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It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

RE: Structure

Well, yeah, "structure" is probably a misnomer in this context in that all music has structure -- melody is structure, songs are structured, even a single note has structure. And I agree that structure can have many different functions and many different effects, e.g., the progression of keys i the Well-Tempered Clavier has a different role than the key changes in a sonata form movement.

But I think that when we say that Tchaikovsky had no understanding of structure, we mean that he never mastered the uniquely sophisticated large-scale structures of German art music. This is the great weakness in his compositions. His structures are in his melodies, while Brahm's structures were in the development of his themes. Tchaikovsky's music was I think in a sense more typical of the romantic period, but also, it wasn't German. Brahms was a classicist at heart; he works with themes rather than melodies, and achieves his effects through the development and juxtaposition of the themes within a tonal framework. And nobody ever did structure like the Germans. To me, Tchaikovsky's most successful works are the ones in which he isn't trying to ape the German forms.


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