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MTO

The Online Journal of the Society for Music Theory


Volume 5, Number 2  March, 1999
Copyright � 1999 Society for Music Theory



New Dissertations

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Konstantinou, Elena. "Nikos Skalkottas: The Piano Music." University of Reading.

AUTHOR: Konstantinou, Elena
TITLE: Nikos Skalkottas: The Piano Music
INSTITUTION: University of Reading, Reading, U.K.
BEGUN: October 1998
COMPLETION: October 2001

ABSTRACT:
My research is concerned with the keyboard music of Nikos Skalkottas. Most of it is unpublished and unperformed, and I propose to assess it with the assistance of supporting analytical methods, addressing the primary sources. Problems to be examined include those surrounding the validity of the texts of the composer currently available and the general appraisal of these in the context of the output of Skalkottas, and his contribution to twentieth-century compositional technique, especially in relation to the structural ideals of his teacher, Schoenberg. Significantly, Skalkottas' idiosyncratic use of serial and developmental techniques is of great interest, particularly viewed in conjunction with the elaborate aesthetic, as opposed to purely technical, concepts with which the majority of Skalkottas' writing is concerned.

KEYWORDS:
Skalkottas, keyboard music, analytical, primary sources, serial, structural, developmental techniques, Schoenberg, aesthetic concepts, writings.

TOC:

CONTACT:
elenak@zetnet.co.uk
Voice:+44(0)181 948 6663
Fax: +44(0)181 948 6663

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Nelson, Thomas K. "The Fantasy of Absolute Music." University of Minnesota.

AUTHOR: Nelson, Thomas K.
TITLE: The Fantasy of Absolute Music
INSTITUTION: University of Minnesota
BEGUN:
COMPLETED: June 1998

ABSTRACT:
This dissertation addresses the genealogy of the fantasy of absolute music. It begins with the pastoral of reconciliation in a prelapsarian alternative world compensating for the dysfunctions of the social world. It concludes with the dissolution of the musical means to support that fantasy. The Lieder of Schubert comprise the primary repertory of this investigation of Austro-Germanic art music. The central chapters, 3 and 4, develop a theory of romantic tonality based on Schubert's own poetics of the bVI complex as manifested in his songs. Two preliminary chapters provide a wider cultural-historical context of Schubert's practice. The first chapter explores the literary and artistic figurations of the pastoral, the socio-psychological motivations for fantasy, and Schiller's philosophical theorization of the elegiac idyll as an allegorical idealization of the absolute. Chapter 2 discusses the poetics of 18th-century Galant-Classical musical discourse.

The legacy of the fantasy of absolute music in the 19th century coincides with the confusions and mystifications of aesthetic ideology. The concluding chapters discuss how the allegorical approach to fantasy, cultivated in Early German Romanticism as a collaboration of philosophy and poetics, succumbed to the desire for a purely symbolic certainty in an age marked by growing pessimism. By the end of the century, the desire for the musical absolute had driven the musico-poetic language of common practice tonality toward its own absolution. Chapter 6 includes a detailed interpretation of two songs composed in the 1880s that illustrate the full potential of bVI musical poetics.

The methodological premise of the dissertation rests on an Early Romantic form of dialectical mediation based on the metaphor of Schweben (hovering or fluctuation) as a means of transcendence. Schweben yields a fundamental concept of the romantic fantasy of absolute music itself and the key to its understanding. Similarly, the bVI provides an allegory for German music history in which the aesthetic experience of tonality is itself subject to a temporal fate of disillusionment. Works examined include art by Klinger, Poussin and Watteau; essays by Nietzsche, Schiller, Schenker and Wackenroder; music by Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Marenzio, Mozart, Schubert, and Wagner.

KEYWORDS:
submediant, lieder, harmony, effect, pastoral, galant, aesthetics, ideology, Arcadia

TOC:

Introduction:
Accorde, or The Fantasy of Absolute Music 1

Chapter 1:
Pastoral Reconciliation of Modern Estrangement

  1. Introduction 44
  2. Pastoral Origins 52
    a. The Golden Age Pastoral in Myth and Bible
    b. Arcadia: Home of the Pastoral Fantasy
    c. Nature as a Pastoral Alternative to Arcadia
  3. Pastoral Motivation 83
    a. The Dysfunctions of Order
    b. Surplus Order Pastorals: Royal and Romantic
    c. The King's Court as Pastoral
    d. Literature as Aesthetic Compensation
    e. Pastoral of Nature: Aristocratic Romanticism
  4. Ut Poesis Pictura: the Painted Pastoral 126
    a. The Sister Arts
    b. Romantic Absolutism
    c. Et in Arcadia Ego
    f. F�te Galante
  5. Schiller's Naive and Sentimental: the Elegiac Idyll 164
    a. Introduction
    b. Sentimental man
    c. Toward the elegiac idyll
    d. Beyond the elegiac idyll
    g. Schiller's legacy for pastoral thought

