Juxtaposition
Two breakthroughs which, according to Brown, Austrian musicologist Hans Keller, Dutch musicologist Francis Maes and Soviet musicologist Daniel Zhitomirsky, came to Tchaikovsky while composing his Fourth Symphony, worked hand-in-hand in giving him a workable solution to building large-scale forms. The first answer was essentially to sidestep thematic interaction and keep sonata form only as an "outline," as Zhitomirsky phrases it, containing two contrasting themes. Within this outline, the focus now centered on periodic alternation and juxtaposition. Instead of offering what Brown calls "a rich and well-ordered argument," Tchaikovsky integrates what Keller calls "new and violent contrasts" between musical themes, keys and harmonies by placing blocks of dissimilar tonal and thematic material alongside one another. These blocks, Zhitomirsky explains, are demarcated by their distinct contrast in musical material and "by the fact that each theme usually constitutes an independent and structurally complete episode." The block containing the main theme, Zhitomirsky writes, alternates with the one containing the second theme. The former, he continues, is "steadily enlivened in reiteration" by what Warrack calls "ostinato figures, dramatic pedal–points, sequences that screw anticipation to a fever pitch with each new step, all expressed in frenzied rhythmic activity." The result of this enlivening, Zhitomirsky says, is "that the very contrast of the two blocks is consistently sharpened."
An important part of this process, Keller states, is that "thematic and harmonic contrasts" are "not allowed to coincide." Mozart, he writes, evidently preceded Tchaikovsky in this tactic of modulatory delay and may have helped give Tchaikovsky the impetus in attempting it himself, although Tchaikovsky develops this form of contrast "on an unprecedented scale." Keller offers the second theme in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony as an example of how this process works. In sonata form, he writes, the first subject enters in the tonic and the second subject follows in a contrasting but related key harmonically. Tension occurs when the music (and the listener with it) is pulled away from the tonic. Tchaikovsky "not only increases the contrasts between the themes on the one hand and the keys on the other," but ups the ante by introducing his second theme in a key unrelated to the first theme and delaying the transition to the expected key. In the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky introduces the second theme in A-flat minor. Since the symphony is written in the key of F minor, the second theme should go either to the relative major (A-flat major) or the dominant (C minor). By the time Tchaikovsky establishes the relative major, this theme has finished playing. Thus, Keller says, "the thematic second subject precedes the harmonic second subject" (italics Keller).
This process, according to Brown and Keller, builds momentum and adds intense drama. While the result, Warrack charges, is still "an ingenious episodic treatment of two tunes rather than a symphonic development of them" in the Germanic sense, Brown counters that it took the listener of the period "through a succession of often highly charged sections which added up to a radically new kind of symphonic experience" (italics Brown), one that functioned not on the basis of summation, as Austro-German symphonies did, but on one of accumulation.
Within this overall concept of juxtaposition, Tchaikovsky employed his second solution. While Maes calls this answer a "structure" and Zhitomirsky an "independent and structurally complete episode," it could actually be described as a system in which melody, harmony, rhythm and tone color become interrelated elements functioning together like the working parts of a clock, each part moving independently but also as part of an overall action serving one purpose. With a clock, that purpose is indicating the time. With a symphony of the kind Tchaikovsky strove to craft, that purpose is two–fold: to resolve the overall tonal and emotional conflict introduced at the beginning of the work and to relieve the tensions produced as a by-product of that conflict, which keep the listener's attention as that conflict progresses. This systematic grouping of normally independent elements may have been a natural outgrowth of Tchaikovsky's creative process, as he mentioned to von Meck:
I write my sketches on the first piece of paper that comes to hand, sometimes a scrap of writing paper, and I write in very abbreviated form. The melody never appears in my head without its attendant harmony. In general, these two musical elements, together with the rhythm, cannot be conceived separately: every melodic idea carries its own inevitable harmony and rhythm. If the harmonies are very complicated, one must indicate the part-writing on the sketch.... Concerning instrumentation, if one is composing for orchestra, the musical idea carries with it the proper instrumentation for its expression.
By making subtle but noticeable changes in the rhythm or phrasing of a tune, modulating to another key, changing the melody itself or varying the instruments playing it, Tchaikovsky could keep a listener's interest from flagging. By extending the number of repetitions, he could increase the musical and dramatic tension of a passage, building "into an emotional experience of almost unbearable intensity," as Brown phrases it, controlling when the peak and release of that tension would take place. Cooper calls this practice a subtle form of unifying a piece of music and adds that Tchaikovsky brought it to a high point of refinement.
As did Keller, Maes uses the first movement of the Fourth Symphony as an example of how this union of elements provides dramatic impact. This movement is "dominated by a powerful and highly rhythmic motto in the brass" which Tchaikovsky uses to demarcate various points in the overall structure. Tchaikovsky makes the actual first theme, already rhythmically complex, seem even more unstable by the notes he writes to accompany it. When he recapitulates this theme, he adds further rhythmic movement in the form of chromatic lines in the woodwinds. The second theme follows a more regular rhythm, which is enhanced by exchanges between violins and woodwinds. The music goes from rhythmic complexity to stasis, "in which a single chord is maintained for twenty-two measures in a regular rhythmic pattern." This respite, however, is also preparation for "a rhythmically confused episode" where various instrumental groups "converse by complex hemiola structures," where multiple rhythms play against one another. "That passage wipes out the sense of meter, rendering the reappearance of the motto all the more dramatic. In the development, the complexities of the exposition are further increased."
The crux of the drama in this movement, Maes continues, comes musically from the rhythmic conflict between the opening motif and the first theme. At the same time, a dramatic conflict is played out between the dramatic nature of these two themes. "The motto uses the rhythm of the polonaise ... in its provocative and aggressive aspect. The first theme is marked, "in movimento di valse": a waltz expressing sentiment and vulnerability." Tchaikovsky initially allows these two elements to peacefully contrast against each other. In the development section, where Western composers in the past had combined their themes by variation and transformation before restating them, Tchaikovsky throws his themes together essentially unchanged to clash "remorselessly." In the movement's coda, he changes the note values of the waltz "so that the structure of the polonaise and the first two thematic elements become fused."
Read more about this topic: Symphonies By Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky