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Volume 9, Number 1, March 2003
Copyright © 2002 Society for Music Theory
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Edith, Zack. "Carmen and Turandot: Femme Fatale to Femme Creatrice in Opera." Bar-Ilan University, Israel, June 2000.
AUTHOR: Zack Edith
TITLE: Carmen and Turandot: femme fatale to femme creatrice in opera.
INSTITUTION: Bar-Ilan University, Israel
BEGUN: October, 1995
COMPLETED: June 2000
ABSTRACT:The male Romantic liked to think of his women as docile, feminine, motherly, saintly and reassuring. Yet, he was also fascinated by a different kind of woman who belonged to a culturally defined group coined by male creators as femmes fatales; erotic, dominant, free minded, willful and seductive.
In this study an integral-typological model of the operatic femme fatale is suggested, from which we may learn about the formation process of the character’s components. The model is applied to two main operas, Bizet’s Carmen (1875), Puccini’s Turandot (1924). In the last chapter it is applied also to Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905) and Alban Berg’s Lulu (1935). Mediating between body and language, between bodily gestures and rhetorical gestures, between their operatic voice and the logic of their speech, these protagonists lead to a different reading of these operas.
Although the styles of the operas are so different, their voice represents and interoperatic unity which consists of the dialectic innovating voice of the femme fatale. Carmen, as an example moves continually into chromaticism and radical modulations; but she also builds repetitive harmonic basses, typical of dance. Turandot, in comparison, takes the form of bicentric tonalities which are themselves musically ground-breaking; the princess’s harmonic basis is equally dissonant, often involving diminished or augmented chords, as well as tritone, and semi-tone progressions.
Interoperatic unity is achieved also by opposing temporal dimensions that symbolize masculine and feminine; linear time versus cyclical and repetitive time; progressive time (time of harmonic progression, time of motivic, and thematic, development) and lyrical time (time that is evoked by marching, metrical time associated with the dance). When all the opposing dimensions are fused together (aria and dance, chromaticism and diatonicism, free ranging melody and rhythmic ostinato, bitonality and traditional harmony) a discursive construction is created in which metalanguage is established. In its nature it is intertextual and intercultural.
KEYWORDS:feminist criticism, gender theories, rhetoric, topics, gesture, discourse, tonal symbolism, color, temporality.
TOC:
Chapter 1: The model of the femme fatale in nineteenth century culture - literary model; psychological model; historical background; feminist criticism.
Chapter 2: Carmen-text and music - Carmen the performer; Jose's changing nature.
Chapter 3: Turandot; ancient story, modern message - the literary text and libretto of Turandot; the music of Turandot; the fatale triangle in music; feminist criticism.
Chapter 4: The application of the model to Richard Struass's Salome (1905) and Alban Berg's Lulu (1935) - Salome as the incarnation of the four stages of the femme fatale - text and music; Lulu; an extreme femme fatale. Epilogue
CONTACT:
Edith Zack
6 Tnuat Hameri
Kiriat-Ono, 55286
Israel
Tel: 972-3-6359686
Fax: 972-3-6358981
E-mail: zacked@mail.biu.ac.il
Rothstein, Evan J. "The Tradition of Developing Variation and the Problem of'Folkloristic' Music in Ives's First Violin Sonata." Bar-Ilan University, Israel, June 2000.
AUTHOR: Rothstein, Evan J.
TITLE: The Tradition of Developing Variation and the Problem of‘Folkloristic’ Music in Ives’s First Violin Sonata
INSTITUTION: Indiana University (Bloomington)
COMPLETED: May 2001
ABSTRACT:This document follows a model proposed by Epstein in "Beyond Orpheus" forunifying schenkerian and schoenbergian approaches to the analysis ofaustro-germanic classical-romantic period music and takes advantage ofrecent Ives research which places the composer's education and earlyevolution in the context of this period.
After a review of the literature concerning the revision of Ives'sevolution, follows a review of the model proposed by Epstein andconsiderations of the debate concerning the application of schenkeriantechniques to "post-tonal" music. A thorough examination of Schoenberg'sconcept of developing variation and Grundgestalt reveals many hidden linkswith Ives's compositional practices.
