# Thematic connection or just a common figure?



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I was listening to Brahms' 1st string sextet today and while I was listening to it I heard that small cadence figure at 1:12 as being a foreshadowing of the second theme at 1:49.






But then I thought, that melodic figure is a fairly common one so is it really a deliberate thematic connection on the composers part or is it just a coincidence because it's such a common gesture?

How do you tell the difference? Does anyone else have instances where the connection between themes seemed ambiguous and you had a hard time telling if it was or wasn't deliberate?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'd almost bet the farm that Brahms derived his second theme directly from that cadential figure (or possibly, but less likely, the other way around). It could have been unconscious, but if so I'm sure he noticed pretty quickly what he had done and said to himself "sehr gut, Johannes."

With the greatest composers, the ones whose works exhibit the most formal ingenuity and purposefulness - of whom Brahms was one - I'm always inclined to read even minor internal resemblances as ultimately conscious and purposeful, even if in many cases they occurred spontaneously in the course of composing and were only noted and maybe refined or developed afterward. Beethoven, Wagner, Sibelius, Mahler - their works are full of internal connections which are not necessarily thematic, and often no more than the recurrence of a certain interval, chord, or note of the scale. I'm thinking of the themes of the _Eroica_ symphony, outlining the tonic triad in various ways, with the first three notes of the main themes of first and last movements identical, and the theme of the trio of the scherzo having its lowest and highest notes (both on the fifth of the triad) echoed in the "skeleton" theme presented as the basis of the fourth movement's variations. But that's a rather obvious case. I'm sure more careful students of scores like Mahlerian and EdwardBast could cite legions of subtler examples. (As I cogitate on this, I seem to recall instances of Brahms using thematic ideas in cadences, but anticipating them...I don't know).

So, yeah, I think Brahms meant to do that. But we'll never be able to prove it!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I am close to certain Brahms did that on purpose and almost as sure, pace Woodduck, that the cadential figure derives from the second theme and not the other way around; that is, that he composed the second theme first and then worked backwards to smooth the transition. I base this on the context - that the transition would otherwise be a little too disjunctive, given other factors like key - and the intuition that coincidences of that kind are unlikely for a craftsman like Brahms.

There was a big controversy in the 1950s and 60s over the validity of thematic resemblances in reaction to Rudolph Reti's _The Thematic Process in Music_ (1951). Reti's main claims were: "The first and second subjects of a sonata [and he means any classical era sonata!] are usually considered as contrasting … in reality, however, they are contrasting on the surface, but identical in substance"; and " In the great works of musical literature [and he means all of the major instrumental works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven!] the different movements of a composition are connected in thematic unity - a unity that is brought about not merely by a vague affinity of mood but by forming the themes from one identical substance." (pp. 4-5) His absurdly overreaching claims, based on the presence of trivial figures like arpeggiations of simple triads, were attacked by Nicholas Temperly ("Testing the Significance of Thematic Relationships," _The Music Review_ 22 (1961)), and Jan LaRue ("Significant and Coincidental Resemblances between Classical Themes" (_JAMS_ 14 (1961) 224-34), among others. These folks used a statistical argument, which was good enough for their purposes but seriously flawed nonetheless.

Donald Tovey (_Essays in Musical Analysi_s, s.v. Beethoven's Symphony no. 5) unwittingly demonstrated the flaws when he used such a statistical argument in claiming that the thematic relationships between movements in Beethoven's Fifth (based on the da-da-da-dum figure) are coincidental, since such figures also appear in the Appassionata, the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Quartet op. 74.

Anyway, Violadude, it isn't always easy to tell when thematic relationships are intentional. One has to go largely on a knowledge of the composer's style and intuition. Gregory Karl, who addresses all of these issues ("Thematic kinship and Narrative Design," _Gamut_ 10, 2001), argued that "In music from Beethoven on, determinations of thematic kinship cannot safely rest on formal criteria alone, for contributions to a comprehensive narrative design are a potentially compelling argument in favor of any marginally plausible thematic relationship." He argues that widely accepted thematic relationships in Beethoven's Eroica and Fifth Symphony, Franck's Violin Sonata in A, and Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony are accepted not primarily because they are compelling in a formal sense, but because hearing them that way leads to a comprehensive view of the dramatic structure in these works - essentially, in practical criticism, thematic relationships that make for a good story are likely to be accepted as valid, even if they are not particularly compelling from a formal standpoint.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> I am close to certain Brahms did that on purpose and almost as sure, pace Woodduck, that the cadential figure derives from the second theme and not the other way around; that is, that he composed the second theme first and then worked backwards to smooth the transition.


