Henry Cowell (1897-1965), American composer in 20th century, is the first who proposed the concept of tone clusters and placed many new techniques in his piano music. Innovative music theories and unique thoughts were displayed in his compositions and critiques. For developing both new visual and audio effects of piano music, Cowell played tone clusters with arms, palms, and fists, and also played strings inside piano to give new gesture and timbre of piano. This thesis is divided into three parts besides introduction and conclusion. The first part describes the origin and development of new piano techniques in the 20th century. The second part investigates Cowell¡¦s compositional career, compositional methods and thoughts for piano music. The third part analyzes ways of performing tone clusters and strings in Cowell¡¦s solo piano pieces with new techniques. Through analyzing these particular techniques, the compositional methods and uniqueness of Cowell¡¦s piano music could be understood. In the meanwhile, the performers will pay more attention to avoid performing injuries and damaging pianos.

Sonata had gone through the development of Baroque and Classical Era and reached the high point in the beginning of 19th century. Liszt¡¦ s Piano Sonata in B minor is an important work. It is also an arguable piece in the sonata literatures. Its musical form or content are both the issues of which is considered to carry on the past musical heritage and opened up the future. This thesis starts from the introduction of the composing background of Piano Sonata in B minor. It then focuses to the significance of this work in Romantic Era. After that, many pianists¡¦ and scholars¡¦ view points are collected and analyzed for discussing how this work has the characteristics of absolute music and program music. The relationship between Liszt¡¦s Faust Symphony and this sonata is also explored. Finally, the structure of this sonata is analyzed for understanding how the technique of thematic transformation works in this piece.

Dissertation--Fachbereich Politik--Freie Universität Berlin, 2006. / Bibliogr. p. 259-287.

Treatise (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis (D. Mus. Arts)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-263).

published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.

The dissertation examines Liszt's experimentation with harmonic, formal, and programmatic procedures in the piano works of his Weimar period (1848--1861). Liszt's music has often been criticized as "new wine in old bottles." His radical development of keyboard technique and harmonic vocabulary appears contained within, and constrained by, traditional forms. Here, however, it is argued that Liszt's "form" and "content" go hand in hand. A change in one compositional element (e.g., harmonic vocabulary) leads to changes in other elements (e.g., formal and tonal design), so that a kind of compositional "chain reaction" occurs. / Chapter one (introduction) establishes the plan of study and describes three organizational strategies ("conflict," "block," and "object") found in the selected works. Chapter two investigates the Etudes d'execution transcendante and focuses on harmonic innovations at the thematic level. In comparing different versions of the Etudes, the chapter shows how the composer's virtuoso keyboard idiom interacts with harmonic content and how surface harmonic procedures function as structural determinants. Chapter three concentrates on the smaller sets of "poetic" piano works. These include the Consolations , the Liebestraume, and the two Ballades as well as selections from the larger cyclical collections, the Annees de pelerinage and the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses. The analytical focus is on Liszt's manipulations of phrase- and section-level formal functions. The works display strophic and through-compositional tendencies that mirror developments in nineteenth-century lieder, and formal ambiguities that arise from the hybridization of traditional instrumental formal types. / Chapter four focuses exclusively on the B-minor Sonata. The composition, perhaps Liszt's most successful and complex work, engages us in a synthetic approach to harmony, form, and programme. The motivic and formal design of the Sonata may be accounted for in programmatic terms. Compositional similarities between the Sonata and the Faust Symphony suggest their shared programmatic subtext. The extensively developed "love interest" in Goethe's Faust invokes issues of gender and sexuality. The programme-related construction of gender as well as the arousal and channeling of desire can be connected with the Sonata's formal and tonal organization. Emphasizing the use of five motives and their various transformations, it is shown how Liszt portrays, through musical means, the three principal characters---Faust, Marguerite, and Mephistopheles---and how the work embodies a variety of narratological and interpretive paradigmsheroic, feminist, and psychological.

One of the remarkable features of Brahm's B-flat major Intermezzo for piano, Op. 76, no. 4 is the ambiguity of its tonal definition. The work disclosed a contrapuntal tension between its fundamental structural-harmonic organization, which is based on an incomplete harmonic progression (V7-I), and its more remote intermediary tonal areas, which Brahms implies throughout the Intermezzo but to which he never wholly commits. / The aim of this investigation is to illustrate how tonal ambiguity is achieved though recurrent "incompletions" of the expected (or at least the more likely) harmonic progressions. The thesis undertakes a detailed study of Brahms' Intermezzo, Op. 76, no. 4, in B-flat major, with additional reference to the openings of Opp. 118, no. 1 (A minor); 118, no. 6 (E-flat minor); 119, no. 1 (B minor); 117, no. 2 (B-flat minor) and 76, no. 8 (C major). The study combines a Schenkerian linear-reductive approach with observations based on phenomenology--after Leonard Meyer and David Lewin--and narrative, after Edward T. Cone.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Hochsch. für Musik und Theater, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.