Organicism, motivic development, and formal design in Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Symphony No. 1.
Item
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Title
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Organicism, motivic development, and formal design in Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Symphony No. 1.
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Identifier
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AAI9326800
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identifier
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9326800
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Creator
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Gunn, Nancy.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Sherman Van Solkema
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Date
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1993
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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 study of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony No. 1 (1982) takes as its starting point the composer's own published comments about the work, in which she states, "Throughout the entire symphony the melodic and harmonic implications of the first fifteen bars of the first movement are explored." An examination of the organic process of the symphony reveals the simultaneous development of two related prototypes. At the beginning of the first movement, Zwilich concatenates a series of increasingly distant variations of a simple prototype (a four-note motive), to create a more complex prototype (a seven-bar violin theme). The violin theme functions structurally throughout the work like a main theme, although once it is stated it is never heard again in its complete form. Instead, motives are derived from this complex prototype and from the simple prototype, and the development and prolongation of these motives constitutes the primary melodic and harmonic material of the work. This study also suggests that the prototypes play an important role in determining the long-range harmonic and formal structure of the work, especially in the first movement.
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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.
