Although a twelve-tone row might seem an anachronism to some, the “miscellaneous” dodecaphonic pattern no. 1298 from Nicolas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns proved itself a fruitful resource for the composition of Fugal Waltz on a Row by Slonimsky. The row and its permutations, strictly speaking, are atonal, but the row’s contour, principally outlining two major triads separated by a tritone, endow the piece with unambiguous tonal features.
As the title implies, the piece begins as a fugue in a seditious waltz meter marked à la “waltz-trot”; however, not unlike the ballerina who runs off with a traveling burlesque show, the piece degenerates under the weight of its own pretentiousness, giving way to musical idioms far removed from the world in which it began. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Walls pokes fun at the archetypal fugue, the musical avant-garde, and popular genres from his childhood. As these strange bedfellows are pushed to the brink of incompatibility, Fugal Waltz acquires a mounting schizophrenic tone. Walls believes that Slonimsky, known for his wit, would have approved. |
