By: Melissa Hoag, Oakland University
Abstract of Video:
This video analyzes the first of Elisabeth Lutyens’s (1906–83) Seven Preludes for Piano (op. 126), titled (“…whose name was writ in water”). Lutyens’s titles are quotes by John Keats (1795–1821), and as in Debussy’s preludes, titles are appended to the end of each prelude.
Short and sparsely textured, this prelude offers an ideal entry into serialism; it features pitch repetitions, elisions, and “wrong” notes, and thus avoids imparting many of the myths delineated in Straus’s Twelve-Tone Music in America (2009). Also, as others have noted, while the efficiency of teaching brief pieces that demonstrate a compositional technique perfectly is tempting, teaching only the most systematic works can convey the impression that serial and other post-tonal music always follows a tidy “system” (Stroud 2023; Buchler 2017), while few pieces are actually systematic. Lutyens’s prelude provides ample messiness in its serial approach without overwhelming students.
The prelude’s title offers abundant opportunity for interpretation. Like ripples in water, its fleeting motives resist establishing a predictable order, leaving a sense of impermanence. Despite occasional invariance and elision, row forms often avoid systematic coherence, which intensifies the work’s ephemerality.
Bibliography:
Buchler, Michael. 2017. “A Case Against Teaching Set Classes to Undergraduates.” Engaging Students 5.
Lutyens, Elisabeth. 1978. Seven Preludes, op. 126. University of York Press.
Schoenberg, Arnold. 1975 (1950). “Composition with Twelve Tones.” In Style and Idea, ed. Leonard
Stein. Reprint: University of California Press.
Straus, Joseph. 2009. Twelve-Tone Music in America. Cambridge.
Stroud, Cara. 2023. “Inclusivity and the ‘Perfect Teaching Piece’ in the Undergraduate Post-Tonal
Classroom.” Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom, ed. Melissa
Hoag.
About the Author:
Melissa Hoag is Professor of Music Theory at Oakland University in Michigan. She is editor of Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom (2022, Routledge). Other articles have appeared in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy (ed. VanHandel), Music Theory Online, Dutch Journal of Music Theory, Gamut, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, and College Music Symposium. Hoag is currently co-editor of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, and also serves as Chief Reader for the College Board’s Advanced Placement Exam in Music Theory. She is also currently member-at-large for the Society for Music Theory’s Executive Board. She holds a Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University.