Preface
At the age of ten José Vianna da Motta composed the Waltz op. 19, Volúvel in F major which is one of his childhood works written between 1873 and 1883. Although Vianna da Motta composed waltzes all his life, this musical genre was never really considered as a part of the identity of his piano work.
Among the childhood piano waltzes we can identify some common pianistic traits that reflect the technical research to which Vianna da Motta was dedicated and the musical trends that were influencing him: the hemiolas on the themes of waltzes op. 14, As Férias, op. 16, Amor Filial and op. 19, Volúvel or the successions of alternating notes between the hands, somehow precipitated by the indications più mosso, vivo or accellerando, under forte and fortissimo dynamics or under the indication of crescendo in the final sections of these waltzes. It is probable that the search for virtuosity in these sections came from Vianna da Motta's will to identify himself as a child prodigy in the eyes of artistic figures who attended the musical salons of the epoch.
However, it is in the structural issues that the similarities between the Waltz op. 16, Amor Filial and the Waltz op. 19, Volúvel are undoubtedly significant. The form and the harmonic architecture of these two pieces are identical, although they were not written in the same key.
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A
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B
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A'
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Coda
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a
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b
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a'
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c
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d
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c'
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a''
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I
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I
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V
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I
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bVI
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V/bVI
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bVI
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I
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I
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It is possible that the structural similarities of these two waltzes are the result of a composition exercise assigned to Vianna da Motta. But they can also be the result of his desire to work on extra-structural musical materials with a common origin: the main melodic theme partly built on a descending chromatic scale; the transitions between b and a' characterized by a descending line in octaves on the bass and a dominant chord written on the third note of this line; the transition zones between c' and a'' characterized by the repetition of the dominant seventh chord on the bass and a scale on the treble consisting of a tone and a series of semitones.
The Waltz op. 19, Volúvel begins with an anacrusis of four sixteenths notes which occupies two-thirds of a 3/8 measure, in an Andante espressivo movement. At bar 20, a motif of four sixteenths notes, which serves as anacrusis to the character-movement Valsa of measure 21, appears in a 3/4 measure occupying a third of this. Although these two motifs seem identical, the rhythm-metric relations confer different musical significances that must be considered by the interpreter. We further suppose that the character-movement Valsa must begin immediately on the anacrusis of bar 21 and not in the first beat of that measure.
João Costa Ferreira