Theme and drama in Thea Musgrave's early music, 1956--1960.
Item
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Title
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Theme and drama in Thea Musgrave's early music, 1956--1960.
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Identifier
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AAI3205452
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identifier
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3205452
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Creator
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Koo, Mijung.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Philip Rupprecht
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Date
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2006
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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
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Abstract
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This dissertation investigates the compositional style of Thea Musgrave's early music, analyzing Piano Sonata No. 2 (1956), A Song for Christmas (1958) for high voice and piano, Trio (1960) for flute, oboe, and piano, and Monologue (1960) for piano. Each chapter parses the serial structure of the music and explores the drama presented in the musical themes.;The analysis is built upon Edward T. Cone's and Fred E. Maus's ideas about musical themes as agents, which "act" as imaginary subjects of the musical actions. Themes are musical materials of distinct pitch-class identity, and agents are those consisting of an identical pitch-class set but with varied non-pitch elements. The interactions of themes or agents produce a drama that governs the formal structure of each piece. Musgrave's works follow a dramatic plan showing a process associated with two climaxes or a process in which two musical events alternate with each other.;To overview each chapter briefly: Chapter 1, on Piano Sonata No. 2, examines constructions of themes and plot; Chapter 2, on A Song for Christmas , analyzes thematic agents and plot, in light of a close reading of the poetic text; Chapter 3, on the Trio for flute, oboe, and piano, discovers two musical events going on in parallel; and Chapter 4, on Monologue for piano, shows the deployment of thematic materials in a variation process and the invention of new modes of interaction among the themes. As Musgrave's compositional style matured, a drama of themes/agents became more fluent: in the pieces of 1960 she arrived at a new understanding of dramatic and formal shape.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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D.M.A.
