The first part of this dissertation is a musical composition for orchestra entitled Symphony No. 1: On the Creation. Each movement depicts one of the first four days of Creation as it is recorded in Genesis 1 of the Bible. The music is programmatic throughout; melodies, textures, colorations, and even forms serve this purpose. The entities and creations involved in the story each appear with a specific motive, mode, and tonal area, similar to Wagners leitmotifs. The movements have various forms, which often derive from the literary form of the particular days creation account in Genesis.
The second part of this dissertation is an exploration of chromaticism and harmony in Henry Purcells sacred music. Purcell composed during a stylistic period marked by a transition from modality to tonality. The Baroque period developed out of the style of the High Renaissance, which was typified by imitation, counterpoint, and strictly controlled dissonance. By its close, the tonal system, characterized generally by the necessary progression of dominant to tonic harmony, had reached ascendance. Purcells music often strikes listeners as highly imaginative and original; certain exceptional moments stand out because the sounds and techniques that Purcell uses break with standard Renaissance practice, and remain unusual in the context of subsequent stylistic periods. Chromaticism was a natural part of Purcells musical language, both at surface and background levels. He used many chromatic techniques, including chromatic motives, chromatic textures, and background chromatic lines to create more vivid expressions of textual ideas and themes, as well as to provide musical coherence across a work. Additionally, Purcells chromaticism creates many different unusual and striking harmonic effects, including false relation, unusual chord progression, modality, and harsh vertical dissonance. This document examines numerous remarkable moments that feature these and similar devices in several of Purcells sacred compositions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-07232014-132831 |
| Date | 29 July 2014 |
| Creators | Carver, Joshua Adam |
| Contributors | Blackwell, Meredith, McFarland, Alison, Perry, Jeffrey, Constantinides, Dinos |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-07232014-132831/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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