A Graphic Analysis of Musorgsky's 'Catacombs'

A Graphic Analysis of Musorgsky's 'Catacombs'
Author(s): Derrick Puffett

Source: Music Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 1, A Musorgsky Symposium (Mar., 1990), pp. 67-77
Published by: Wiley
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/854045
Accessed: 27-08-2019 17:46 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wiley is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Music Analysis
This content downloaded from 143.107.252.54 on Tue, 27 Aug 2019 17:46:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
DERRICK PUFFETT
A GRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF MUSORGSKY'S

'CATACOMBS'
Musoryanin has finally finished and written the last bit of h

Hartman. You don't know the second part at all, and I feel t
best things are there. [There follow brief descriptions of 'L
march&', 'The Hut on Fowl's Legs' and 'The Great Gate a
this same second part, there are some unusually poetic moments.
These appear in the music for Hartman's painting 'The Catacombs of
Paris,' which consist of nothing but skulls. At first Musoryanin has a
depiction of a gloomy cavern (with purely orchestral chords held out
long with a big 0). Then, above a tremolo in minor, comes the first
promenade theme; this is the glimmering of little lights in the skulls;
here, suddenly, Hartman's enchanting, poetic appeal to Musorgsky
rings out.
(Stasov to Rimsky-Korsakov, 1 July 1874)1
'Catacombs', the eighth of the Pictures from an Exhibition, is also the

strangest.* At a mere thirty bars, it is shorter than any of the other num-
bered pieces in the suite (the unnumbered 'Promenades', which serve as
links between one 'picture' and another, are shorter). It is unique among
Musorgsky's non-vocal works in being athematic: a chant-like inner part
(bs 4-11), its notes stemmed upwards in the composer's characteristically
scrupulous fashion, seems to promise thematic development, but nothing
comes of it, and the burgeoning melodic interest in bs 17-22 peters out at
the cadence. Its phrase structure is flexible and prose-like: the harmonic
rhythm of bs 15-22 hints at a more balanced relationship between the
phrases, but again this comes to nothing. The harmony is unpredictable,
even non-functional (bs 23-4), its oddity emphasised by the sudden
dynamic contrasts2 and unusual, Stravinsky-like spacings.3 The tonality is,
at the very least, uncertain. Even the title displays ambiguity: it is not abso-
lutely clear whether 'Catacombae' (to use Musorgsky's Latin) refers only
* I am grateful to Michael Russ and Craig Ayrey for their comments on an earlier version of this article.
MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990 67
DERRICK PUFFETT
Ex. 1
Occurrences of octave motive
3)
. -
N 6 ( 3) 5
4 p3
I V
to the piece immediately following, which is subtitled 'Sepulchrum

Romanum', or whether it is also meant to cover the next piece in the suite,
which has its own subtitle, 'Con mortuis in lingua mortua',4 and which is
the only 'Promenade' both to do so and to act as conclusion to the previ-
ous, numbered piece (all the others act as introductions or transitions).
Stasov certainly saw the two as a unity.- And this interdependence helps
to explain some of the strangeness of 'Catacombs'. Example 1 is a fore-
ground graph of the piece, but one does not need a graph to hear that it is
incomplete, that it depends upon 'Con mortuis' to resolve the tonal and
harmonic tensions that have been set up. In fact 'Catacombs' is doubly
incomplete: it does not even reach the dominant chord that would give its
ending the quality of an imperfect cadence. The bass moves from B to FO,
but the final chord, above the dominant pedal, is a diminished seventh,
68 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990
A GRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF MUSORGSKY'S 'CATACOMBS'
Ex. 1 cont.
-n
6 6 8(8)
4 4 --5 6663--6
3 --4 - 4 -7
-3
(V)
implying an F# major resolution which does not take place (and has to be
indicated in parentheses on the graph). This 'incompletion' reflects a larger
incompletion, that of the Fundamental Line. In bs 1-4 the upper voice
moves from b to f#' by way of the upper neighbour note g'. The rest of the
piece takes the f#' up to the g2 in b. 23, which remains the highest note in
the piece and does not resolve to FO (either f#' or f~2) within 'Catacombs'
itself. For that it has to wait until the start of 'Con mortuis'. Here f2
appears as part of an octave tremolo - the tremolo mentioned by Stasov -
and persists as cover note to the end of the piece while at the same time
launching the descent of the Fundamental Line (this is shown in Ex. 2).
'Con mortuis' also resolves the harmony at the end of 'Catacombs', first
locally (with the diminished seventh closing on the FO major chord implied
by the tremolo and made explicit in b. 2) and then on the large scale (with
DERRICK PUFFETT
Ex. 2
'Catacombs'
S @@ @? 0 0 ? 000B
'Con mortuis'
4 1 2
G F
I V I
V falling to I).
The tidiness of this reading should not blind us to the very real ambigui-
ties of the two pieces. 'Catacombs', as well as ending on the dominant,
begins in a way which recalls many nineteenth-century off-key openings,
the octave B immediately undermined by the low G and the spacing of the
chord in b. 4 (this chord is especially ambiguous, containing all three notes
of the B minor triad but interspersing them with a g - and in such a way as
to suggest a 4). One's aural impression of this passage is quite complex.
The bass line arpeggiates a G major triad (again, in I position), giving the
piece a G major quality which the chord in b. 4 does not contradict: at this
point the f4' at the top sounds like a neighbour note, against a g pedal in
the middle, and it is only as the piece progresses that one realises that f#' is
the pedal and g the neighbour note, itself resolving to f# in b. 9. I have tried
to convey this ambiguity in the graph by interpreting the bass D in b. 4 as
the fifth of G rather than as the third of B minor. The latter reading would
improve the graph as an interpretation of a piece 'in B minor', but the
exclusivity of such an interpretation is something I should like to avoid.
(For the purposes of graphing one has, of course, to decide on a particular
pitch class as being the tonic; this is implicit in any monotonal approach.'
However, one can still try to convey the ambiguity of the piece in all its
richness.) Indeed, when one hears 'Catacombs' in the context of the whole
suite, it is hard to experience it as being in B mi

