Harmony in Late Brahms

Harmonic wonders in Brahms’ Intermezzo Op 117 No 3 in C# Minor

#1: The key

What is so compelling about C Sharp Minor?  Perhaps it is due to the effect of certain pieces that were written in that key: the opening fugue of Beethoven’s late quartet, op 131; the 5th prelude and fugue from the first book of the Well Tempered; and, Brahms’ Intermezzo Op 117 No 3.

The spell of this key is both obvious and subtle.  Tragic but not overly so.  Deeply reflective of the human condition, but without overstatement. or wallowing.   Notes that enter this solar system of retain reveal the opposite effects of stoicism and great sympathy.

#2. The theme.

As in many of Brahms’ his late pieces, the motivic material out of which the piece is woven are themselves terse and simple.  Nothing startling in itself.  In Op 117 No. 2, just two notes, descending in a step, suffice to create the entire varied panoply of music effects heard throughout the piece.  In the case of Op 117 No. 3 it is woven out motives of three notes, rising in pitch by the steps of a scale.

Sometimes the distance between the second and third note is enlarged to three half steps.  Sometimes the middle note stands as a passing tone between the other two notes which are chord tones.  Sometimes the middle note stands as a lower neighbor note connecting two identical chord tones.  Out of these motives a long theme emerges which takes most of the entire first line of the score.

Every time the theme returns it does so in one way – invariable: exactly the same sequence of pitches (C# D# E …).  There is a growing sense of ineluctability about it, an effect that is progressively offset however by changes to the chords that set the notes of the theme.  No matter how these chords lead us away from the tonic, C# minor, all eventually leads us back to that tonic.

At the beginning the theme appears without simultaneously sounding chords.  When it appears again there are implications of triads (chords having just root, third and fifth).  At the next statement, the chords embracing the theme have become 7-chords.  And even later they have become 9-chords.  This is done is such a way that, a particular note of the theme, let us say the third note, E natural, sounds first as the third of a chord, then as the seventh of a chord, and ultimately as the 9th of the chord.  This means that the chords, rather than being built on the same root note, are built on changing root notes: a more revelatory way of enlarging upon the chords, so as to be always expanding the harmony.

We go on to trace in somewhat more detail these changes of harmony, changes that are always put held in check by the constancy of the theme notes:

– At the beginning we hear the theme as unisons, amplified by sounding in three octaves once at once, an effect made starker by the absence of vertical chords.  The harmony is there. but remains adumbrated by just the melody notes (which are sensed as chord tones and which as tones of embellishment.

– When the theme appears again at the end of measure 5, it is almost as if Brahms wants to keep the harmonic implications as Spartan as possible.  There is a hint of the tonic chord (C# minor) and a dominant chord (G# major).  The third is missing in the dominant chord, though, so we hear it as major only through the implication of the melody notes.   The effect here is one that when I played the piece today I described to myself as tragic inevitability tempered with patience and nobility.

– The next statement of the theme occurs after a Spartan interlude.  This interlude begins with an inexorable march notes of equal value (eighth notes) to which, at the end, sixteenths are added so that there is a sense of reprise of the rhythm of the main theme (which uses the rhythmic germ of sixteenth, sixteenth, eighth.   The measures of the interlude repeats, but with the magical addition of an extra voice appearing in the left hand which creates a rhythmic counterpoint to the steady eighths, but whose beauty is largely the result that these attempts at rhythmic variation are still imprisoned by the constant eighth notes.

As the theme occurs throughout the piece, it does so unaltered in terms of pitches (a series that always begins with the notes C# D# E.  However the chord that is woven around theme has expanded into a 7-chord, an F# Minor-7 chord.

The piece is in three broad parts, the first of which is brought to a close with a statement of the theme that retreats into its initial harmonic simplicity: there is a tonic chord, there is a dominant chord, but but the two are blurred together by the retention in the dominant chord of the C# from the tonic chord, an effect added to by the absence of a third in the dominant chord.  We are being reminded, though subtly, that we are in C# Minor, so that we more fully appreciate the modulation to A major in the second part.

The second section of the piece a contrapuntal and harmonic miracle brought down to earth from the celestial harmony of the spheres.  I want to hold off describing what Brahms does there until we have followed the remaining statements of the main theme which occur in part three.

