Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17 - III. Scherzo. Allegro molto vivace

this whirling little scherzo might be one of my favorite of all tchaikovsky movements. it is in a brisk 3/8, with a really delightful tension and use of chromatic climbing to heighten suspense. also it is kind of cool how he varies the grouping of the bars. a lot of the time it sounds as if it could be 9/8 but he throws in random 6/8s to keep us on our toes. he does a lot of hemiola too, a lot of fun rhythmic things.
this movement is very accessible so it requires little explanation. there is a little sprightly trio section which starts at 2:30, with a meter change into a l'istesso tempo 2/8. the subject is given by the winds and horns.
for me the most amazing thing is the transition back to the da capo. this occurs almost without our noticing, at 3:30, with a quick switch by the winds into triplets instead of eighths, allowing the strings to take back the first theme of the opening.
the coda occurs at 4:46, with the return of some material from the trio meshed with relentless triplets from the scherzo.

Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 - III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace

i can't remember the last time i actually updated this thing on consecutive days :( ok, here is some dvorak. the reason i am not updating well these days is because i am having an audition this weekend that has sort of been taking precedence. this post covers the movement that i would conduct in the third round, assuming i made it that far.

since everyone basically already knows this symphony probably, i'll just post some interesting recordings and comment on the form (a standard ternary form). this movement is your standard scherzo, basically: ternary form, ABA.
the A part, the scherzo itself, is itself a rounded binary form: a skittering first theme firmly in e minor, which builds upon itself into something that includes the entire orchestra. it cadences in the original key, then slows down a bit into a poco sostenuto, and we get a second theme in e major, which is more lilting, the other side of the classic dvorak coin. this is played by all the winds, and finally the celli at the end. then theme a comes back for a repeat, rounding off the binary first half.
the trio is heralded by a creepy little arpeggio begun in the celli and continued (after some interjections by the winds) by the violas. then the violins take over a tail end of that arpeggio and raise an a-flat into an a, segueing gracefully into a dancelike c-major section which itself is also a rounded binary (in which the first half, a series of dotted wind chords above the violin arpeggios, comes back after the second trio theme, which is a series of rapid plays on the interval of the sixth). then a bridge section leads us back to the top and we repeat the scherzo.
the second time through we skip to the coda, which holds suspense by emphasizing unstable tremolo chords in the strings starting with a weird C7. horn and wind solos play on the main motif of eighth-eighth-quarter quarter quarter, and then the strings take a half step up, giving us a Db major chord. then one more step up: D major, which morphs into f-sharp minor (one note difference), B-Major, and a cadence in E major, during which the trumpet recalls the main theme from the first movement. the triumph rapidly decays into E minor, though, which is the end of that.
ahem, if you can't tell, i'm studying a lot of vocab terms. see my other blob for what else i've been studying.
here's celibidache. so slow. but i'm using this as inspiration, hope i have the guts to not rush like this this weekend.

Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39 - III. Scherzo: Allegro

i am trying to get around to a fair number of composers before giving any one composer a second entry, otherwise i would do something else by schubert, whose birthday it happens to be today.

instead, though, i'm going to a composer that alex ross in his famous book "the rest is noise" described as more or less an isolated incidence of development in 20th century music. sibelius wrote music that was highly nationalistic, but like grieg, is not given quite enough credit for the musical loyalties he kept, which were called oldfashioned by the serialist and ultramodern schools developing in germany (there were actually articles published calling him "the worst composer in the world). i think most of us now can agree that this was pretty wide of the mark and that sibelius had some pretty unique, not at all backwards sounds.

sibelius wrote this symphony in 1898 when he was 33, with some revisions the subsequent year.

this is ashkenazy and philharmonia. there is a better video of bernstein with sappy slow bernstein tempi, but unfortunately the videos are not divided by movements so the movement starts in the middle of video 3 and ends halfway into video 4, if you are interested in looking it up.
this scherzo is, in form, as most are: a brisk 3/4. the recurrent tattoo of quarter notes is brought in emphatically  (and somewhat unusually) by the timpani, which comes back and brings it sharply back down to the ground every time it looks as if the other instruments will fly away with it. the motif gets shortened as instruments interrupt each other mid-sentence, giving the feeling of acceleration through instrumental compression, even though the rhythm and tempo remain the same.
slow section is somewhat rhapsodic, starts at 1:56 with the horns putting a sudden brake on the galloping scherzo with a big diminished chord which sounds totally out of nowhere, but manages to relax into a warm set of chords, later with solo winds adding a countermelody. then oboes come in with a pastoral little answer, but before you know it a rude awakening by trombones and tuba and bunch of swirling descending scales in winds and strings lead us back into the scherzo, which is a straight ride to the end.

listen to the other movements, which are actually from just about every aspect more intense and interesting. there is a high chance i'll do at least one of them sometime later. this movement is fun, though.

