Thematic Transformation in the Piano Quartet
My Piano Quartet was composed in 1993 and revised in 2018-2019. The piece encompasses a wide variety of moods and contrasting themes, and as I explained in another recent blog post, one of my aesthetic goals in the composition was to unite these diverse materials into a coherent whole. My last post explained how the work’s tonal structure supported that goal. Another device by which this unity is achieved is thematic transformation. The work is in sonata form, with three main themes, and chromatic lines — especially descending chromatic lines — play a prominent role in all of them, as well as in some secondary themes that arise during the piece’s development. The video shown at the end of this post presents the score along with a 2020 recording with violinist Cari Sue Jackson, violist Camille Phillips, cellist Sarah Langford, and myself on the piano.
The first theme (bar 23, around 1:54 in the video) is lush and lyrical.
This theme begins mezzo-piano in the cello, joined later by the viola and then the violin. As can be seen, its first phrase is an ornamented chromatic line, which descends from the B-flat tonic to the dominant. Four bars later, the answering phrase is similarly based on an ornamented, mostly chromatic ascending line, rising from D to Gb, then resuming a bar later at G and rising to C. When this theme returns in the recapitulation (b. 347, 16:58 in the video), it is presented fortissimo, in a triumphant and majestic form.
In the exposition, the transition between the first and second themes (starting at b. 37, 2:51 in the video) is based on another richly ornamented descending chromatic line in the piano, joined two bars later by an imitating line in the cello and developing into the staccato pattern seen in b. 41 of the piano part:
Beginning eight bars later, this last descending chromatic staccato pattern becomes an ostinato in the deep bass register of the piano, accompanying the second theme (b. 53, 3:30 in the video), which is a lively, diabolical fugue in the strings, stylistically reminiscent of Shostakovich.
This second theme is remarkable enough to deserve a post of its own, so I will discuss it in further detail in a future post to this blog.
The third theme, marked Maestoso, is soaring and Romantic, presented initially forte by the piano and then more quietly by muted strings in a rich contrapuntal texture. The opening phrase (b. 91, 4:31 in the video) again displays the descending chromatic line, which is echoed in the theme’s concluding phrase (b. 114).
SCORE VIDEO:
