Musicologica Brunensia 52 / 2017 / 2
DOI: 10.5817/MB2017-2-10
Compositional Technique and Phenomenological
Categories of Perception in the Passacaglia
of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8
Faculty of Fine Arts, Yarmouk University, Irbid, JOR
Abstract
This article is an attempt to apply several fundamental phenomenological concepts regarding
the perception of sound, and music in particular, to the analysis of a concrete musical com-
position, the Passacaglia of Dmitriy Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8. We aim at exploring the
underlying compositional structures that determine how a musical composition presents itself
to consciousness, and how it is perceived. An approach is used that combines the views of two
of the most prominent researchers in the field of phenomenology of music, F. Joseph Smith
and Don Ihde. Our main concern is the structure of primary perceptions and how the latter are
intended as a unified phenomenon (akoumenon). A specifically descriptive method is used to
analyze the way in which the music presents itself to us acoustically and how we perceive it as
sounding in time. After that reference is made to techniques of composition used to mediate
and achieve the described sounding.
As a result our research has revealed a deliberately structured dialectical play of awakened
retentions, of fulfilled and unfulfilled protentions, a play with intentionality, touching upon the
most subtle mechanisms of perception. The current research has also shown that the catego-
ries of musical composition and dramaturgy reflect an underlying dramaturgy of phenomeno-
logical categories of perception related to the listener’s intentionality. These categories include
shifts in the focal-fringe ratio, as the focus of intentionality narrows or broadens in accordance
with the auditory field of the music it is intending. They also include shifts between different
focal cores as such that we have called regional shifts of focus. On a more fundamental level
regional shifts of focus occur between various musical parameters, such as rhythm, tonality-
modality, orchestration, melody, timbre, playing technique. Also, the bidimensional character
of sound makes it possible for the noetic act to shift its focus between the roundish and the di-
rectional dimensions of the auditory field-shape of the music intended. Finally, we have shown
how musical time is thematized as a region of intentional focus by way of a desynchronization
of various layers of the polyphonic textures within the framework of the fundamental repetitive
structure of the Passacaglia. Shostakovich forms three processes of desynchronization within
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Compositional Technique and Phenomenological Categories of Perception in the Passacaglia …
each of the work’s three parts (exposition, development, and recapitulation), each of which
starts with a synchronization of the musical material and its layers.
Keywords
Shostakovich, Passacaglia, tonality, modality, musical parameters, phenomenology, time-con-
sciousness, retention, protention, passive synthesis, focus-fringe ration, desynchronization
The current article is an attempt to apply a number of basic phenomenological concepts
regarding the perception of sound, and music in particular, to the analysis of a con-
crete musical composition, the Passacaglia of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8. We
aim at exploring the underlying compositional structures that determine how a musical
composition presents itself to consciousness, and thus how it is perceived. We will use
an approach combining the views of two of the most prominent researchers in the field
of phenomenology of music, F. Joseph Smith and Don Ihde. Our main concern will
be the structure of primary perceptions and how the latter are intended as a unified
phenomenon (akoumenon). Another poignant question that inevitably arises, but which
the scope of the current research does not allow us to investigate, is that of how these
structures come to constitute what we call a meaning of the composition as a whole in
our consciousness. Thus we will use a specifically descriptive method to analyze the way
in which the music presents itself to us acoustically and how we perceive it as sounding in
time. After that we will make reference to techniques of composition used to mediate and
achieve the described sounding.
Since ancient times the mystic relation between music as sound and the effect it has
on humans has been the object of everlasting speculations and interpretations, theories,
and teachings. The questions of how sound is perceived, of how sound becomes mu-
sic that evokes emotions, and of how it acquires meaning for our consciousness, have
tormented the human mind since the dawn of what we denote with the word culture.
