Klavier (Tondichtung Die Stadt)

The structure of the tone poem:

PROLOGUE:

As a 5-bar introduction with the keynote ‘G’, the key of my song setting. This ‘G’ sounds as a very

soft harmonic in the violin, as ‘glissandi in the grand piano’ from the small to the flat G. The basic

tempo is slow: Grave and 4/4 or alternating in 6/4 time. I would like to use this to prepare a ‘misty,

grey basic mood’. In the following

SONG:

I have placed my song setting originally in the two instruments, the violin carries - played with

mute - the melody of the first verse, accompanied by the piano after four bars.

The second verse - melodically the repetition of the first verse - is now in the right hand in the piano

with the same accompaniment, surrounded by triplets and semiquavers in the violin.

Both verses - in keeping with the text - are in G minor.

The third verse is - in keeping with the memories of youth - in major and from here on without

mutes in the violin. I have also changed the tempo and the character of the performance from Grave

to Allegretto and the time signature to 6/8 time. In the tone poem, I have adopted this verse 1:1, i.e.

the violin takes over the original vocal part and the piano performs the original piano

accompaniment from my song setting.

Metamorphosis I:

This is where the actual tone poem begins, as I try to capture the atmosphere of the first two verses

in the form of a free, incomplete series from the sound material available up to this point: Tempo

and character: Grave. This means that this basic row is based on the ‘G minor’ of the song setting,

the frequently occurring fifths - first in the left hand in the piano - are intended to represent the line

‘...The fog presses heavily on the roofs...’, the violin part-writing rather the colour grey ‘...On the

grey beach, on the grey sea...’. Sixteenth-notes and thirty-second-note runs describe the waves of

the sea, which are repeated in condensed form at the end of this Metamorphosis I for the text line

‘...And through the silence the sea roars...’.

Metamorphosis II:

Stands for the third verse, so now again in allegretto character in 6/8 time. The lyrical I - the violin -

moves out of the city to the nearby sea, looking from there towards the city. The storm by the sea

can be recognised by the thirty-second-note passages in a roiling and diminishing dynamic.

Metamorphosis III:

Is the return to the city to the first and second verses - depicted here in the ‘crab technique’ from

Metamorphosis I.

EPILOGUE:

The tone poem concludes - after a long day in the evening, so to speak - again with the five bars of

the prologue, only slower than the latter and the ‘glissandi in the grand piano’ now go in the

opposite direction, i.e. from top to bottom.

First performance: 19.Juli 2013 Drensteinfurt Violine: Istvan & Klavier: Gabrielle Karacsoniy

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