Although the First Violin Sonata appears sectional in construction,including several apparently "pasted-in" folk music "objects" a thoroughanalysis a reveals a very tightly constructed and dynamic structure whichrelies on both the control of the long harmonic line and complete motivicintegration.
To balance this rigorously "organic" approach, two appendices explore thepossible implications of recent research into cultural and aestheticchanges the the arts in the early twentieth century as well as thephilosophy of Gilles Deleuze.
KEYWORDS:Ives, Schoenberg, Schenker, Grundgestalt, Developing variation, Deleuze
CONTACT:
Dr Evan Rothstein
29, quai de Bourbon
75004 PARIS
tel (33) 1 40 51 81 65
evanrothstein@minite.net
Fancher, Joseph E."Pitch Organization in the Turangalîla-Symphonie of Olivier Messiaen." University of Oregon, March 2003.
AUTHOR: Fancher, Joseph E.
TITLE: Pitch Organization in the Turangalîla-Symphonie of Olivier Messiaen
INSTITUTION: University of Oregon
BEGUN: September 1997
COMPLETED: March 2003
ABSTRACT:The musical language of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) retained a remarkably consistent syntax across the entirety of his compositional career. This is all the more remarkable when one considers the astonishing variety of his musical interests. In the realm of pitch, these ranged from planed chords, often paired and moving in contrary motion; to birdsong, which he is famously known to have transcribed in the field; to cyclic pitch collections, particularly his "modes of limited transposition." As a result, the analyst of his music might expect to find in the Turangalîla-Symphonie (1946-48) a veritable pastiche of styles and techniques, and indeed Messiaen's musical structures have been criticized for exhibiting mere juxtaposition of musical materials.
With regard to the organization of pitch in this symphony, however, the picture is considerably more integrated than Messiaen's catholic interests would suggest. Using analytical tools provided by set theory, we learn that in the creation of many of his pitch constructs, both melodic and harmonic, Messiaen employs T±1 transpositions of the (06) dyad to create (016) trichords, typically voiced {0,5,B} or {0,6,B}. So influential is this trichord in many of the pitch structures in the symphony, including but not limited to Messiaen's modes and his transcriptions of birdsong, that (016) in its many manifestations may be considered as the generative pitch cell of the entire composition. The (016) trichord not only informs local harmonic and melodic constructs but, in the fourth movement of the symphony, for example--one of the five movements analyzed in this study--it also knits together temporally distant sections of the musical fabric.
While set theory accounts well for the organization of much of the pitch content of Turangalîla, it is not the only methodology used in this study. References to traditional harmonic structures, untraditionally used by Messiaen, find their place in this study, and Schenkerian analysis reveals the nature of the large-scale structure of the idyllic sixth movement of the symphony.
This analysis is indebted to the analytical work of numerous scholars, not the least of whom is Messiaen himself. His treatises, Technique de mon langage musical and Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie, provide invaluable insights into the pitch organization underlying the symphony. Building on the exegeses of Messiaen and others, this study points toward a coherence of pitch organization across the movements of Turangalîla that is greater than that which has been ascribed to the composer heretofore.
KEYWORDS:Messiaen, Turangalila, Turangalîla
TOC:
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY
II. LOOKING IN: AN OVERVIEW OF KEY SCHOLARSHIP ON MESSIAEN
III. A VIEW FROM WITHIN: ASPECTS OF TECHNIQUE DE MON LANGAGE MUSICAL
IV. ASPECTS OF RHYTHMIC AND PITCH ORGANIZATION IN THE SYMPHONY
V. FIRST MOVEMENT: "INTRODUCTION"
VI. SIXTH MOVEMENT: "JARDIN DU SOMMEIL D'AMOUR"
VII. SECOND MOVEMENT: "CHANT D'AMOUR 1"
VIII. FOURTH MOVEMENT : "CHANT D'AMOUR 2"
IX. TENTH MOVEMENT: "FINAL"
X. EPILOGUE
CONTACT:
Joseph Fancher
1252 Bond Ln.
Eugene, OR 97401
fancher@oregon.uoregon.edu
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