Musicology and phenomenology have been drifting towards each other since the end of
the nineteenth century. At that time Carl Stumpf, the forefather of the phenomenology
of music, develops in his work Tonpsychologie (Tone psychology, 1890) the notion of tonal
fusion to explain the effect of tonal consonances and, in a broader sense, of harmony in
general. Approximately two decades later Edmund Husserl uses musical tone as a para-
digm of internal time in his work Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusst-
seins (Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, 1928), as
well as for his theory on passive synthesis in his work Analysen zur Passive Synthesis (Analy-
ses of Passive Synthesis; first published: Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966; on basis of
manuscripts 1929–1936). During the post-war decades much research has been done in
the field of phenomenology of sound in the general, and in the field of phenomenology
of music in particular. Yet these attempts seem to be mostly sporadic notions founded
on rather divergent grounds that do not sum up to a general and overall theory related
concretely to music and musicology. The current research attempts to tie a number of
fundamental and generally accepted conceptions to actual musical material and to the
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Compositional Technique and Phenomenological Categories of Perception in the Passacaglia …
compositional techniques applied in it, thus concretizing these conceptions and giving
them a more experiential dimension.
Theoretical Considerations
Phenomenology of sound, or, using F. Joseph Smith’s term, akoumenology, is primarily
concerned with sound as such, as it presents itself to us, i.e. noematically. As Smith writes,
“any merely semantic meaning is secondary to the sound in its noematic significance” (Smith
1979: 100). The same attitude is expressed by Roman Ingarden when he declares that:
“the specifically aesthetic questions were to me at that time of secondary importance” (Benson
2009: ix). All other considerations such as theoretical conceptions, historical and bio-
graphic facts, as well as semantic categories are temporarily bracketed. This leads to a de-
scription of the noema, the composition, as it presents and shows itself. After that refer-
ence is made back to the noetic act, to how we perceive the work and how we intend it as
one, as a unified entity, and how it constitutes itself as meaningful in our consciousness.
In his study The Experiencing of Musical Sound (1979), F. Joseph Smith examines sound
as it is experienced from two interconnected aspects. He combines Husserl’s model of
time-consciousness with his notions on passive synthesis. According to Husserl, sound
is perceived momentarily, i.e. as a sequence of now-moments, in which each moment
leaves behind it a trail of retentions or short-term memory instances that slowly weak-
en until they temporarily vanish into memory. From this “memory awareness” that is
a “sublevel of consciousness” it can be recalled either by an active act, or passively, be-
ing awakened by an accidental event. On the other hand, sound evokes protentions, i.e.
projections towards the future, both in the consciousness of the composer during the act
of composition as well as in that of the listener, which open up a horizon of possibilities
and expectations that might or might not be fulfilled as sound unfolds. Thus the concept
of objective time is replaced by one of “phenomenal time”, i.e. appearing time, time as
it shows itself (erscheinend). Pieces of music “appear to us and develop over time. Husserl’s
account of internal time consciousness explains how we are able to experience a phenomenon
over time. We ‘intend’ an object in the moment. Yet that object has continuity for us both because
of protentions and retentions” (Benson 2011: 582). The extension of a melody is differ-
ent from that of a res extensa in that it is the “subject expanding in consciousness, the latter
interpreted affectively” (Smith 1979: 101). Time shows itself as an “intentional line of temporal
experience” (Smith 1979: 103).
The question that arises is: how is a sequence of now-moments or primary impres-
sions perceived as a whole, a unity? Since a melody is not actively reconstructed and
synthesized in consciousness subsequently to the act of listening, but rather enters con-
sciousness as already fused in perception, Smith turns to Husserl’s notion on passive
synthesis. This latter term is a development of Husserl’s mentor Carl Stumpf’s concept of
fusion or amalgamation (Verschmelzung), which he uses to explain two consonant tones
sounding together being perceived as one entity rather than simply as two simultaneously
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sounding separate tones. According to Smith, sound unfolding in time, be it a melody,
a musical form, or a whole composition, is perceived as one entity, a unity, as result of
a similar process of passive synthesis applied to a sequence of sound-instances. This
relative passivity is in the heart of sound perception as such and is based on a unity of
the same intuitional intentionality intending a sound entity as a whole at the pre-analytic
stage of perception, which has its own type of intentionality, independent of what we call
“mental activity”. Thus, sound unfolding in time becomes a “progressive building of tempo-
ral unity in the consciousness of the composer and the perceiver, a unity held together as primary
impression, memory, and expectation” (Smith 1979: 106). This passivity, we must emphasize,
is of relative nature as opposed to deliberate mental activity. Husserl uses many terms in
his work Analysen zur passiven Synthesis to describe this process in an attempt to designate
its mediatory character as located between the traditional understandings of active and
passive. A thing “builds itself up” (sich aufbauen), “primordially constitutes itself” (sich
ursprünglich konstituieren)”, “achieves itself” (sich leisten), “produces itself” (sich herstellen),
and “fulfills itself” (sich erfüllen) (Husserl 1968: 140, 144, 201, 359, 369). All these terms
evolve later, in Heidegger’s Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, to become the work of art “put-
ting up” or “establishing” a world (eine Welt aufstellen) (Heidegger 1977: 30).
