Musical Structures in Wagnerian Opera (Studies in the History & Interpretation of Music)

This monograph presents original research based on Wagner's theoretical writings and demonstrates that there is a precise logic to his tonal structures. "Marshall Tuttle brings a fresh analysis, one that suggests that the ‘problem’ of Wagner’s music may not be as complex as traditional discussions suggest. . . . Musical Structures in Wagnerian Opera is technically detailed, simultaneously discussing Wagner’s own commentary on his musical intentions and how traditional analytic methods confirm these intents. Tuttle’s book reveals both surface-level and unstated, hidden tonal events . . . . a persuasive argument for a viable hypothesis: Richard Wagner exercised absolute command over traditional Western musical harmony, utilizing it for thorough in-depth portrayal of fantastic dramatic characters and events. For Tuttle, the outcome of careful, painstaking analysis results in confirming Wagner’s own words as well as a clearer (though still complex) understanding of his operas. The outcome will keep the Wagnerian debate percolating for generations to come." Harold E. Fiske This work proposes a solution to what is often considered the central problem facing Scarlatti scholarship, determining the chronological order of his keyboard sonatas. In the data-poor arena of Scarlatti research, this work, avoiding a primarily musicological or organological approach, analyzes large-scale patterns of musical characteristics over all (or parts) of a sonata sequence founded primarily on the Parma manuscript. As a result of an extensive application of this analytic approach to the sequence, this work notes that many sequence patterns seem to be chronologically structured, that none seem anti-chronological, and that a few mirror historical changes in the music of Scarlatti's time. These phenomena and other observations delimit something like a general history of Scarlatti's musical development enriched further by a variety of localized events. Among some 26 patterns observed in the sequence are a systematic rise in Scarlatti's use of the major mode, stepped increases in sonata compass that seem to accord with the sequential availability of larger keyboards, and both an increase in the rate at which the sonatas were combined into sets of two or three works and the use by Scarlatti of progressively complex techniques for doing so. This work also sketches a methodological background for the chronological proposal, including a discussion of why chronological order seems a superior interpretation of the sequence compared to the thought that it may have been reorganized, whether at random or by specific criteria. This study also discusses such subjects as the probable location of the 30 essercizi within the sonata sequence, the likely mis-location of several other sonatas, implications of chronological order from organology, a broadly dated window for the latter part of the sequence, the relationship between conservative and radical elements in Scarlatti's compositions, a late-sequence change in his approach to writing slow sonatas, and the interplay of structural integration and musical diversity in the later sonatas. It presents a new catalog of the sonatas that, while substantially congruent with Kirkpatrick's, proposes modifications to his ordering of the first hundred sonatas as well to a few other but smaller regions of the sequence Preface by Leland Smith 1. Introduction 2. Late Wagnerian Harmonic Grammar: General Principles of Wagner’s Tonal System (Basic Definitions; Analytical Methods – Roman Numeral Analysis; Text Key Analysis; Linear Harmonic Analysis; Sequence of Tonics); Wagner the Atonalist? (The Conspiracy Scene in Gotterdammerung; Fricka’s Lament; The Final Tristan Chord) 3. Wagner and Modulation in Tristan 4. Interlude: Tonal Association and the Poetic Music Period 5. Magic in the Ring 6. A Wagnerian Scena 7. Wotan’s Dream of Self Destruction 8. Motivic Transformations 9. Key Relationships and Tonal Association 10. Summary and Concluding Remarks 11. On Interpretation of the Ring Bibliography Index Integrating contemporary research in the domains of analysis, stylistic analysis, semiotics, and approaches based on cognitive science, this study of 31 arias of Giovanni Legrenzi, a minor composer of the Baroque era, formulates 118 rules which describe the texts of the arias and their formal, melodic, and harmonic properties as well as the movement of the bass. The rules are then applied to a sample of melodies culled from ten centuries of Western music. A computer program that tests the validity of these rules is also described