Curating Music History: Menuet and Trio from "Palindrome" Symphony (Haydn)
This is a piece that I had written briefly about many many months ago for @recordpool, but not for this series of Music History posts. Seeing as I'm doing a short tour with this symphony as part of the programme, I thought it would be a good time to revist the movement (the Menuet and Trio) that gives the piece it's moniker of the "Palindrome" Symphony.
In language, a palindrome is a sequence that reads the same backwords as well as forwards. Some of the better known ones (in English) are:
Madam
redder
Madam, I'm Adam
Never odd or even
A man, a plan, a canal - Panama
Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog
As you can see, it is often a clever device for a little joke. As the length of the sentence or the word increases, the less sense the actual meaning might take!
The concept also appears (with more sense) in Mathematics and Science. Palindromic numbers are a clever pastime for those interested in numbers or pure mathematics. Just for a little brain excercise, it was proven in 2018:
that every positive integer can be written as the sum of three palindromic numbers in every number system with base 5 or greater
[Source](Cilleruelo, Javier; Luca, Florian; Baxter, Lewis (2016-02-19). "Every positive integer is a sum of three palindromes". Mathematics of Computation. (arXiv preprint))
The Composition
Anyway, back to the topic at hand... the 3rd movement from this Symphony is an interesting and clever application of the principle of the palindrome. The entire piece reads and sounds the same read forwards as it does backwards! Although, personally if you ask me, it is more of an intellectual curiosity rather than a great piece of music!
Below is a version of the movement that has been audio reversed, so that it is clear to hear that it is the same (apart from the reversed decay of notes from the instruments!).
The Composer
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was the direct musical predecessor to Mozart and the teacher of Beethoven. Known as the father of the symphony and the string quartets, he was prolific in the composition of these forms of music and cemented them as the dominant forms of instrumental music in the chamber and orchestral settings in the Classical music era.
His music is pretty much the academic definition of the early Classical period, developing the musical structures that would define the period, whilst building upon the musical structures of the transition period between the Baroque and the Classical.
The Performers
Tafelmusik (the first performance) is one of the leading Early Music groups in the world. Based in Toronto, Canada it is composed of players from all around the world. Interestingly enough, it is one of the few Early Music ensembles in the world (perhaps the only one!) that offer salaried positions for it's members instead of the usual freelancer contracts!
Previous Curating Music History posts
1st movement from the String Quintet (Schubert)
1st movement from Brahms Violin sonata in G major
Sonata Representativa (aka The Animal Sonata by Biber)
Curating Music History: A Night on Bald Mountain (Mussorgsky)
El sombrero de tres picos (The Three Cornered Hat, de Falla)
Oboe and Violin Double Concerto (JS Bach)
An American in Paris (Gershwin)
1st and 2nd Arabesque (Debussy)
Last movement from 6th Brandenburg Concerto (JS Bach)
Last movements from 2nd Sonata in a minor (Westhoff)
Last movement from Brahms Violin Concerto
Finale from 4th Symphony (Tchaikovsky)
Last movement from "Jupiter" Symphony #41 (Mozart)
Overture to Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn)
Histoire du Tango: Cafe 1930 (Piazzolla)
Last movement from Violin sonata 2 (Prokofiev)
Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Britten)
'Sonata in d minor for violin and continuo" (Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre)
'Sonata duodecima' for Violin and Continuo(Isabella Leonarda)
Chaconne from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Lully)
Account banner by jimramones
.gif)
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://www.gamerjokerbreadder.com/2018/10/13/curating-music-history-menuet-and-trio-from-palindrome-symphony-haydn/
This post has been rated by the user-run curation platform CI! In this platform users are able to manually curate content. This is done regardless of Steem Power, for both rewards and vote size calculation.
Join in at our site here!
https://collectiveintelligence.red/
Or join us on discord to interact with the community!
https://discord.gg/sx6dYxt
This post was submitted for curation by: @theironfelix
This post was given a rating of: 0.823706541429674
This post was voted: 91.95%
Your post has been supported and upvoted from the Classical Music community on Steemit as it appears to be of interest to our community.
If you enjoy our support of the #classical-music community, please consider a small upvote to help grow the support account!
You can find details about us below.
The classical music community at #classical-music and Discord.
Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio.
Follow our curation trail (classical-radio) at SteemAuto or help us out with a delegation!
Yaayy.. have heard about this from my friend but because I never concentrate when listening to classical music.. I don't know what it was. And I think few composer love to play maths on the music sheet. Thank you @bengy.
Ah yes, the old composers often had a lot of little interesting things left around for musicians to find. It might not be noticed by the audience, but it can sometimes be very funny for us!
I'd say it smart or tricky 😂 because it gaves us a lot of opportunity to explore what's behind it.. though the composer himself doing that for fun. Well you know, sometimes people imagination beyond the time..😊
Thanks! Glad you enjoy these music ones!
Interesting, but that backwards version really hurts my ears! I like what I've heard of Hadyn's music, though I'm not very familiar with his work.
Do you do requests? I'm increasingly interested in the music of Monteverdi, especially after having heard this beautiful song on the radio a few months ago.
Yes, it's because of the backwards decay of the sounds, it's completely weird and unnatural so it is quite difficult to listen to!
Monteverdi, sure thing! I will find something nice for you! Although, from that era... I'm a bit more partial to Buxtehude myself!
I've never heard of Buxtehude - I will look him or her up!
I'll try and feature something in the coming week!
Yay!
Palindromes?
That reminds me of the Illuminati symbols in the Da Vinci Code and CRISPR...
Namaste, JaiChai
Ha, I only read the book... Don't remember palindromic symbols in it, but it wasn't exactly a book that commanded a huge attention!
The math bit just blew my mind. I don't know that I know enough about math to prove it to myself, but I'll take your word for it. :-) Oh, and the video at the top of your composition isn't available. I'm not sure if it's because I'm in the States or some other reason, but I thought you'd want to know.
The math part was pretty interesting.. Unexpected, and it seems to be a new discovery.
Which Condenser are you using? For some reason, it doesn't seem to be a problem with the ones that I'm using so I can't figure what is wrong!
Condenser? As far as I know I'm not using a condenser. I'm probably wrong about that though. :-)
Ha ha! You are using a condenser! A condenser is any dapp that interacts with the Steem chain. Steemit, steempeak and busy surface blog like stuff. Steem monsters surfaces more monster ownership, that sort of things!
Got it! (Kind of....) I use steemit and that's the only thing. I don't have enough monitors for all the things I use as is. I can't imagine adding more to my daily routine.
If you reverse the order of the letters, it reads the same!
Yeah, I learnt something new :)
Thanks, didn't know about the recent theorem on 3 palindromes :-)
Looks like a few puzzles in the making there!
No, that was an interesting little thing for me to find as well!
Very interesting. I heard several works of Haydn, but did not pay attention to polindromes.
This is the only example of a deliberate palindrome in Haydn's music. A little joke of his I guess!