This will be a rambling discussion of a few classical pieces which seemed to fit the mood, if not always the fact, of a musical “elegy.” They are what I listened to in preparation for the work on this composition and concept, with a bit on how they provided (or failed to provide) inspiration.

Witold Lutoslawsky: Musique funèbre (Funeral music)

This work is just a delight, despite being a commission in the memory of the deceased Béla Bartók, The opening section seems to be a nod in the direction of several of Bartók’s work, with its gradual unwinding of a short theme. Tonally, it’s built on a sequence of ascending tritones followed by descending half-steps, an idea that produces a lot of parallel 5ths and unisons — a pattern you can find pieces of in my work here.

Lutoslawsky and Bartók both produce a lot of dramatic dynamic changes, a style that is common to many late Romantic works. As someone who has affection for the dramatic side of music, I too embrace this, though Lutoslawsky’s sense of the dramatic leverages almost none of the harmonic tools the Romantic composers happily used for such purposes. But as an elegy, that works well.

Béla Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta

This work is probably one of favorite musical compositions, in no small part because it (and much of Bartók’s late works) fits well with what I find attractive from a tonality perspective. But this work in particular fits both the initial dark mood of an elegy (the entire first movement is very dark indeed), but it also includes a less moodily dark, tonally expanded version of that same theme in a short closing section of the last movement. Bartók’s use of polyphony, mathematically-moving tonal centers, and instrumentation also serve to inspire some of the specific compositional decisions I made. The 2nd movement of Bartók’s Divertimento op. BB118 is also close to such a mood. Both works focus on a string ensemble.

The Usual Suspects

No discussion of musical elegies could go far without the obvious inclusion of several well-known ones. Needless to say, I listened to them all, though I didn’t use them as much as “inspirations.”

• Edward Elgar: Elegy, Op. 58, for string orchestra: Definitely lush and attractive, but Elgar’s long and beautiful melodic themes aren’t developed in the same way as the above pieces.
• Sergei Rachmaninoff, Elegie in E♭ minor (Op. 3, No. 1): Lovely, relatively short piano solo.
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Élégie, Movement 3, Serenade for Strings Op. 48: Also for string orchestra, this piece is quite stirring. After a long introduction, the first violins introduce a tuneful theme which is passed from section to section. But like the others in this list, it suffers a bit from its melodic simplicity and a sense of the melodramatic.

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