Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas (Oxford Studies in Music Theory)

Why would Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), modernist titan and so-called prophet of the New Music, commit himself time and again to the venerable sonata-allegro form of Mozart and Beethoven? How could so gifted a symphonic storyteller be drawn to a framework that many have dismissed as antiquated and dramatically inert? Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas offers a striking new take on this old dilemma. Indeed, it poses these questions seriously for the first time. Rather than downplaying Mahler's sonata designs as distracting anachronisms or innocuous groundplans, author Seth Monahan argues that for much of his career, Mahler used the inner, goal-directed dynamics of sonata form as the basis for some of his most gripping symphonic stories. Laying bare the deeper narrative/processual grammar of Mahler's evolving sonata corpus, Monahan pays particular attention to its recycling of large-scale rhetorical devices and its consistent linkage of tonal plot and affect. He then sets forth an interpretive framework that combines the visionary insights of Theodor W. Adorno-whose Mahler writings are examined here lucidly and at length-with elements of Hepokoski and Darcy's renowned Sonata Theory. What emerges is a tensely dialectical image of Mahler's sonata forms, one that hears the genre's compulsion for tonal/rhetorical closure in full collision with the spontaneous narrative needs of the surrounding music and of the overarching symphonic totality. It is a practice that calls forth sonata form not as a rigid mold, but as a dynamic process-rich with historical resonances and subject to a vast range of complications, curtailments, and catastrophes. With its expert balance of riveting analytical narration and thoughtful methodological reflection, Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas promises to be a landmark text of Mahler reception, and one that will reward scholars and students of the late-Romantic symphony for years to come [Publisher description] This book is about how music "in a key" is composed. Further, it is about how such music was composed when it was no longer compulsory to do so, starting a few years before the First World War. In an eclectic journey through the history of compositional technique, Daniel Harrison contends that the tonal system did not simply die out with the dawn of twentieth century, but continued to supplement newer techniques as a compelling means of musical organization, even into current times. Well-known art music composers such as Bartok, Hindemith, Prokofiev, and Messiaen are represented alongside composers whose work moves outside the standard boundaries of art music: Leonard Bernstein, Murice Duruflé, Frank Martin, Xiaoyong Chen. Along the way, the book attends to military bugle calls, a trailer before a movie feature, a recomposition of a famous piece by Arnold Schoenberg, and the music of Neil Diamond, David Shire, and Brian Wilson. A celebration of the awesome variety of musical expressions encompassed in what is called tonal music, Pieces of Tradition is a book for composers seeking ideas and effects, music theorists interested in its innovations, and all those who practice the analysis of composition in all its modern and traditional variations [Publisher description] Tonality Continued To Be A Viable Compositional Technique Well After It Was Claimed To Have Been Made Obsolete By Novel Developments Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century. The Attention Of Music Theorists Understandably Shifted To Explaining These New Approaches, And The Continuation Of Tonal Practices Was Not Studied In General, But Only In Relation To Individual Composers. This Work Picks Up Theories Of Tonality Where They Were Abandoned And Develops Them In Light Of Tonal Practices Of The Last Century, Focusing On Common Principles Underlying The Music Of Composers Of Both Art And Popular Music, Including Brian Wilson, Dmitri Shostakovich, Frank Martin, Leonard Bernstein, Maurice Duruflé, Neil Diamond, Olivier Messiaen, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, And Xiaoyong Chen. Inheritance -- Overtonality -- Geography -- Harmony -- Styles. Daniel Harrison. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Cover 1 Series 3 Mahler’s Symphonic Sonatas 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 About the Companion Website 12 Introduction 16 Part I Interpreting Mahler’s Sonata Forms 24 1 Sonata Form in Mahler’s Narrative Imagination 26 2 Adorno’s “Novel-Symphony”: The Dialectic of Freedom and Determinism 50 3 Dimensions of Mahlerian Narrativity 76 Part II Mahler’s “Classical” Sonatas 106 4 “A Demonic Haydn”: Mahler’s Confrontation with Tradition in the First Movement of the Sixth 108 5 “A Play within a Play”: Games of Closure and Contingency in the First Movement of the Fourth 154 Part III Mahler’s “Epic” Sonatas 190 6 “The Objectification of Chaos”: Epic Form and Narrative Multiplicity in Part One of the Third 192 7 “Tragedy Refuses a Nominalist Form”: “Inescapable” Coherence and the Failure of the Novel-Symphony in the Finale of the Sixth 232 References 278 Index 288