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Form and Orbital Tonality in the Finale of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony: The Finale of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony
Abstract
This article investigates questions of form in the Finale of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, paying special attention to the reversed recapitulation as a problematic category in contemporary Formenlehre. Counterpointing Timothy Jackson's reading of the movement as a ‘tragic’ reversed sonata against James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's critique of the concept of reversal, it seeks ways of accounting for the movement's novel form‐functional characteristics, which integrate concepts of thematic syntax with a model of chromatic tonality, drawing simultaneously on Schenkerian and neo‐Riemannian theories and the notion of the double‐tonic complex first proposed by Robert Bailey. The argument is contextualised in relation to critical debates about Bruckner's forms that originated during the composer's lifetime, especially claims of material discontinuity and harmonic illogicality, which were common in the symphonies’ pro‐Brahmsian reception and which linger in the discourse up to the present. The article's central claim is that a substantial understanding of both the Finale's form and its critical reception is attendant upon a theory of formal function, which takes seriously the difficulties of harmonic analysis that Bruckner's post‐Wagnerian idiom engenders.
... Here, we want to point out that an analysis that relies on major or minor keys does not do justice to its intricate harmonic structure (Cohn, 2012). An appropriate analysis of tonality in late 19th-century music, sometimes referred to as "extended tonality" (Schoenberg, 1969), requires more advanced concepts, such as chromaticism, extended harmonies, and symmetrical chords and scales (Cohn, 1996;Haas, 2004;Horton, 2018;Kopp, 2002;Lerdahl, 2001;Polth, 2018;Weiß & Habryka, 2014). Thus, keyscapes based on key-finding algorithms are not suitable for representing extended tonality. ...
Many structural aspects of music, such as tonality, can be expressed using hierarchical representations. In music analysis, so-called keyscapes can be used to map a key estimate (e.g., C major, F minor) to each subsection of a piece of music, thus providing an intuitive visual representation of its tonality, in particular of the hierarchical organization of local and global keys. However, that approach is limited in that the mapping relies on assumptions that are specific to common-practice tonality, such as the existence of 24 major and minor keys. This limitation can be circumvented by applying the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) to the tonal space. The DFT does not rely on style-specific theoretical assumptions but only presupposes an encoding of the music as pitch classes in 12-tone equal temperament. We introduce wavescapes, a novel visualization method for tonal hierarchies that combines the visual representation of keyscapes with music analysis based on the DFT. Since wavescapes produce visual analyses deterministically, a number of potential subjective biases are removed. By concentrating on one or more Fourier coefficients, the role of the analyst is thus focused on the interpretation and contextualization of the results. We illustrate the usefulness of this method for computational music theory by analyzing eight compositions from different historical epochs and composers (Josquin, Bach, Liszt, Chopin, Scriabin, Webern, Coltrane, Ligeti) in terms of the phase and magnitude of several Fourier coefficients. We also provide a Python library that allows such visualizations to be easily generated for any piece of music for which a symbolic score or audio recording is available.
The timeworn view that Bruckner's sonata form is a motionless architecture devoid of dynamic processes has long contributed his isolation from the mainstream post‐Beethovenian tradition. Taking inspiration from August Halm's (1914) and Ernst Kurth's (1925) approaches, which were aimed at overcoming this view, this article seeks to elucidate the processual aspects of Bruckner's symphonic form in light of recent theoretical developments in musical form. Specifically, it combines William Caplin's form‐functional theory (1998), especially its beginning–middle–end paradigm, with Matthew Arndt's (2018) reconception of formal functionality to construct a new framework for the analysis of Bruckner's symphonic forms.