Chapter 2:
The Romanticism of Galant Music 206

  1. The Galant Compromise
    a. Envy and Resentment
    b. French Court to German Bourgeoisie
  2. The Figural Language of Galant Musical Discourse 227
    a. Marked Correlations
    b. Battle of the Pastorals
    c. Toward a Dictionary of Musical Figuration
  3. A Fantasy of Absolute Music: The Pastoral Replete 261
    a. Topological Inventory
    b. Scholarship and the Syntactical Fallacy
    c. A Pastoral of Galant Courtship
  4. Questions of Reception 304
    a. The Noncontemporaneous
    b. Alternative Autonomies
  5. Assaulting the Galant 322
    a. The Origins of the Sturm und Drang
    b. From the Storm-Style to Sturm und Drang
    c. Mozart's Opera of Storms
  6. A Second, Romantic Practice 358
    a. Toward the bVI complex
    b. Conclusion

Chapter 3:
Theory of the bVI Complex: The Logic of its Arcadian Poetics

  1. Introduction 379
  2. The Arcadian Pastoral 383
  3. Why the bVI for Arcadia? 388
  4. The bVI Complex 401
    a. Progressions by Third
    b. bVI Effect
    c. Submerged bVIs
    d. More Members of the bVI Family
    e. The Rogue bVI
    f. An Alternative Route to Distant Parts
  5. The Early bVI: A Subconscious Metaphor? 433
  6. Musical Scholarship and the Romantic bVI 451
  7. The Arcadian bVI: Elegiac Idyll of Romantic Music 475
    a. On the Value of the Ideal Type
    b. Initial Setting
    c. Entry into bVI Fantasy
    d. Residence: Illusion
    e. The Exit: Dis-illusionment of the Fantasy
    f. Final Reality

Chapter 4:
Schubert bVI Song Studies

  1. Part I: Schubert Studies 502
    a. Introduction
    b. Approaches to Lieder
    c. The bVI and Schubert's Dysfunctional World
    d. General Observations on Schubert's bVIs
  2. Part II: bVI Songs 539
    a. An den Mond, D.193
    b. Schaefers Klagelied, D.121
    c. Ihr Bild, D.957 #9
    d. Nacht und Traeume, D.827
    e. Die Goetter Griechenlands, D.677
    h. The bVI as a Sign of Mental Clarity

    (1) Erstarrung, D.911 #4
    (2) Fahrt zum Hades, D.526
    (3) Aus Heliopolis II, D.754

    i. Ihr Grab, D.736
    j. Tonic as bVI

    (1) Geistes-Gruss, D.142
    (2) Der Alpenjaeger, D.588
    (3) Grenzen der Menschheit, D.716
    (4) Selige Welt, D.743
    (5) Am Fenster, D.878
    (6) Laube, D.214
    (7) Der Fluss, D.693
    (8) Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D.965
    (9) Der Musensohn, D.764
    (10) Bie dir allein, D.866
    (11) Staendchen, D.889
    (12) Mein!, D.795 #11

    k. Meeres Stille, D.216
    l. bVI = V as pivot to bII

    (1) Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, D.583
    (2) Prometheus, D.674
    (3) Szene aus Goethes Faust, D.126
    (4) Wehmuth, D.772
    (5) Suleika I, D.720
    (6) Ganymed, D544
    (7) Der Zwerg, D.771

    m. Auf dem Flusse, D.911 #7
    n. The song cycles as tonal 'whole'

    (1) Winterreise, D.911
    (2) Schwanengesang, D.957

    o. Kennst du das Land, D.321

    (1) Beethoven
    (2) Schubert

    p. Conclusion

Chapter 5:
The Poetics of Absolute Music, or Schweben and its Ideological Discontents

  1. Introduction: Song and Absolute Music 657
  2. Allegory and Symbol as Philosophy and Ideology 664
  3. Words and Music: Uneasy Accord 677
  4. The Rebirth of Spirit in the Music of Allegory 690
  5. As if a Presence in Music 700
  6. The Foaming Chalice of Romantic Music 707
  7. German Music History: The Long, Hard Line 721

Chapter 6:
The Absolution and Dissolution of Pastoral Fantasy

  1. Schenker as Arch-allegorist 740
  2. Brahms: "Wie melodien zieht es" 755
  3. Mahler: "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht" 782
  4. Symptoms of a Fatal Condition 810

