47. évfolyam / 2. szám (2009)

The Changing Concept of Form in Anton Webern’s Art
Máté Csaba Szigeti

Webern’s form world is examined also from the direction of the Austrian-German musical tradition and the interpretations of posterity. It leans on the legacies of past (archetypes of musical form, classical schemas in compositional thinking, influences of Beethoven’s form world, tradition of the German Lied, etc.) and points to future schools of composition (particularly to the serialist techniques of the 50’s). However, over the several obvious relations this ouvre, born at intersection of traditions, stands apart the continuity of history: it accumulates experiences of capacious times, therefore the rules of time and sound arrangement become independent from the age they were born in, they become timeless and universal.

Inventio vs. Dispositio
Bach’s fugues and the problem of musical form
Gergely Fazekas

Since the beginning of the 19^th century several attempts have been made at defining an ideal basic form of the fugue, which, as Adolph Bernhard Marx admitted in 1834, „has possibly never quite been comletely realized in any one fugue thus far composed”. After the age of Formenlehre, in the 20^th century, the fugue was increasingly considered as a genre, a texture or simply a technique as opposed to a form. It is shown in the present essay that two of the most important theoriticians of the 18^th century, Johann Mattheson and Bach-disciple Wilhelm Friedrich Marpurg consider the fugue primarily as a complex of contrapuntal techniques, such as diminution, augmentation, inversion, stretto. Form is not an issue for them; or, in the words of Mattheson borrowed from rhetoric: it is the inventio of a fugue that matters, and not its dispositio. Still, relying upon Ulrich Siegele’s „discovery”, that in both volumes of the Well-tempered Clavier exactly half of the fugues lack any of the polyphonic devices mentioned above, the present essay demonstrates through the analysis of two fugues (E_b major, BWV 852; F# major, BWV 882) that even in the compositional process of some of the fugues the dispositio (i.e. the pre-planned form) plays a role equal to that of the inventio.

Subdominant Main Themes in Mozart’s Reprises
Three draft analyses
Ferenc László

It is a well known fact that the first two movements of Sonate facile (1788) have an irregular sonata form: in the reprise the first theme returns in the subdominant key instead of the tonic key. The author mentions two more examples to this form, the slow movement of Wind Serenade/String Quintette in c-minor (1782/1787) and the finale of the Sinfonia concertante in E-flat major (1779). The latter is a uniquely complex development of the A B A B A formula. “A” recites six different themes, of which Mozart could even have created a separate sonata form. At the same time, the two “B”-s are the exposition and reprise of another, original and separate sonata form. Therefore, this movement is an exceptional amalgamate of the “rondo principle” and of the “sonata principle” which is rather different from the “rondo sonata” described in textbooks.

A Hybrid Form: The Second Movement of Ernst von Dohnányi’s String Quartet in A Major (Op. 7)
Ilona Kovács

The form of the second movement of the String Quartet in A major, original not only in Dohnányi’s oeuvre but in music history in general, as well. This new musical idea is a fusion of two traditional forms: a variation and a ternary form. The theme of the movement is followed by four variations, but at the end of the second one there is an unexpected break: a contrasting Trio-like section comes in between and the flow of variations continues only after it finishes. This unique structure is analysed in detail for the first time in present study. Relying on analyses of Dohnányi’s compositions, this study traces similar formal characteristics in other works of the composer too. Finally, the article provides with an example for this hybrid form in one of its three closest relatives: the second movement of the Piano Quintet in E flat minor, Op. 26.

Lajtha and His Minuets
Emõke Tari Solymosi

László Lajtha (1892-1963), one of the most outstanding Hungarian composers of the first half of the 20th century and a member of the French Academy, belongs to a group of masters who composed quite a number of minuets in an age when the heyday of this type of dance or movement had for one and a half century been gone. His eight minuets composed in the course of two decades (1937-1958) form an integral part of diverse genres, such as suite for chamber ensemble, string quartet, sonata for piano and flute, symphony as well as ballet and opera. The ever common existence of this elegant and aristocratic type of dance at the emergence of the communist dictatorship (1948) tends to show that his attraction to minuet was not simply a manifestation of his liking to 17th and 18th century music, but a political statement by an artist neglected and silenced by the regime. This paper analyses the minuets composed by Lajtha showing the functions of this type of dance in his compositions as well as throwing light on its changes in the course of the 20th century.

Dénes Bartha, Researcher of 18th and 19th Century Hungarian Music
Lujza Tari

Researching Hungarian singing-poems between the 18^th and 19^th century meant primary importance of Dénes Bartha’s career. His outstanding work on this topic is his book on Ádám Pálóczi Horváth’s song collection of the turn of the 18^th and 19^th century (published 1953, co-written by literature historian József Kiss).
Among Pálóczi’s hand written notes (in primitive writing) we find many songs of old Hungarian music, item songs of German origin and instrumental versions of songs as well. The determining of melodies and the differences in rhythms from the defective transcriptions, and discovery of variants from Hungarian and European art- and folk music shows the excellence and wide knowledge of Bartha. The author of this study, being a former student of his, displays the actuality of Bartha’s achievements in the topics of Hungarian and German song, and verbunkos music.