Analysis Of Van Gogh's Motivic Symphony

If Van Gogh wants to draw a hand in his painting, he would draw a thousand hands and pick one from his samples to use. On the other hand, composers uses the similar idea with Van Gogh, but they do use the samples as what we call motivic development to shape the story of symphony and manipulates the emotion of their listener. Like Brahms said in Henschel’s diary entry: “ There is no real creating without hard work.” The success of Amy Beach’s Gaelic symphony was not only because she was a women composer or how she using the idea of nationalism and exoticism in her music. It was because of her hard work in creating her music that helps the listener to understand the story and meaning of her symphony. In the last movement of Gaelic symphony, Mrs.Beach used the theme as a motivic material and continuously develop itself to lay out a dramatic story line. …show more content…
The next development I call it Primary theme A(PTa) happens on measure 35, it’s played in the dominant of e minor by violin. The melody keeps moving towards up and crescendo to fortissimo, which brings the primary theme to the highest emotion in the exposition. The next development(PTc) is on measure 59, it’s the opposite of PTb, which the melody moves in a dropping motion from top to down. It also indicates the transition begins and the listener should be relax for the primary theme and get ready for the second