Schubert's late three-key expositions: Influence, design, and structure.
Item
-
Title
-
Schubert's late three-key expositions: Influence, design, and structure.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9618079
-
identifier
-
9618079
-
Creator
-
Kessler, Deborah.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Carl Schachter
-
Date
-
1996
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Music
-
Abstract
-
This study focuses on a special type of sonata movement cultivated by Schubert in which the exposition has three key areas rather than the more common two. Detailed examinations of four first movements written between 1824 and 1828, those from the Octet, D. 803, the Quartet in D minor, D. 810, the Piano Trio in E{dollar}\flat{dollar}, D. 929, and the Piano Sonata in B{dollar}\flat{dollar}, D. 960, form the core of the study. Each examination begins with investigation into the context surrounding the movement, especially influence from Schubert's Lieder and Beethoven's instrumental works. Detailed analysis of the movement itself, using the approach developed by Heinrich Schenker, follows.;Schubert's movements with three-key expositions have been negatively assessed by scholars including Donald Francis Tovey and Felix Salzer. Although recent writers have been more sympathetic, they have tended to focus on key schemes rather than motivic and expressive features. Consideration of these features in the four movements examined in this study reveals two interrelated phenomena: first, the expositions (or recapitulations) feature large-scale neighbor-note motion in the bass from ({dollar}\flat{dollar}) to --this contrapuntal motion is harmonically expressed through prolongation of ({dollar}\flat{dollar})VI as the middle key area; second, the expositions project dramatic contrast by means of modal shift or chromaticism in the middle key area. These findings, viewed in relation to the context in which these movements were written, lead to three hypotheses: (1) Schubert, for affective reasons, imported the -({dollar}\flat{dollar})- motive (historically associated with death), in association with modal or chromatic contrast, from his songs into his movements with three-key expositions--Schubert's songs often render textually expressed opposition between past happiness and present misery through these means. (2) Schubert looked to Beethoven for models of sonata form that incorporate the -({dollar}\flat{dollar})- motive into their large voice-leading structure. (3) Schubert's large-scale use of the -({dollar}\flat{dollar})- motive or a variant in the three-key exposition (or its recapitulation) results in a disjunction between formal design and harmonic structure: the middle key area prolongs an embellishing neighbor note that is less structurally weighty than the surrounding tonic and dominant prolongations, and yet it carries the dramatically essential contrasting "second theme.".
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
