Compositional work in the 4th movement of ernst von Dohnányi’s Suite en valse (op. 39)

Abstract

The last movement of the Waltz Suite is the most complex of the series, the Waltz of Waltzes, which Dohnányi emphasized with the slow introduction, the size of the movement (the longest of the four movements that make up the suite) and its form. All this was intended as a summary and crowning of what had been heard in the previous movements. In this movement, Dohnányi composed not one but three waltzes that can be interpreted in their own right – in these he used a total of eight different themes – sometimes linked by simultaneous appearances of the themes. At the end of the movement, the composer refers back to the main theme of the first movement, and does so in such a way that it is played simultaneously with the penultimate theme of the fourth movement. The study traces the development of the movement and the process of stitching together the individual themes. I will also seek to answer the question of why, contrary to Dohnányi’s habit of absolute pitch, in the final score he did not write one of the themes in the key that it appears in several times in his sketchbook, and in this context I will also point to possible models and inspirations for the simultaneous voicing of the themes.