Another prominent philosopher of music is the American postphenomenologist Don
Ihde. In his collection of essays Listening and Voice (2007) Ihde develops a visually ori-
ented model of perception, based on the visual dimension of human experience that
he afterwards applies to sound. This model, which he calls the double ratio structure,
consists of a focal core-peripheral fringe ratio, or center-field ratio, paralleled by a field-horizon
ratio. “Noematically within my visual field there is a ‘center’ of the clearly and distinctly perceived
that shades off into a ‘periphery’ or ‘fringe’ of the indistinctly perceived” (Ihde 2007: 37). This
noematic structure has a correlative in the noetic act that “displays a central awareness that
shades off into the barely aware or implicit consciousness at the ‘fringe’ of more explicit or focused
attending” (Ihde 2007: 38). This ratio may considerably vary according to the intentional
act, from an exceedingly “narrow” in a “fine focus”, up to a more “widely expanded”
focus that drives the fringe farther towards the horizon. The extreme case of the latter
is what Ihde calls a field state that is the result of an indifferent “blank stare of boredom”,
when the “focal core recedes towards the limit of disappearance” (Ihde 2007: 39-40). In the re-
ality of human experience the focus-fringe ratio constantly shifts, according to “interests
and occasions”, i.e. to noetic and noematic factors influencing the experience. Similar
considerations apply to the field-horizon ratio, as the “horizon situates the field which in its
turn situates the thing”, producing the double ratio of focus-filed and field-horizon ratios (Ihde
2007: 106). So, although the field transcends the thing, it is not synonymous with World.
As Ihde points out, the latter is introduced only with the “question of horizons that in turn
‘surround’ and ‘transcend’ the field of presence” (Ihde 2007: 74).
When applying this visually-based model to the experiencing of sound, Ihde under-
lines several fundamental differences, two of which are of primary concern to us in this
article. On the one hand, sound as a field-shape is roundish, it is omnidirectional in the
sense that it surrounds me, I find myself immersed in it, “music can be so penetrating that
my whole body reverberates, and I may find myself absorbed to such a degree that the usual distinc-
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tion between the senses of inner and outer is virtually obliterated” (Ihde 2007: 76). This does
not, however, presume the surrounding to be constantly homogenous. On the other
hand, sound is directional, in the sense that we perceive it as coming from a certain
spatial direction. These two aspects taken together produce a bidimensionality of the
auditory field-shape, a copresence of surroundability and directionality.
Apart from these two aspects Ihde characterizes the auditory field as continuous, since
there is sound present in any human experience. This noematic continuity, though, re-
sults in presence becoming invading and penetrating consciousness, an aspect that leads
Ihde to the noetic question of a response to this continuous invasion. Finally, the pres-
ence of sound is characterized as lively. Sound is present rhythmically and thus has an
essential temporality. “The inner secret of auditory experience (is) the timefulness of sound.
The auditory field is not a static field” (Ihde 2007: 83).
After this short theoretical excurse we may now turn to Shostakovich’s Passacaglia
itself and attempt to describe it as it sounds, in a straightforward and purely acoustic way
with as little reference to the score or to the usual theoretical and analytical categories as
possible, i.e. in a pre-analytic modus. At the same time we will give a description of trans-
formations occurring in the noetic sphere and how these are related to the composition
techniques applied.
The Passacaglia: a Description of Sounding
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 was written a few months after the heroic defense of
Stalingrad in February 1943. According to Krzysztof Meyer’s biography of the composer,
Shostakovich began working on the symphony’s first movement, lasting around half an
hour, on July 2nd and finished it on August 3rd in Moscow. By September 9th the score of the
more than one-hour-symphony was finished (Meyer 1998: 254). According to the composer,
he wanted to portray the “life of the human soul […] to reflect man’s anxieties, his suffering, his
courage, and his joy… to portray him as loving life and freedom” (Sabinina 1976: 201).