By way of an analytical case study of the first movement of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony, the article reveals that the expression of continuous motion occurring across discrete formal entities, often further dramatised by ‘wave dynamics’ (Kurth 1925), is fundamental to Bruckner's reinvigoration of sonata form's inherent temporal process in a post‐Romantic context. In the exposition, the inter‐thematic beginning, middle and end paradigms are redistributed to the three thematic groups, which express their unique temporal domain while delineating a continuous tonal journey from the home key to the subordinate key. The remainder of the movement articulates a gradual journey of homecoming, with each subsequent large‐scale part addressing previously suggested tonal implications. Ultimately, the modified form‐functional approach adopted in this study sheds light on Bruckner's exceptional care for formal syntax on various levels of structure, and its close association with an overarching, though unconventional, tonal plot.
Schubert's early string quartets reveal a tendency towards bi‐rotational designs combining elements of type 1 (lacking a development section) and type 2 (beginning their second rotation off‐tonic) sonata form. Examples of the practice are found in first movements, slow movements and finales and encompass at least nine movements from the ten quartets composed between 1810 and 1815. Owing in part to their difficult reception history, these works have not yet been utilised to evaluate the applicability of sonata theory's typology of sonata forms to early nineteenth‐century repertoire, even though they seem uniquely well placed to do so.
In this article I propose a new conceptual formal model based on a hybrid form, existing in a continuum between type 1 and type 2 structures. Through analysis of the first movement of the String Quartet in D major, D. 74 (1813) and the early Quartettsatz in C minor, D. 103 (1814), I argue that the tension between understanding these works as either balanced, parallel binary forms or as a single unfolding process of tonal actualisation stems from their particular historical profile: on the one hand, they hark back to Classical models (in particular, the operatic overture), and on the other, they are prescient of the progressive formal/tonal strategies in Schubert's later works. It is this unique dual perspective that renders these works apposite as a means by which to problematise the ostensibly strict distinction between type 1 and type 2 strategies, and to lead to a more nuanced realisation of the theory's analytical possibilities.
In a small number of sonata forms scattered across the nineteenth century, the development is followed immediately by a return of the subordinate theme, the main theme coming back only later or not at all. How to interpret these forms – often casually referred to as sonata forms with ‘reversed recapitulation’ – has been a topic of debate among theorists within the new Formenlehre. While some (e.g. Hepokoski and Darcy 2006, Smith 2019 and Hepokoski 2021) have argued against the ‘reversed recapitulation’ model and in favour of an understanding along the lines of the (eighteenth-century) ‘type 2 sonata’, others (e.g. Wingfield 2008, Wingfield and Horton 2012 and Vande Moortele 2017) have problematised that position on historical and analytical grounds.
This article weighs the arguments for and against the various positions, at once problematising the type 2 approach and arguing for a more restrictive application of the reversed recapitulation idea. Analyzing more and less familiar pieces by Mendelssohn (Octet, Op. 20/ii), Schumann (Symphony No. 4/iv), Martucci (Piano Trio Op. 62/iv), Hartmann (Piano Sonata Op. 34/iv) and Hummel (Piano Sonata Op. 106/iv), it develops ways of thinking about these forms that move beyond the dichotomy between type 2 and reversed recapitulation by introducing the categories of ‘main-theme deletion’ and ‘development-recapitulation fusion’.
This article revisits the long‐standing issue of form in the Adagio of Mahler's Tenth Symphony (1910) in light of recent developments in Formenlehre and neo‐Riemannian theory. I consider the movement's sonata properties, as discerned by Kofi Agawu (1986) and Richard Kaplan (2005), by exploring the applicability of William E. Caplin's form‐functional theory (1998) and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's Sonata Theory (2006) in a post‐Wagnerian tonal environment, construed in terms of Richard Cohn's hexatonic systems (1999) and Julian Horton's model of orbital tonality (2018b). While the argument posits a hexatonically orientated conception of form based on what I theorise as hexatonic tension, special attention is given to the idea of breakthrough as an analytical and hermeneutic point of reorientation: conceived after Janet Schmalfeldt's concept of becoming (2011), the breakthrough initiates a retrospective reinterpretation of the Adagio's tonal universe and consequently turns its form into a diatonically orientated sonata form. The article thus explicates the formal function of breakthrough based on Adorno's aesthetic formulation, propounding a chromatically inflected model of sonata form in response to Seth Monahan's call for a novel framework for Mahler's late works (2011). Together they constitute a foundation of a theory of fin‐de‐siècle modernist symphonic sonata form.
