By: Christoph Neidhöfer, McGill University
Abstract of Video:
As Hartmut Krones (2003) and Don McLean (1995) have noted, in the final movement of Impressions for piano (1926/27-1967), written in 1964, Julius Schloss (1902-1972) quotes the tune from the Bach chorale “Es ist genug,” which Alban Berg cites in his Violin Concerto from 1935. This video examines Schloss’s use of the choral melody, whose first three phrases he imitates in canon at the lower twelfth in a complex web of twelve-tone rows. How was Schloss able to do this with a twelve-tone series he had originally designed in 1926/27 without this chorale tune in mind?