The Passacaglia on DSCH is a large-scale composition for solo piano by the British composer Ronald Stevenson

Ronald Stevenson

Ronald Stevenson is a British composer, pianist, and writer about music.-Biography:The son of a Scottish father and English mother, Stevenson studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music , studying composition with Richard Hall and piano with Iso Elinson, graduating with distinction...

. It was composed between 24 December 1960 and 18 May 1962, except for two sections added on the day of the first performance on 10 December 1963. The composer presented a copy of the score to Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

, its dedicatee, at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

.

Description of form

The work takes the principle of the passacaglia

Passacaglia

The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....

 or chaconne

Chaconne

A chaconne ; is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and...

 - namely, strict variations on an unchanging subject, usually a ground bass, and applies it across a very large single-movement structure that divides into a cumulative design of many different musical styles and forms. It is based on a 13-note 'ground' derived from the musical motif D, E-flat, C, B: the German transliteration of Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

's initials ("D. Sch."). (Shostakovich used these four notes as a musical 'signature', for example in his Eighth String Quartet

String Quartet No. 8 (Shostakovich)

Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor was written in three days . It was premiered that year in Leningrad by the Beethoven Quartet....

). Stevenson's work takes more than an hour and a quarter to perform and may be the longest unbroken single movement composed for piano. It is extraordinary in its scope, the range of its reference to historic events, and the musical influences absorbed. The work includes a Sonata form

Sonata form

Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...

 first section, a suite

Suite

In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...

 of dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

s (incorporating a Sarabande

Sarabande

In music, the sarabande is a dance in triple metre. The second and third beats of each measure are often tied, giving the dance a distinctive rhythm of quarter notes and eighth notes in alternation...

, Jig

Jig

The Jig is a form of lively folk dance, as well as the accompanying dance tune, originating in England in the 16th century and today most associated with Irish dance music and Scottish country dance music...

, Minuet

Minuet

A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...

, Gavotte

Gavotte

The gavotte originated as a French folk dance, taking its name from the Gavot people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné, where the dance originated. It is notated in 4/4 or 2/2 time and is of moderate tempo...

 and Polonaise

Polonaise

The polonaise is a slow dance of Polish origin, in 3/4 time. Its name is French for "Polish."The polonaise had a rhythm quite close to that of the Swedish semiquaver or sixteenth-note polska, and the two dances have a common origin....

), a transcription of a Scottish bagpipe

Bagpipes

Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...

 Pibroch, a section entitled To Emergent Africa involving percussive effects directly on the piano strings, a section resonating to Lenin's slogan 'Peace, Bread and the Land'. The penultimate section is a huge triple fugue

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....

 over the ground bass, the first fugue on a 12-note subject derived from the bass, the second combines the DSCH motif with Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

's monogram BACH (B-flat, A, C, B), and the third, on the Dies Irae

Dies Irae

Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...

 chant, is inscribed In memoriam the six million (a reference to the victims of the Holocaust of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

). The work ends with a series of variations on a theme derived from the ground marked Adagissimo barocco and organized on the principle of Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 'doubles', with the basic unit of metre halving with each variation.

Plan of Work

Pars Prima Sonata Allegro

Pars Prima Waltz In Rondo-Form

Pars Prima Episode 1. Presto

Pars Prima Suite. Prelude.

Pars Prima Suite. Sarabande.

Pars Prima Suite. Jig.

Pars Prima Suite. Sarabande.

Pars Prima Suite. Minuet.

Pars Prima Suite. Jig.

Pars Prima Suite. Gavotte.

Pars Prima Suite. Polonaise.

Pars Prima Pibroch (Lament For Children).

Pars Prima Episode 2. Abaresque Variations.

Pars Prima Nocturne.

Pars Altera Reverie-Fantasy.

Pars Altera Fanfare.

Pars Altera Forebodings. Alarm.

Pars Altera Glimpse Of A War Vision.

Pars Altera Variations On 'Peace, Bread And The Land' (1917).

Pars Altera Symphonic March.

Pars Altera Episode 3. Volante Scherzoso.

Pars Altera Fandango.

Pars Altera Pedal Point. 'To Emergant Africa'.

Pars Altera Central Episode. Etudes.

Pars Altera Variations In C Minor

Pars Tertia Adagio. Tribute To Bach

Pars Tertia Triple Fugue Over Ground Bass: Subject 1. Andamento

Pars Tertia Triple Fugue Over Ground Bass. Subject 2. Bach.

Pars Tertia Triple Fugue Over Ground Bass. Subject 3. Dies Irae

Pars Tertia Final Variations On A Theme Derived From Ground (Adagissimo Barocco).

Performances and recordings

The composer gave the world premiere at the University of Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

 on 10 December 1963. In 1964 he recorded the work on a Petrof

Petrof

Petrof is a Czech piano maker. The company was founded in 1864 in Hradec Králové by Antonín Petrof who had studied piano making in Vienna.-History of PETROF:...

 grand piano on two LPs issued under the auspices of the Editorial Board of the University of Cape Town, in a signed edition of 100 copies. (In 2008 this performance was reissued on Apprian APR 5650.) CD Stevenson also gave the work its European public premiere on 6 June 1966 as part of the Handel Festival

Handel Festival, Halle

The Handel Festival in Halle is an international music festival, concentrating on the music of George Frideric Handel, in the composer's birthplace in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. The festival was founded in 1922 and grew into a center of Handel studies and performance in Europe...

 in Halle

Halle, Saxony-Anhalt

Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...

 then part of the German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

. The first broadcast was given by John Ogdon

John Ogdon

John Andrew Howard Ogdon was an English pianist and composer.-Biography:Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and attended Manchester Grammar School, before studying at the Royal Northern College of Music between 1953 and 1957, where his fellow students under Richard Hall...

 on the BBC Third Programme

BBC Third Programme

The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...

 on 22 May 1966, and Ogdon went on to give the British public premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival

Aldeburgh Festival

The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings...

 on 14 June 1966. He subsequently made a recording for EMI

EMI

The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

 on two LP discs. The work has been recorded on CD by Raymond Clarke and Murray McLachlan as well as by the composer.

Publication

The Passacaglia was published for sale by Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

in 1967, engraved by the Polish publishers PWM. This edition is 141 pages long.
In 1994 the Ronald Stevenson Society published a facsimile edition of the composer's manuscript. This edition is 191 pages long.