During his lifetime, Johann Christian Bach (1739--1782) was considered the most famous musician of the Bach family throughout England and Europe. Although his music was highly regarded in the eighteenth century, little scholarly work has been undertaken on the historical and analytical aspects of his compositions. His keyboard compositions are valuable in tracing his musical development since this was the only genre that he wrote throughout his career in Berlin, Milan and London. Previous analyses of Bach's keyboard music have mainly focused on stylistic development, thus neglecting the importance of phrase and larger formal functions. / I adopt William Caplin's theory of formal functions to analyze Bach's solo keyboard sonatas: the Solo in A minor from Berlin (1750--55), three sonatas from the Milan collection (1755), six sonatas from London Op. 5 (1767), and six sonatas from London Op. 17 (1773--4). I demonstrate that Bach gradually refines phrase and thematic functions of the exposition of first-movement sonatas. I examine Bach's use of core technique and subordinate theme-like units in development sections and discuss the reasoning behind different recapitulation strategies. I also compare the sonata forms of the first movement to the second and third movements, and discuss other types of large-scale formal design (theme and variations, minuet and trio, and rondo). / Many sources indicate that Mozart was greatly influenced by Bach, but they remain vague in describing the type and extent of this influence. Building on previous melodic, motivic and stylistic studies, I draw important phrase-structural connections between the music of Bach and Mozart. I discuss the construction of Mozart's early piano pieces (KV 6 through K 284) and demonstrate that he adopts particular phrase-structural and thematic designs similar to pieces from Bach's Op. 5 and 17 collections. Through form functional analysis, I illustrate Bach's development of phrase and thematic structures and provide important phrase-structural evidence of his influence on the music of Mozart.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.112339 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Goodchild, Meghan. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Schulich School of Music.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002769409, proquestno: AAIMR51377, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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