When the theme next appears in its entirety is at the beginning of the third section.  The 7-chord has been expanded by a D#-9 chord (the ninth being a minor ninth above the root note).  It is as if Lear asked the of his three daughters: “what {harmony} can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.”*.  Unlike Cordelia’s answer, which is most understated and matter of fact, Brahms’ answer is a 9-chord compared to the previous “sisters'” ‘5’-chords and 7-chords .

In the coda, at the penultimate entrance of the theme, the melody is accompanied by a chord whose root note is now A# which, with the other chord tones in the melody, forms an A#-half-diminished 7 chord.

At the very last, we hear the theme one more time and, as if surveying the field of a great harmonic battle which has taken place over just a single day, and which now looks deserted and barren: the original theme returning one last time accompanied by just a tonic and dominant chord, bringing the piece to rest on the C# minor chord, which, which for the first time in the piece is heard alone, complete in time and unencumbered.’

#3. The middle section of the piece

The middle of the piece deserves special analysis.  Let us start by trying to “uncover” its ‘main theme’, or at least that, which by default acts in the place of a principal voice line.  In itself it is not the most melodious of note sequences,  it is devoid of any rhythmic personality, and moves seemingly randomly from one note to another – sometimes in skips, sometimes in steps, and sometimes in capricious jumps: seeming somehow in between insipid and random.  However, this seemingly undernourished melody is is able to usher in, with each new note, a new “chapter”, a new harmonic vista, allowing us to see further and then further to the harmonic horizon, as if from higher and higher vantage points.

In its most stripped down form, which we never get to hear literally, the theme consists of the succession of the notes E F E B G# A C.  Upon this Brahms performs a series of transformations and eventually metamorphoses.

The first transformation seemingly makes things worse rather than better:  a random yanking around of the melody notes from one octave range to another.  In its base form, all the notes would sound in the octave of middle (we shall call this octave number “4”).  But this remnant of pitch stability is dislodged so that the first E sounds just in octave 4; the F simultaneously in octaves 4 and 5; the following E just in octave 5.  This is followed by B in octaves 5 and 6 simultaneously, G# in one octave only – octave 5, and the last two notes, A and C, each heard in two octaves (octaves 4 and 5).  What began as uninspired is now wonky** as well.  It is like being on a roller coaster and leaving out the parts that connect the low points and the high points.

To this Brahms adds a single bass tone, A, modestly appearing at the beginning of each measure of 2/4.  It is a first attempt at establishing a tonal center for all the meandering of the theme.

But the stability is further broken by shifting each melody note (which lasts a quarter note, or four sixteenths), to the “left” so that each note comes in a sixteenth too early, just before each beat.

So far in this analysis we see how octaves have been changed, almost capriciously, melody notes brought in ahead of time, one modest note in the bass to remind the listener of where the first beats of the measures actuakkt are.  Not a good state in which to leave things.  There is however one more step to the transformation,  Each melody note is accompanied by an voluptuous figure of four sixteenths that swoop down and then soar back up.  Somehow this makes everything else make sense to the ear.  If we examine these four note groups, by making chords out of their notes, we get this succession of triads: e-cs-e, e-b-d, e-cs-e, e-d-f, fs-d-fs, forming just by themselves, as it were, a single “thick” melody.

There are still other startling details before this section finishes***.  But it is the last one that is the most stunning.  Something that the ear believes and disbelieves at the same time.   It occurs after the second double bar, where the key signature changes back to 4 sharps.  In other words a point when we would expect either a return to the original theme, or first, some transitional passage linking the the end of the second part, the one we have just been discussing, to the beginning of the third part.  What happens instead a polyphony worthy of the forty-voice Renaissance motet “Spem in alium” by Thomas Tallis.  Little, nascent, voices, appear and then disappear into the overall harmonic firmament, each one living just for three notes, each modeled exactly on the first three notes of first statement of the theme at the beginning of the piece.   Moreover each ephemeral voice makes its appearance in such a way as to partially obscure (or perhaps “occlude” is a better word) the end of the previous one.****  This process continues in a cascading fashion working its way through an elaborate dominant-like (G#) harmony that barely succeeds in stabilizing the whole affair.   I say barely because it is intentionally destabilized  by coercing a cadence to end it based on a B Minor-7 chord.   And then, to completely throw the listener off, a similar cascade begins, seemingly without reason or preparation, tracing over the first cascade but with each note two half steps above the similarly placed note in first cascade.   The first was built around the dominant of the original tonic key of the piece.  That seems to make sense if we looking for a transition back to the original C# minor key.  The second is just ‘quasi-dominant’ in nature, but its root note is A#!   Now this unexpected A# turns out to be the dominant of D#, which is the dominant of G# which is the dominant of the original C#.  Thus it only becomes clear why this shift of two half steps had occurred between cascades when the original theme comes suddenly comes back in its full form (starting with the usual notes: cs4 ds4 e4) but this time surprisingly surrounded by a D# Major (9) chord.   This chord then transforms itself until, in a fairly short amount of time, we are clearly back in the original C# minor.  Thus the previous six measures have prepared two separate but parallel things: the longer range goal of an eventual return to the tonic key of C# Minor, and a shorter term goal of preparing the D# chordal sonority that will underlie the return to the original theme.

