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| We are taught the very first day of writing lessons what we should include in a story, namely the time, the place, the characters, and the event; but should an event be made incomplete with the lack of the previous three?
There are many people fascinated by the universes created by writers and start to try their hands in writing. They usually imitate the style of writers they admired.
But there is a problem. Some of them are caught in the struggle to find the time and place for their stories. They think of the time and place they are now in, only to find that they just do not want their stories take place then and there, fearing that their characters should sound or be taken like the people around them, or even that writing is to them the way out of instead of into their petty world. They then think of the time and place their admired writers brought them to, only to realize that their knowledge of that world limits to what one should expect but not what one should not expect. They fear that their ignorance would lead to contradictions attracting ridicules. But this problem applies only when the time and place are real and agreed among people. Some people then find a way out.
Fantasy satisfies the writer's yearning to escape his petty world and his ambition to create his own universe. He need not worry about contradictions as his words rule. He can make anything happens.
Yet a fantasy is bound by its time and place, even though they are the sole creation of the ambitious writer. What if we fling altogether the time and place away?
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| After the perfect cadence into bar 26 and a brief crotchet rest, we go back from pianissimo to piano, leaving the second cello and contrabass to reassert their pianissimo.
In the viola and the first cello voiced a lament in unison, the nasal voice of the viola and the chest voice of cello complementing each other. The march rhythm goes to the second violin, sightly stressed by the pianissimo bass line.
Pay attention to the lament. It will become predominant through out the movement. The first eight bars, beginning with minor second descent move from the mediant to the dominant, interpreted as the mediant of the relative major. The next eight bars also begins with a descent of a minor second, this time from the dominant, and continue with a decorated chromatic descent to the mediant, a cadence with double appogiatura D-C#-C. It then proceed to the tonic with a double acciacautra motive that has formerly lead to the mediant and the dominant. Notice how this lament, while preserving its melodic beauty, forms counterpoint with top line in marching rhythm. You may have thought that the top line was written later to the melody, but the sketch of that seemingly monotonous top line actually preceeds this lamenting melody and even the whole symphony. As evidence shows, the idea of the symphony starts with this marching theme.
When you listen to the piece, pay attention to both the marching theme and the lamenting theme, appreciating how they form counterpoint with each other, for they will be what we have till the first climax.
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| As the A minor chord in second inversion has its diminuendo from forte into the pianissimo of the third bar, the strings enter.
The rhythm is repetitive, with tempo too fast to be funeral, mood too dark to be marching, yet makes this piece sometimes regarded as a funeral march. What is immediately arresting when the strings voice the marching rhythm is the grim harmony, enhanced by the dividing of the cello, instead of the topmost line, which, in spite of its apparent monotony, must be regarded with great care as it will show its significance later in the movement.
The phrasing is simple. The first eight bars (bars 3-10) moves from A minor to a cadence in C major. The earliest draft of this part only included the topmost line, consisting of merely three notes (E, F# and G) in repeating crotchets and quavers. The melody alone would make as well as if it is in C major. But the moving harmony confirms the tonality of A minor and transports us safely to C major. The next eight bars (bars 11-18) first move to E minor than back to a firm perfect cadence in A minor. The latter eight bars are then repeated pianissimamente, forming a 24-bar unit which will be repeated several times until the first climax.
These bars are excellent exercise for tonal analysis. Try it before we move on to the first repetition of the 24-bar unit where a lamenting theme of the viola and the first cello in unison shows its colours.
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| Let's stop the talk for a while and listen to the piece itself. Pay attention to the beginning. This version is performed by BPO conducted by Karajan.
Note the march-like rhythm in the strings after the beginning chord. Some say this piece is a funeral march, some say it is too fast to be one. However, the sombre mood of this piece cannot be mistaken. Listen to it and remind yourself what happened twenty years ago.
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| Starting from today we will look at something more exciting. Well, not exactly exciting considering the mood of the piece. But on second thoughts, it is indeed quite exciting for a second movement. The tempo marking can already tell you this. The second movement is usually a slow movement, but the tempo for this movement is allegretto, moderately fast, even though it is relatively slow compared to other movements. You may ask, what is that movement I am talking about? I will now tell you. It is the second movement, the movement encored at the premiere, of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, called by Richard Wagner "the Apotheosis of Dance." This cannot be truer. If you look at the rhythms throughout the piece, you can see that it is nothing but dance. Even the slow introduction. Even this second movement, the traditional place for a slow movement. Why do I choose the second movement to talk about here? It is because it is the most famous and loved movement of the symphony. More than the first movement and the finale. Pity that the Japanese drama series just picked the latter two. Let's stop all this glibberish and look at the opening of this movement: The magic start with the first chord.
Remember that the first movement end with an A major chord. Now this movement open with an A minor chord. It seems an ordinary minor chord in the winds, but look closer.
The woodwinds behave normally here, spreading the chord notes A C E from bottom to top across two octaves evenly.
But the horn in E! How are they transposed? For a horn in E, a written C means a concert E, so these two horns are reinforcing the dominant in this tonic A minor chord. Moreover, note that the concert pitch is a minor sixth below the written pitch, so the E of the second horn is lower than the A of the second bassoon. That means this chord is an A minor chord in second inversion. This movement starts with an unstable chord, and this is where the magic starts.
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