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VW9 and the ‘St. Matthew Passion’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2009

Mark Doran
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Extract

On the face of it, Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony are two works which could hardly have less in common. Even the one feature they might be said to share at the outset – some form of E minor tonality – has come to divide them by the end: the Baroqueperiod work concludes not in the starting key but in a ‘progressive’ C minor, and it is, curiously, the 20th-century symphony which not only returns to its original tonic but also makes use of the Baroque feature of the ‘picardy third’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 201 , July 1997 , pp. 17 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 Kennedy, Michael, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London, 1964; 2nd ed. 1980), p.369 Google Scholar.

2 Ottaway, Hugh, Vaughan Williams Symphonies (London, 1972), p. 48 Google Scholar.

3 Bach, of course, would have insisted that the opening chord is actually an the issue of ‘doubling’ (which by its very nature does not introduce new pitch-classes) may be ignored here, however.