Maybe... But I'd point out that that four-note figure flows so naturally out of the preceding material - with every element in it having been stated already, including its lowest and highest notes in the first theme and its three ascending steps shortly thereafter - I think it more likely to have been the source of the second theme than to have been derived from it and then inserted as a transition. Brahms could have done that, but such an anticipation isn't really needed to make a satifactory transition - music is full of first-to-second-theme transitions without such anticipatory devices - and it unquestionably functions as a satisfying rounding off of what came before.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Maybe... But I'd point out that that four-note figure flows so naturally out of the preceding material - with every element in it having been stated already, including its lowest and highest notes in the first theme and its three ascending steps shortly thereafter - I think it more likely to have been the source of the second theme than to have been derived from it and then inserted as a transition. Brahms could have done that, but such an anticipation isn't really needed to make a satifactory transition - music is full of first-to-second-theme transitions without such anticipatory devices - and it unquestionably functions as a satisfying rounding off of what came before.


You are right that the figure isn't necessary to make a satisfactory transition. But I don't think it is correct that every element in it has already been stated. In fact, there are no prior instances of those ascending steps (1st to 3rd scale degrees) nor is there another instance of a descending sixth. All in all, though, you could still be right. Perhaps the second theme retrospectively justifies what otherwise would have been an arbitrary cadential figure concluding the first theme? Anyway, this would be the sort of thing one would want to settle by examining sketches, had Brahms left any. I wonder if he did? Or did he burn those too?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I did overstate a bit. But the first note and the highest and lowest notes of the first theme are also those of the figure in question, and occur in the same order even though the notes in between are different (you're right that there's no descending sixth). An ascending three step figure, from dominant heading toward tonic, occurs as a pickup throughout the opening melody (I don't have a score so I can't say which measures), and gets a little extra aural importance because of Brahms's irregular phrase structure. I think he was feeling, or seeing, both these features in forming that cadence and then deciding on his second theme. Maybe...

Did any of his sketches escape the fire?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I did overstate a bit. But the first note and the highest and lowest notes of the first theme are also those of the figure in question, and occur in the same order even though the notes in between are different (you're right that there's no descending sixth). An ascending three step figure, from dominant heading toward tonic, occurs as a pickup throughout the opening melody (I don't have a score so I can't say which measures), and gets a little extra aural importance because of Brahms's irregular phrase structure. I think he was feeling, or seeing, both these features in forming that cadence and then deciding on his second theme. Maybe...
> 
> Did any of his sketches escape the fire?


Maybe. I have no idea about sketches, which is why I threw it out there.

As for the Dude's request for other examples, there are two famous examples in Beethoven:

1) Is the second scherzo theme in Beethoven's Fifth intentionally related to the symphony's opening gesture? Tovey argued that the figure was too commonplace in his work to be significant; nearly everyone else assumes it is intentional and valid.

2) For ages folks have been asserting that the new E-minor theme in the development of the Eroica/i is related to the opening measures of the first theme - It was August Halm's idea. Many buy this connection despite it being rather tenuous in a formal sense.

What do you (or anyone else) think of these cases?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> 1) Is the second scherzo theme in Beethoven's Fifth intentionally related to the symphony's opening gesture? Tovey argued that the figure was too commonplace in his work to be significant; nearly everyone else assumes it is intentional and valid.
> 
> 2) For ages folks have been asserting that the new E-minor theme in the development of the Eroica/i is related to the opening measures of the first theme - It was August Halm's idea. Many buy this connection despite it being rather tenuous in a formal sense.
> 
> What do you (or anyone else) think of these cases?


1. I don't see why an obvious internal resemblance between two themes should be dismissed on grounds that the common element is found in a lot of other music. The implication in this case is that the composer wasn't purposeful in shaping his thematic material. To say this of Beethoven of all people...! All composers have "fingerprints," ideas they use again and again. It doesn't mean all these uses are incidental or insignificant.