The Passacaglia is the symphony’s fourth movement and is located between a Toc-
cata and the Finale, designated by Meyer as a Pastorale (Meyer 1998: 257; compare also
Orlov 1961, 210; Sabinina 1976: 232). The three movements are performed attacca, and
are preceded by the long first movement sonata form (Adagio – Poco piu mosso – Al-
legro non troppo), and the second movement Scherzo-March. The use of the Passaca-
glia has, of course, in itself important cultural connotations. As R. Golianek points out
in his article Dramaturgical Categories of Expression in Shostakovich’s String Quartets, slow
tempos and related to them genres in Shostakovich’s compositions (he mentions the
Elegy, Passacaglia and Funeral March), often comprise “different pathetic funeral expressions
[…] of mourning” (Golianek 1998: 513). The Passacaglia makes its entrance at the break-
ing point of the whole symphony’s dramaturgy, its culmination, turning the symphony
into a “poem of suffering” (Meyer 1998: 257). It forms the symphony’s penultimate
movement (Henderson 2000: 53), portraying the “human will, blocking the way of brutal
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and senseless destruction” (Sabinina 1976: 227; compare also Bobrovsky 1962: 155–156).
Charlotte Segond-Genovesi points out in her 2009 article La question du sens dans les pas-
sacailles de Chostakovitch: vers une interpretation sociopolitique that the “rhythmic figure dotted
eighth – sixteenth note strongly refers to the world of the Funeral March” through“ scholarly
examples such as the Marches funèbres from Chopin’s 2nd piano sonata, Beethoven’s 3rd
symphony and 12th piano Sonata (Segond-Genovesi 2009: 241; compare also Orlov 1961:
208; Golianek 1998: 514). Most soviet researchers describe the movement as reflecting
a state of “petrification in front of rigid images of motionless destruction and death” (Orlov
1961, 208; compare also Bobrovsky 1962: 156; Sabinina 1976: 228).
The Passacaglia is written in compound ternary form, alluding to a sonata form, and
consisting of an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation followed by a coda.
The scheme below illustrates the overall form of the movement and will be useful to us
throughout the analysis.
Ex. 1 Formal scheme of the D. Shostakovich Passacaglia, Symphony No. 8.
The Passacaglia opens with a striking triple forte tutti that includes extensive use
of percussion instruments. The opening consists of two dissonant chords, the second
of which is a major chord on D sharp with an added diminished seventh, and will be
resolved on G sharp, the bass theme’s first note. These two measures form a short in-
troduction before the bass theme’s first statement and, at the same time, a bridge link-
ing the Passacaglia with the previous movement. Shostakovich’s abrupt and unforeseen
move of the focal center from this highly complicated and loud (invading, penetrating)
texture to the unison of the bass theme’s first statement demands a rapid and immediate
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change from what Ihde calls a widely expanded focus that nearly occupies the complete
auditory field and surrounds, penetrates us, to an extremely “fine” one that directs our at-
tention, and thus our intentionality, towards one, though loud, note. The surrounding
auditory field momentarily turns into a distinctly directional one. We experience a sud-
den “zoom-in”, to use a visual metaphor, of our attention. But there also occurs a sudden
change of the focus-fringe ratio, a change from an all-encompassing sound to one allow-
ing, despite its loudness and dominance, and due to it being in unison, for accidental
concert hall sounds that were not perceptible before to be perceived at the periphery of
our consciousness. Thus, in this sudden change from a large dissonant chord to a sin-
gle unison note we simultaneously experience a shift in the focus-fringe ratio as well as
a shift from a roundish to a directional auditory field-shape.
From this note starts the slow unfolding of the Passacaglia’s bass theme with its gradu-
ally fading retentions and fulfilled or unfulfilled protentions. The theme builds up steadily
rising within the ambit of a diminished octave, which is clearly perceived as we reach the
higher G natural (which is in itself an unfulfilled protention in relation to the expected
G sharp!), and then descending through a sequence towards the dominant of G sharp,
leaping down a perfect fifth to the tonic followed by the leading-note F double sharp.
