By: Rachel E. Mann, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Abstract of Video:
Roberto Gerhard’s Metamorphoses, a reworking of his Symphony No. 2 (1959), left unfinished at the time of his death in 1970, has a variety of serial elements at play. Like all of Gerhard’s serial works from the 1950s onward, the piece begins with the presentation of what he calls a combinatorial code. This brief video outlines how Gerhard established this combinatorial code and how he used it throughout this work to govern pitch and temporal elements.