This paper discusses the pianist problems in the fifth sonata created by Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin and provides historical background to the works of the composer before analyzing his work.

Arnold Schoenberg's teaching career spanned over fifty years and included experiences in Austria, Germany, and the United States. Schoenberg's teaching assistant, Leonard Stein, transcribed Schoenberg's class lectures at UCLA from 1936 to 1944. Most of these notes resulted in publications that provide pedagogical examples of combined elements from Schoenberg's European years of teaching with his years of teaching in America. There are also class notes from Schoenberg's later lectures that have gone unexamined. These notes contain substantial examples of Schoenberg's later theories with analyses of masterworks that have never been published. Both the class notes and the subsequent publications reveal Schoenberg's comprehensive approach to understanding the presentation of the Gedanke or musical idea. In his later classes especially, Schoenberg demonstrated a method of analyzing musical compositions using illustrations of elements of the Grundgestalt or "basic shape," which contains the technical aspects of the musical parts. Through an examination of his published and unpublished manuscripts, this study will demonstrate Schoenberg's commitment to a comprehensive approach to teaching. Schoenberg's heritage of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music theory is evident in his Harmonielehre and in his other European writings. The latter include Zusammenhang, Kontrapunkt, Instrumentation, Formenlehre (ZKIF), and Der musikalische Gedanke und die Logik, …

In Vienna from about 1918 until the 1930s, contemporaries perceived a high point in the music-historical significance of Mahler's works, with regard to both the history of compositional style and the social history of music. The ideas and meanings that became attached to Mahler's works in this milieu are tied inextricably to the city's political and cultural life. Although the performances of Mahler's works under the auspices of Vienna's Social Democrats are sometimes construed today as mere acts of political appropriation, David Josef Bach's writings suggest that the innovative and controversial aspects of Mahler's works held social value in line with the ideal of Arbeiterbildung. Richard Specht, Arnold Schoenberg, and Theodor Adorno embraced oft-criticized features in Mahler's music, regarding the composer as a prophetic artist whose compositional style was the epitome of faithful adherence to one's inner artistic vision, regardless of its popularity. While all three critics addressed the relationship between detail and whole in Mahler's music, Adorno construed it as an act of subversion. Mahler's popularity also affected Viennese composers during this time in obvious and subtle ways. The formal structure and thematic construction of Berg's Chamber Concerto suggest a compositional approach close to what his student Adorno described …

Although Schoenberg viewed his twelve-tone method as an extension of the Germanic musical evolution from Bach to Brahms, one group of writers in America identified twelve-tone antecedents with Medieval and Renaissance polyphony. Such a correlation of Schoenberg's practice with this textural orientation of the past was part of a larger movement (what I term "neopolyphony") recognizing twentieth-century musical developments as the genesis of a polyphonic epoch reviving both the technical and aesthetic concerns of the former era. With Schoenberg's practice applied to this analogical context, other writers (Hill, Krenek, Perle) advanced certain modal theories based in various degrees on the internal organization and functional role of the Church modes.

The expressive marking "schattenhaft" appears twice in Gustav Mahler's symphonies: at the beginning of the scherzo in the Seventh and within the first movement of the Ninth. Theodor Adorno's observations regarding Mahler's use of this marking, which connect it to Schopenhauer and Romantic aesthetics, provide the framework for an examination of possible meanings of these two passages in Mahler. Drawing also on references elsewhere in Adorno's book to stylistic and formal features peculiar to Mahler's music, and especially on the comparison he makes between the experiences of reading novels and listening to Mahler's symphonies, this thesis demonstrates that close analysis of the "schattenhaft" passages offers a valuable point of entry into the thinking of both Adorno and Mahler.

David Lewin, in his 1986 article “Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception,” offers a promising methodological approach for the analysis of tonal music from a phenomenological perspective. Lewin’s phenomenological method has a propensity to render seemingly contradictory readings in such a way that their respective validities can be preserved by articulating them within differentiated contexts. Expanding upon Lewin’s phenomenological work with analyzing tonal music, I propose that a phenomenological investigation of an atonal song, Webern op. 3, no. 1, from within a variety of differentiated contexts can shed light upon what it means to perceive a piece of music as being “not in a key.” This thesis will open with an introduction to Lewin’s phenomenological work and the writings of Edmund Husserl and Izchak Miller that Lewin used as a point of departure. The analysis of Webern op. 3, no. 1, that follows will regard the voice and piano parts as differentiated musical contexts in order to investigate the interaction between these contexts as they generally undermine the perception of tonality in the song. Finally, the notion of a “musical context” as an organizing factor of musical perception will be expanded to include the different analytical approaches of Olli …

