This could be a first for me, a page-long 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 works, 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. (Music theorists call it 12-tone, since the sequence does manage to find it’s way through all of the notes of the chromatic scale. That is what theorists do — they take what they know, compare it to what they’re studying, and try to find a fit. I have no idea whether Lutoslawsky intended such, but my ear finds lots of things to focus on besides that. And I definitely do not work from that playbook myself!)

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, in an elegy, drama works well.

Béla Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta

This work is probably one of my favorite musical compositions of all time, 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 the initial dark mood of an elegy (the entire first movement is very dark indeed). However, it also includes a less moodily dark, tonally expanded version of that same theme in a short closing section of the last movement, a concept I also use. Bartók’s use of polyphony, mathematically-moving tonal centers 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 I, or the above composers, do.
• 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 its melodramatic nature is a bit too late romantic for me.
• Gabriel Fauré, Élégie: This might very well be one of the most famous elegies, a very moving piece initially for solo cello and piano (it was later orchestrated by the composer). Apparently, Fauré had a habit of writing the slow movement first in any suite, but in this case, none of the other movements of a possible cello suite made it to print, and the piece remains a stand-alone composition. It’s quite simple, intense, and tuneful. I ended up leveraging solo cello in my piece, but not because of this one.
• Sergei Rachmaninoff, Elegie in E♭ minor (Op. 3, No. 1): Lovely, relatively short piano solo.

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