Written for the 100-year anniversary of Joseph Haydn’s death, Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn, by Maurice Ravel, is a short minuet that uses a musical code to transform the name HAYDN into the main theme.
Ravel transforms the name as follows:
H, which in the German musical alphabet signifies B-natural;
A, which is A-natural;
Y, which, if musical alphabet is cycled through the full alphabet, produces D-natural;
D, which is D-natural; and
N, which cycled through the full alphabet gives the note G-natural.
Not only does he use the HAYDN motif for the opening theme, but he also, through the course of the piece, inverts the theme, has it occur in reverse, in the left hand, etc. One appearance of the motif occurs only when holding the sheet music itself upside-down.
Above all, it is a beautiful -and to me, melancholy- piece of music.
-Eric Tran, piano
Public domain sheet music:
http://bit.ly/1MFNmyF