Thursday, February 03, 2005

Concerto in G minor for Organ, Strings and Timpani - Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

Movement 1 (Andante):

The piece begins with the jarring voice of the organ in a harsh and dissonant, yet thrilling theme, it fades once into the softer, more esoteric folds of the organ's pipes and suddenly is halted by the timpany and strings. The theme returns, punctuated at by an especial dissonance which then smoothes into a crawling, soft, yet more lyrical suggestion on the part of the strings. The music pauses, the violins hesistantly draw up part of a scale and mimic meekly the original theme of the organ--ending in a sort of diminished seventh chord. Then the low voice of the cellos speaks until the organ, loud and full of brassy gusto, dominates once more the texture. Suddenly the strings spring out in a quick and leaping (and also more tonal) theme. The rhythm is quite striking--dotted, almost as though the melody is bouncing downward. The organ and strings play off each other, and eventually decide upon a tonal ambiance of something to order of a chord "ti, do, re, mi" and then suddenly break into a final dissonance which ends the movement.
-subsequently in the following movement, a part of the theme of the strings is echoed.

1 comment:

Scott said...

This sounds like an interesting piece (I've never heard it). I'm not sure what one of your clauses means: "...eventually decide upon a tonal ambiance of something to order of a chord 'ti, do, re, me'..." Can you clarify?