The overall clarity of the theme’s structure makes it easily perceptible as a unity. There
are, however, three aspects of it that need to be carefully examined: that of tonality, of
rhythm, and of orchestration. As the following description will show, there is a dialectical
play with regard to expectations, i.e. protentions, that make it rather unusual and, one
may say, akoumenologically interesting.
Ex. 2 Passacaglia bass theme.
Regarding rhythm, there is a mutli-leveled repetitive structure embedded in the
theme that anticipates the cyclic structure of the movement as a whole. First, there is the
rhythmic pattern of a dotted half note – dotted eighth note – sixteenth note that encom-
passes the first six and a half measures of the nine-measure theme. Second, the fourth
measure together with its anacrusis is a literal repetition of the previous measure. This
is in itself an interruption of the gradual tonal movement, of the theme’s development,
and would presumably form an unfulfilled protention, as well as a moment of doubt
regarding the coming unfolding of the theme. Third, the sequence in measures five to
seven enhances the feeling of the already existing rhythmic repetition through a repeti-
tive melodic pattern, and that at a moment when the rhythmic pattern has itself already
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become to a certain degree tedious. After that, in the middle of the seventh measure,
the place where predictability has reached its highest point, the theme loses its gained
momentum and determinacy and “gets stuck” on three, tonally relevant but rhythmically
vague, long notes, two of them tied across barlines. As M. Sabinina writes, “the [musi-
cal] idea seems to be looking for a point of support, from which it can push itself off in order to
move on” (Sabinina 1976: 230). All this makes the first six measures of the theme almost
unmistakably predictable, up to the last three measures where the established rhythmic
structure, not only the specific rhythmic pattern, dissolves into ambiguity.
The tonal plan of the theme is relatively stable, G sharp minor with a lowered fourth
degree, characteristic for Shostakovich, is consistent throughout it, with the exception
of a sudden deviation in measures five and six to C major. This shift has two implica-
tions: first, it emphasizes the note C natural, the lowered fourth degree of the scale that
defined the modality of the theme from its very beginning, and, second, it leads to the
note G natural forming the already mentioned overall ambit of the theme, a diminished
octave. This, of course, disrupts the hitherto stable tonal foundation, again, disappoint-
ing formed protentions and evoking new, less confident ones. So, the sequence in meas-
ures five to seven has another, adverse side to it other than strengthening the tedious
effect of repetition. As Ch. Segond-Genovesi notices, a reiterated sequence in the bass of
Shostakovich’s Passacaglias is often used as a “pretext (but also as a structural framework) for
a subtle game of tonal distortions, which primarily affect the bass itself”. As she points out, such
distortions are especially valued by the composer “because of the high tension they create
and their ability to destabilize the feeling of tonality in the bass” (Segond-Genovesi 2009: 252).
The previous remarks give an insight into how Shostakovich structured his music.
There exists a clear complementarity between the rhythmic and tonal aspects of this
theme in regard to predictability and the forming of fulfilled or unfulfilled protentions.
The composer creates a dialectics of intentionality. For the first four measures Shostako-
vich allows for both tonality and rhythm to establish themselves before the unexpected
tonal shift to C major for two measures occurs, while the rhythmic pattern remains un-
changed. This shift disrupts the just established modal consistency and draws the focus
of our attention towards the tonal aspect of the unfolding melody, moving the sphere
of rhythm towards the periphery. After that, as soon as we are back to the dominant
of G sharp, that same hitherto unwavering rhythmic pattern is abruptly interrupted
and rhythmic predictability dissolves in anticipation. Consequently, the focus of our
attention is turned back towards the rhythmic aspect while modality is moved to the
periphery of our perception. Such a complementarity and interdependency between
various aspects of an akoumenon, in this case modality and rhythm, make it easier for
the listener to perceive the theme as a unity, i.e. in its wholeness.
Thus, here we are dealing with a regional shift of focus (in the phenomenological
sense of “regional”, used by Husserl in his Ideas) when attention shifts from one aspect,
element, or parameter of the music to another. Such a description must in no way be
understood as dualistic, advocating an absolute duality between pitch and rhythm, since
there can be any number of aspects to a musical akoumenon, allowing a great degree of
variation to such approximations.
