Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T03:05:42.539Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thematicism in Gerhard's Concerto for Orchestra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Darren Sproston
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Concerto for Orchestra has probably been the most performed of Roberto Gerhard's works since its triumphant première at the 1965 Cheltenham Festival. Yet it is one of the most difficult for the listener to come to terms with, owing in part to its apparent ‘athematicism’. Any thematic aspect seems at first totally subordinated to the surface play of extreme textural and colouristic invention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 184 , March 1993 , pp. 18 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘Symphony No.l, Introduction by the composer’: notes included in the sleeve insert for HMV ASD 613, the first issue in the Gulbenkian Foundation ‘Music Today’ series, released 1965.

2 Gerhard, Roberto, ‘Tonality in Twelve-Tone Music’, in The Score, No.6 1952, p.34 Google Scholar.

3 The ritornello aspect was noted as early as 1968 by John McCabe in his notes to the Argo recording by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Norman Del Mar (ZRG 553): ‘The form of the whole work might be seen as a gigantic rondo, in which the main ritornello “theme” is the opening wind and string flourishes…’