Form and fantasy: 1870-1920.
Item
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Title
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Form and fantasy: 1870-1920.
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Identifier
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AAI9820521
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identifier
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9820521
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Creator
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Coppola, Catherine.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Stephen Blum
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Date
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1998
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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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The fantasy is such an elusive genre that it might seem too sphinxian for study. Most commentators have concluded either that the fantasy has no predictable features or that it conforms to a traditional formal outline--most often the sonata--and thus is not really a fantasy at all. I reject both of these extremes and show that the fantasy does have a form, but that the form is not always sonata form.;The fantasy is a defensible genre that is unified by certain shared concerns and procedures. Its elusiveness stems from the broad range and the variable combinations of features. From my analysis of twenty-nine antecedents and twenty-one fantasies composed between 1870 and 1920, four processes emerge: reference to established forms, often ternary, rondo or variation; the pervasive role of developmental processes; the imitation of improvisation through discontinuities created by contextual and constitutive interruption; and an emphasis on linking areas in general, and particularly in fantasies on existing themes. Four more features emerge from the treatises of Schilling, Mendel Czemy, Marx, Lobe, Riemann and d'Indy: recitative style, variation techniques, cyclic organization and generic mixture. While many writers have noted the balance between freedom and order in the genre, my thesis examines objective features that support this balance.;Significant issues examined include: semantic implications regarding imagination, improvisation and work; the creation of subtypes; the large role of program music; sources in existing or original themes; and the uneasy relationship between the fantasy and neighboring genres: the potpourri and the sonata. A fundamental paradox is that the great prestige of sonata form coexists with the recognition that the fantasy represents the ultimate challenge.;Antecedents examined in the opening chapter include keyboard fantasies of C. P. E. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt; contemporaneous orchestral and piano fantasies studied are those of Franck, Debussy, Sarasate, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Brahms.;The final three chapters analyze nine test cases from the period 1868-1920: Tchaikovsky's Fatum, Romeo and Juliet, Francesca da Rimini, Hamlet and Concert Fantasy; Bruch's Scottish Fantasy; and Busoni's Indianische Fantasie, Fantasia nach Bach and Kammer-Fantasie uber Bizets Carmen.
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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.
