Tonality and chromaticism in Hans Werner Henze's early operas
Item
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Title
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Tonality and chromaticism in Hans Werner Henze's early operas
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:8c1c7062b925:10076
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identifier
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10040
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Creator
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Ozgen, Mustak Zafer,
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Contributor
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Richard Kramer
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Date
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2009
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music | Analysis | Contemporary music | Darmstadt | Hans Werner Henze | Hermeneutics | Opera
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Abstract
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Regarded as one of the most prolific twentieth-century composers, Hans Werner Henze is particularly famous for his remarkable output for the stage. Yet, current music scholarship, particularly in English speaking countries, responds to Henze's operas only sporadically. Studies in German, understandably more in quantity, approach his operas from a limited analytical perspective resulting in an incomplete understanding of dramatic issues. Devoting more attention to librettos as the primary source of dramatic content, these studies remain at the descriptive level in their consideration of the music, and neglect a thorough analysis of the musical textures in their entirety.;Taking four operas composed in the ten-year period from 1955 to 1965 as its point of departure, the present study examines characteristic elements of Henze's musical language in order to clarify issues related to dramatic action. Henze recalls his growing frustration with the music aesthetic views cultivated during this period, which he considers as his break with the aesthetic aspirations of the so-called Darmstadt School. Coupled with his permanent move to Italy, the polarity he claims to have existed around mid-twentieth century marks a change in Henze's aesthetic views. The operas considered in this study reflect a rejection of the modernist concerns. But Henze does not abandon serial techniques categorically; rather he refrains from a dogmatic approach to serial techniques and combines them with other styles. My analyses concentrate specifically on strategies of creating tonal allusions, closely related to his idiosyncratic twelve-tone technique, and the typically dissonant stratified textures that recur in the operas under investigation. Particularly in Der Prinz von Homburg and The Bassarids Henze tackles the task of uniting his twelve-tone method with tonal allusions to delineate dramatic action.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Music
