Abstract

Despite their reputations as musical revolutionaries, Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky continually asserted that their styles were not revolutionary, but evolutionary. For each composer, stylistic evolution implied a continuation of the musical traditions and techniques they inherited from their predecessors. While much has been written about the innovative—or revolutionary—aspects of these three composers, less has been written about how their styles connected to the classical tradition. This dissertation attempts to capture the evolutionary aspects of the styles of Bartók, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. In each chapter, I analyze the interaction of innovative and traditional musical structures. Chapter one discusses the interaction of tonal rhythm and hypermeter with atonal triadic structures in the music of Béla Bartók. Chapter two discusses the interaction of tonal textures and forms with atonal pitch structures in Arnold Schoenberg’s music. Chapter three discusses the interaction of tonal musical patterns from the galant era and modern approaches to texture and harmonization in the music of Igor Stravinsky. In addition to the analyses, I also explore the cultural and aesthetic reasons behind the mixture of modern and traditional musical structures.

Committee Chair

Ben Duane

Committee Members

Jack Boss, Christopher Stark, Alexander Stefaniak, Paul Steinbeck,

Comments

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/99gm-km95

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Music

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Summer 8-15-2019

Language

English (en)

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