One of the most welcome consequences of the new Formenlehre is the recent surge of interest in Romantic form. Motivated by the twin achievements of sonata theory and form-functional theory, analysts have extended Formenlehre’s purview well beyond its classical core repertoire, embracing canonical and non-canonical music from Berlioz to Mahler.¹ With this expansion has come recognition that Romantic forms disclose a wide array of practices that are resistant to classically grounded explanations, including novel form-functional habits and processual techniques, strategies of elision and divisional overlap, and the erosion of axiomatic structural principles, not least the devaluation of the perfect authentic cadence as a formal marker.
To this burgeoning field can now be added Steven Vande Moortele’s significant and absorbing new study of the Romantic overture.² The book realizes an ingenious concept, which neatly dovetails music-theoretical and musicological objectives. As a contribution to Formenlehre, it develops the idea that a theory of Romantic form is best pursued via generically constrained corpus studies; as a contribution to musicology, it promotes the advantages of allowing genres to speak for their historical circumstances. These objectives are really two sides of the same coin: consistent formal practices define a genre in its time; but the corpus for any theory of form has to be chronologically bounded to be manageable or meaningful. The resulting disciplinary elision is provocative, not least because music theory and musicology have frequently proved uncomfortable bedfellows. The quasi-scientific ambitions that have driven theory since the 1960s have invariably marginalized historical considerations, either by accident or design. The heated disputes of the 1990s hardly laid the foundations for a lasting rapprochement; and there is scant evidence that music historians are finding new applications for theoretical models in cultural scholarship. To insist at once that formal theory is necessarily musicological and that musicology necessitates theory is therefore a bold move indeed, a point to which I will return below.
Building on ideas first advanced by Arnold Schoenberg and later developed by Erwin Ratz, this book introduces a new theory of form for instrumental music in the classical style. The theory provides a broad set of principles and a comprehensive methodology for the analysis of classical form, from individual ideas, phrases, and themes to the large-scale organization of complete movements. It emphasizes the notion of formal function, that is, the specific role a given formal unit plays in the structural organization of a classical work.
This book offers a theory of Romantic song by re-evaluating Schumann's Dichterliebe of 1840, one of the most enigmatic works of the repertoire. It investigates the poetics of Early Romanticism in order to understand the mysterious magnetism and singular imaginative energy that imbues Schumann's musical language.
The Romantics rejected the ideal of a coherent and organic whole and cherished the suggestive openness of the Romantic fragment, the disconcerting tone of Romantic irony and the endlessness of Romantic reflection - thereby realizing an aesthetic of fragmentation. Close readings of many songs from Dichterliebe show the singer's intense involvement with the piano's voice, suggesting a 'split Self' and the presence of the 'Other'.
Seeing Schumann as the 'second poet of the poem' - here of Heine's famous Lyrisches Intermezzo - this book considers essential issues of musico-poetic intertextuality, introducing into musicology a hermeneutic that seeks to synthesize philosophical, literary-critical, music-analytical and psycho-analytical modes of thought.
