Nikos Skalkottas: sets and styles in the Octet

Musical Times, Autumn 2004 by Mantzourani, Eva

MARCH 2004 marked the centenary of the birth of the Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas (1904-49), perhaps the last great undiscovered composer of the ioth century. Nowadays his name is usually recalled through his association with Schoenberg; yet he was not always an unknown figure. In the 19205, having won a Greek scholarship to study abroad, he was a promising young violinist and composer in Berlin and, between 1927 and 1931, one of Schoenberg's most gifted pupils.' It was only after Skalkottas's return to Greece in 193 3 that he became an anonymous and obscure figure, earning a meagre living as a back-desk violinist in Athenian orchestras and composing in complete isolation until his death, from a neglected hernia, in September 1949.

One reason for his relative obscurity has been the general unavailability of his music: his works remained unpublished during his lifetime and, apart from some 'easy' tonal compositions, largely unperformed. The pre-dominantly negative attitude towards his music in Greece since the early 19305, the limited musicological research that has so far been undertaken on his work and the inaccessibility of the Skalkottas Archive in Athens have all ensured that he remains a neglected figure in the Western art music tradition. But now this situation is slowly changing; the 1990s have seen an increased academic research into Skalkottas's music, notwithstanding that much of it remains unpublished, and, thanks principally to an initiative by BIS records, an increase in the number of recordings.

Despite this increasing attention, however, the technical aspects of Skalkottas's compositions remain neither widely known nor fully understood. This article will therefore focus on certain characteristic features of the composer's i2-note technique and his approach to large-scale musical form, with examples taken from his Octet of 1931.

The Octet, composed during the last year of his studies with Schoenberg, is a seminal work and a paradigm of both Skalkottas's approach to formal structure and his 12-note compositional thinking, albeit demonstrated here in an embryonic form.2 It was first performed on 2 June 1931 at the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, conducted by Erich Schmid, with Skalkottas himself playing the first violin. The work, scored for woodwind (flute, oboe, B[musical flat] clarinet and bassoon) and string quartet, consists of three movements: Allegro moderato, Andante cantabile and Presto.

Each of the three movements explores a different aspect of Skalkottas's compositional technique. The Allegro is not truly representative of his 12-note writing, since only a few thematic ideas are based on sets which include all 12 pitch-classes. By contrast, the Andante is entirely dodecaphonic: each section is based on a different group of closely related 12-note sets, used largely in their prime forms. The form of the Presto is largely determined by the 12-note operation of transposition: here, the sections of the movement are built on different transpositional levels of the sets, reminiscent of relations between keys.

Twelve-note technique

Skalkottas's compositional technique did not change substantially either during or after his studies with Schoenberg. Although he was greatly influenced by his teacher's 12-note method he adopted a freer version of serialism, and some of his techniques deviate from Schoenberg's principles. The main structural and technical features of Skalkottas's dodecaphonic music can be summarised as follows:

The simultaneous use of several discrete, closely related 12-note sets in polyphonic combinations

Skalkottas consistently employs more than one set in his 12-note compositions. The sets are closely connected through numerous common and transpositionally or inversionally related segments, usually dyads, trichords and/or tetrachords. These are generally presented in groups, each consisting of several discrete 12-note sets, and usually with a different group for each major section of a piece. Thus, 12-note 'regions', established by the use of referential groups of sets, contribute to the definition of the large-scale harmonic structure of the movements. The majority of Skalkottas's n-note works are based on this set-group technique. His most common approach to set presentation is linear, with the different sets employed simultaneously, superimposed as lines in a traditional part-writing fashion. Occasionally, however, a family of instruments or groups of instruments sharing similar textures contribute to the articulation of a set. Both the Andante and Presto of the Octet clearly illustrate this approach. In particular, the Andante, having a ternary form (ABA1),3 is built on two groups of closely related 12-note sets, with each section being identified by its 12-note content. Section A is built on two successive source hexachords (set-classes 6-Z19 and 6-Z44), whose aggregate gives all 12 notes of the chromatic scale; the main theme, countertheme, accompaniments and secondary motives derive from this set, as shown in ex.: (a & b). Section B is built on three new sets, shown in ex.2 (a & b). The Presto, having a rondo form (ABACA^sup 1^B^sup 1^A^sup 1^C^sup 1^A), is built on three different groups of 12-note sets, one for each of the main sections (A, B and C). The sets of section A are shown in ex. 3 (overleaf).