Martin, Frank

Preface

Frank Martin – Passacaille pour Orchestre à Cordes

(b. Geneva, 15 September 1890 — d. Naarden, 21 November 1974)

Preface
Frank Martin stood slightly aloof from the main compositional movements of his time. He listened to Schoenberg and adopted some aspects of serial technique, but without abandoning tonality. His music is much more rhythmically vital than that of the Second Viennese School, perhaps as a consequence of working as a young man with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, the founder of the Dalcroze technique of learning music through movement. His music also has something of the pungency of Stravinsky and his lean textures, but always has his own distinctive personality and often a certain wistfulness or melancholy even in his most energetic works. Perhaps this reflects his position as a Swiss national, aware of but also somewhat outside the European conflicts of his times.

The Passacaille exists in three version. The original version was a commission from the organist Karl Wolfgang Senn for an organ work, and he premiered it on 26 September 1944 in Berne. In 1952 Martin transcribed it for string orchestra. In this form it was performed by Karl Mūnchinger and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra on 16 October 1953 in Frankfurt. Finally, when Martin was invited to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he transcribed the work again, this time for full orchestra, and he conducted this version in Berlin on 30 May 1963. The present score is of the second version, the one for string orchestra. Martin later said that he preferred either of the two orchestral versions to the organ original.

Martin described the work in his own words in this way: ‘The work faithfully adheres to the classic scheme of the passacaglia form. An eight-bar melodic line in three-four time is initially presented in pianissimo; over this recurring bass the upper parts then develop numerous variations, one harmonic, others polyphonic, and yet others in three-part counterpoint. One characteristic of the bass melody is the way it ends a semitone higher in the odd-numbered variations than in the even-numbered ones. This peculiarity enabled me, from the fourteenth variation onwards, to transpose each repetition one semitone up. That results in an extremely slow rise in pitch, accompanied by a gradual crescendo, returning after twelve variations to the original key. Then the first idea, the first variation, of harmonic character, returns in fortissimo. Things calm down in a coda in a serene, clear atmosphere.’1

To this we can add that the strings are frequently divided into ten or more parts, and that the work gradually rises in tension to an agonized climax before finally subsiding. The technical ingenuity of the writing in no way detracts from its expressive power. One cannot help noting that it was written in war time, and indeed it has something in common with two other wartime works for strings, Honegger’s second symphony and Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, to both of which it is a worthy companion.

Stephen Barber, 2024

1 A propos de . . .Commentaires de Frank Martin sur ses oeuvres, Maria Martin, Neuchâtel, 1984. English translation by J. & M. Berridge from MDG recording 901 1539-6.

For performance material please contact Universal Edition, Vienna.

 

 

Deutsches Vorwort … > HERE