Organic item
Organic item, pedal (German Orgelpunkt, French pedale inferieure, Italian pedale d’armonia, English pedal point), – a sustained sound in the bass, against which other voices move freely, sometimes entering into a functional contradiction with the bass (up to the departure in distant tones); harmonic the concurrence of the O. p. and the rest of the voices is restored at the moment of its termination or shortly before that. The expressiveness of O. p. is associated with harmonic. tension, determined by the functional discrepancy between the sustained sound and other voices. O. p. enriches the sound of harmonics. vertical, leading to multifunctionality.
The most commonly used OPs are on the sound of the tonic (I degree of the mode) and the dominant (V degree). O. p. is an amplification of the corresponding modal function, its extension not to one chord, but to an extensive harmonic. construction. Thus, it has a unifying meaning, holding together the heterogeneous elements of the development of the upper voices. O. p. on the tonic brings to the music a sense of stability, sometimes even static; it finds its greatest application in the final, as well as the initial sections of music. works (for example, the final section in the scene of Boris’s death from the opera “Boris Godunov”, the beginning of the 1st chorus in “Matthew Passion” by J.S. Bach). The OP on the dominant combines a functionally unstable bass support with unstable consonances in the upper voices, far from the tonic, which turn out to be subordinate to the dominant function of the bass. It gives the music the character of intense expectation. Its most typical use is before a reprise (especially in sonata allegro – for example, I part of the 8th sonata in c-moll for piano by Beethoven), also before a coda; found in introductions.
O. p. is possible not only in the bass, but also in other voices (usually called sustained sound) – in the upper (French pédale supérieure, Italian pédale, English inverted pedal, for example, III part of the 3rd Tchaikovsky quartet) and middle (French pédale intérieure or médiaire, Italian pédale, English internal pedal, for example, the play “The Gallows” from the piano cycle “Night Gaspard” by Ravel). Samples of double O. p. are known – at the same time. on tonic and dominant sounds. Similar O. of the item, in Krom tonic dominates. function characteristic of music. folklore of different peoples (“bagpipe fifths”), it is also used in prof. music, especially when imitating nar. playing music (for example, the fifth part of Beethoven’s 6th symphony); double dominant O. p. – on the sounds of the dominant (lower) and tonic (in the transition to the finale of Beethoven’s 5th symphony). Occasionally there are OPs on other steps (for example, on the third step of the minor – in the trio from the II part of Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony; the sustained sound of the fourth step – in the piano “Serenade” by Rachmaninov). The effect of O. p. is also preserved in cases where the sound that forms it does not stretch, but is repeated (for example, scene IV from the opera Sadko by Rimsky-Korsakov) or when short melodic ones are repeated. figures (see Ostinato).
Like art. O.’s phenomenon of the item is rooted in nar. music (accompaniment of singing by playing the bagpipes and similar instruments. The origin of the term “O. p.” is associated with the practice of early polyphony, organum. Guido d’Arezzo (11th century) described in “Micrologus de disciplina artis musicae” (1025-26) two-voiced “floating” organum with an indirect movement of voices (“Organum suspensum”):
Franco of Cologne (13th century), speaking (in the treatise “Ars cantus mensurabilis”) about the organum, also uses the term “O. P.” – “organicus punctus”. By “point” here is meant the section of the organum, where the sustained sound of the cantus is counterpointed by the melodic. drawing of the upper voice (“point” is also called such a sound itself). Later on, the OP began to be understood as the long pedal sound of the organ, which is widely used in organ music in accordance with the technical. the capabilities of the instrument (the French term point d’orgue in French musicological literature means either an improvisational cadenza of a soloist, or, more often, a fermata). In polyphonic In the forms of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the phenomena of OP are often caused by the cantus firmus technique (by G. de Machaux, Josquin Despres, and others), the sounds of which were given a long duration.
In the 17-19 centuries. O. p. acquired (especially in classic. musical forms) dynamic. properties have become powerful levers of development. In the 19th century O. p. began to be used as a coloristic, genre-characteristic. means (for example, Chopin’s “Lullaby”, “The Old Castle” from “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Mussorgsky, II act from the opera “Prince Igor”, “Song of the Indian Guest” from the opera “Sadko”). In the 20th century other ways of using O. p. (and ostinato) appeared. The value of O. p. can have a chord (for example, coda I I of Shostakovich’s 8th symphony) or a complex consonance. O. p. can take on the character of a background (for example, an introduction to The Rite of Spring) and unusual textural forms (for example, a precursor to a reprise in the fourth part of the 2nd piano Prokofiev’s sonata – 15 sharply accented sounds eis as a lead-tone precursor to a reprise in the key of d-moll).
References: see at Art. Harmony.
Yu. N. Kholopov
