Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok

Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok
ISBN-10
0195355954
ISBN-13
9780195355956
Category
Music
Pages
360
Language
English
Published
2004-07-22
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
Elliot Antokoletz

Description

Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bart?k explores the means by which two early 20th century operas - Debussy's Pell?as et M?lisande (1902) and Bart?k's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) - transformed the harmonic structures of the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language. It also looks at how this language reflects the psychodramatic symbolism of the Franco-Belgian poet, Maurice Maeterlinck, and his Hungarian disciple, B?la Bal?zs. These two operas represent the first significant attempts to establish more profound correspondences between the symbolist dramatic conception and the new musical language. Duke Bluebeard's Castle is based almost exclusively on interactions between pentatonic/diatonic folk modalities and their more abstract symmetrical transformations (including whole-tone, octatonic, and other pitch constructions derived from the system of the interval cycles). The opposition of these two harmonic extremes serve as the basis for dramatic polarity between the characters as real-life beings and as instruments of fate. The book also explores the new musico-dramatic relations within their larger historical, social psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts.

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