2. No such connection I can see. What relationship is Halm suggesting?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Re: Brahms, this comes down to a question of how he went about writing music, doesn't it? When composing a movement, did he start with one idea and then derive subsequent ideas from it as he went along? Or did he start with two or more and figure out how to link them? The second seems more likely to me somehow but is there any evidence either way?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> Re: Brahms, this comes down to a question of how he went about writing music, doesn't it? When composing a movement, did he start with one idea and then derive subsequent ideas from it as he went along? Or did he start with two or more and figure out how to link them? The second seems more likely to me somehow but is there any evidence either way?


What does a composer actually "start" with? If the implication is that a composer begins a piece with several unrelated ideas and then hopes to find some logical relationship or common quality - I think this would be very unusual and unlikely. If he begins with more than a single idea, these are likely to have some relationship already, based on some underlying concept which represents his real beginning, and which directs him to possible linkages and arrangements. Most likely is that the actual beginning of a work is a either a singing in his head of a few notes, a single main idea, which will quickly extend itself and spawn other ideas, or an overall formal concept or feeling he wants to explore, which may suggest ideas in any combination or sequence. In other words, there's no rule.

I don't know how Brahms worked. Maybe he made some remarks about it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> What does a composer actually "start" with? If the implication is that a composer begins a piece with several unrelated ideas and then hopes to find some logical relationship or common quality - I think this would be very unusual and unlikely.


This depends on the composer. Prokofiev, for example, sketched melodic material in notebooks he had on him at all times, and then chose themes from them for specific compositions. He often seems to have done this precisely to avoid logical relationships and common qualities(!). He believed that to fully understand ones own compositional logic was to be creatively dead, so he used strategies that would guarantee unexpected or unpredictable results. These results manifested themselves when he forced incompatible themes to closely interact, which he often did as the climax of his movements in sonata form.

Beethoven often began movements with a provisional theme or motive, which was then adjusted and refined at the same time that its implications were being worked out in subsidiary material. Some of the earlier versions of well-known themes in his sketches are bizarre and it is hard to believe he even entertained them. (I heard a paper in which examples from early sketches were compared to the final versions - a real ear opener for me.)



Woodduck said:


> If he begins with more than a single idea, these are likely to have some relationship already, based on some underlying concept which represents his real beginning, and which directs him to possible linkages and arrangements. Most likely is that the actual beginning of a work is a either a singing in his head of a few notes, a single main idea, which will quickly extend itself and spawn other ideas, or an overall formal concept or feeling he wants to explore, which may suggest ideas in any combination or sequence. In other words, there's no rule.


This more or less summarizes the nineteenth century organicist ideal: Starting with one central idea and then deriving others from it like plants growing from their seeds. This seems pretty likely for some works of Brahms, like the first movement of the Fourth Symphony. But I doubt he was always so rigorous or systematic. I would guess he sometimes worked as isorhythm suggests as well



Woodduck said:


> I don't know how Brahms worked. Maybe he made some remarks about it.


I'll check my Brahms biographies for info on his working methods.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> I heard a paper in which examples from early sketches were compared to the final versions - a real ear opener for me.


Any idea where this might be found?

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that Brahms ever threw unrelated ideas together at random, only that sometimes the connection may have been that they "felt" right together rather than one being consciously derived from other in some formal way.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Schoenberg loved to cite the connection between two of the major themes of his chamber symphony, how the one precisely mirrors the other in contour, without his having designed it that way consciously at all. Given that we are talking about a man who could imagine complex 4 or 6-part counterpoint and simply transcribe it, it is not unlikely that some part of him sensed the affinity between the themes.

I find the connections between Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony and Mahler's Seventh interesting. The premiere of Mahler's Symphony was after that of his younger colleague's, but it was written before. We know that Schoenberg loved the work, and particularly the second Nachtmusik, so while it may be a bit of a stretch to say that he heard Mahler play the work for him at the keyboard before its premiere and stuck in an homage to him, it's not impossible.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Any idea where this might be found?


No. It was more than a decade ago at an American Musicological Society meeting, Midwest chapter I think. Don't remember who read it and never followed up to see if it was published. Just part of the "entertainment." 



isorhythm said:


> To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that Brahms ever threw unrelated ideas together at random, only that sometimes the connection may have been that they "felt" right together rather than one being consciously derived from other in some formal way.


