The Five Orchestral Pieces containing the Peripetie is written for a very large orchestra using three flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, also a piccolo, cor anglais, clarinet in D, bass clarinet and contrabassoon. There are extra horns, trumpets, trombones and a tuba and also with percussion. Schoenburg was famous for writing pieces for instruments where they often play at the extreme of their registers.
The piece first starts of in the key of C, but because the piece lacks a key it continuously changes throughout. In the first few seconds of the piece the woodwind play triplets whilst the brass does a glissando and the strings are playing pizzicato. When the texture is this Schoenberg uses the ritardando effectively to slow down the sections. He uses extreme not values like demi-semi quavers and combining that with extreme ranges of pitch and dynamics only extremely advanced musicians can play this piece. Due to the ranges the piece sounds quite dissonant and unusual, there are many syncopated rhythms so it is hard to trace the beats. The piece is homophonic for the majority of the time but when melodies start to overlap each other then the parts are polyphonic.
The piece is a musical kaleidoscope of constantly changing musical patterns, as it is based on small motifs that are first introduced then developed as the piece goes on, as each motif begins it opens explosively with dramatic and loud playing. All the motifs are based around Schoenberg’s love for hexachords. There are 3 main motifs, Motif A is a short fanfare played by three clarinets, a bass clarinet and three bassoons which uses triplets, different pitches and forte which makes it feel quite angular. It is immediately followed by a short chromatic scale played by three muted trumpets (for Schoenberg’s idea of colour) and four trombones. Trombones 1 and 2 play a glissando. Motif B is for three flutes and piccolo, three oboes and cor anglais, three clarinets in B flat and one in D. he uses a lot of accidentals creating the dissonance that Schoenberg attempts to create. Six horns play loudly to introduce Motif C with triplets but this time triplet quavers. And also a dissonant interval of a 7th.
The motifs are developed in the middle three sections. Imitation is used where a motif in one part is repeated in a different part overlapping the motif in the first part, Diminution aswell where the note values are halved. Schoenberg uses melodic inversion, where the melody is turned upside down. In the final section there is an orchestral tutti. The motifs are piled up on top of each other and are played in counterpoint. The motifs are heard in canon.
.