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Iyad Abdelhafeez Mohammad
Compositional Technique and Phenomenological Categories of Perception in the Passacaglia …
In respect to orchestration we perceive the first statement of the theme itself as an
unfolding variation, albeit a decreasing one, a symbolic retrograde movement, or a de-
construction of the orchestral formation reached at the movement’s beginning through
previous development. After the opening tutti, the exposition of the theme in unisono
starts with the complete brass and string sections with the exception of the double-
bass, enhanced by the cor anglais, clarinets, bass clarinet and bassoons. The orchestra is
gradually diminished by a step-wise reduction of the brass section followed by the same
process simultaneously in the strings and woodwinds, to leave only the 1st violin, viola
and bass clarinet at the end. After the theme’s exposition the orchestra is, until the end
of the movement, limited to the strings, occasionally joined by the flutes, clarinets and
first French horn.
This gradual reduction of the orchestra is at the same time a subtle change in tim-
bre. This is very obvious in the interpretations of, for example, M. Rostropovich and
V. Gergiev. It is a slow change from the firm military brass sound of the first measures
to a more expressive, even lamentous sound in its last notes, bringing us to the sound of
the muted strings sustained for the remainder of the movement.
The orchestration of the theme’s first statement as a noematic process, thus, leads to
a corresponding noetic narrowing of the focal center of the listener’s attention, a subtle,
yet noticeable change of its focus-field ratio. This example very clearly illustrates the
difference in intentionality between perceiving ordinary everyday sounds and listening
to music. In everyday life, when attention is focused upon a specific fine sound and the
focus-field ratio changes as the focal center narrows and the peripheral part of the field
broadens, my intentionality is completely concentrated on the focal center, conscious-
ness tries its best to suppress all other surrounding sounds that threaten to invade it
and disturb my perception of the focal akoumenon. When listening to music, on the
contrary, the process is much more complicated. For while consciousness does concen-
trate on the focal center, it simultaneously tries to filter peripheral sounds in perception, to
suppress “unwanted” sounds that clearly do not belong to the music, but at the same
time to stay open to sounds that may suddenly start sounding at the periphery, and that it
does in the broadest range of pitch (register), dynamics, (loudness) and timbre. At this
point the listener’s intentionality is an anticipating and projecting one. Consciousness is
forming peripheral protentions as I hear and anticipate the theme reaching its end. I am
intending the center as well as the periphery of the sound field that surrounds me and
into which I am immersed.
Statements II-V (Exposition)
The following four statements of the theme present us with a gradually intensifying
texture, thickening and growing more and more dissonant. The second statement is coun-
terpointed by a melodic line in the second violins. This counterpoint is simple, unobtru-
sive, even passive, and restricted in its expressive means. It consists of only minor and
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major seconds with many chromatic alterations, it is restricted to the relatively small
range of a perfect forth, and presents a typical two-voice polyphonic texture where the
second voice is imitative and rhythmically complementary to the bass line. Therefore,
the focus of attention is constantly shifting between the two voices, the overall structure
of the texture is predictable, and no sudden events disrupt emerging protentions, apart
from the yet ambiguous last three measures.
In the third statement the beginning of the counterpoint coincides with that of the
statement, with a three-beat anacrusis. The texture is still restricted to the same two
voices, but here the second violins develop a much more individualized and expressive
melodic line that includes larger and consecutive leaps with an overall ambit of two and
a half octaves. In addition to its rhythmic diversity, in most measures it emphasizes the
anacruses to the following measures, in coincidence with the rhythmic structure of the
bass theme. The counterpoint to this statement is the most individualized and the most
expressive melodic theme of the whole Passacaglia, alongside the strict and ascetic bass
theme. It becomes the dominating focus center while the bass line is distinctly moved
towards the periphery, without, of course, losing its unmistakable presence.
Just before the fourth statement, as the violas join in “above” the second violins two
and a half measures before its beginning, a vague asynchronicity is starting to be felt.
Our attention shifts back to the bass that has clearly not yet reached its end. Rhythmic
complementarity between the upper voices and the bass is maintained within an entan-
gled dissonant imitative polyphonic texture that can best be characterized as a counter-
texture rather than as separate individual contrapuntal melodies. This quiet texture
regresses to an even less individualized and expressive level than the counterpoint of the
second statement.
Two measures and three quarters of a measure before the beginning of the fifth state-
ment, half of the first violins come in, again “above” the rest of the texture. This entrance
confirms the earlier felt asynchronicity. Here the counter-texture almost completely loses
all signs of individuation, with the exception of the overtly expressive first measure of the
actual statement, reaching the “highest” note yet.