I understood this and think it is likely true.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> Beethoven often began movements with a provisional theme or motive, which was then adjusted and refined at the same time that its implications were being worked out in subsidiary material. Some of the earlier versions of well-known themes in his sketches are bizarre and it is hard to believe he even entertained them. (I heard a paper in which examples from early sketches were compared to the final versions - a real ear opener for me.)


Leonard Bernstein actually incorporated some of Beethoven's sketches for the Fifth Symphony into the work, speculating on where they might have been used, and played them with the NY Phil. as part of a lecture which was included on his recording of the work. He talked about why B's final ideas were more effective. As a teenager just getting to know the music I found this fascinating and mind-expanding. I imagine that recording is still available somewhere.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> 1. I don't see why an obvious internal resemblance between two themes should be dismissed on grounds that the common element is found in a lot of other music. The implication in this case is that the composer wasn't purposeful in shaping his thematic material. To say this of Beethoven of all people...! All composers have "fingerprints," ideas they use again and again. It doesn't mean all these uses are incidental or insignificant.


I agree completely. Even if an idea is a fingerprint of his style, the way it is used in a particular composition can pretty much prove the presence of a unifying intent.



Woodduck said:


> 2. No such connection I can see. What relationship is Halm suggesting?


His original idea about the connection is silly in itself. He hears the outline of the principal theme in the cello part during the new theme, only on an E minor triad rather than an Eb major one (see the Xs in the example):









There is however a strong parallel of rhythmic profile between the two ideas:









Numerous writers have taken this alleged connection seriously and have argued that it is a critical one to the structure and/or "meaning" of the work. Best known, perhaps, is Scott Burnham's _Beethoven Hero_.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> I agree completely. Even if an idea is a fingerprint of his style, the way it is used in a particular composition can pretty much prove the presence of a unifying intent.
> 
> His original idea about the connection is silly in itself. He hears the outline of the principal theme in the cello part during the new theme, only on an E minor triad rather than an Eb major one (see the Xs in the example):
> 
> ...


Ha. An implicit rhythm may be a "connection," but it's hardly thematic or "meaningful." One would expect such underlying connections, but "underlying" seems the important word. It's surely sufficient just to note it.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Unfortunately, along with other obsessions, Brahms was especially private when it came to his working methods. He systematically destroyed notes, sketches, drafts, etc. at the end of the composition process and we'll never really know how he worked things out. Nevertheless, very little occurs in Brahms by accident, and the more you listen, the more tightly composed his works reveal themselves to be.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Ha. An implicit rhythm may be a "connection," but it's hardly thematic or "meaningful." One would expect such underlying connections, but "underlying" seems the important word. It's surely sufficient just to note it.


I agree, mostly anyway. What is interesting to me is why folks seem so intent on finding a connection. I think it is because the "new theme" is clearly marked as a critical juncture in the structure because of the chaos it follows. For many measures preceding it, duple meter cross-rhythms and motives from the counter phrase of the principal theme (from mm. 23ff) had raged and stormed, culminating in a harrowing and dissonant climax. The "new theme" follows as a direct consequence of this cataclysm. In effect, the unleashing of a disruptive force from the principal theme gives rise to the "new theme." This constitutes a relationship, of sorts, to the principal theme, and a meaningful one, but it certainly isn't the kind we are discussing.

GGluek - That is what I would have guessed. Of course Brahms would destroy the evidence.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> I agree, mostly anyway. What is interesting to me is why folks seem so intent on finding a connection. I think it is because the "new theme" is clearly marked as a critical juncture in the structure because of the chaos it follows. For many measures preceding it, duple meter cross-rhythms and motives from the counter phrase of the principal theme (from mm. 23ff) had raged and stormed, culminating in a harrowing and dissonant climax. The "new theme" follows as a direct consequence of this cataclysm. In effect, the unleashing of a disruptive force from the principal theme gives rise to the "new theme." This constitutes a relationship, of sorts, to the principal theme, and a meaningful one, but it certainly isn't the kind we are discussing.