#4. The end of the piece

In the last two measures of the piece we have a stable, lasting C# Minor chord.  So, in the end, all is drawn back into this tonic key, which may have been at times out of mind, but which never lost its grip on the piece.  At the end there is only the solace that no matter hard we try to get away from fate, we never free our self completely from its somber embrace.  As is the case with Brahms – perhaps the greatest worker of harmony – for all the restless harmonic movement towards or away from the tonic, no note, no chord, no modulation is ever away from the tightest control of the original key.  There is never a chord, be it ever so remote from the tonic, that is not perfectly clear to the listener as to its relationship with the tonic, in spite of as many as several key regions that we would have to travel through to get to it from the tonal center of the piece.

These are just some of the harmonic and thematic wonders of Brahms’ Op. 117 No 3.

* King Lear, Act I, Scene I

** Searching google produced this definition for wonky:

– (of a thing) unsteady; shaky…                – synonyms: wobbly, unstable…                                        – not functioning correctly; faulty.

***

In measure 4 and 5 of this middle section there are two flowing voices, one in eighths, and one in sixteenths, that chime with each other in the presence of a D# followed by an F#, and a B followed by an A.   This all occurs as the ‘main’ melody settles down to rest on a long C.

In the fourth and fifth bar of the section that follows the next double bar, the simplest kind of canon is utilized, but with ranks closed, the imitative voice starting but one sixteenth after the imitated voice, but also with the imitated voice sounding a sixth lower than the imitative voice.  A simple idea structurally but one which has the effect of creating near chaos with where the principal beats are supposed lie.  The ear wants to be thrown a lifeline, and Brahms does so, but with the least clarification that will still shed some light on the situation.

****

The first such contracted theme motive is on the notes bs4 cs4 ds5, snd when the ds5 occurs, it is hidden in the middle of a triad, whose bottom note is the beginning of the next, furtive, momentarily flickering motive entrance (whose notes area4 bf bs4).

Sometimes, it Really Is Black and White

Key signatures remain a stumbling block for certain types of students.

We were reading the middle section of the Mozart “Rondo alla Turca” – the section with the seemingly endless running sixteenths in the right hand.

If I am reading a piece in G Major, when I come to a note in a measure that that is printed on the top line of treble clef it simply doesn’t “look like” an “F” to me.  It looks different, it “looks like” an “F#.”  I’m lucky that way.  For many students however F-s do not magically transform in appearance to F#-s.

I also carry around the inductive logic of the circle of fifths as a fixed and clear model in my mind.  There is no trouble in remembering that if there are three sharps in the key signature they will be F#, C# and G#.  I don’t have to examine the key signature to come to this conclusion.  For many, though, regardless of experience, they have to look at the sometimes dense group of sharps or flat signs at the beginning of each line, an decipher for which line or space each is centered on, then try to remember, each one separately, to go through a check list, as it were, for each note they encounter in the piece to figure out of it is a natural or not.

These students have difficulty every developing more than a rudimentary sense of what a “key” is.  They are apt to forget each time, for instance, that if there are three sharps in the key signature, they are always the same  sharps, and that these F#, C#, G#.* Sometimes they will find it easier to they remember the three as C# F# G#, so at least they are sorted alphabetically.  A typical question from such a type of student is “how do you know if the piece is major or minor?”  “Can you tell from just looking at the notes at the beginning of the piece; or is it something to do with the sound?”   Attempting to explain the answer to this question in terms of there being certain statistical likelihoods for certain notes and chords to show up in the first measures of the piece, further complicates and mystifies.

