Anton Webern’s Op. 18 stands at nearly the exact center of his published work. Though it was in his Op. 17 that Webern began working with ordered pitches, there are some logistic struggles evident in his diversions from the row throughout that work. It is in Op. 18 that Webern first consistently uses a row in its complete, unchanged form. His increasing mastery of this style of composition is shown throughout Op. 18, a collection of three songs; the first with a single row repeated with no permutations of any kind; in the 2nd song, inversions and retrograde are introduced; and in the final song Webern experiments with simultaneous unique row forms for each instrument. These songs feature a guitar, E-flat clarinet, and soprano voice, with the first song a setting of a folk text. In this dissertation I argue that Webern’s later style–his orchestration, harmonic progressions, and formal structures–grows out of his choice of guitar as harmonic foundation in Op. 18. In my analysis I look at row construction and usage, as well as orchestrational considerations, folk implications, text setting, and specific voice-leading properties of Webern’s Opp. 18, 25, and 30. In so doing I will uncover a link between Webern’s pivotal Op. 18 song cycle, with the guitar playing a central role, and many of his compositional choices in his later works. My analysis looks at Webern’s works through the lens of a guitarist. I will explore the piano accompaniment of Op. 25 as if it were written for guitar, and do the same for his Op. 30 Variations for Orchestra. These analyses will show that his later works, and later style in general, have an underlying idiomatic character of guitar music. I argue that Webern’s late works feature, as a result, are his own version of folk music through their simplicity, clarity of form, and overall encapsulation of the sound of the guitar.

Sergei Prokofiev is among the ranks of early-twentieth century composers whose music endures in the concert hall and whose life has attracted much musicological research. Fewer studies, however, have undertaken an analytical investigation into his music, and the body of scholarly work on the musical theoretical issues raised by his compositions does not rival that exploring the music of such major contemporaries as Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók. Existing Anglo-American contributions to the field of Prokofiev theory have mostly employed the tools of common-practice musical analysis, many of them using Schenkerian methods, with the more recent accounts of Richard Bass and Deborah Rifkin expanding these to incorporate the chromatic features of Prokofiev’s music in more sophisticated ways. A notable exception is Neil Minturn, who proposes an analytical approach informed by pitch-class set theory; his methodology, however, has not been developed in any further research. This thesis aims to make a contribution to Prokofiev analysis by applying recent developments in neo-Riemannian theories and the work of the noted Russian musicologist, Yuri Kholopov, whose early monograph on Prokofiev’s harmony has not been engaged with in English language accounts to date. Neo-Riemannian theories are well suited to this task due to the correspondence between their remit and the diatonic chromatic aspect of Prokofiev’s music. This thesis also introduces and explores the potential of Kholopov’s theoretical concepts regarding the nature of twentieth-century music, and in particular processes such as polyharmony, in original analytical applications. Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 and Piano Sonata No. 8 have been selected as focal works as they are acknowledged masterworks on an ambitious scale and arguably represent a shift in Prokofiev’s compositional thinking towards more abstract music in his later period. Existing analyses of extracts from these two works also offer the opportunity of making comparative observations. By focusing on harmony and large scale tonal design in these two works, this thesis hopes to demonstrate that a dialogue between the theoretical perspectives of Kholopov and those of neo-Riemannian theories may contribute valuable insights into Prokofiev’s music, at both surface and deep structural levels.

No description available.

Parsimonious voice leading is a term, first used by Richard Cohn, to describe non-diatonic motion among triads that will preserve as many common tones as possible, while limiting the distance traveled by the voice that does move to a tone or, better yet, a semitone. Some scholars have applied these principles to seventh chords, laying the groundwork for this study, which strives toward a reasonably comprehensive, usable model for musical analysis. Rather than emphasizing mathematical proofs, as a number of approaches have done, this study relies on two- and three-dimensional geometric visualizations and spatial analogies to describe pitch-class and harmonic relationships. These geometric realizations are based on the organization of the neo-Riemannian Tonnetz, but they expand and apply the organizational principles of the Tonnetz to seventh sonorities. It allows for the descriptive “mapping” or prescriptive “navigation” of harmonic paths through a defined space. The viability of the theoretical model is examined in analyses of passages from the repertoire of Frédéric Chopin. These passages exhibit a harmonic syntax that is often difficult to analyze as anything other than “tonally unstable” or “transitional.” This study seeks to analyze these passages in terms of what they are, rather than what they are not.

The music of Benjamin Britten is both inspiring and intriguing: inspiring, because his music can move the listener; intriguing, because his use of triadic harmonies and rhythmic settings seems at once free, flexible, and spontaneous yet sensible and appropriate in representing the mood of the text. Although many of Britten’s harmonies are traditional in nature, e.g. major and minor triads, it is difficult, almost impossible or cumbersome at best, to assign Roman numerals to his harmonies because his manner of chord progression does not always conform to functional theory. In my analyses, I will demonstrate that the logic behind Britten's harmonic progressions can be explained through two types of neo-Riemannian transformation theories, namely Richard Cohn's Four Hexatonic Systems and Leonhard Euler's Tonnetz. In the case of the "Spinning Scene" from The Rape of Lucretia, Hindemith’s "Table of Chord-Groups" will be used to explain the presence of harmonies that are not part of the four hexatonic systems. Throughout, Schenkerian graphs will be presented to illustrate how the underlying structure and overall harmonic design of each piece work in conjunction with the emotion of the text. In addition, I will show that his rhythmic manipulations, when coupled with the meaning behind his chord progression, vividly paint the emotion of the text, as well as the state of mind of the poet or the character in an opera.

