Prokofiev...?

Question

How come he NEVER uses huge arpeggiations? I know it seems like an idiotic question because that was how he wanted his music to be, but I just noticed that those gigantic passages Liszt and Ravel used become somewhat extinct in Prokofiev's, Shostakovich's, Shoenberg's and a lot of other modern musicians music.

Maybe I'm just trying to share my (probably nonsensical and absurd and most likely wrong observation) with you... I really don't know.

Though Albert Russel and Dutilleux did still use arpeggiations.

What am I talking about?

So did sorabji! I'm going crazy, but my observation sort of makes sense about those three musicians pieces. They rarely use humungus arpeggiations with tons of pedale. It's too romantic?

Answer 1

Such compositional techniques are fundamentally at odds with the idiom of modern (say twentieth century music) because they require traditional harmonic structure. The trend for dissonance made such things difficult and if used would end up as musical nonsense.

Answer 2

I think I can explain for Schoenberg: because arpeggios require tonality and he was an atonal composer.

And I might be able to answer for Prokofiev: because he was intent upon spoofing the Classical Era. Alberti bass may have abounded during the Classical Era, but not the arpeggios on the scale you're talking about.

I can think of only Eighteenth Century composer who wrote full-keyboard arpeggios, and that's Scarlatti. That is ironic, because Scarlatti was too early for the Classical Era rather than too late.

Answer 3

You're talking about an extremely difficult assessment, appraisal, to make. And you're not crazy: it's often very difficult if not impossible to put into words, what we think or feel about this or that aspect of serious music.

Liszt lived during the height of the Romantic movement. Such "flourishes" as you describe, were very common for composers of that period to employee.

Ravel, though he was an impressionist rather than romantic, was an original and very innovative composer. Remember, he orchestrated Moussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", and enhanced the quality of the original composition a hundred-fold.

Most if not all of the composers that followed him, their compositions tend to as time went on, have less and less "form" to them: no rules, no sonata form, no restrictions.

So that, if anyone is able to offer you a truly genuine, erudite explanation in responding to your question, I will be greatly surprised, and will take my hat off to them.

And please continue to ask your questions,

Alberich

Answer 4

Simply said, arpeggios do not work well with the dissonances of modern music. They sound like striking the wrong note!