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A Study of Szymanowski Preludes, op. 1

Szymanowski was regarded as the most important Polish composer of the 20th century. His creative life could be divided into three periods, and his compositional skills were deeply influenced by Chopin, Scriabin, Wagner, Stravinsky, the Impressionists and the National School of Music. Preludes, op.1 was one of Szymanowski¡¦s earlier works, which the creative music style was influenced by Chopin, Wagner and the late German Romanticism. The historical background of ¡§prelude¡¨ is with a kind of special interest, because it expressed the important characteristics of keyboard music in the earlier period. The ¡§prelude¡¨ originated from the unattached prelude in the 16th century, then graduately developed to evolve the attached prelude, becoming the main type in the Baroque period. The type of independent prelude was lately established by Chopin in the Romantic period. All the nine preludes are essays. The composition technique is often based on a single motivation or a subject, and expresses the music through the graceful melody. Furthermore, Szymanowski was skillful in using the complex harmony, adding dissonances and non-chord tones to expand the texture of music. He also employed the major and minor keys in turn to create a kind of indecisive tones. Therefore, the tonal structure became more clear only at the end of the music. The music style of Szymanowski is very characteristic and with diversity. He adapted different composing techniques to combine various characteristic sensations, moods and perspectives brilliantly, and produced the nine pleasant preludes consequently.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0615105-154838
Date15 June 2005
CreatorsYang, Chih-Hui
ContributorsMei-wen Lee, Cha-hui Ko, Kwang-i Ying
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0615105-154838
Rightsoff_campus_withheld, Copyright information available at source archive

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