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Ce travail est une étude sur le style et les références présentes dans l’œuvre pour piano solo de Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949). Il (ré)intègre pour la première fois le compositeur dans le milieu des pianistes qu’il a connu pendant ses années berlinoises (1921-1933), en inscrivant l’œuvre dans son contexte et l’ensemble des références auxquelles elle renvoie. Une méthodologie analytique émerge de ces mises en relation, destinée à faciliter le travail de l’interprète et à révéler les composantes stylistiques du corpus. Une importance particulière est portée sur le raffinement du timbre des pianistes berlinois dans l’entre-deux-guerres, mis en valeur par le « son coloré » des Bechstein historiques. Cette observation devient le point de départ d’une série d’analyses graphiques, montrant le rôle de la texture et du timbre en tant qu’éléments compositionnels chez Skalkottas. Les analyses, destinées à être utilisées par les interprètes, dévoilent une interaction de la texture avec le schéma formel. Elles sont complétées par l’étude des pièces, groupées par pôles de référence pour l’ensemble du corpus. Ces références s’étendent de la musique baroque et de Beethoven au jazz dansant et à la musique légère, tout en incluant des éléments provenant de la musique grecque. Les deux approches choisies s’appuient sur des sources mises pour la première fois au service de ce répertoire et s’avèrent complémentaires. Elles ont comme but d’offrir aux pianistes des clés pour son interprétation, de le rendre plus accessible et de faciliter sa propagation. / This thesis is a research into the style and influences on the solo piano works of Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949). For the first time the composer is considered in relation to the pianistic milieu he was acquainted with during his Berlin years (1921-1933) and his oeuvre is examined in the light of its various references. A specific analytical methodology emerges from these influences, aiming at facilitating the performer’s work and revealing the stylistic components of the pieces. The refinement of the timbre in the playing of Berlin pianists in the interwar years, enhanced by the “coloured sound” of the Bechstein historical pianos, acquires a special importance. It leads to a series of analyses and graphs, showing the role of texture and timbre as compositional elements in Skalkottas’s piano music. The graphs, meant for the use of pianists, reveal an interaction between texture and form. This is complemented by the study of the piano pieces grouped according to their references; they extend from baroque music and Beethoven to dance jazz, light music, and Greek music elements. Both approaches can be justified from the study of primary sources, used for the first time in relation to this repertoire, and are complementary. By offering pianists new tools for its interpretation, the aim is to facilitate the access to this music and help its further promotion.

Arnold Schoenberg's teaching career spanned over fifty years and included experiences in Austria, Germany, and the United States. Schoenberg's teaching assistant, Leonard Stein, transcribed Schoenberg's class lectures at UCLA from 1936 to 1944. Most of these notes resulted in publications that provide pedagogical examples of combined elements from Schoenberg's European years of teaching with his years of teaching in America. There are also class notes from Schoenberg's later lectures that have gone unexamined. These notes contain substantial examples of Schoenberg's later theories with analyses of masterworks that have never been published. Both the class notes and the subsequent publications reveal Schoenberg's comprehensive approach to understanding the presentation of the Gedanke or musical idea. In his later classes especially, Schoenberg demonstrated a method of analyzing musical compositions using illustrations of elements of the Grundgestalt or "basic shape," which contains the technical aspects of the musical parts. Through an examination of his published and unpublished manuscripts, this study will demonstrate Schoenberg's commitment to a comprehensive approach to teaching. Schoenberg's heritage of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music theory is evident in his Harmonielehre and in his other European writings. The latter include Zusammenhang, Kontrapunkt, Instrumentation, Formenlehre (ZKIF), and Der musikalische Gedanke und die Logik, Technik, und Kunst seiner Darstellung (the Gedanke manuscripts), written over the course of several years from the 1920s to the early 1930s. After emigrating to the United States in 1933, Schoenberg immediately began teaching and writing in an attempt to arrive at a comprehensive approach to his pedagogy. The remainder of Schoenberg's textbook publications, with the exception of Models for Beginners in Composition, were left unfinished, were edited primarily by Leonard Stein and published after Schoenberg's death in 1951. Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, and Structural Functions of Harmony complete his ouevre of theory publications. An examination of the Stein notes offers contributing evidence to Schoenberg's lifelong pursuit to find a comprehensive approach for teaching an understanding of the musikalische Gedanke. With the addition of an analysis of the first movement of Mozart's G minor Symphony, K. 550, which Schoenberg used often to illustrate examples of basic concepts as liquidation, transition, neutralization in the minor key, the role of the subordinate theme, retransitions, codettas, melodic and harmonic overlapping, and motivic analysis, this study focuses on Schoenberg's comprehensive approach to both analyzing the musical work and teaching methods of composing.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the use of isorhythm in two of Arnold Schoenburg's chamber works, the Third and Fourth String Quartets. The study of rhythm in twelve-note music has been generally relegated to a position less prominent than that held by the study of any of the other important aspects of the style. This condition is due probably to the fact that rhythm underwent less change with the advent of the twelve-note school of composition than melody, counterpoint, or harmony experienced. However, Rufer states that "rhythm has a special formal function in Schoenberg's twelve-note music, in addition to its motivic function and to that of creating subdivisions.

