any other nation. Still they cannot honestly be said to realize the full
possibilities of the form. It is so easy to write a good piece of free
and fairly contrapuntal harmony in three or more parts, and so arrange
it that it remains correct when the parts are brought in one by one,
that very few composers seem to have realized that any further artistic
device was possible within such limits. Even Cherubini gives hardly more
than a valuable hint that the round may be more than a _jeu d'esprit_;
and, unless he be an adequate exception, the unaccompanied rounds of
Mozart and Brahms stand alone as works that raise the round to the
dignity of a serious art-form. With the addition of an orchestral
accompaniment the round obviously becomes a larger thing; and when we
consider such specimens as that in the finale of Mozart's _Cosi fan
tutte_, the quartet in the last act of Cherubim's _Faniska_, the
wonderfully subtle quartet "Mir ist so wunderbar" in Beethoven's
_Fidelio_, and the very beautiful numbers in Schubert's masses where
Schubert finds expression for his genuine contrapuntal feeling without
incurring the risks resulting from his lack of training in fugue-form,
we find that the length of the initial melody, the growing variety of
the orchestral accompaniment and the finality and climax of the free
coda, combine to give the whole a character closely analogous to that of
a set of contrapuntal variations, such as the slow movement of Haydn's
"Emperor" string quartet, or the opening of the finale of Beethoven's
9th Symphony. Berlioz is fond of beginning his largest movements like a
kind of round; _e.g._ his _Dies Irae_, and _Scene aux Champs_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account