predecessor, ends with an explosion of E6 major;
pitch class of 'Catacombs', written B, sounds like
the entire opening phrase (until the crashing chor
prolong the augmented triad E-CL-G. And alth
ually reveals itself to be 'in' B minor, it contai
no key signature).
From b.12 there is a strong move towards D major; but there is no
cadence in that key, or even a I chord. The pedal A in the bass from b. 15,
introduced as a dominant (the 4-#3 suspension in bs 15-16 must be a delib-
erate archaism), is deceptive, resolving down to G in b.22: this is one of
the most astonishing effects in the piece, with a dominant turning into a
dominant-of-the-dominant before the bass finally moves by step (two
crotchets after the rest of the harmony!) to the new 'tonic'. The G in turn
moves to F# in b.25, preparing for a cadence in B minor that never comes
and, more to the point, for a new kind of ambiguity in 'Con mortuis'. Here
F# is prolonged with such insistence that, to my ears at least, the final B
major triad sounds inconclusive, more like a subdominant than a tonic.
(The decisive point in this process is surely bs 16-17, a move from I to V
which sounds more like a plagal cadence: it is part of Musorgsky's genius
that he can establish such an equilibrium between two apparently contra-
dictory progressions.)
The actual graphing technique used in Exs 1 and 2 is Salzerian rather
than Schenkerian, as the music would seem to demand:' in particular,
Musorgsky's extensive reliance on neighbour-note figures - notably the G-
F# figure which pervades so much of 'Catacombs' - suggests a type of
analysis close to Salzer's analyses of Debussy.' There is a historical point
here, of course,' but what interests me more is the unusual background
structure that results from such an analysis. (One can hardly speak of a
middleground, since there is no tonicisation other than the cadence in G
minor, a cadence much weakened by the preceding A pedal and the
absence of any fifth-progression in the bass. This is why my graph consists
of only two levels.) For the entire piece the outer voices move in octaves,
with the neighbour-note motion G-F#-G-(F#) in the upper voice being
shadowed by a similar (but completed) motion in the bass. The voices do
not move together, of course - the opening is the only example of this -
but in a kind of heterophony (seen most clearly in Ex. 2). In addition, from
b.4 onwards the bass is doubled two octaves higher by an inner part (this
can only be seen in Ex. 1), which means that at times there are three voices
moving in parallel. This three-octave doubling gives the texture a unique
resonance.
It also helps to articulate the form. The piece i

first ending on the F# chord (actually a bare fi
implied by the voice leading, as the figured bass
plain) in b.11. The second part repeats and elab
DERRICK PUFFETT
first - except, of course, for the final F# cho