The inductive logic of the circle of fifths doesn’t establish itself firmly in their minds.  They do not see an imaginary sharp or flat sign to the left of each note along a line of music, whose existence is confirms a sharp or flat that in the key signature at the beginning of the line.  And practicing scales until they become automatic in the fingers seems a daunting task, as difficult and time consuming as learning entire pieces.

For many years I stubbornly retained the simple logic of he circle of fifths as the only unambiguous way of clarifying key signatures to students for whom this posed an issue.  Logic, I felt, will always win out.  It took a while to mature out of this notion.

At today’s lesson I chose a less elegant, a less logical, but simpler expedient.  I told Rachael that my intuitive impression was that as she was reading the notes on the page it didn’t seem immediately clear to her whether the next note to play was a white note or black note.  I took the first measure of the passage, and I asked her to play the passage as slowly as she needed to in order for her to say for each next note that she read, “this is a black note”, or “this is a white note”.  How she determined this was unimportant, it was just the final experience of the hand on the keyboard that mattered.

This shifted the emphasis from remembering the key signature and how it applied within the measure, and raising to a higher level of conscious awareness the identity of that note as simply being a white note or a black note.  There was no more key signature present.  There was just the individual identity of each note as falling into the class black note or white note.  If it was a black note it didn’t matter if it was written as a sharp or as a flat.  Only key color mattered.  The same with regard to white notes,  whether their note names were naturals, or flats or sharps.

This first measure of eight sixteenth notes was just memorized as a sequence of words.  Just as a binary number is a series of zeros and ones in a certain order, so the measure was a series of the words ‘back’ and ‘white’.

At first she seemed skeptical that this could work, since it seemed to beg the question of needing to know and retain in her mind the key signature.  But it turned out otherwise.  Now that there was only one of two things to choose about each note, and after putting in the initial downloading time it took to put the measure into this on/off, zero/one, black/white form, her confidence level in playing the notes correctly rapidly increased.  She felt a certainty and a mastery over what to play.  There were no questions left.  No uncertainties.  Just the color of the notes. She bypassed any worry about applying a ‘template’ of white and black notes, first to the key signature, and relate things from there to the notes of a measure.

*Or furthermore that the first two of those sharps are always the same as the sharps that appear when there is only two sharps in the key signature.

Lyricism, Connectivity and Shaping of Sounds

At B’s lesson today, he was playing Mozart’s Adagio in B Minor

He plays a series of notes from the piece, and stops because he is frustrated with how it just sounded.  He says: “In order for me to even it out, ‘this’ note needs to be a little louder, and ‘that’ note needs to be a little softer.”  He makes physical adjustments in how he plays each of those two notes.  The result is a new set of inconsistencies in the sound.  I try to explain that any difference in muscular action for which one can consciously in control will over-compensate for the problem.  The only ways that reliably control evenness in sound, whether in a melody, or in a chord, are based on either the ear or finding a lever further up the arm that controls all the fingers alike.

Here are some of the spots that we worked on.

#1.  The first chord in the piece: es3-b3- -gs4-d5.

If the chord is not coming out the way you want it to, do the following:

a) Play the es3, three times in a row, while doing nothing other listening to them.  For, without your realizing, your playing mechanism is going to adjust the resonance of es3 your figurative, “inner” ear is satisfied with the sound.  Just by gradually playing it over and over it comes closer to having the quality of sound you want.  Hold the third one longer than the others.

b) Then pause a couple of seconds. Now play es3 and b3 together, three times in a row (as before).  Again your instinctive ear is going to automatically cause the body to unconsciously change the enunciation of the two notes until both are equally resonant and well balanced.

c) Pause again for a couple of seconds, and play the es3, b3 and gs4 together several times.  Let the same automatic balancing of the sound occur through the ear.  You don’t have to do anything more than listen to the triads.  You don’t have evaluate the balance each time you play it.  It will simply gravitate towards an idea position.  It’s an unconscious process of “practicing” something over and over until it pleases you or sounds the way you want.

d) The last stage is to play all four notes together – three times.  Then,  aslmost as an afterthought, play the four notes together again.  Through the silence that elapsed between the last of the three iterations of the four note chord, and the ‘fourth’ one you just added on, you will have preserved, without the slightest change, the balance of the notes.  It simply sounds the way you just heard it a few moments ago.