Holst: The Planets, Op. 32 - III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger

so all anyone ever really recognizes from this suite is mars and jupiter. here is movement 3, a sparkling 4 minute character piece.

holst wrote this from 1914-1916, and it premiered in september 1918 to an audience of 250 (and on short notice - the orchestra only saw the music two hours before the performance). it didn't go completely public until 1920, all the performances up to then being either semi-private or incomplete.

despite the name of the suite, it's common knowledge now that the motivation for the piece was not actually astronomic or mythological, but rather astrological - holst really liked astrology and fortunetelling, and he used a horoscope book to come up for the subtitles to all these. mercury is one of the movements for which the roman mythology coincides more or less with the astrology (a winged messenger, associated in astrology with intellect, communication, and mental facility). but saturn the bringer of old age (a god of dance, agriculture, and justice), uranus the magician (god of nothing in particular in mythology, but definitely not a magician), and neptune the mystic (god of the sea) have rather less going for them in the mythological sense.

here's a british recording for a quintessentially british piece. BBC and mackerras

this movement is fleeting and fast, like you might expect. it's scherzando, 6/8, marked vivace. pretty simple to grasp. it's basically in sonata form. the exposition has two main themes, one at the beginning, delicate ascending and desceding inversions of chords, finished off by a chromatic ascending flourish. the second is first played (after a few tries) at 0:38 by the oboes.

1:00 begins the middle section (it's actually not quite enough to call a "development"), and this middle theme is a little more dancelike, first played by a single violin. it basically gets repeated until all the orchestra is playing it, and then it dwindles back down to a single flute. then the recap, at 2:02. he takes the time to develop both themes from the first minute, until solo instruments (including a twinkling celeste) bring back all three and weave them together (or at least put them rapidly end on end).

if you really wanted to connect this to astrological properties of mercury, you definitely could, first with the speed of the movement, then with the rhythms - an incessant 6/8 or 2/4, mechanical and rapid - plus lots and lots of hemiola (listen to the middle section), cross rhythms, and orchestral relays, passing the baton of a melody seamlessly from instrument to instrument. it really leaves little to the imagination, which is one reason i think it's a popular suite - a bunch of character pieces tied up with a fairly compelling theme, even if a common misperception is that those characters are roman gods and goddesses. it works for the first four movements, which is why i suspect those have become the most well-known. i know that personally i enjoy thinking of the celeste as mercury's winged slippers.

Mahler: Symphony No. 3 - III. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast

Ohne hast means without haste.

this movement is one of my favorite of all mahler movements. i get the ending stuck in my head all the time. i don't know how appropriate for beginnings this is, but i decided to get it out of my system because it's been there for several days.

the symphony was composed from 1895-6, and really out of order. the first movement was composed last, and it's basically the first half of a 1.5 hour symphony (the beginning of which is pretty fun if you listen to it with an ear to the last movement of brahms 1).

originally the entire symphony had this big program attached to it and every movement came with a "what the [flowers, animals, man, child, angels, love] tell(s) me" subtitle. (this scherzo was originally "what the cuckoo tells me," then later "what the animals tell me"). the subtitles were dropped later in the typical debate about the value of program - mahler said that the attempt to "provide non-musicians with something to hold on to... the expressive content of the various movements" had failed and "led only to misinterpretations of the most horrendous sort" (Steinberg). so don't take the titles too seriously, basically.

there's an interesting abstractionism even in the original titles, as programmatic as they might be. "what love tells me" (the original subtitle of the sixth and last movement) isn't exactly a plotted storyline. so you might say that having the subtitles couldn't hurt too much. but their lack of specificity is also a double-edged sword: why have them if they provide so little real direction - or worse, if they appear to refer to such platitudes that people can only misinterpret the composer's actual, much more subtle intention? that danger is probably greatest in this movement. "what the animals in the forest tell me" is liable to lend itself to all sorts of kitschy assignments as to what instrument represents which animal's or tree's voice, which sections are indicative of wind rustling leaves, etc. once those sorts of cute assignments get ingrained, one's attention might forever be focused on "oh cool, there is the clarinet cuckoo" rather than whatever more subtle or holistic experience mahler had in mind.

ok, this is actually getting lengthier than i intended, so here are some notes about the actual movement.

it basically rips the entirety of a song he wrote for das knaben wunderhorn, titled Ablösung im Sommer. i'm only linking the video because i don't think it's that important. you can also find the text here. (from this it's readily apparent where the original "cuckoo" subtitle came from, and maybe find a bit of the semi-morbid playfulness, but other than that i'm not convinced the text should really be the lens for this movement).
the melody is simple enough but starting at 2:49 with the addition of the flowery violin descant (if you will) he layers it on and makes it much more chromatic and twisted and difficult to hear the original seed (i like the big chromatic scale at 3:57). big affinity for chromatic downwards twists in the whole movement. also note the tattoo of

in various configurations, throughout, but always with the fifth or octave leap.

there's a really dramatic offstage posthorn solo that comes up twice, probably everyone's favorite moment(s) of the whole piece. starts off with a fanfare of fourths and fifths and octaves and then goes into an extended song.
my personal favorite moment of the piece is at the end of the second posthorn solo, which starts at about 4:35. i like the big compression of the motif depicted above leading into the e-flat minor crash and the big harp flourishes. the subsequent trombone soli is apparently a reference to brass music in the finale of the 2nd symphony.

i don't know why, but i find the last about 20 bars super compelling, i think because of the rhythms, and also because of the use of the c major triad to c-e-aflat (what is that? augmented six in the parallel minor? my theory is out of commission =/).

ok, this took way longer than i wanted it to oops.