Living Scores Learn - Hans Werner Henze

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Pitch and Interval Organization

The fully chromatic reservoir of twelve notes is established in the first twelve notes of this fifth movement. We also see a lot of the compositional techniques in chords and intervals of the former movements that reappear.

Figure 31
© Schott Music, Mainz, BAT 39

The whole movement is much more polyphonic than the former movements, there is a lot more happening at the same time. An interesting question for the interpretation of this movement could be what exactly to bring out in order to shape the musical material. An example of this added phrasing in the figure below.

Figure 32
© Schott Music, Mainz, BAT 39

What stands out in this movement in this regard is the passage without meter Gracefully, smoothly, swiftly, without rushing. In this passage, some of the notes are more recurrent than others, it appears to be a twelve-tone polyphony, where some of the notes are more important than the others. The most present notes are again the penultimate notes of the range of the instrument, the low Bb and the high B. It might be wise to look at the ratio of occurrence of every single note and to give these notes their respective importance in the interpretation of this movement. To be noted: for the first time in the piece the notes remain in their octave, thus functioning like little ‘bells’. Therefore, the whole ending of the movement could be regarded upon as a musical analogy to a belltower with twelve bells, each following their own speed and importance.

Figure 33
© Schott Music, Mainz, BAT 39

An interesting thing is the appearance of a six-note chord in the first bar of page 2 of this movement. Chung points out different strategies in his analysis (4) in order to tackle this problem for marimba players. Our preference clearly goes to the four-note emendation Chung made considering the first edition of the score of the piece.

Rhythmical Organization

The last movement of Five Scenes from the Snow Country clearly has three structural parts, marked by the change in meter and rhythm: The first part is clearly rhythmic and measured, and combines 3/4 and 2/4 bars with actual bar-lines. From the second bar of the second page on, the bar-lines are omitted in the writing, and the music becomes pulse based, very similar to the rhythmical approach of the beginning of movement 4. The third part starts on the third line of page 3 of this movement and represents a polyphonic, non-rhythmic writing until the end of the movement. Chung again made an estimation on how long the different fermatas throughout the movement can last in his analysis (5).

Notes

  1. FANG, I-Jen (2005), Doctoral Dissertation, 2005 University of North Texas, pp. 3-10
  2. CHUNG, Yiu-Kwong, Hans Werner Henze’s “Five Scenes from the Snow Country”, an Analysis”, Doctoral Thesis, City University of New York, 1991, p. 127
  3. id., pp. 138-139
  4. id., p. 144
  5. id., p. 163