The gradual process of desynchronization is finally established as the second half of
the first violins enter almost in the middle of the current statement, three and a half
measures before the beginning the of the sixth statement, at the same time strengthening
the dissonant character of the already dense texture.
Thus, after the initial unison statement with its decrescendo, deconstruction of the
orchestra, and the transformation of its sound, the listener would have experienced
a gradual increase of sounding dissonances and overall density of the texture, albeit
without any noticeable change in dynamics, countered by a variable, though in general
decreasing degree of expressiveness and individuation of the counter-texture. In the ex-
amined statements we experience a continuous subtle but detectable alternation of the
focus of our attention between various voices, between the bass theme and the counter-
texture, an incessant interchange between the focus and the periphery that lies in the
very heart of polyphonic writing and listening. It is an attempt to grasp the texture in its
wholeness by way of passive synthesis of consecutive now-focus-moments. At the same
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time one experiences various focus-field ratios in accordance to the broadening and nar-
rowing of the auditory field due to its intensification or reduction.
Statements VI-IX (Development)
With the sixth statement of the bass theme a radical transformation of texture and tim-
bre occurs. To mark its beginning the composer resynchronizes the music’s main lay-
ers, starting a new gradual process of desynchronization and alienation. Shostakovich
introduces the French horn on the statement’s first measure as the violins and violas
form long four-beat dissonant chords determined more by horizontal voice leading than
by vertical functionality. The texture is thus divided into three contrapuntal layers: the
bass line, the string chords, and the melody of the French horn. All three are clearly
perceptible, as each layer has its own beat(s) to emphasize and stress. Thus, the French
horn changes notes together with the bass on the first beat and alone on the third beat
of each measure. This changes on the last beats of the bass theme, as it starts to lose its
dominance and distinctness. As a consequence, a more complex focus-fringe ratio in
reached, although the principle of the continuous shifting of attention between layers
of the polyphonic texture remains valid. The French horn is clearly the closest to the
focal core, the bass theme would be located at a close fringe, while the string chords
form a farther fringe. The French horn’s melody grows out from a four-note motif and
extends more than two measures into the next bass statement, delaying the beginning of
the following “variation” and further delinking the textures from each other. Thus there
is a clear return to the desynchronization between layers, which will only intensify over
the next three bass statements.
Ex. 3 French horn melody in sixth statement.
The seventh statement introduces new material as well. At the focal core the piccolo
plays an ornamental melody consisting mainly of turns or gruppettos around the tonic,
dominant, and occasionally subdominant notes of G sharp minor in fast quintuplets.
Towards the end of the statement each last quintuplet becomes tied to the first of the
next quintuplet group. As a consequence, the rhythm becomes vague and very much
detached from that of the overall texture. Asynchronization is relocated from the layer
level to that of rhythm, leading to further alienation between the layers. In the farther
fringe, filling the register between the basses and the piccolo, the violins and violas play
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Compositional Technique and Phenomenological Categories of Perception in the Passacaglia …
tremolo a perfect fourth doubled in three octaves and chromatically descending over the
span of the whole bass statement; a “thick” passus duriusculus leading directly to the fol-
lowing statement of the bass theme.
Ex. 4 Piccolo passaggi in seventh statement.
In the eighth statement we see the layers gradually getting back “into place”, and, at
the same time, “closer together” in register. Here the four flutes combine the tremolo of
the previous statement, turning it into a frullato, with the opening motif of the French
horn melody from the sixth statement. They are joined by the violins and violas playing
the same notes pizzicato. The texture is thus becoming “thinner”, more “translucent”,
and the layers closer both in register as well as in material. Nevertheless, the amorphous
character of the flute-strings layer, both as melody and as rhythm, sustains a concrete
level of alienation between itself and the bass line. In this statement the focus-fringe ratio
is not as clear as previously because the flutes, having started by developing a familiar
motif, quickly lose their melodic significance. At the same time the natural imbalance
between the weaker frullato of the flutes accompanied by the pizzicato of the strings on
the one hand, and the heavy basses on the other, allows for a natural return to the domi-
nating role of the bass theme.
