Tonality as Topic: Opening A World of Analysis for Early Twentieth-Century Modernist Music
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Abstract
In this article, I argue that tonality itself often functions as a topic in early twentieth-century modernist music. Tonal figurae gain markedness while compositional practices simultaneously fracture and flourish after 1900, opening a diverse network of significations and meanings. To account for this variegated musical world, I attempt to broaden and extend topic theory’s orbit by deploying two types of semiotic analyses—1) a narrative analysis of tonal figurae within a piece or excerpt and 2) a wider analytical survey of a single tonal figura among many pieces. These methods enable exploration into the confluences of tonality and meaning in an eclectic set of musical examples by Schoenberg, Berg, Bartók, Ives, Penderecki, Feldman, and Tower, among others. A multidimensional spectrum of potential tonal-topicality emerges, reflecting composers’ reactions to processes of modernization.
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