How have we come to hear melody as going “up” or “down”? Why does the Western world predominantly adopt spatial terms such as “high” and “low” to distinguish musical notes while other non-Western cultures use non-spatial terms such as “large” and “small” (Bali), or “clear” and “dull” (South Korea)? Have the changing concepts of motion and space in people’s everyday lives over history also changed our understanding of musical space? My dissertation investigates the Western concept of music space as it has been shaped by social change into the way we think about music today. In our understanding of music, the concept of the underlying space is so elemental that it is impossible for us to have any fruitful discourse about music without using inherently spatial terms. For example a term interval in music denotes the distance between two combined notes; but, in fact, two sonic objects are neither near nor far from each other. This shows that our experience of hearing interval as a combination of different notes is not inherent in the sound itself but constructed through cultural and social means. In Western culture, musical sound is often conceptualized through various metaphors whose source domains reflect the society that incubated these metaphorical understandings. My research investigates the historical formation of the conceptual metaphor of music. In particular, I focus on historical formation of the three underlying assumptions we bring to our hearing of music: (1) “high” and “low” notes and motion between them, (2) functionality of musical chords, and (3) reliance on music notation. In each chapter, I contextualize various music theoretical writings within the larger framework of philosophy and social theory to show that our current understanding of musical sound is embedded with the history of Western culture.

In Schubert’s music, the theme “wandering” is used frequently, closely related to human life and death. I presume that, being stricken by serious illness and facing challenging relationships, Schubert lived his short life with agony and dismay, confronting the life theme “death.” In that sense, Schubert himself was probably the wanderer who kept trudging throughout his life journey. In 1822, Schubert composed the allegorical tale “My Dream,” and in that tale, he writes as follows; “when I attempted to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love. Thus were love and pain divided in me” (Deutsch 1977, 227). Schubert lived his life, struggling between love and pain, and between life and death. Human life and death conflict with each other, but exist together in the same place. In other words, death is a root of life. If one can perceive that life and death both exist at the root of one’s life, the form of life should be represented by a circular path, not by a linear formation. This notion accords with Schubert’s musical style, where the same material comes back again and again in a circular formation. I assume that the notion—death as a root of life—is the essential conception of “wandering” that Schubert’s music expresses. In this dissertation, I would like to offer several Neo-Riemannian analyses and graphs of Schubert’s piano compositions; Impromptus D. 899, Moments Musical D. 780, Sonata in C-minor D. 958, and the “Wanderer” Fantasy D. 760. For each work and movement, I will map out the harmonic structure and key progressions on a Tonnetz graph, and suggest a new way to comprehend the nature of “wandering” that Schubert’s music portrays. Through the configurations and harmonic motions on the Tonnetz graphs, I will establish a way to comprehend Schubert’s concept of circular “wandering” visually and geometrically.

Film musicology is growing at a heartening pace, but the discipline is still bereft of sustained contributions from music theory. The current study seizes the opportunity presented by the underanalyzed repertoire of film music, offering an argument for applying the techniques of transformational analysis, and neo-Riemannian analysis in particular, to the interpretation of music for the moving image. Film musical style and form respond strongly to a transformational approach, which adapts well to both the triadic chromaticism characteristic of Hollywood’s harmonic practice and the dynamic and contingent condition of musical design inherent to the medium. Concurrently, the analytic tools and conceptual structure of neo-Riemannian theory benefit from exposure to a fresh repertoire with different analytic needs than those of art music. In this dissertation, the author scrutinizes the capacity for tonality to act as a unifying and dramatically potent force in film. With parameters of effective cinematic tonal design established, the adapted transformational methodology responds faithfully to the expressive and temporal qualities of the soundtrack. The author develops a model for harmonic associativity and a general hermeneutics of transformation, extrapolated from analyses of scores from John Williams, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and many others. The power of the transformational approach to capture tonal phenomena through spatial representations is marshaled to perform critical readings of scores for A Beautiful Mind and Star Trek. Not only can the neo-Riemannian stance illuminate the way film music works, but it can train the listener and analyst to perceive and enjoy film with more sensitive ears. / Music

No description available.

Cette thèse présente des généralisations u groupe néo-riemannien PLR, que agit sur l'ensemble des 24 triades majeures et mineures. Le travail commence par une reconstruction de l'histoire de Tonnetz, un graphe associé aux trois transformations qui génèrent le groupe PLR. La thèse présente deux généralisations du groupe PLR pour les accords de septième. Le premier agit sur le tournage des septièmes de dominantes, mineure, semi-diminuée, majeure et diminuée, le second comprend également la septième mineure majeur, majeure augmenté, l'augmentée et la septième dedominante bémol. Nous avons également classé les transformations les plus parcimonieuses parmi les 4 triades (majeure, mineure, augmentée et diminuée) et avons étudié le groupe généré par celles-ci. Enfin, nous avons introduit une approche générale permettant de définir des opérations parcimonieuses entre les accords de septième et de triade, mais aussi les opérations déjà connues entre triades et celles entre septièmes. / This thesis presents a generalizations of the neo-Riemannian PLR-group, that acts on the set of 24 major and minor triads. The work begins with a reconstruction on the history of the Tonnetz, a graph associated with the three transformations that generate the PLR-group. The thesis presents two generalizations of the PLR-group for seventh chords. The first one acts on the set of dominant, minor, semi-diminished, major and diminished sevenths, the second one also includes minor major, augmented major, augmented, dominant seventh flat five. We considered the most parsimonious operations exchanging two types of sevenths, moving a single note by a semitone or a whole tone. We also classified the most parsimonious transformations among the 4 types of triads (major, minor,augmented and diminished) and studied the group generated by them. Finally, we have introduced a general approach to define parsimonious operations between sevenths and triads, but also the operations already known between triads and those between sevenths.