Opening to Brahms 1

Analysis of Brahms’ First Symphony, Bars 1-9

The beginning of this symphony is incredible.  A wash of sound, a constant heart beat in the low voices and timpani, full string section and full woodwinds.

Sitting down to do a harmonic analysis of the opening of this movement, Brahms’ habit of playing with the meter will also play with your mind as you try to figure out which notes in which voice belong to which chord.  Above you will see a reduction of the opening of this symphony.  It has three main ideas (doubled at the octave).  Line one is played by the violins and celli.  Line two belongs to flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, Eb Horns (partially), and violas.  The pedal C (line three) is played by the timpani, contrabassoon and contrabass, and is also sustained by the C Horns.

The most important road block in analyzing this opening is lining up what the harmonic rhythm is and where the actual chords are.  The goal of the following section is to show how aligning line one over the harmonic rhythm established by line two can uncover the underlying harmonic progression in these nine bars. This can be accomplished by eliminating the second quarter note in the first bar of line one, and writing the part exactly as written.  To realign the parts at the end, extend the final Bb in measure 7 and the F natural in measure 8 by one eighth note each.  This looks like the figure below.

As you can see (and perhaps more clearly hear) this lines up the two parts almost perfectly, allowing for a harmonic progression that is clear to discern, and a regular harmonic rhythm.  The progression can be explained thusly (roman numerals reference the key of c minor):

Bar 1 : Beat 1 announces a unison c, implying i.  Beat 4 is a vii°/ii. The vii°/ii resolves to a

Bar 2 : II, which over the course of the bar and a quasi voice exchange leads to

Bar 3 : ii (the ultimate goal of the vii°/ii). Beat 4 is a vii° of the next chord which is

Bar 4 : a V7/E.  Using root motion by a third, this chord progresses to

Bar 5 : V

Bar 6 : i

Bar 7 : IV

Bar 8 : Beat 1 produces a dominant chord of the next harmony on beat 2, a V7/VII.  This chord is transformed on beat 7 by raising the root up a halfstep into a vii°/V.

Bar 9 : V.

When the piece is lined up this way, you do not find a single non-chord tone, except for a couple passing tones in the ascending stepwise sections, and the pedal C that drones throughout. 

Brahms, by offsetting line one, has created added even more tension in the first four bars (as if the progression there was not tense enough), and has added a bit of suspense to the seemingly plane V – i – IV turnaround in the middle of these bars.  This will also explain why there is a release of harmonic tension when the Ab moves to the G in bar five.

I hope that this little analysis provides a clearer picture of the opening of this great symphony.

Peter Mennin: a composer born from the Eastman tradition…

There is so much to say about this symphony, as it is filled with so many interesting elements, especially in terms of harmony and rhythm. But I feel like I’ve ramble on enough about this piece and want to move on to others.

So for my last post on Peter Mennin (at least until I study him again), I want to talk about where he belongs in the history of music. When historians and history books cover this era of music history, they tend to get tied up in the areas of atonality, serialism, chance music, minimalism, and so forth. However, Mennin fits in another camp, that of extended tonality, a continuation of what was going on before Schoenberg moved into the atonal realm.

As you have seen here, vertical harmonies might not always function the way we would expect, but horizontal lines are indicative of a key. These are elements of 20th century counterpoint, used by composers such as William Schuman, Bernard Rogers, and Howard Hanson.

I suppose you could say this area is sometimes avoided in history texts because it adds a whole new dimension to recent music history. Certainly Schumann, Rogers, Hanson, and their peers wrote for orchestra, but their names are most commonly associated with compositions for wind ensemble.

As the title of this post suggests, Mennin was born out of the Eastman tradition. He was at Eastman right before Frederick Fennell formed the Eastman Wind Ensemble, of which Hanson was a big supporter. Hanson composed several works for wind ensemble, a sound that belongs to what many college directors call “50s band music.” It is a distinct extended tonality that characterizes these works. Instrumental choirs were used independently and rarely mixed.

That being said, when I first heard Mennin’s Third Symphony, I instantly heard the sound of the wind ensemble in the orchestration and tonality. This stems from the sound that he inherited from his teachers. In flipping through Howard Hanson’s first two symphonies, what sticks out to me is his grouping of instrumental choirs, frequent use of brass for melodic material, and frequent meter shifts.

The characteristics of Mennin’s Third Symphony are very similar. And here, I am going to list the qualities of Mennin’s symphony that sets him apart from other symphonic composers:

• The use of counterpoint within tonal areas without much regard for vertical sonority.
  
• The use of asynchronous rhythms and metric pulses.
  
• The use of the orchestras choirs to present themes in whole, rarely blending woodwind and brass, or brass and string, etc.
  
• Minimal thematic material with lots of development.
  
• Ambiguous, yet fluid form.

Though Mennin’s symphonies belong to this camp of tonal (or at least tone centric) music, I hope in the future that these symphonies will get studied more frequently.

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Works Referenced

• Battisti, Frank L. The Winds of Change. Galesville: Meredith Music Publications, 2002.
  
• Hanson, Howard. Symphony No. 1. Boston: Carl Fischer Inc., 1923.
  
• Hanson, Howard. Symphony No. 2. New York: Carl Fischer Inc., 1932.
  
• Mennin, Peter. Symphony No. 3. New York: Hargail Music Press, 1948.