The interval cycles in the music of Bartok and Debussy through 1918.
Item
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Title
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The interval cycles in the music of Bartok and Debussy through 1918.
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Identifier
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AAI9207085
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identifier
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9207085
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Creator
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Karpinski, Gary Steven.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Leo Treitler
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Date
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1991
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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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A number of books and articles have discussed a special property of pitch collections found in the music of a few twentieth-century composers. A collection of pitches possesses this special property if it comprises at least one repetition of an interval. Particularly central are those collections that entirely divide the octave into equal partitions, otherwise known as the interval cycles.;Although some scholars began to view Bartok in the light of the interval cycles as early as the 1950s, scholarship in this area has been increasing in recent years. This study shows that the interval cycles play an important role in the works of Bartok even during the early part of his career before the death of Debussy.;This study also shows that Debussy's celebrated use of the whole-tone collection-type is merely a specific case of a much more general practice involving the interval cycles. It contends that Debussy's use of such collections is pervasive, while perhaps not as systematic as Bartok's.;Parallels are also drawn between the types of collections these composers used and the compositional contexts in which they used them. Transformations among collections and the voice leading involved are also discussed. In addition, this study asserts that many of the passages which have been lumped under such headings as "planing" and "pantonality" can be shown to be generated by or otherwise related to the interval cycles, often through examining how the cycles operate on various structural levels and interact with diatonic collections.
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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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Ph.D.
