Composing with circles, spirals, and lines of fifths: Harmony and voice leading in the works of Nicolai Roslavets
Item
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Title
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Composing with circles, spirals, and lines of fifths: Harmony and voice leading in the works of Nicolai Roslavets
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:ac0db71a18a0:10397
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identifier
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10359
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Creator
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Bazayev, Inessa,
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Contributor
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Joseph N. Straus
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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 | 20th century music theory | Roslavets | Roslavetz | Russian avant-garde | Russian futurism | Soviet music
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Abstract
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This dissertation proposes a new theoretical framework for the analysis of works of an important early twentieth-century Soviet composer Nicolai Roslavets. Roslavets was one of the few composers from his generation to develop his own unique compositional style. Although he welcomed the Russian revolution of 1917 and later held important political, professional, and social positions in Soviet society, in the 1930s he fell a victim to Stalinist cultural campaigns to eliminate all radical activity from Soviet art. Consequently, Roslavets lost his high positions in Soviet society and his name was erased from history books. It was not until the early 1980s that efforts were made both in Russia and the West to revive his name and analyze his music.;Roslavets developed his own theory of pitch organization called the "New System of Tone Organization," in which he identified the synthetic chord as the driving element of each of his compositions. A synthetic chord is described as having three features: (1) it is a group of notes, usually arranged as a scale-like succession of pitches with a fixed progression of tones and semitones; (2) it is used both vertically and horizontally; and (3) it is used to define the total harmonic plan of the composition. Many theorists including Yury Kholopov, George Perle, and Anna Ferenc recognized that each of Roslavets's pieces is characterized by a contextual synthetic chord that travels through different transpositional levels; however, no theory explains the underlying symmetrical pattern through which the synthetic chord travels, causing its unique spellings.;The current dissertation addresses Roslavets's unorthodox orthography, which features such peculiarities as triple sharps, and explains the structural importance of perfect fifths. Plotting the synthetic chords on different spaces of fifths---the circle, spiral, and line---reveals the underlying synthetic chord-path that can be characterized by my three types of symmetries: crisp symmetry, near-symmetry, and nested-crisp symmetry. I use pieces from 1913 through 1926---Nocturne-Quintet (1914), Sonata No. 1 for Viola and Piano (1926), Trois Compositions (1914), Trois Etudes (1914), and Cinq Preludes (1919-1922)---to show that Roslavets uses the deeper structure of fifths relations to create a novel musical language with distinct orthography and symmetrical chord-paths making him one of the most intriguing and innovative composers of his generation.
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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
