Rudolph Reti
Rudolph Reti, also Réti (
Biography
Reti was born in
Reti's compositions have not remained in the repertoire, but he was an active composer and received a number of high-profile performances. At the end of the first International Festival of Modern Music in Salzburg, in 1922, his 'Six Songs' were performed alongside
Between 1930 and 1938 Reti was chief music critic for the Austrian newspaper Das Echo. Together with the composer and musicologist
Reti is best remembered today for his distinctive method of musical analysis, which he claimed revealed the '
Reti's way of showing 'maintained substance' would usually involve constructing a music example which juxtaposed a number of contrasting themes; the 'homogeneity in the inner essence' was represented by the notes printed at full size; the 'variety in the outer appearance' would be relegated to small type. In focusing on shared features and hidden similarities in shape and contour, the tonal or harmonic significance of the various 'significant' notes in the themes would usually be ignored. So too would rhythm—with the result that Reti's method focuses on relatively abstract 'pitch cells' rather than rhythmically defined 'motifs'. In addition to admitting inversional and retrograde relationships between cells, Reti also introduced the process of 'interversion', in which the notes of a cell would be re-ordered.
Reti's analytical procedure is best understood concurrently to the work of other contemporary German analysts of the time such as Schenker and Schoenberg. Like Schenker, and Schoenberg, Reti's analysis of musical works was primarily motivic, tracing the evolution of a musical work from a melodic kernel. The preoccupation the three aforementioned theorists had with such procedure stems from a metaphysical belief that the works of the "great masters" (as exemplified in the First Viennese School) were unified thematically often, from a single idea. The metaphysical basis of this idea was the fact that such unity, was thought to be a metaphor for the unity of God's creation. Thus in Reti's analysis the "thematic process" is explored, in Schenker the analysis takes the form of a reductionist procedure, and in Schoenberg the unity of a musical work from a "Grundgestalt" (basic shape) is asserted.
Reti's method, which is to be seen in the context of early-20th-century musicology, has been criticized by the music theorist Nicholas Cook, who regards Reti as having been over-concerned with proving the validity of his method, at the expense of producing convincing analyses of individual works.[2]
Writings
- 'Salzburg - Verheißung und Gefahr', 23. Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift, Reprint, Nummer 15/16 (1935)
- The Thematic Process in Music (US 1951; UK 1961). ISBN 0-8371-9875-5.
- 'The Role of Duothematicism in the Evolution of Sonata Form', Music Review, Volume XVII Number 2 (1956)
- Tonality, Atonality, Pantonality: A study of some trends in twentieth century music (1958). ISBN 0-313-20478-0.
- Thematic Patterns in Sonatas of Beethoven (ed. Deryck Cooke; Faber, 1967)
Bibliography
- Cook, Nicholas (1987), A Guide to Musical Analysis, Oxford: OUP
References
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How to use archival material |
- ^ Morgan, Paula. "Rudolph Reti". Grove Music Online. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
- ^ Cook, 1987, pp.2-3