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Mendelssohn Octet in E Flat Major, Op. 20

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

CHAPTER

Mendelssohn's Unison Theme

Mendelssohn begins his movement with a mini fugue, meaning that one voice plays a mode of her melody and then other voices follow in. This all rushes us into the main theme of this movement, a cascading series of arpeggios in the melody with the rushing eighth note accompaniment. All of a sudden the cascading motion stops, and we get another theme, a heroic, yet somehow playful,. unison theme that will come back at the climactic moment of this movement. We've now basically been presented with the main ideas of this movement: fugues, a sense of constant motion, and this one unison theme where the rushing eighth notes are silent.

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