List of Works Cited 866

Appendices
Appendix # 1: Concordance of bVIs in Schubert's Lieder 903
Appendix # 2: Longer German Quotations 947
Appendix # 3: Outline of Pastoral Types in Western Culture 959
Appendix # 4: Examples of music and art 969

CONTACT:
Thomas K. Nelson
2733 40th Ave. South
Minneapolis, MN 55406
(612) 724-1651
tknlsn@earthlink.net

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Samplaski, Arthur G. "A Comparison of Perceived Chord Similarity and Predictions of Selected Twentieth-Century Chord-Classification Schemes, Using Multidmensional Scaling and Clustering Techniques." Indiana University.

AUTHOR: Samplaski, Arthur G.
TITLE: A Comparison of Perceived Chord Similarity and Predictions of Selected Twentieth-Century Chord-Classification Schemes, Using Multidmensional Scaling and Clustering Techniques
INSTITUTION: Indiana University
BEGUN: November 1998
COMPLETED: May 2000

ABSTRACT:
There seems to be an implicit consensus among adherents of several classification systems for the chord-types of twentieth-century Western art music that in some sense they reflect listeners' perceptions. This dissertation will undertake one perceptual study to test whether there is support for such a view of these theories. Subjects will listen to pairs of chords under several different experimental conditions as played by a computer program, which will collect their ratings of the chords' similarities. Two different pools of subjects will be recruited, to assess the effects of experience in listening to non-tonal music. Subjects' responses will be pooled and analyzed using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. The derived configurations will be compared to the (qualitative) clustering predictions of several chord-classification systems, to see if there is any perceptual support for their grouping criteria. Emphasis will be given to testing perceptual support for theories by Forte and Hindemith, but the method is also applicable to other classification systems.

KEYWORDS:
music cognition, music perception, atonal analysis, pcset theory, Hindemith, multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis

TOC:

CONTACT:
Art Samplaski
Music Theory Dept.
IU School of Music
Bloomington, IN 47405
asamplas@indiana.edu

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Santa, Matthew S. "Studies in Post-Tonal Diatonicism: A Mod7 Perspective." City University of New York.

AUTHOR: Santa, Matthew S.
TITLE: Studies in Post-Tonal Diatonicism: A Mod7 Perspective
INSTITUTION: City University of New York
BEGUN: February 1998
COMPLETED: May 1999

ABSTRACT:
There is a substantial body of music written in the 20th century in which the notes of a diatonic scale predominate, but which often lacks one or more of the other basic requirements necessary to be considered tonal: 1) a centricity around a single tone p erceived as tonic; 2) a harmonic organization based on triads and seventh chords; 3) a
hierarchical organization of functional harmonies; and 4) a contrapuntal substructure based on the laws of species counterpoint. Such music, by the likes of Barber, Copland, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky, has always posed a problem for music theorists, since neither traditional tonal analysis nor pc-set analysis yields satisfying analytic results. This dissertation argues that the problems inherent in analyzing post-tonal diatonic music can be solved by a careful application of set theory modulo 7, in interaction with the more familiar mod12 set theory. The first chapter outlines a system of mod7 set theory designed specifically for the analysis of post-tonal diatonic music . Chapter 2 then utilizes that system to analyze a range of post-tonal diatonic works in order to demonstrate the system's validity, its flexibility, and its explanatory power. Chapter 3 rigorously examines chordal tone centers in post-tonal diatonic music, an aspect of centricity that has thus far only been discussed in the vaguest of terms. Chapter 4 deals with structural levels in post-tonal diatonic music, presenting an approach that considers both the salience of individual pitches, and their place in the work's formal and motivic structure, in determining their structural weight. The final chapter explores how diatonic partitionings of the octave interact with pentatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and chromatic partitionings in much
music of the 20th c entury, and addresses the analytic problems posed by such interactions.

KEYWORDS:
post-tonal, mod7, centricity, diatonic, set theory, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartok, Copland, Barber

TOC:
Chapter 1: Set Theory, Mod7
Chapter 2: Motivic Analysis, Mod7
Chapter 3: Chordal Tone Centers
Chapter 4: Structural Levels
Chapter 5: Beyond Mod7: Relating Diatonic and Nondiatonic Materials

CONTACT:
Matthew Santa
120 W. 44th St., Apt. 914
New York, NY 10036
< msanta@aol.com >
(212) 921-2074

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Prepared by
Eric J. Isaacson, General Editor
6 April 1999