Dissertation Index



Author: Mutch, Caleb M

Title: Studies in the History of the Cadence

Institution: Columbia University

Begun: September 2011

Completed: June 2015

Abstract:

This dissertation traces the development of the concept of the cadence in the history of music theory. It proposes a division of the history of cadential theorizing into three periods, and elucidates these periods with four studies of particularly significant doctrines of musical closure. The first of these periods is the pre-history of the cadence, which lasted from the dawn of medieval music theory through the fifteenth century. During this time theorists such as John of Affligem (ca. 1100), whose writings are the subject of the first study, developed an analogy between music and the classical doctrine of punctuation to begin to describe how pieces and their constituent parts can conclude. The second period begins at the turn of the sixteenth century, with the innovative theory expounded by the authors of the Cologne school, which forms the subject of the second study. These authors identified the phenomenon of musical closure as an independent concept worthy of theoretical investigation, and established the first robustly polyphonic cadential doctrine to account for it. For the following three centuries theorists frequently made new contributions to the theorizing of the cadence in their writings, as exemplified by the remarkable taxonomy of cadences in the work of Johann Wolfgang Caspar Printz (1641-1717), the subject of the third study. By the early nineteenth century, however, cadential theorizing had largely ossified. Instead, authors such as A. B. Marx (1795-1866), on whose writings the fourth study focuses, only drew upon the concept of the cadence as was necessary in their treatments of newly emerging theoretical concerns, especially musical form. Through historical contextualization and comparison with contemporary music, the dissertation reveals discontinuities in the concepts and functions of cadential doctrines in historical music theories, and provides new possibilities for understanding and experiencing musical structure.

Keywords: Cadence, Closure, History, Affligem, Printz, Marx

TOC:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. MUSICAL CLOSURE, GRAMMATICO-RHETORICAL DOCTRINE, AND CHANT: JOHN OF AFFLIGEM
1.1 The Analysis of Speech Structure in Classical Rhetoric
1.2 The Grammatical Doctrine of Punctuation in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
1.3 Grammatical and Rhetorical Elements in Musical Discourse before John of Affligem
1.4 John of Affligem and the Application of the Distinctiones to Music
1.5 The Transmission of the Doctrine
1.6 Conclusion

CHAPTER 2. POLYPHONIC CLOSURE IN THE RENAISSANCE: THE COLOGNE SCHOOL
2.1 The Term Clausula Formalis
2.2 Precedents of the Cologne School’s Theory
2.3 The First Stage: Three-voice Cadences in the Opus aureum and Musica
2.4 The Second Stage: Four-voice Cadences in the Musica and Tetrachordum musices
2.5 Triadic Tonality and Cochlaeus’s Sixth Rule
2.6 Cadential Doctrine and Compositional Practice
2.7 Conclusion

CHAPTER 3. MID-BAROQUE CLAUSULA DOCTRINE: PRINTZ AND HIS PREDECESSORS
3.1 German Cadence Theory before Printz
3.2 A Ramist Theory of Cadence
3.3 Printz’s contribution
3.3.1 Voice-specific Cadences
3.3.2 Cadence and Mode: Propria/Peregrina
3.3.3 Perfect/Imperfect Cadences
3.3.4 Totalis/Dissecta
3.3.5 Desiderans/Acquiescens
3.3.6 The Sedes
3.3.7 An Inchoate Theory of Phrases
3.4 Conclusion

CHAPTER 4. A. B. MARX, BIOLOGY, FORM, AND CADENCE
4.1 The Roles of Cadence in Music-theoretical Discourse before A. B. Marx
4.2 A. B. Marx’s Conception of Cadence
4.3 Form and Cadence in Marx’s Music Theory
4.4 Organicism and Marx’s Theory of Form
4.5 Changes in the Nineteenth Century
4.6 Conclusion


Contact:

cmm2209@columbia.edu



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