Ordinary people. Extraordinary Impact. side, there were audience members who preferred Western classical music and were incensed that Piazzolla had included bandoneons in a piece scored for an orchestra. On the other side, tango aficionados felt that he had pushed the traditional genre too far beyond their expectations. Across all three movements, the Sinfonia Buenos Aires is infused with striking dissonances, passionate melodies, driving rhythms, and an unmistakable ethos of the tango.
PAULA MAUST is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Peabody Conservatory. She is the author of Expanding the Music Theory Canon and performs extensively as a harpsichordist and organist.
ALSOP CONDUCTS TCHAIKOVSKY’ S PATHÉTIQUE
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and elegance. While 5 / 4 meter is not typical in the Western canon, it is no less elegant than its more common 3 / 4 counterpart. The movement is in ternary form, featuring a more somber melody in the B section. Like many symphonists, Tchaikovsky drew upon dance meter and character. But unlike most of his fellow symphonists, this dance movement comes second rather than third. His reason? It serves the story, as III. Allegro molto vivace is a rush; a virtuosic caper; full of joy, confidence, and exuberance. Tchaikovsky doesn’ t have time for a development section, because that’ s not the point: the main theme and its variants are the draw, emerging in different textures and instrumentations, all towards a triumph that’ s almost tragic. Like all good things, it can’ t last forever.
IV. Finale: Adagio lamentoso. The opening melody signals something tragic and sorrowful. But it’ s the second melody that takes your heart and squeezes. Here is the passion, that flurry of emotion that can only be sustained for so long. That must come to an end, that must be let go.
A. KORI HILL specializes in American music, Black composers, and music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is a program notes annotator for Seattle Symphony and Chamber Music Society at Lincoln and the ead writer for Classics for Kids Blog at Cincinnati Public Radio. She is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Florence B. Price, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
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