Reicha: Die Harmonie der Sphären

Series: 19th and Early 20th Centuries  Publisher: A-R Editions
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Anton Reicha
Die Harmonie der Sphären

Edited by Daniel Obluda

N072 Reicha: Die Harmonie der Sphären
978-0-89579-863-3 Full Score (2017) 9x12, xii + 42 pp.
$90.00
SKU
N072

Performance Parts (Available Separately)

N072R
Rental Parts (2018)
Set of 38 partbooks: 0000 0000 timp. 1-4, vn. 1-3 (x6 each), va. (x4), vc. 1-2 (x4 each), cb. (x3), choral score
Although Hector Berlioz is often credited for expanding the role of timpani during the first half of the nineteenth century, it is now well known that he borrowed several of his ideas from his teacher, Anton Reicha (1770–1836). Reicha’s Die Harmonie der Sphären, a work scored only for eight-part chorus, strings, and timpani, appears at the end of the second volume of Reicha’s Traité de haute composition musicale (1826) and was never published or copied elsewhere except in Carl Czerny’s translation of the treatise in 1834. The work’s most notable characteristic is its use of eight chromatically tuned timpani, divided among four timpanists, which at various points throughout the piece are rolled to produce sustained diatonic triads. These rolled chords not only provide support for the orchestra and choral parts but also serve to illustrate the sonorous motion of the planets and celestial bodies described in the text, taken from a poem by Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten.
 
Die Harmonie der Sphären