I see what you mean. The new theme itself, with its cycling up and down, moving to another key and cycling on itself again, seems dazed after the earthquake and unsure where it is or how to move the piece ahead. Beethoven needs just such a theme here in response to this unprecedented crisis - but he knows better than to make it _entirely_ new. And so, after he's just shaken the crap out of us, he offers, beneath the uncertainty, that modicum of rhythmic reassurance that the building is still standing and that life will go on. It's a great example of meaning deriving from a combination of structure and that less tangible "narrativity" that's needed, beyond purely formal analysis, to understand why a piece is made the way it is.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

GGluek said:


> Unfortunately, along with other obsessions, Brahms was especially private when it came to his working methods. He systematically destroyed notes, sketches, drafts, etc. at the end of the composition process and we'll never really know how he worked things out. Nevertheless, very little occurs in Brahms by accident, and the more you listen, the more tightly composed his works reveal themselves to be.


Thanks. So it sounds like you think the connection Violadude was hearing is intentional then?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

A thematic-motivic guide for Mahler's Sixth at the front of the Eulenburg score was one of the first things I read about the work (after having already heard it a number of times, of course), and it specifically said that the Andante movement had no connection to the others, except insofar as its key was the most distant possible from them.

At the time, I took it for granted that whoever wrote the guide was right, but I've since come to doubt that conclusion.

First of all, there is the constant minor third-major third that inverts the major third-minor third of the other movements. Then there are certain key relations that mirror the progress of the other movements (first movement's development moves from E-flat major to B major, andante ends by moving from B major to E-flat major).

But then there are also some important connections harmonically.

The upper left is the chord at the climax of the Scherzo. The upper right is the chord that appears at the beginning of the finale and at important junctures thereafter. Below is the chord that "interrupts" the progress of the first theme of the andante. All of them are seventh chords in first inversion, the ones for the scherzo and andante are both rooted on the flattened second degree.








The left is the climax of the first movement, a D major chord with a sharpened fourth (G#) on top (sorry, in editing this I failed to note that the trombones changed to tenor clef, so it looks like B-D, but it's F#-A). The right is a chord that juts into the climax of the andante, a G-sharp in the bass with a D major chord in the treble (the natural sign in the violins looks like it's for the F, but that's a misprint).


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Since we've moved on from the specific Brahms citation to related examples in other composers, let me open this question for Haydn's Symphony 46. In my opinion it's one of the most carefully throughcomposed works of all time, besting Beethoven's Fifth in this respect. But not everybody agrees, given that the motive that repeats throughout - a variant of 5-4-3-2-1 - is such a common melodic progression in classical music. 

Still, it's worth listening through the symphony once for this, because it carries implications about what Haydn was trying to say in this one Symphony of all his works that has an explicit thematic reprise from one movement to another. Listen not just for the melody 5-4-3-2-1 but the "stepped" version of it (5-4-4-3-3-2-2-1) and close variants of same (the first instance occurs in the 3rd bar of the first movement). I think it's remarkable how much it appears and where and why, and I don't care if LaRue can show me a thousand other symphonies using this figure, I'm pretty sure it was being used, reused and overused very deliberately.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> But then there are also some important connections harmonically.
> 
> The upper left is the chord at the climax of the Scherzo. The upper right is the chord that appears at the beginning of the finale and at important junctures thereafter. Below is the chord that "interrupts" the progress of the first theme of the andante. All of them are seventh chords in first inversion, the ones for the scherzo and andante are both rooted on the flattened second degree.
> View attachment 69728


The second two chords you cite are not dominant seventh chords in first inversion, but augmented sixth chords in "root" position. I don't have the score in front of me, but given Mahler's fastidiousness in matters notational, I imagine the chords function as indicated, rather than as dominant sevenths.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> The second two chords you cite are not dominant seventh chords in first inversion, but augmented sixth chords in "root" position. I don't have the score in front of me, but given Mahler's fastidiousness in matters notational, I imagine the chords function as indicated, rather than as dominant sevenths.


No, it plays neither a dominant nor predominant function, and the sixth doesn't resolve outward in the andante, but inward. In the other movements, the chord isn't resolved at all; the finale replaces it with an A major chord (turning to minor), and in the scherzo it becomes a bare octave A.

It would be more accurate to say that the latter two are enharmonically equivalent to a German sixth chord (still in inversion, as the sixth isn't with the bass), though they are not resolved "properly."


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