Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and Tradition in Wolfgang Rihm's 'Fremde Szenen' I-III and Related Scores

Williams, Alastair

doi:10.1093/ml/gci234

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Rihm's relationship to serialism and the avant-garde is complex and worthy of its own study. For more on this important question, see Williams (1997) and, Knockaert (2017), andBrodsky (2018).…”

Section: Large-scale Formmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming and Disintegration in Wolfgang Rihm’s Fifth String Quartet, Ohne Titel

Hier

2022

MTO

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Wolfgang Rihm’s Fifth String Quartet poses numerous challenges to analysis because it contains little repeated material, no clear formal design, and contains a wealth of diverse musical gestures. I argue that the piece’s gestures should be understood in relation to an idealized Austro-German romantic music, common to much of Rihm’s work from the 1970s, but which fails to materialize in the Fifth Quartet. I trace the piece’s closeness to romanticism and demonstrate how the piece’s unpredictable formal process produces a large-scale gestural contour composed of smaller processes. I call processes directed toward romanticism, “becoming,” and those directed away from it, “disintegrating.” After surveying several noteworthy passages, I examine the quartet’s large-scale form. I conclude with a brief meditation on the relationship between Rihm’s aesthetics and German romanticism and the post-modernism of the 1970s and 1980s, and argue that Rihm’s music fulfills the demands of romantic theorists from the early 19th century, forming a new strain of romanticism built atop the ruined memories of the old.

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Section: Large-scale Formmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming and Disintegration in Wolfgang Rihm’s Fifth String Quartet, Ohne Titel

Hier

2022

MTO

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“…That this objectification could be more generally understood in relation to other composers had already been suggested by Alastair Williams in his 2006 article 'Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and Tradition in Wolfgang Rihm's Fremde Szenen I-III and Related Scores'. Williams concluded that article by suggesting that 'the flow of this music suggests that the future and the past can intersect on multiple horizons by placing the familiar and the unfamiliar in a dialogue capable of turning the one into the other' (Williams, 2006).…”

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confidence: 99%