The purpose of this study is to examine Sonata No. 2 in detail from many analytical perspectives including melodies, rhythms, harmonic progressions, tonal plans, voice leading, and cadential patterns on macro- and micro-levels. It is believed that a more in-depth discussion of the composition from the perspective of harmony and voice leading may provide answer for the questions raised, and correct some misinterpretations in the works of certain writers. Furthermore, through analysis of Sonata No. 2. this study will show the relationship of the use of formal, stylistic, harmonic features between Mendelssohn and other composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Dream of a Thousand Keys is a concerto for piano and orchestra, which consists of four movements presenting multiple dimensional meanings as suggested by the word "key." I trace the derivation of Korean traditional rhythmic cycles and numerical sequences, such as the Fibonacci series, that are used throughout the work, and explore the significant role of space between the soloist and piano that are emphasized in a theatrical aspect of the composition. The essay addresses the question of musical contrasts, similarities, and metamorphosis. Lastly, I cover terms and concepts of significant 21st-century compositional techniques that come into play in the analysis of this work.

There has been relatively little scholarship to date on Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. The writings about this song cycle that do exist primarily focus on the disparate nature of the poems and justify Kindertotenlieder as a cycle by highlighting various musical connections between the songs, such as keys and motivic continuity. Mahler, however, has unified the cycle in a much more complex and sophisticated way. His familiarity with Wagner’s music and methods, and his mastery of the human voice and orchestral voices allowed him to weave a dramatic grief-laden narrative.

The primary purpose of this study is to address performance issues in the Polish Fantasy, Op. 19, by examining characteristics of Polish folk dances and how they are incorporated in this unique work by Paderewski. The study includes a comprehensive history of the fantasy in order to understand how Paderewski used various codified generic aspects of the solo piano fantasy, as well as those of the one-movement concerto introduced by nineteenth-century composers such as Weber and Liszt. Given that the Polish Fantasy, Op. 19, as well as most of Paderewski's compositions, have been performed more frequently in the last twenty years, an analysis of the combination of the three characteristic aspects of the Polish Fantasy, Op.19 - Polish folk music, the generic rhetoric of a fantasy and the one-movement concerto - would aid scholars and performers alike in better understanding the composition's engagement with various traditions and how best to make decisions about those traditions when approaching the work in a concert setting. Chapter 1 provides biographical and factographical information about Paderewski as a composer, pianist, and statesman. Chapter 2 examines characteristics of Polish folk music with regard to melody, rhythm and tempo. Musical examples of the Polish folk songs …

Composition for Arnold Schoenberg is a comprehensible presentation of a musical idea (musikalische Gedanke); the totality of a piece represents the idea. For tonal works, he defines Gedanke as a process of resolving the "tonal relation" or "tonal problem." Contrary to the numerous tonal examples illustrating the notion of Gedanke, Schoenberg hardly expounds on the Gedanke principle for his atonal and twelve-tone repertoires. This study reevaluates Schoenberg's compositional philosophy and aesthetics including Gedanke, comprehensibility, Grundgestalt, and developing variation in light of his compositional practices in Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, Op. 34. Although Schoenberg denies the existence of a tonal problem and hierarchy among pitches in twelve-tone compositions, the registral placement found in Op. 34 indicates certain functionality assigned to each pitch-class, producing a sense of "departure and return." The approach here elucidates the "idea" of Op. 34, in which the large-scale formal organization unfolds through contextually emphasized tonal relations. This study also explores Schoenberg's concept of the multi-dimensional presentation of a musical idea. Even though Schoenberg's discussion of musical coherence is usually limited to the immediate musical surface, I believe that he was also aware of an extended realization of foreground motives in the sense of Heinrich Schenker's "concealed motivic …

The earlier symphonies of the 1950s embody a gradual realization of Pettersson’s own unique symphonic style, containing large-scale development, repetition, and reiteration. Symphony no. 5 takes these ideas to the extreme and represents the codification of techniques that are further developed in later symphonies. The present study examines the structure of the symphony from a voice-leading perspective. Included in this study is an analysis of the construction of the piece focusing on the development and expansion of motives that operate as structural determinants and the use of chromatic saturation to create intensity and direction. The use of linear analysis in a post-tonal context makes necessary a section devoted to explicating the graphic notation shown in the analysis and the analytical process of determining linear progressions.