This volume offers a new view of Joseph Haydn's instrumental music. It argues that many of Haydn's greatest and most characteristic instrumental works are 'through-composed' in the sense that their several movements are bound together into a cycle. This cyclic integration is articulated, among other ways, by the 'progressive' form of individual movements, structural and gestural links between the movements, and extramusical associations. Central to the study is a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the 'Farewell' Symphony, No. 45 in F sharp minor (1772). The analysis is distinguished by its systematic use of different methods (Toveyan formalism, Schenkerian voice leading, Schoenbergian developing variation) to elucidate the work's overall coherence. The work's unique musical processes, in turn, suggest an interpretation of the entire piece (not merely the famous 'farewell' finale) in terms of the familiar programmatic story of the musicians' wish to leave Castle Eszterhaza. In a book which relates systematically the results of analysis and interpretation, Professor Webster challenges the concept of 'classical style' which, he argues has distorted our understanding of Haydn's development, and he stresses the need for a greater appreciation of Haydn's early music and of his stature as Beethoven's equal.
Sibelius's Fifth is one of the great late-Romantic symphonies. In this searching account, based on a wealth of new information, James Hepokoski takes a fresh look at the work and its composer. His findings have implications beyond Sibelius himself into the entire repertory of Post-Wagnerian symphonic composition. The early chapters place the Fifth Symphony squarely within the general culture of European musical 'modernism' and focus in particular on the problem of the clash of that culture with the more radical 'New-Music' experiments of an emerging younger generation of composers. Subsequent chapters include a probing consideration of Sibelius's style and meditative aesthetic; an account of how the symphony was composed; and a descriptive analysis of the final, familiar version. The book concludes with a discussion of the composer's own prescribed tempos for the Fifth Symphony, along with a comparison of several different recordings.
This book provides a selection of annotated translations from Ernst Kurth's three best-known publications: Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts (1917), Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners 'Tristan' (1920), and Bruckner (1925). Kurth's contemporaries considered these books to be pioneering studies in the music of J. S. Bach, Wagner and Bruckner. Professor Rothfarb's extensive introductory essay discusses the intellectual and socio-cultural environment in which Kurth was writing, referring to aspects of the early twentieth-century cultural renewal movements and to intellectual developments of the day in phenomenology, aesthetics and psychology. By reading Kurth against the cultural-intellectual background provided in the essay and commentaries, today's music historians and theorists can round out their picture of music theory in the early twentieth century.
In this book Steven Vande Moortele offers a comprehensive account of operatic and concert overtures in continental Europe between 1815 and 1850. Discussing a broad range of works by German, French, and Italian composers, it is at once an investigation of the Romantic overture within the context of mid-nineteenth century musical culture and an analytical study that focuses on aspects of large-scale formal organization in the overture genre. While the book draws extensively upon the recent achievements of the 'new Formenlehre', it does not use the overture merely as a vehicle for a theory of romantic form, but rather takes an analytical approach that engages with individual works in their generic context.
Despite significant advances in Bruckner scholarship, many problems persist. Although the relationship between Bruckner's music, post-Wagnerian ideology and, ultimately, Nazism has been carefully reconstructed, questions of how such matters should condition our responses to the music remain unaddressed. This important study isolates problematic issues of interpretation, analysis, reception, and historical location, and offers potential solutions through case studies of individual works.
At the center of this study is a desire to understand better the distinct temporal quality expressed in the first movement of Schubert's late G-Major Quartet, D. 887. This movement famously amalgamates sonata and variation impulses, a feature that has informed readings of its structure as retrospective, concerned with memory and reminiscence ( Dahlhaus 1986; Frisch 2000; and Burnham 2000).
Taking its cue from Dieter Schnebel's 1972 study of time in Schubert's music, this article posits that the first movement of D. 887 (abbreviated hereafter as D. 887/i) displays an array of diverse temporal perspectives that are, at base, functions of recognizable formal devices. Distinct temporalities are revealed analytically via an extended adaptation of William E. Caplin's theory of formal functions. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates that the musical syntax of the movement's grouping structures functions simultaneously on different formal levels and displays what I term “form-functional multiplicity” in the first and second expositional groups as well as a double tonal/thematic trajectory in the development section. Considered in tandem, these hold implications for the articulation of time in the movement as a whole.
