Schoenberg's twelve-tone music : symmetry and the musical idea / Jack Boss.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boss, Jack Forrest, author.

Series:

Music since 1900.

Music since 1900

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874-1951--Criticism and interpretation.

Schoenberg, Arnold.

Twelve-tone system.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxviii, 437 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Jack Boss takes a unique approach to analyzing Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone music, adapting the composer's notion of a 'musical idea' - problem, elaboration, solution - as a framework and focusing on the large-scale coherence of the whole piece. The book begins by defining 'musical idea' as a large, overarching process involving conflict between musical elements or situations, elaboration of that conflict, and resolution, and examines how such conflicts often involve symmetrical pitch and interval shapes that are obscured in some way. Containing close analytical readings of a large number of Schoenberg's key twelve-tone works, including Moses und Aron, the Suite for Piano Op. 25, the Fourth Quartet, and the String Trio, the study provides the reader with a clearer understanding of this still-controversial, challenging, but vitally important modernist composer.

Contents:

Musical idea and symmetrical ideal

Suite for Piano Op. 25: varieties of idea in Schoenberg's earliest twelve-tone music

Woodwing Quintet Op. 26: the twelve-tone idea reanimates a large musical form

Three Satires Op. 28. no. 3: the earliest example of the "symmetrical ideal" in a (more or less) completely combinatorial context

Piano Piece Op. 33a: the "symmetrical ideal: conflicts with and is reconciled to row order

Fourth String Quartet Op. 37, movement I: two motives give rise to contrasting row forms, meters, textures, and tonalities (and are reconciled) within a large sonata form

Moses und Aron: an incomplete musical idea represents an unresolved conflict between using word and image to communicate God

String Trio Op. 45: a musical idea and a near-death experience are expressed as a conflict between alternative row forms.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-139-69924-5

1-139-86229-4

1-139-86321-5

1-139-86107-7

1-107-62492-4

1-107-11078-5

1-139-86892-6

1-139-87107-2

1-139-86534-X