I encountered this piece working through Anne Marsden Thomas' New Oxford Organ Method. I thought this would help with my own playing as well as give me a template to move forward with some of my own students. It is a wonderful book! Teaches you how to take pieces of music apart to learn them better and faster. Anyway, I recorded this piece today after a week of working on it.
A Passacaglia is a Baroque musical form in which a repeated line of music (usually short and often in the bassline) repeats over and over to provide continuity to the musical form. Over the top of this line (and sometimes underneath it) the other parts provide variation and development to the music with very little repetition. Two famous examples of this are Dido's Lament from Dido and Aeneas and Pachelbel's Canon (which is a canon in the truest sense as well as incorporating passacaglia elements with the bassline).
This Passacaglia, as the title implies, uses a rising bass line. While the first few times we hear the bassline at the same pitch, later presentations of the bass line are at a higher and higher bassline until the climax. After this point, the bassline begins to meander its way (still using the patter presented) back to the original rendition of the bassline. Over the top of this, we get a variety of different two part melodic material in a fairly modernistic/neoclassical sense. The harmonies sound a little off in the ears, a bit more dissonant than the should be. And yet, the piece is quite intriguing. It's an ingenious way of creating contrast by moving away from the original sounding of the bassline while also giving us repetition by repeating the pattern, albeit at a different pitch level.
Nice piece.
Is it a coincidence that all passacaglias I know are in a minor tonality? I can't think of one in a major tonality right now. Perhaps because it's early morning...
😀
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