Arnold Schoenberg's development of twelve-tone serial ism in the early 20th Century had profound and far-reaching impact on the musical world. As Schoenberg himself grew and matured as a composer, so did the compositional technique of, and indeed his proficiency with, serialism. The opera Moses und Aron was composed in Schoenberg's third compositional period that lasted from 1923 through Schoenberg's death in 1951 and was characterized almost exclusively by this new technique of twelvetone serialism. Moses und Aron's first two Acts (as well as the libretto for the third) were written from 1930 to 1932 and based entirely on a single tone row. Though the opera itself was composed in the early 1930s, it had its beginnings as a religious play, similar to Schoenberg's earlier work, Oer Biblische Weg. Schoenberg left the opera as it was in 1932 and failed to return to score the libretto in Act III. Despite remaining unfinished, Moses und Aron is still widely regarded as one of Schoenberg's finest works and displays a composer working at the height of his skill. This project brings to light the brilliance of the tone row Schoenberg chose as his foundation for Moses und Aron through examining the various tone row transformations used throughout the opera as well as their specific setting and orchestration within the context of each scene. More than simply a musical background for the dramatic events of the Exodus narrative, the tone row becomes a character in-and-of itself, transforming and shifting to mirror dramatic events and becoming a driving force throughout the opera. In addition to informing dramatic content and context, the way in which Schoenberg scores the tone row also helps to illuminate the large scale musical form of each scene and is even essential to the dramatic tension and characterization within the narrative. In addition, this project endeavors to show that Moses und Aron displays Schoenberg's mastery of the compositional technique of twelve-tone serialism by examining in detail the significance of the functional orchestration as well as the divisions, or partitions, of Schoenberg's twelve-tone row. Inseparably connected with a discussion of the functional orchestration and partitioning of Schoenberg's tone row is a discussion of the different kinds of counterpoint that often occur as a result of such partitioning within the choral and instrumental orchestration of Moses und Aron. These concepts of functional orchestration, partitioning, and multiple forms of counterpoint are defined and unpacked in the upcoming chapters. As counterpoint functions as such an important aspect of the partitioning of the tone row, a brief discussion of counterpoint in serialism, specifically in Moses und Aron, accompanies the discussion of functional orchestration and the row partitioning. This understanding of the function of counterpoint in twelve-tone serial atonality is essential to this study. Much has been written, specifically by Michael Cherlin, about the formal and dramatic organization of Moses und Aron and how Schoenberg's permutations of his tone row both influence and are influenced by the formal and dramatic context. Cherlin has also given significant attention to defining links between tone row partitions and dramatic events or characters within Moses und Aron. An important part of my research, therefore, includes examining the analytical findings of Cherlin as well as those from other scholarly sources. This project also challenges or supports these findings based on my own analysis and discusses what I believe to be a new facet of the organization of Moses und Aron not previously revealed in other studies. In Chapter 5 of this project, I bring to light two specific partitions of the row that occur within the choral counterpoint of the opera and have not been mentioned in any study of Moses und Aron that I have discovered in my research.

<p>Much of our understanding of Schoenberg and his music today is colored by early responses to his so-called free-atonal work from the first part of the twentieth century, especially in his birthplace, Vienna. This early, crucial reception history has been incredibly significant and subversive; the details of the personal and political motivations behind deeply negative or manically positive responses to Schoenberg's music have not been preserved with the same fidelity as the scandalous reactions themselves. We know that Schoenberg was feared, despised, lauded, and imitated early in his career, but much of the explanation as to why has been forgotten or overlooked. As a result our own reception of Schoenberg's music is built upon inherited fears, hopes, and insecurities that are now nearly a century old. In order to more fully approach these musical works and their composer it is necessary to attempt to separate his reputation from the sound of the music.</p><p>This dissertation, which studies Schoenberg's reception from 1908 through 1924 in the United States, Britain, and Austria and German through select works (Opp. 10, 15, 16, 17), contributes to the field by uncovering additional primary sources, including previously unknown performances and reviews. My work interacts with larger trends in musicology, including questioning the narrative of atonality, assessing the value of social and artistic movements (i.e. expressionism) as applied to music, and examining how the reception of a work is the combination of many factors - from the aural to the political - which intertwine to form our idea of a musical text. Ultimately, through a study based on close musical analysis employing elements of set-class theory, the methodology of Rezeptionsästhetik, and a focus on historical context, I present an interpretation in which Schoenberg's reception is strongly determined by early critical responses from Vienna, where conservative views of music's role in society combined with undercurrents of anti-Semitic thought to brand Schoenberg as mentally unstable and his music as socially detrimental.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-165). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The prevalence of expressionism in the early twenty century was strongly related to the social environment at that time. Under the political situation of militarism and absolute monarchy, the society was facing a severe turbulence in Germany. And, an economic system based on capitalism also lead to extreme disparity between the rich and the poor. Additionally, the scientific study of rationality revealed the importance of caring for the inside needs, which gradually resulted in the prosperity of expressionism in different kinds of arts fields, including literature, theater, painting, music and so on. Expressionists started to express their feeling in a distorted way in order to show their true self and emotional experience. Arnold Schoenberg, who was one of the chief representatives in music of expressionism, used atonal composition skill as a reflection of his dissatisfaction against the reality. This study is divided into three main parts, excluding the part of introduction and conclusion. In the first part, the origin and style of expressionism in the early twenty century is introduced. Secondly, factors leading to the transformation of Schoenberg¡¦s composition skill, from the conventional method to the innovative atonal technique, are further discussed, which include the effect from other expressionists in other fields and his living environment. In the last part, Drei Klavierstucke, Opus 11 is taken as an example to demonstrate its historical background, music features, and composition techniques used in the work to specifically tell the content of expressionism.

Diss.--Berlin--Univ. der Künste, 2006. / Bibliogr. p. 214-237.

Mémoire--Histoire de la musique--CNR-Conservatoire supérieur de Paris, 2000. / Conrient en annexe le livret de l'oeuvre d'Arnold Schoenberg, ainsi que des extraits de la partition. Bibliogr. f. 99-104.