Although there are somewhat tortured harmonic theories to explain this chord in a single tonality, it is simpler to consider this as simultaneous C major and F# major chords, keys a tritone apart.  On the piano (which is the instrument this is played on in Stravinsky’s ballet) this tremolo consists of two simple but unrelated chords, one all white keys and one all black keys.  Tonality is ambiguous.  Is the key here C or F#?

Certainly Rachmaninoff was not so extreme in his harmony!?  He comes close to the same kind of tonal ambiguity here in the 23rd variation of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini:

Here the piano is playing in A flat minor, while the orchestra plays in A minor, a half tone higher.  It’s an effect suggesting that the piano is out of tune, i.e. too flat.  Perhaps this is a little joke (there is a lot of humor in this piece) on violinists playing out of tune.  The Rhapsody includes many violin-like effects, as the theme of the Rhapsody was written by Paganini, the greatest 19th century violinist.  In the last variation, which mimics the leaps seen in virtuoso violin pieces, Rachmaninoff uses polytonic arpeggios in the left hand which could have come right out of Petrushka.

The first 6 notes in the left hand of each measure consist of two triads, minor and major, a major second distant.  He combines D minor and E major, then E minor and F# major, then F# minor and A flat major, and then A flat minor and B flat major, in a rising sequence.  On the third beat of each measure, the chord of the first beat is lowered a half tone (e.g. D minor becomes C# major), to make the tonality even more loose.  This is decidedly odd harmony, especially combined with a violin-like right hand of simultaneously ascending and descending chromatic scales.

These examples and my previous post on this subject demonstrate that, as much as Rachmaninoff professed publicly that he was incapable of understanding “modern music,” he was very capable of using very modern harmonic idioms in his own music when it suited him.

At the beginning of this excerpt, marked 1, the piano plays a B natural above a root position C minor chord, the key of the movement. This is a Cmin7 chord, dissonant, but fairly conservative and common in the Romantic Era. The B is flattened and then suspended over the dominant of g minor, resolving to an A in the next measure. Again, fairly typical. Rather than the expected g minor chord, Rachmaninoff prolongs the tension by making the next chord an augmented 6th chord, at mark 2. The piano however repeates the A natural of the last measure, over the A flat in the base, essentially an augmented octave or minor 9th. This A natural can be considered another passing note, since it resolves to A flat the next half note. Certainly more daring than the previous measures harmonically, but the best is yet to come. The orchestra suspends the A flat into the next measure, but the harmony underneath is the 3rd inversion of a c minor 6th chord, i.e. with A natural in the base (mark 3). What’s amazing about this chord and what sets it apart from the cadence at mark 1 is that the A flat is being suspended (and actually repeated by the piano) over not just an A natural, but an A natural and a G natural. This is essentially 2 minor seconds on top of each other; if the spacing of the notes were different this would be a tone cluster (G – A flat – A). A lesser composer than Rachmaninoff would have made the top note an A natural, or the bass an A flat, but instead the cadence as written is one of the most poignant in music. One wonders if Rachmaninoff, the professed musical conservative, struggled a bit with this harmony before committing to it. Next time you listen to this concerto pay attention to this cadence — it has an odd sound, almost like quarter tone music, that is unique and a bit disquieting. It’s an incredibly moving effect. It may not be Prokofiev or Scriabin, but still daring harmonically for a composer too often deemed a holdover from the 19th century.

I have been familiar with these concertos my whole life, have various recordings, have the scores for them all, and have studied and played through them. I will discuss each concerto (and maybe the Rhapsody on A Theme of Paganini too) separately in upcoming posts, but will give a hint here of some of the themes I would like to discuss.  These include the influence of 20th century advances in harmony such as dissonance and polytonality (e.g. the last variation in the Rhapsody contains arpeggios with triads in 2 different keys), self-reference (e.g. the beginning of the 4th Concerto as a reflection of the end of the 3rd Concerto),  and variant versions of the concertos. Regarding the last theme, Rachmaninoff was notoriously self-critical with the result that all the concertos save the 2nd (which I’ll argue is one of the most “perfect” pieces ever composed, especially the first movement) have multiple versions. The 1st Concerto as published and performed nowadays is really pretty much the last concerto and is markedly different from the original 1st Concerto. The 3rd Concerto has numerous ossias and was at least in the past often performed with various cuts. And the 4th Concerto has 3 different forms, with the final published version markedly different in tone and character than its manuscript version. I’ll attempt to publish my analyses in bits and pieces in upcoming posts on this blog.

I am looking into the alternatives.  I think eFax or something similar will work.  Faxes can be sent or received via email, where I can even view them on my Droid.  A good fast document scanner (useful not only for faxes, but to declutter the office of papers) will be necessary.  There will be a charge for the fax service, but I bet it will be less than having a second phone line, and the net result will be a decrease rather than increase in paper around the office.   I need to research what service to use and what scanner to get, but I’m sure this is the way to go.  Maybe next I’ll get rid of this teletype I am typing on and upgrade to a screen and keyboard (just kidding).

One of the state-of-the-art teletypes here at EP Studios

ClickIt Screenshot

I’m working on the next version of ClickIt.  ClickIt is an automatic computer document signing program.  It allows batch signing of documents in programs that don’t allow batch signing.  It was originally designed to work with the Allscripts EMR system which forces the user to repetitively click the Sign button, wait for the next document to load, and click again, ad infinitum.  If these documents have already been reviewed, it seems stupid to spend 20 or 30 minutes clicking a button a few hundred times.  Not a good use of a physician’s time!  The new version of Clickit will be much more flexible and work with any system that can use a keystroke to sign a document.  There is a nice GUI and it will run on any version of Windows.  It is based on the AutoIt utility, instead of the old defunct Microsoft ScriptIt program.  I expect to complete this new version in a week to two, hopefully sooner.

Then I read about visual-line-mode. It seems to do the same thing as longline-mode, except it doesn’t insert the linefeeds into the text. It just wraps the text on the screen somehow without putting in the linefeeds. You can see what it does again by using whitespace-mode. So, that’s a wrap!