So, you made it through the email!… one way or another – here’s your reward. Please feel free to use this analysis to help in your teaching or studying. If you could please let anyone interested know about:

• VCE Analysis Workshop 30 May
• Twilight Class 8 October
• VCE Exam Prep 17 October
• Facebook Live sessions – First session 26 Feb 8pm

that would be much appreciated.

Listening Beyond Hearing Fourth Edition and Progressive Musicianship pre orders of books and eBooks are now available at the shop!

I hope you find this analysis helpful.

Please attempt this yourself before looking at what I wrote! You may well pick up things I didn’t! Please let me know when you do. 

Wagner – Overture to “The Flying Dutchman”

Question: How is a sense of drama created in this work?

A dramatic character, and thus a sense of drama, is created through the use of an exaggerated and energetic approach to the elements of music:

• Sudden attack from the first note in tremolo strings played at a loud dynamic through use of much of the bow and firm pressure.

• Tremolo in upper strings doubled at the 8ve and fifth to add emphasis, creating a louder dynamic and thus increasing the sense of drama.

• Sudden, dramatic change in string dynamic to piano so that a forte brass – horn – fanfare can soar over the top.

• Horns playing forte through use of unison line and bright, clear tone colour. Dramatic fanfare created through sudden, accented attack, longer held notes, over all rising contour that uses ascending/descending 4th and 5ths. This is played later ff by unison brass and doubled at the 8ve to further increase the dramatic character.

• Low drone which emerges into a chromatic line from low brass and strings that has a rumbling tone colour at low pitch but extends over numerous octaves, brightening in TC as it goes – and dramatically over many bars – to the upper reaches of the orchestra, exchanging from lower to higher instruments as it ascends.

• Sudden, dramatic change from unison fanfare line to thick, rich harmony over a few octaves range from extended brass section and, ultimately, tutti orchestra.

• Warm, resonant, rumbling timpani played with accented force adding to the ff dynamic. 

• An extended tone colour palate at the climax of the phrase from the rumbling, resonant timpani to bright, almost shrill strings playing at high pitch. Warm, resonant mid strings and brass.

• While the tempo is fairly moderate, the use of semiquavers and tremolo make it rhythmically ‘busy’ and seem faster which adds to the dramatic character.

• Sudden change in texture from clear homophonic lush harmony to multiple descending chromatic lines. Corresponding sudden, dramatic change in rhythmic complexity from long held note to semiquaver triplet chromatic melodic swells.

• Repetition of ideas to emphasise these ideas and increase the sense of drama – Fanfare theme repeats at lower or higher pitch, again by brass. Long held notes in upper brass fluctuates to semitone upper neighbour note momentarily then back again. Continued use of overlaid chromatic lines, repetition of long note followed by chromatic swells idea.

•   Extreme, dramatic use of loud dynamic created through – overlaying chromatic lines, overlaying descending contours, a large number of instruments playing in unison or doubling at the octave.