Ultimately, by uncovering the precise mechanisms behind the temporal vibrancy of this movement, this study illuminates the interaction between Schubert's idiosyncratic formal practices and his music's manipulation of musical time.
There is something sphinx-like about Bruckner’s musical forms. They can seem neat and traditional at one moment, but at the next appear free and unconventional. This duality is evident in the rather disparate interpretations, ranging from the accusation of ‘formlessness’ to the claim that Bruckner’s symphonies represent a pinnacle in the evolution of musical form, that have been offered, discussed, and elaborated from the nineteenth century onward. A prevalent early judgement found Bruckner’s music ‘formless’. This concern was first raised after the composer conducted the Second Symphony on 26 October 1873. A. W. Ambros, staking out what was to become a familiar position, wrote that instead of exhibiting, as expected, a ‘firmly joined musical structure [festgefügte musikalische Tektonik]’ the symphony drove the listener to ‘breathlessness’ by presenting a series of ‘tonal shapes [Tongebilde] wilfully strung one after another’. Throughout the 1880s the notion that Bruckner’s symphonies were chaotic in form percolated through antagonistic reviews, most importantly in those by Hanslick, Kalbeck, and Gustav Dömpke. Dömpke, for example, opened his review of the Viennese premiére of the Seventh Symphony with the assertion ‘Bruckner lacks the feel for the primary elements of musical formal shape, for the coherence of a series of melodic and harmonic component parts.’ Even observers sympathetic to Bruckner’s music were occasionally puzzled by his forms; Hugo Wolf referred to a certain ‘formlessness’ that haunted the symphonies despite their ‘originality, grandeur, power, imagination and invention’.
Brahms's self-identity and public identity as a Liberal are the basis for the two historical perspectives in this book. One reconstructs his place in Vienna. The other draws on criticism conditioned by Western Marxism, on ideas developed in response to 19th-century Liberalism. Brahms appears not to have recognized a societal problem of late Liberalism: exaggerated emphasis on the individual. He did, however, recognize a related musical problem delineated by Adorno - individualized themes at the expense of the formal whole - and made it central to his lifework. Commentary on Brahms's chamber music draws on other ideas articulated by Adorno and Lukács such as "second nature", while discussion of ideology of the symphony applies Habermas's explanation of the "public sphere", in both instances to move between social and musical problems associated with late Liberalism. Emphasis is placed on Brahms's diverse sources of renewal and on an under-explored facet of his music: his mastery of ways and degrees of establishing a key in this late period of tonality. With Brahms's works and his circumstances as exemplars, an addendum to late-style dialectics is proposed: late works are at once an expression of their time and alienated from the contemporary context. For better and worse, Brahms remained an orthodox Liberal. Thus, despite his allegiance to German nationalism he did not succumb to the tribalism that became critical around 1890.
This book analyses the sonata. Both building on and departing from earlier methods of analysis, it provides an in-depth examination of the sonata genre. After establishing the normative features of the sonata, the authors examine how individual sonatas from Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart both adhere to and deviate from those standards to a variety of effects. Co-authored by a music theorist and a musicologist, the book provides a foundational theory and offers insights on individual works from the Western canon.
