than motivic.

It's also the case that no one in the Renaissance thought it necessary to canonize unity with a plethora of fancy names and terms like Romantic composers did: organicism, _idée fixe_, thematic transformation, etc.



> Not to mention the works of the 2nd Viennese School.


True, and it is significant that the Second Viennese School thought they were extending the tradition of Brahms.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Some of this discussion exactly mirrors the long debates in the rock world some decades ago about the "concept album." Some argued that so and so's album must be a concept album because all the songs/pieces flow together well, then so and so says they were all written at about the same place and time so of course they work well together, and indeed one can hardly avoid it.


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Stravinsky's Petrushka is 'held together' -- to be simplistic, by the harmonic premise of the polytonality generated by two major triads at a distance of a Tritone apart, layers of activity based upon one or more of the relationships between key, and that in place, is peppered throughout a work which is more episodic by nature, but unified, it is.


I would identify the unifying principle behind _Petrushka_ as octatonicism rather than tritonal polytonality. The former accounts for more stretches of the work than the latter; and, significantly, the former subsumes the latter, as every pitch of the Petrushka chord is referable to the octatonic scale.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> In addition to what others have mentioned, we should also note that a lot of unity one finds in the Renaissance--say, in a cyclic mass--is partly functional. Since the sections of mass are interspersed throughout a service with sometimes long stretches of talking/praying in between, the recurring cantus firmus was mostly a way of reminding the congregation what the previous section sounded like. In motets or non-cyclic masses where the voices imitate each other, there is rarely a common motive that is sustained throughout the entire composition. Rather, a motive will be passed from one voice to the next, and then they move on to another motive, and then another, etc. The overall effect is in fact much more episodic than motivic.
> 
> It's also the case that no one in the Renaissance thought it necessary to canonize unity with a plethora of fancy names and terms like Romantic composers did: organicism, _idée fixe_, thematic transformation, etc.
> 
> True, and it is significant that the Second Viennese School thought they were extending the tradition of Brahms.


Are you sure, i thought that Schoenberg totally disliked Brahms music


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

KenOC said:


> I can see it now. "Martha, what's this music? It just goes on and on and nothing happens." Or, "Martha, I think the station is off the air. I'll switch to that classic rock station you like." But Berg may have a chance...maybe.


See I've got a hit in the making here - mental note extra heavy rotation for Berg.


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Are you sure, i thought that Schoenberg totally disliked Brahms music


Nope. Schoenberg coined the term "developing variation" to describe the motivic density of Brahms's works and used it as the justification for his own motivically saturated music, both pre-serialist and serialist alike.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> Nope. Schoenberg coined the term "developing variation" to describe the motivic density of Brahms's works and used it as the justification for his own motivically saturated music, both pre-serialist and serialist alike.


Damn............... Traitor


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Damn............... Traitor


Heh. It hurts to admit, but when you get right down to it, Schoenberg was a romantic through and through.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> Heh. It hurts to admit, but when you get right down to it, Schoenberg was a romantic through and through.


Damn Damn Double Traitor, was he working for MI6 also?


----------