What we’ve done through this process is “taken apart” in time something that is meant to be heard “together” in time.  Rather than that changing the nature of what we hear because we have broken it into repeating parts, we actually gain more automatic control of how the notes will sound when ‘together’ in time.  One might say we have created a figurative lever of to gain a mechanical advantage of consciousness over simultaneous in time.

#2.   The first three notes of measure one: b4, fs4 and d5.

We use a similar process to what we used in number 1.  Play the b4  three times.  Just listen to it.  “Get to know it”.  “What does it sound like when it sounds like a B”?  Or, as in Ireland: “who is he when he is at home” (who is he really).

Pause and then play the b4 together with the fs4.  Same principle, three times; getting to know the full tonal implications of the interval of the fourth between the notes.  And something new: that there is an implication in that fourth that there is, latently, or about to be realized, another note that will complete the fourth and turn, as in this case, into a B Minor chord in second inversion.

Now ‘confirm’ your expectations, that have built up further and further  during the last few moments in time, that you have patiently kept in check through the previous eighth note, and with an air of satisfaction / relief / puzzlement, etc.: any emotion will do, by playing the missing note (d5). If, for example, it meets your expectations, say to yourself something like “I knew all along it was going to sound this”.

What we are discussing in the last two paragraphs falls under the heading of “hearing the missing sounds”.  Or, play it in such a way that even the listener can sense, vaguely, or more specifically, what the missing note or notes are.

If all we heard is the fourth between the fs4 and b4, and no other sounds from the universe, including from what we have stored in our musical memory, any of the following note (or notes) will complete the empty fourth:

fs4-b4-d5       or     fs4-b4-ds5    or    ds4-fs4-a4-b4   or   d4-fs4-a4-b4   or d4 f4-af4-b4

etc..

Here is another approach to the same opening three notes. It is sort of the reverse of the process just described.  Don’t begin with just one note, but with a B Minor chord of many notes (for instance: b2-fs3-b3–d4-fs4-b4-d5.  Follow that by the single note with which the piece starts.  That single note will still retain the coloring, or mood, that it possessed by virtue of the presence of the other notes sounding with it.

Or, we can start with the same, full chord, and then gradually strip away notes from that chord, until at the end we leave just one note, for instance the first note of the piece.  Through each stage in this process the notes that are left remaining retain the full power and effect of a B Minor chord.

The end goal is, without physically playing the other notes of the chord, sound the b4 just as it would sound within the chord.

What applies to one note from a chord compared to a full orchestra, let us say, playing that chord in many voices and ranges, can apply to any chord we play in the piece, as compared to that same chord being elaborated over many octaves in a full symphony orchestra.

The process reminds me of the beginning of a poem by Wordsworth.

“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Appareled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.”

This is from the poem: “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”.   The rest of the poem has to do with the possibility of retaining that celestial light or illumination that bathes even everyday things.

There is yet one more way of talking about this.  It is also quasi poetical but scientific as well.  When we play the piano, the sound of each individual note is already rich and complex in sound.  Each such sound contains within it a firmly held together chord made up out of what are called the “partials”, or more commonly, the “overtones” of that note.  So if we compare what we hear, when we listen to that note, to what, for example, a tuning fork (which has few overtones, and the ones it does last very briefly), sounds like intoning that sound, each individual piano note is found to be already rich and complex in sound.  Bass tones evoke the higher overtones of heaven. And when our ears are open we hear the full panoply of pitches throughout the range of the piano.

When we play more than one note at a time, the higher notes in our chords often correspond to overtones of the lower notes in the chord, and these higher notes in the chord take upon them a fullness and resonance that they would not have minus the presence of the lower notes sounding with them.

“I don’t get this piece of 20th century music”

I sent my friend Roy a recording I made ages ago with the Polish violinist Hanna Lachert.   Among other things it contained the three “Myths” Karol Szymanowski*.  Part of his response was:  “What’s the structure of these pieces?  They seemed episodic, and I did not recognize the music as being in any traditional form.”