Many nineteenth-century theorists viewed triadic distance in terms of common tones and voice-leading proximity, rather than root consonance and mutual diatonic constituency. Audacious Euphony reconstructs this view and uses it as the basis for a chromatic model of triadic space, developing geometric representations from blueprints of Euler (1739) and Weitzmann (1853). The model renders coherent many passages of romantic music (e.g. of Schubert, Liszt, Brahms, Chopin, Wagner) that are disjunct from the standpoint of classical tonality. Semantic attributes commonly ascribed to romantic music are theorized as the result of incompatibilities between classical and romantic conceptions of triadic distance. The model generalizes to apply to relations among Tristan-genus seventh chords, due to their structural homologies with triads. At the heart of the approach is the observation that major and minor triads are minimal perturbations of perfectly even augmented triads, and that this property underlies their status as voice-leading optimizers. Consonant triads are thus overdetermined, as they are also independently the acoustic optimizers of classical theory. Both consonant triads and Tristan-genus seventh chords are homophonous diamorphs, whose syntactic behaviors and semantic qualities require two distinct theories, as well as a third one that reconciles them in a cognitively plausible way. Among the compositions treated analytically in Audacious Euphony are Schubert "Der Doppelgänger" and "Auf dem Fluße", his sonatas D. 959 and 960, Chopin's e-minor prelude, fantasy, and g-minor ballade, Schumann's Dichterliebe, Liszt's Consolation #3 and organ Kyrie, Rimsky-Korsakov's Antar, Fauré's Requiem, Brahms's 1st and 2nd Symphonies, Wagner's Parsifal, Bruckner's 3rd Symphony, Dvorak's New World Symphony, and Strauss's "Frühling."
The present study offers an extended neo-Riemannian examination of chromatic-third relations in selected Bruckner compositions of the 1880s, and it constitutes the first such examination of the composer's music. Owing to its inherent indifference towards the notions of tonal centre and conventional harmonic syntax, a neo-Riemannian transformational model seems particularly apt for the analysis of the music selected – music in which non-functional chord progressions, symmetrical divisions of the octave and the temporary suspension of tonic centricity are featured. The characteristics of the works analysed here suggest an evolution in Bruckner's handling of chromaticism, from the seemingly sui generis mixture of plagal and chromatic-third relations in the coda of the opening movement of the Sixth Symphony, to a more methodical use of hexatonic-polar transformations in the motet Ecce sacerdos magnus, to the exhaustive, almost systematic exploration of hexatonic cycles in the finale of the Eighth Symphony.
The first movement of Schubert's String Quintet, D. 956, is among the early nineteenth-century repertoire's clearest examples of what Janet Schmalfeldt has called ‘form as the process of becoming’. In this article we show how the governing formal principle of the movement's exposition is the conflation of distinct and typically consecutive formal functions. The result is an extraordinary chain of form-functional overlaps, requiring the analyst to engage in a process of constant retrospective reinterpretation that ends only with the unambiguous closing group. Our aim is not only to revisit some familiar analytical questions about Schubert's Quintet from a form-functional perspective, but also to provide a test case showing the applicability of form-functional thinking to early nineteenth-century music. We begin by presenting a form-functional overview and cadential plan of the exposition and then home in on three passages that pose particular analytical challenges: the introduction/main-theme/transition complex (bars 1–59), the transition/subordinate-theme complex (bars 60–100) and the closing-group/subordinate theme complex (bars 100–138). The article concludes by proposing certain ways in which Schmalfeldt's idea of retrospective reinterpretation may be further refined.
Despite the prominent status John Field’s seven piano concerti enjoyed during his lifetime, lingering complaints of formal
incompetence have combined with the critique of virtuosity and collusion between Formenlehre and Austrocentric conceptions of canon to guarantee their subsequent marginality. This essay re-evaluates these works as
a platform for critiquing recent trends in Formenlehre. It contrasts the development of the theory of concerto first-movement form out of the reception of Mozart’s piano concerti
with the localized influence Mozart exerted over the genre’s development in the early nineteenth century. Situating designs
in Field’s concerti that diverge from Mozartian norms within a practice evolving in London in the last decade of the eighteenth
century, I call for a more historically nuanced formal theory, arguing that our persisting habit of theorizing concerto first-movement
form in relation to a dominant Mozartian archetype misrepresents a large proportion of the subsequent repertory.