Toward the end of his life, from 1908 to 1909, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) composed Das Lied von der Erde (The song of the earth). This piece is a cycle of six song movements based on seven poems selected from Die chinesische Flötem - Nachdichtungen chinesischer Lyrik (The Chinese flute - free adaptation of Chinese lyric poetry) by Hans Bethge. The Chinese verse was written by Li-Po (numbers 1, 3, 4 and 5), Tchang-Tsi (number 2), and Mong-Kao-Jen and Wang-Wei (combined in number 6). Subsequently, in 1921, Arnold Schoenberg reduced the work to a simple chamber version transcription from Mahler's original massive score for full orchestra, a version completed in 1983 by Rainer Riehn. While the main melodic material in the vocal parts was maintained, the orchestral parts underwent substantial changes. This dissertation explores Mahler's reconfiguration of textual material and the setting of these texts in the orchestral medium. After consulting the various textual editions, I establish misreading and translational differences from the original Chinese through its various Western European incarnations; how and why Mahler chose the Bethge edition; what influenced his specific selection of poetry; and how these poems inform one another and the work as a whole. I also …

The lecture was presented on November 18, 1991. This presentation focused on the only two compositions for solo flute and orchestra by Ernest Bloch. Written during the last three years of the composer's life, the pieces are representative of his last style period. While Suite Modale is neobaroque in style, Two Last Poems is much more subjective. Together they represent a synthesis of many of the stylistic characteristics of Ernest Bloch. The musical parameters discussed included form, melody, texture, rhythm, harmony, and expressive devices.

Aaron Copland has been in the forefront of the American musical scene since the 1920s. He has been called an "American composer" for his ability to formulate the essence of American folk music into a wide variety of mediums. The variety and scope of his compositions encompass a diverse array of styles and techniques. From the jazz influenced works that dominated his early period to the works for Hollywood films, from the chamber music that was directly influenced by his Jewish background to the partial acceptance of serial technique, Copland has managed to delve equally into all these styles. Yet, one could arguably rank his works for the stage as his most popular and generally most successful compositions of his career. The extent to which the American public has accepted these works as being "folk" is a case for the genius and adaptability of Copland's talent. Although works like Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, and Lincoln Portrait command the attention of the general public, of whom Aaron Copland was constantly aware, there are works for the piano that deserve and demand close study by pianists. One such work is the Piano Variations. Written in 1930, it has been acknowledged as a twentieth …

The present study develops a dynamic model of strict and free composition that views them as relative to a specific historical context. The dynamic view espoused here regards free embellishments of an earlier compositional generation as becoming the models for a strict compositional theory in a later one. From the newly established strict compositional models, succeeding generations of composers produce new free embellishments. The first part of the study develops the dynamic conception of a continuously emerging strict composition as the context necessary for understanding Anton Bruckner's compositional methodology with respect to the harmonic instruction of his teacher, Simon Sechter. In other words, I view Sechter's harmonic theories as a strict compositional platform for Bruckner's free compositional applications. Many theoretical treatises of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such as those by Christoph Bernhard, Johann Philipp Kirnberger and Sechter acknowledged that strict composition must provide the structural framework for free composition. The above procedure becomes a manner of justifying a free embellishment since a "theorist" can demonstrate or assert the steps necessary to connect it with an accepted model from a contrapuntal or harmonic theory. The present study demonstrates that the justification relationship is a necessary component for understanding any …

This dissertation draws some of the innovative composers from the early 1900's to the 1960's into the spotlight to highlight their new musical and pianistic ideas. These composers, including Debussy, Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, Cowell and others, brought new creative forces into piano music, generating many distinctive features of modern music. The discussion of new resources in harmonic language, timbre, texture, form and concept of time has a direct bearing on aspects of Richard Wilson's Eclogue itself as well as aspects of performance problems. American Composer, Richard Wilson, has written three substantial piano solo works, Eclogue, Fixations, and Intercalations. Eclogue, from 1974, is a one-movement work. The detailed analysis of Eclogue covers aspects of form, harmonic language, timbre and texture, and rhythm and time. In addition, essential issues of performance problems such as notation, rhythmic control, extended techniques, hands distribution, and pedaling are also discussed.

Conductors are oftern associated with a specific body of work in their repertoy. Gustav Mahler's conducting repertory contained some major Wagnerian works, including Tristan und Isolde. Mahler's first performance of Tristan took place during his tenure at the Stadttheater in Hamburg (1891-1897). It remained an integral part of his repertory through his tenure at the Vienna Hofoper (1897-1907), and was one of eight works he conducted at New York's Metropolitan Opera (1907-1910). This study includes a brief history of Mahler's education and a description of his conducting style characteristics. It traces the reception of Mahler's production of Tristan from Hamburg to New York, and focuses on his performances at the Hofoper and at the Metropolitan Opera. Sources used to determine performance changes he made include letters, personal reminiscences of friends and critics, and newspaper and journal reviews.