Variations on 4 Rhythmic Themes, Op. 24 (1963)

Description:

The Variations were written in Athens in the autumn of 1963 and represent the composer’s effort to study and anticipate, as much as possible, the rhythmic patterns he used in the work, aiming to fully exploit the expressive possibilities they offered.

Of the four rhythmic patterns in the work, the first is free (i.e., not controlled by the system of series), while the other three are based, each in a completely different way, on the mathematical ratio 1:2:3:5:8. Each rhythmic pattern corresponds to a particular twelve-tone series, all derived from the first, which is immediately presented with the first (free) rhythmic pattern. The series are formulated so that only mid- and high-pitched tones are heard—tones that are as pure as possible, free from harmonic resonance. The rhythmic patterns, along with the series that express them sonically, are initially presented sequentially, one after the other. As the work progresses, they interweave and complement each other until finally all four are heard simultaneously, in the order they were introduced.

The composer created a rationalistic work in terms of structure and technical execution. He sincerely believed that this approach would not only achieve a sonically ‘logical’ result, which the listener would be able to feel more than intellectually grasp upon first hearing but also that by achieving this, it would create in the listener an impression of a deeper ‘spiritual’ balance, due to the structural balance of the sonic and rhythmic elements.

-This is a near-verbatim translation of Sicilianos’s Greek text.