The article examines notions traditionally attached to the concept of cadence in general, retains those features finding genuine expression in "the classical style" (as defined by the instrumental works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven), and investigates problematic ideas that have the potential of producing theoretical and analytical confusion. It is argued that cadence effects formal closure only at middle-ground levels of structure; a cadential progression is highly constrained in its harmonic content; cadential function precedes the moment of cadential arrival, whereas the music following this arrival may be postcadential in function; cadential content must be distinguished from cadential function; cadence represents a formal end, not a rhythmic or textural stop; and cadential strength can be distinguished in its syntactical and rhetorical aspects. An analysis of selected musical passages demonstrates that an accurate identification of cadence has a major impact on the interpretation of musical form and phrase structure. © 2004 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved.
The AMusic flat sign-C-E major-third constellation stands as a prototype for nineteenth-century composers' expressive and structural uses of chromatic major-third relations. After tracing the origins of the collection, this article presents a conglomeration of hierarchic and transformational analytic approaches to AMusic flat sign-C-E music by central European composers to demonstrate that recognition of the complex comprises a valuable added dimension to our structural and phenomenological hearings of romantic-era music.
Although recent scholarship has witnessed a welcome disavowal of the view that Schubert's formal and tonal designs in sonata form compositions bespeak the song composer's inability to master large-scale instrumental genres, it remains a commonplace to characterize Schubert's unorthodox practice as "lyrical." Yet the historical, theoretical, and aesthetic bases of this lyricism have received little critical attention. A systematic and historically grounded approach to the notion of lyrical form in Schubert may be established by appealing to the rhetorical distinction between hypotaxis and parataxis, which pervaded late 18th-century discussions of both music and language. In particular, parataxis, a style that deliberately omits syntactical connections and relies instead on juxtaposition and parallelism, offers a suggestive technical link between Schubert's instrumental practice and the discursive techniques of contemporaneous lyric poetry. There are also aesthetic connections between idealist views of the lyric and the composer's own artistic beliefs, as confirmed by biographical documents. Schubert's approach to form was as much informed by these literary sensibilities as by the Classical compositional tradition. Like poets for whom the lyric served both as an Arcadian ideal of song and as an alternative to the prosaic realities of the present, Schubert evoked the lyric within the context of the sonata as a means of reunifying the dissociated sensibility of the Enlightenment. In so doing, he secured a place for the poetic imagination in instrumental music. © 2006 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
This article analyzes Hugo Wolf's Auf eine Christblume I and II in relation to Robert Bailey's concept of the "double-tonic complex." These songs project an intricate pairing of D and Ft tonalities that often result in various hexatonic relationships. My interpretation associates the D/Ft complex with the central poetic subject: the Christmas rose. The article introduces Wolf's setting, reevaluates Bailey's idea, and offers an in-depth herme- neutic analysis of the two songs.
This is a broad, comprehensive study of Stravinsky's famous ballet. In the early chapters, van den Toorn draws on the composer's correspondence, sketches, and annotations of the original Nijinsky choreography to trace the compositional process from the initial Stravinsky-Roerich collaboration to the celebrated premiere of the ballet on 29 May, 1913. He discusses the numerous revisions that followed the completion of the score, as well as Stravinsky's changing aesthetic attitudes. In chapters 3 and 4, the author turns to The Rite's most striking feature - its explosive rhythm and timing. A central concern here is the traditional context for the music's revolutionary rhythmic practice. In the course of his discussion, van den Toorn refers to many of Stravinsky's other works. His theory of meter and rhythm is thus shown to be relevant to Stravinsky's music as a whole. The concluding chapters are devoted to The Rite's harmonic and melodic materials, as traced to Stravinsky's teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. The text is supplemented by some 90 musical examples. Readership: musicologists and students of the music of the 20th century.
Adorno's essay on Schubert opens by invoking a fraught move across the threshold that separates the death of Beethoven from the death of Schubert. He goes on to read Schubert's music through a series of dichotomies whose opposite terms are distinctly Beethovenian: Schubert's themes are self-possessed apparitions of truth rather than inchoate ideas that require temporal evolution; his repetitive, fragmentary forms are inorganic rather than organic, crystalline rather than plantlike. Above all, Adorno develops the idea that Schubert's music offers the repeatable truth of a landscape rather than the processive trajectory of a teleological history. Schubert's themes, like landscapes, are forms of permanence that cannot be fundamentally altered but can only be revisited.
