Nikita Koshkin’s piece for classical guitar is a well loved favourite at the performer level. Not for the beginner or intermediate student, with the technical requirements needed to perform it well, it is nevertheless a piece worth knowing by every guitar player. Much like a lot of Bach’s music is accessible to students, although perhaps performing it in public is a bridge too far.
Anyhow, before we get into the intricacies of the tonalitites and modes that are employed in this piece, it is worth noting the story that the piece has taken inspiration from, The Fall Of The House Of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. I shall endeavour to explain the imagery contained within the music with references to the literature and add music theory commentary as I progress. I have added a link below to a performance of the piece for those who would like to hear the music for the first time and for those who would like to follow along with the analysis.
Firstly, our protagonist appears on the scene of a dank, dark swamp like view, with the vast mansion of the Usher family enshrouded in mists and gases that arise from the fetid waters. This is heard at the outset of the piece with a phrase in A Harmonic minor combined with a G natural in harmonics , the G# and G ringing over each other to create an uncomfortble discordance.
Next, in the story, the house is entered and the owner, the last of the house of Usher, is found by his visitor in a dreadful state, half out of his wits and obviously near to death. The madman plays to the visitor, on a lute that was lying on the floor, a waltz that has a discordant melody that reviles our listener, whilst at the same time he sings words from The Haunted Palace about Porphyrogene the king, (literally translates as born of the purple, meaning royalty because of the expense of the purple dye back in ancient times that only a royal family could afford).
This is where Koshkin begins the main part of the piece, the Waltz is relating back to the hideous music that lord Usher is playing in his study. It is marked Allegro Agitato in the music, a direct reference to the state of the player in the story and his solitary audience. Koshkin creates a discordant theme here by playing an A minor chord followed by an arpeggio on Bb from A Neapolitan minor which then resolves to A Harmonic minor before a chromatic run into A Harmonic Major and then back with a dip into A Hungarian minor, shown below:
A Harmonic min – A Neapolitan min – A H. min – A H. Major – A H. min – A Hungarian min
Here we can the use of chromatics in creating an oscillating or wave effect in the music. Notice the alteration is always resolved back to the Harmonic minor scale before the next one takes place. The second half of this theme follows this route:
A Harmonic minor – A H. Major – A H. min – A Hung. Min – C H. Major – C Major
Here, the sequence starts half way through the first and Koshkin uses the enharmonic equivalent of C Harmonic Major in substitution of A Harmonic minor to resolve the music back into C Major once more. This is accomplished by simply altering the G# in A Harmonic minor (A B C D E F G#) to its enharmonic equivalent in C Harmonic Major (C D E F G Ab B).
The story continues, and the characters in the song, sung by lord Usher, become vast forms that move fantastically around the king, evil in nature and eventually the palace is lost to the malevolent forces, only glimpsed in horror from a distance by onlookers as they pass by. This is where the music leads, for the first three pages, until we reach the next phase in the story.
Here, the sister of Usher has finally passed away from her lengthy malady and the two men carry her body and place her in a coffin, deep within the holds of the house, nailing tight the coffin and closing the large iron gate to the tomb. Then, the tempest begins outside, with a whirlwind appearing in view of the flung-open windows. To represent this, Koshkin begins with the chord sequence that starts on A minor and the bassline is A – E – Bb with implies A Neapolitan minor again, then modulates to a C minor (parallel minor of the relative major) and has C – E – Db again implying Neapolitan minor but with the discordance of the E natural again in the bass. Koshkin deliberately uses the major and minor 7th together or major and minor 3rd to create the unease throughout the piece.
The hideous atmosphere is now conveyed by a reworking of the original theme but with some altereations to the dissonances. An A minor chord is now harmonised with a #4, implying E Neapolitan minor instead of the A Neapolitan minor in the first section. The insanity in the room is now rising, and the music highlights this with a simple melody that is in A Neapolitan minor again but uses intervals of minor 9ths and Major 7ths to create a repulsive sound.
The zenith of the tale now arrives, and as the guest is reading a short story to his sickly friend in order to calm his nerves, sudden sounds are heard from within the house, carried on the wind of the storm. First, indefinite rumblings from below. Koshkin uses Bartók pizzicato to create this effect, a technique that asks the performer to grab a string between the thumb and forefinger and literally twang it as if one was firing an arrow. This is followed by the character in the story that is being read smashing a door into a house with his mace, and the music shows this with the notes being bent out of tune after the pizzicato has been played. Literally, recreating the twisting and smashing of the wooden door as it flies open in the story to reveal a dragon sitting on a pile of treasure. Now the character in the story rushes in and kills the dragon with a hefty blow and it screams as it dies in agony, whilst at the same time, a loud scream is heard in the house and the door to the study flings open to reveal the sister, having been buried alive, bloody in her robes after escaping her tomb. Now the source of the strange sounds are revealed. They were made by her as she tried to escape, her brother had misdiagnosed her condition.
Standing there, half crazed in the moonlight, with the storm raging outside, she jumps on her brother and both fall to the ground dead. The final scene is of the guest fleeing the house in terror, only to turn and see the house slowly split, crumble and be swallowed by the swamp in which it stood. Here, Koshkin uses a static bass note of A to represent the fleeing man with another hideous melody over the top, comprised of the notes C – C# - D#, implying D Melodic and E Neapolitan Major before returning to the original A Neapolitan minor theme. The house falls with the phrase C – Db – B – Bb/G#. Nasty sounding. You can then literally picture the house disappearing under the slime with the final chords as they diminish in frequency, 9 times, 6 times, twice and then once.
Finally, two harmonics on A and E provide peace with a perfect fifth, and pop!, the final note means the scene has disappeared from our eyes, like the final bubble popping on the surface of the pool.
I think Koshkin has done a tremendous job with this piece, and just like Brouwer’s Black Decameron , which I covered previously, a deeper knowledge of the story that the music is based on can make a difficult piece much more enjoyable for the listener and performer both.
Thanks for reading.
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