Metrical Ambiguities in Ursula Mamlok's Panta Rhei (1981)

Roxane Prevost

University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Composer Ursula Mamlok (b. 1928) has gained prominence in the areas of performance, recording, and publishing in the past four decades. The majority of her recorded works draw from serial techniques, but since the 1970s, she has settled into a post-serial style that develops traditional forms and uses classical devices, such as motivic repetition and development. Although Mamlok manipulates the row through conventional operations in Panta Rhei (1981), she does not draw on serial techniques for some sections in the fourth movement, which displays a rondo design. Instead, Mamlok alternates between non-serial refrains and serial middle sections in this movement of her piano trio. She manipulates the entries of the repeated-note unit at the beginning of the refrains, giving the unit duple and triple identities. Although the duple and triple identities of the returning opening unit, the overlapping statements of the unit, and the reinterpreted incomplete measures contribute to the fluctuation in the perception of time, it is the many instances of acceleration and deceleration that give the piece the impression of Atime in flux.@