With special emphasis on Schubert's G-Major String Quartet, this article inflects Adorno's view of Schubert's landscapes by considering how these "truths" also present themselves as illusory and inward (e.g., how some of Schubert's thematic areas can be heard to project a visionary interior space in the way that they suddenly introduce a markedly different realm or the way that they obliquely inhabit their tonal centers). It is then argued that Schubert's music is thus steeped in an existential consciousness for which subjectivity is the only knowable truth. And this truth bears repeating, in the double sense that it can be repeated and it must be repeated.
This translation is based on an amended typescript in the New York Public Library, Oster Collection, File 31, items 281-53, transcribed here on pp. 131-231. Details of the organisation of this document, and of the nature of the changes made by Schenker to the original typescript, are provided in my introductory essay and in the preface and notes to the transcription. For passages in which Schenker's handwriting has been deemed illegible, I have adopted the following procedures: center dot Where the sense of a phrase or sentence with handwritten corrections can plausibly be determined from what is legible, any words that are needed to complete the sense are enclosed in square brackets. center dot Where the meaning of a word or short phrase cannot be determined, a gap is indicated by an ellipsis [...]. center dot Where the meaning of an entire sentence cannot be determined with confidence, the translation is based on the original typescript and a note indicating this is provided. In revising the typescript, Schenker at times cancelled sentences and even whole paragraphs, sometimes by putting a cross over the material to be deleted, sometimes merely by drawing a faint line across the page. If this material is of sufficient scope and, at the same time, does not duplicate arguments in any replacement text, it appears in this translation in a smaller typeface. Otherwise, I have not attempted to offer simultaneous readings of earlier and later phases of the text. Typewritten page numbers in the typescript provide the main referencing system in this translation, and are supplied (boldface in curly brackets) without comment; for pages that are unnumbered, or numbered by hand, I provide the Oster Collection file number in square brackets, for example [31/52]. For the most part the sequence of pages is straightforward and unambiguous. For the text on and around pp. 14-27, and pp. 39-47, Schenker has explicitly indicated or suggested considerable reordering of sentences, paragraphs and larger sections of text for continuity of wording and argument. For details on the reordering of pages in the typescript, see Table 2 in the introductory article. The section headings, printed in boldface type, are my own. They have been added in order to help guide the reader through the various topics discussed, and do not in any way reflect the structure of the typescript, for which Schenker provided no such markers.
Examples of directional tonality, associative tonality, associative theme and motivic parallelism all appear in the Act III Finale to Die Feen, Wagner's first complete opera. The inter-relationships evident among these compositional principles foreshadow a level of sophistication usually attributed to the more mature music dramas, suggesting that the keys to unlocking das Geheimnis der Form can, in some senses, be found in an understanding of the earlier works. The present study adopts a range of theoretical paradigms in order to address the variety of Wagner's musical and dramatic techniques. Used in conjunction, Schenkerian generative views of tonality, Robert Bailey's dramatic-tonal concepts, neo-Riemannian transformations and an understanding of thematic association enable a series of analytical observations unattainable through any single interpretative approach.
This book is recognized as the seminal work paving the way for current studies in mathematical and systematic approaches to music analysis. The author, one of the 20th century's most prominent figures in music theory, pushes the boundaries of the study of pitch-structure beyond its conception as a static system for classifying and inter-relating chords and sets. Known by most music theorists as "GMIT", the book is by far the most significant contribution to the field of systematic music theory in the last half-century, generating the framework for the "transformational theory" movement. Appearing almost twenty years after GMIT's initial publication, this Oxford University Press edition features a previously unpublished preface by the author, as well as a foreword by Edward Gollin contextualizing the work's significance for the current field of music theory.