The ninth statement of the bass theme is a simplified, less individual version of the pic-
colo solo of the eighth, now played by the clarinet. It is situated an octave “lower” and
the opening, more characteristic part is omitted, thus introducing the tied quintuplets
from the beginning. The “thick” layer of tremolo in the violins and violas is replaced with
slow one in parallel thirds. The clarinet solo ends on accented syncopated quarter notes
that lead to the next statement and continue throughout it.
Thus, starting with the French horn melody in the sixth statement, Shostakovich in-
troduces two new akoumenological regions to the listener’s attention that have previously
been relatively absent: those of melody and timbre. Melody has thus far been associated al-
most exclusively with the bass theme; primarily by ways of its dominance, but also due to
the high level of dependency of other counter-melodies on it. This is true as well for the
counter-melody of the third statement, despite its originality and individual character.
Also essential to determining the content of the region of melody is the strong contrast
in character between the melodies of the sixth and seventh statements.
As for timbre, we can say with certainty that it occupies a central place in the focal
core of attention of the listener due, mainly, to its novelty, but also to the extreme differ-
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Compositional Technique and Phenomenological Categories of Perception in the Passacaglia …
ence between the timbres of the French horn, piccolo, and clarinet. Thus the middle sec-
tion demonstrates a clear shift from one group of akoumenological regions to another.
Shostakovich replaces rhythmic complementarity with contrast of melodies and timbres.
In addition, starting with the seventh bass statement, the composer introduces a fur-
ther region: that of playing technique. And although it is less significant than that of
melody or timbre, it still plays a noticeable role in the formation of the music by, first,
transforming the timbre of previously introduced instruments and, second, by contribut-
ing to the outlining of the musical form through its return as we shall see later on.
Statements X – XII (Recapitulation and Coda)
At the beginning of the tenth statement Shostakovich again resynchronizes the poly-
phonic layers to form a canon between the basses on the one hand, and the violins and
violas on the other. Such a polyphonic genre entails a constant shifting of attention
from one voice to the other. At the fringe of the audial filed we can barely hear the
accented syncopated quarter notes of the two clarinets. Shostakovich makes them delib-
erately obtrusive, pitch-wise irrelevant, and completely detached. With its clear return
to the “pure” theme, this statement forms what can be called a recapitulation, while the
remaining two constitute a coda-transition linking the movement to the following one.
In these last two statement of the bass theme the detachment between the latter and
the rest of the music is finalized. What we perceive are sporadic fragments of familiar
motifs and akoumenological regions that the composer had made the focus of our at-
tention at one point or another. Despite the two complete and consistent statements
sounding in the basses, this is a section full of reanimated retentions and anticipating
protentions, in which the hitherto dominating theme is moved to the fringe.
Conclusion
As a result our research has revealed a deliberately structured dialectical play of awakened
retentions, of fulfilled and unfulfilled protentions, a play with intentionality, touching
upon the most subtle mechanisms of perception. The current research has shown that the
categories of musical composition and dramaturgy reflect an underlying dramaturgy of
phenomenological categories of perception related to the listener’s intentionality. These
categories include shifts in the focal-fringe ratio, as the focus of intentionality narrows
or broadens in accordance with the auditory field of the music it is intending, as we have
most clearly seen in the shift of the focal-fringe ratio between the first two measures of
the movement preceding the bass theme’s first statement and this latter statement itself.
They also include shifts between different focal cores as such, that we have called regional
shifts of focus. The simplest example of such a shift is the constant shift of focus between
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Compositional Technique and Phenomenological Categories of Perception in the Passacaglia …
different voices or contrapuntal voice-layers when listening to polyphonic texture. On
a more fundamental level regional shifts of focus occur between various musical parameters,
such as rhythm, tonality-modality, orchestration, melody, timbre, and playing technique.
Also, the bidimensional character of sound makes it possible for the noetic act to shift its
focus between the roundish and the directional dimensions of the auditory field-shape of
the music intended. Finally, we have shown how musical time is thematized as a region
of intentional focus by way of a desynchronization of various layers of the polyphonic
textures within the framework of the fundamental repetitive structure of the Passacaglia
and its overall musical form. Shostakovich forms three lines of desynchronization within
each of the work’s three parts (exposition, development, and recapitulation), each of
which starts with a synchronization of the musical material and its layers.
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