seen, implied). First, in this second part, we ha
now expressed as a vertical; then rising octave
means of approaching A) instead of G; and the
began the chromatic bass descent in bs 4ff. b
sion (the 'archaic' 4-#3 mentioned earlier). The
further in bs 17-20. But the most important p
is the use of the semitone G-F#. I have already
g2 in b.23 is probably the most striking singl
strengthened in various ways: most obviously by the octave leap that
immediately precedes it (two octaves instead of one, in contrast to the
single-octave leaps in bs 2-3 and 13-14); more subtly by the octaves,
produced by reaching-over motions, in the inner parts from b. 15 onwards,
which set up a chain of ascending fourths/descending fifths (see the upper-
most stave in Ex. 1); and not least by the amazing double Neapolitan in bs
23-4 (E? major harmony in relation to the D that has been so strongly
suggested in bs 12ff. and never quite overshadowed by the intervening G
minor, C major in relation to the impending B minor - the two bridged
only by the common note G and the voice-leading connection d'-eb'-e?').
All this melodic and harmonic activity is supported, as has already been
noted, by a large-scale bass motion from F# to G and back again. (It is this
bass motion, of course, that constitutes the most radical departure from
the first part of the piece: even though the 'events' of the second part seem
to reproduce those of the first, their function is different because the
second part prolongs the dominant.) The D-C# semitone simply duplicates
the G-F# semitone a fifth higher. This is particularly noticeable in bs 9-11,
where the parallels become explicit (see Ex. 2). It is less noticeable at the
end, because here, of course, D does not fall to C#: it has to wait until 'Con
mortuis' to do that (see Ex. 1). The D-C# semitone returns in bs 12-14 of
the new piece, now assimilated into the Fundamental Line and supported
by the warmest harmony we have had so far (this is presumably the
moment when the skulls begin to glow).
What is going on here? All is explained when we remember that 'Con
mortuis' is a minor-key variant of the opening 'Promenade'. The
'Promenade' theme, which is in BI major, plays with the motives G-F and
C-D (see Ex. 3: the theme has an almost palindromic structure). In the
pieces that follow, the G-F motive is transformed into a generalised 6-5
shape which is heard in several keys, sometimes in major, sometimes in
minor. Example 4 charts its main appearances. After various tonal adven-
tures the fifth 'Promenade' (between Nos 6 and 7) restores it to its original
pitch. Then 'Catacombs' (No. 8) gives it an unexpected twist: G-F
becomes G-Fg. The motive is further developed in 'Con mortuis' (see
Ex. 2) and in the following piece, 'The Hut on Fowl's Legs', where
G-Fg becomes Fg-G in a C major context (the motive is also present in its
original form, mutatis mutandis, i.e. as Ab-G). 'Catacombs' and 'Con
Ex. 3
2 3
G F C D
mortuis', which in th
transform the C-D mo
'The Great Gate at Kie
G-F# back into G-F?
since these pitches occ
different meaning. Th
piece (bs 97ff.), when
were formerly the firs
sixth (see Ex. 5). The final statement of the 'Kiev' theme then absorbs
these pitches into the piece's Fundamental Line - which by a further leap
of the imagination can also be taken as the Fundamental Line of the whole
cycle, with the ten numbered pieces forming a closed tonal structure in E,
(see Ex. 4 again). The motivic transformation of G-F - whereby the pitches
formerly identified with the sixth and fifth degrees of the scale become the
third and second degrees - acquires a deeper significance by being brought
into the tonal organisation of the cycle as a whole.
Schenkerian methods of analysis have often been criticised for minimis-
ing the salient features of a piece.'" This means that, when applied to music
like Musorgsky's, they would tend to minimise its strangeness, making it
look like the music of any other composer. My own belief is that they show
exactly in what ways Musorgsky's music is strange: the graphs I have pro-
duced, with their parallel octaves and fifths, would be considered most
eccentric from an orthodox Schenkerian point of view (though not from a
Salzerian one). To that extent they make a historical point, by showing
Musorgsky's oblique relation to nineteenth-century tonal practice. I sus-
pect that if we were to analyse Rimsky-Korsakov's amendments to Boris
Godunov, making Schenkerian graphs" and comparing them with graphs of
Musorgsky's originals, we would find a far more conventional approach to
tonal structure. The degree to which Schenker's methods can be applied to
Musorgsky is in fact a precise measure of his originality.
DERRICK PUFFETT
Ex. 4
(Nos) Prom. 1 Prom. 2 Prom. 3 4 Prom.
6 65=
6-5 *u,.
665 i I&N
V V~ V vIV I
IV VI IV
Ex. 4 cont
6 7 8 9 10
Prom. ('Catacombs') Prom.
('Con mortuis')
V I UVI 1I
I V I
DERRICK PUFFETT
Ex. 5
'Promenade' theme
6 5
'Promenade' theme as it
a pears in 'The Great
ate at Kiev' loutlinel
'Kiev' theme
lOr 'L -- . i " _
NOTES
1. Quoted in Alexandra Orlova, Musorgsky's Days and Works: A