I responded:

I once read an article by Sir Donald Francis Tovey*, about the first movement of Beethoven’s “Arch Duke” trio.  He compared “side by side” a phrase taken from later in the movement with one taken from near the beginning of the movement.  At first they seem totally unconnected: different number of notes, different rhythm, etc..  However, Tovey demonstrated that if you connected the two phrases with a series of in between phrases heard during the interim in the same movement, they form a chain in which each link in the chain was clearly related to the link before it.  If you skipped from the beginning to the end of the chain, the ends seemed to have nothing to do with one another.  But if you followed the chain one link at a time you could always see, going on, a process of gradual transformation, or morph-ing.  Each link “developed” into the next.

If we let the links of the chain be made out of statements of the same musical theme, each next version of the theme brings out things that were more hidden in earlier version of the theme, though, ‘in retrospect’, were clearly based on what was latent or implied in the earlier version.

Something that was potential in the previous version the theme, had become actualized in the next version.  Tracing the history of these statements of the theme, from one version to the next, you would discover that each next step has kept something essential of the spirit of the preceding manifestation of the them, and so on all the way back to the beginning of the movement.  When looked at from this perspective, one not only grasps intellectually, but literally ‘hears’, the later material as a true derivation of the beginning theme.

The above process is contained within a single movement of a piece. What if we extend the process to one composer and the another through the span of a century?  In the case of Szymanowski the links  were forged from the eve of  the nineteenth century through the early twentieth.

We would witness the analogous process at work.  Each next, great composer, more fully developed something that was lying there in the previous composer, but now developed more fully.

One of the things that makes it harder to see this relationship over decades or even centuries is from our standpoint in the 21st century, what Brahms or Mahler realized out of the essence of Beethoven or Schubert, we now take so for granted, that we “see it” already when we look or listen to Beethoven or Schubert.

If we arbitrarily pick three times: Beethoven’s, Brahms’s and our own era.  The quality that was first fully exposed in Brahms’s works we attribute it “backwards” to Beethoven.  We hear things in Beethoven that he would not have heard.  This leads to some odd observations.  Due because of the order within my personal life in which I got to know, let us say Beethoven and Brahms, I would say: “how clever of Beethoven to have stolen this idea from Brahms.”

I think the way to understand the structure in a work like that of the Szymanowski, is to conceive of a process that begins historically with a very clear structural ordering of parts in a movement, perhaps that of a late Haydn Symphony.  That the next step in this process takes place a number of years later, say at Beethoven’s time.  Comparing the Haydn with the Beethoven we see that the latter has changed the way one of the structural parts of the Haydn evolves into the next.  Same two parts, but differently connected.  Or the greater or lesser aesthetic significance one of the structural parts has for Beethoven than for Haydn.

Then another decade or two goes by, and similar transformation takes place to the Beethoven.  And so on.  We continue this process until there is a linked chain of developments from the structure of Haydn to that of Szymonowski, with the latter being simply the “latest” but probably not the “last” state of the evolution of the structure in a movement, a process continuing in our day.

I got this response back from my friend***:

“What a great reply!  This explains to me, actually, why a work like Szymanowski’s Myths seems so familiar in its structure, but when your mind tries to analyze what your ears receive, it’s difficult to understand the form.  The listener’s emotions flow right along with what’s happening, indifferent to any question of logical process, because, I feel, that that historical underpinning, as you so eloquently have said, is there, even though it’s so difficult to pinpoint.  This seems like an In Medias Res kind of issue.  Whereas in the Beethoven, as Tovey points out, there is a beginning and a conclusion, both related to and supporting one another, in these Szymanowski pieces, he starts in mid-historical stream, so to speak, and then has a problem about how to conclude.  In popular recorded music, they just do the “fade out”, where the music just gets softer and softer, until it disappears.  Szymanowski does something similar, sometimes concluding pianissimo, but with a short little epigrammatic phrase that is really quite clever and surprising.  In a sense (or so it seems to this musically uneducated mind), he is able to enact a temporary resolution to the piece.  You’re mind says, this is the conclusion, but your emotions tell you that nothing really ends, and the music is still going on, but inaudibly, awaiting another composer or composition to revive it.  Schubert often does something like this  in Die Schone Mullerin (sorry no umlats) by creating a running figuration in the piano, which breaks right through the last sounded note, and keeps going as an earwig in the listener’s mind.   Feel free to post this on your site.

*  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Szymanowski

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Tovey

Sir Donald Francis Tovey (17 July 1875 – 10 July 1940) was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist.

***  Please search for Roy Doughty’s poetry on line; you won’t regret it. Here is a link to some older poems:  http://doughtyspoetry.com/page/2/