Parallelism and symmetry in three Debussy preludes.
Item
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Title
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Parallelism and symmetry in three Debussy preludes.
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Identifier
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AAI9969710
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identifier
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9969710
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Creator
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Miller, Cynthia Fayne.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joseph Straus
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Date
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2000
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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 is concerned with parallelism and symmetry and how they are deployed and utilized in three Debussy preludes: "Le vent dans la plaine," "Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir," and "Des pas sur la neige." The dissertation addresses three questions. First, what types of parallel and/or symmetrical collections appear in each of these preludes, and where do they occur? Second, what kinds of processes give rise to these collections? Third, what is the larger significance of these collections in the overall structure of the pieces in which they appear?;The first chapter defines parallelism and symmetry and presents examples of each from several preludes, including the three mentioned above. In subsequent chapters, the three preludes are analyzed in detail to show the importance of parallelism and symmetry in their details and overall structures.;Parallelism and symmetry in both pitch space and pitch-class space are considered. Parallelism in pitch space involves two or more voices moving in parallel motion. Parallelism in pitch-class space involves pc collections that can be produced by combining two or more transpositionally related subsets, what Cohn has termed "transpositional combination." The parallelism of such collections may be more or less obvious depending on the musical context.;Symmetry in pitch space occurs when a collection of pitches is symmetrical around a central pitch or pitches. Several kinds of pitch symmetry are discussed, including ordered pitch symmetry, unordered pitch symmetry and registral symmetry. Symmetry in pitch-class space refers to inversionally symmetrical pitch-class sets. Whereas pitch symmetry is usually fairly explicit in the music, pc symmetry is more abstract and may not always be obvious in the musical context.;In addition to the analysis of local instances of parallelism and symmetry, processes that involve parallelism and symmetry over the long range are examined. The processes include accretion, mutation, expansion and contraction, projection, and planar shifts. These processes are defined and are shown to control progressions over large musical spans.
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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.