Documents, trans. and ed. Roy J. Guenther (Ann Arbor: UMI R
1983), pp. 419-20.
2. Some of these are downgraded in most editions: Musorgsky's
'ff sf' markings in bs 25 and 29 in addition to those found el
Musorgsky, Pictures from an Exhibition: Facsimile, [ed. Emilia Fried?]
(Moscow: State Publishers Music, 1982). On the various editions of Pictures
see Edward R. Reilly, 'The Music of Musorgsky', The Musical Newsletter
(New York, 1980), pp. 32-3.
3. The chords in bs 12-14, in particular, look forward to many passages in the
later composer. On 'the metamorphosis of Misha', the bear whose 'clumsy
feet trample over so much Russian ... music', see Louis Andriessen and Elmer
Sch6nberger, The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky, trans. Jeff Hamburg
(Oxford: OUP, 1989), p. 225: 'How ponderous and sluggish you sound -
always thick, low chords, always octaves with thirds.'
4. A note in Musorgsky's manuscript reads: 'A Latin text: with the dead in a
dead language. ... The creative spirit of the departed Hartmann leads me
toward the skulls and invokes them - the skulls begin to glow faintly.' Quoted
in The Musorgsky Reader: A Life of Modeste Petrovich Musorgsky in Letters and
Documents, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda and Sergei Bertensson (New York:
Norton, 1947), p.273.
5. M.D. Calvocoressi, too, refers to 'Con mortuis' as the 'second part of No. 8'.
Mussorgsky (London: Dent, 1974), p.173.

6. Commenting on an earlier version of this article, M
Ambiguity is obviously at the heart of Musorgsk
language, but Schenkerian approaches always mak
way or the other; they have a kind of reasoning that goes: 'We
thought it was this and/or that, but now we see it must be ...' For
this reason a Schenker graph takes away more from Musorgsky than
it does from less ambiguous, eighteenth-century German music: it
leaves us with a severe sense of loss, even though we might be able to
use it to show Musorgsky is closer to the German tradition than we
may have thought.
To give an example, for me G major and B minor are in a state of
equilibrium in 'Catacombs'. Yet Schenker's theory forces us to
regard all the G elements as subsidiary, as prolongational; G
becomes N while F# becomes M/I. 'Con mortuis', in a way, obliges us
to re-hear 'Catacombs' as being in B minor if we are to accept the
Schenkerian approach. I'm not sure we hear Musorgsky in this inte-
grated kind of way.
Letter to the author, 20 October 1988. See also Russ's article 'The
Mysterious Thread in Musorgsky's Nursery', printed above.
7. Even so, my graphs are orthodox by Salzerian standards, requiring no spec
symbols and invoking no special techniques of prolongation.
8. See in particular his analysis of Bruydres in Structural Hearing (New York
Dover, 1962), Ex. 478. I have used this as a model for other, unpublished
analyses of Musorgsky (the first two songs of Sunless).
9. Musorgsky's influence on Debussy is widely acknowledged. See, for example,
Allen Forte, 'Musorgsky as Modernist: The Phantasmic Episode in Boris
Godunov', printed above, p.3.
10. See, for example, Joseph Kerman, Musicology (London: Fontana, 1985),
pp.82ff.
11. Boris's monologue in Act II, 'I have attained supreme power', would be a
good place to start.

A Graphic Analysis of Musorgsky&#39;s &#39;Catacombs&#39;

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Graphic Analysis of Musorgsky&#39;s &#39;Catacombs&#39;

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Graphic Analysis of Musorgsky's 'Catacombs'

Author(s): Derrick Puffett

A GRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF MUSORGSKY'S

Musoryanin has finally finished and written the last bit of h

'Catacombs', the eighth of the Pictures from an Exhibition, is also the

MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990 67

Occurrences of octave motive

to the piece immediately following, which is subtitled 'Sepulchrum

68 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990

MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990 69

70 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990

suite, it is hard to experience it as being in B mi

It also helps to articulate the form. The piece i

MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990 71

first - except, of course, for the final F# cho

72 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990

MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990 73

(Nos) Prom. 1 Prom. 2 Prom. 3 4 Prom.

74 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990

MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990 75

lOr 'L -- . i " _

1. Quoted in Alexandra Orlova, Musorgsky's Days and Works: A

76 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990

Mussorgsky (London: Dent, 1974), p.173.

MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:1, 1990 77

You might also like

A Graphic Analysis of Musorgsky's 'Catacombs'

A Graphic Analysis of Musorgsky's 'Catacombs'