Music Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2796
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Item Hungarian Composers in Piano Music: from Liszt to Ligeti(2023) Li, Szu-Yi; Gowen, Bradford; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the nineteenth century, German composers held an almost out-of-proportion importance in the classical music world. However, with the advent of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, composers in non-German countries such as Russia, Norway, Spain, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, England, and the United States began to compose works in many genres that emphasized the particular national or ethnic qualities of their own native music. This resulted in the production of many works that greatly expanded and enriched the repertoire for the piano, beginning as far back as the Mazurkas and Polonaises of Chopin and the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt in the first half of the nineteenth century. With Liszt’s ethnic-inspired works written throughout his life, followed by the ethnomusicological promotion by Kodály and Bartók in the early twentieth century, Hungary, this small country in Europe, started to play an essential role in music history. Liszt’s early virtuosic pieces changed the world’s approach to piano technique; moreover, his late innovations in harmonies and forms shed light on the path of modern techniques. Bartók was an innovator in developing a percussive approach to the piano, and he used folk elements in new ways that changed how later composers would write piano music. Ligeti’s exploration of textures, extreme dynamic contrasts, and hyper-complicated rhythmic and metrical design, established his unique role in music history. These composers altered profoundly the development of piano music in its technique and expression. I have sought to put these Hungarian composers in historical context, and show how their legacies passed on to the next generation. What is Hungarian style? Generations of Hungarian composers tried to find their own answers through different resources. Liszt’s interest in Hungarian style lay in verbunkos music — the old recruiting dance of the army from the eighteenth century, which had long been in the repertoire of Gypsy bands. Kodály and Bartók found their answers in peasant songs, and Bartók later developed his unique style that synthesized folk music and modernism. Dohnányi was another kind of interesting figure who insisted on German Romanticism when his colleagues tried to avoid the influence of European techniques. Post-Bartók composers like Jenő Takács, Pál Kadosa, and Ferenc Farkas identified with the use of folk music, explored tunes from around the world, and strived to find new paths through modern techniques. Miklós Rózsa, best known as a film music composer, wrote piano music that reflects Hungarian folk elements. György Ligeti was an influential composer of the late twentieth century who brought piano music to a new level of complexity and virtuosity with his piano etudes. His interest in extra-musical elements, combined with his knowledge of folk elements like aksak rhythm and others, helped him find his answer to the synthesis of folklorism and modernism.Item Registral Space as a Compositional Element: A New Analytic Method Applied to the Works of Ligeti, Josquin, and Beethoven(2012) Burt, Patricia Ann; DeLio, Thomas; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The motion of a musical work through registral space is an important element of the listening experience. However, the tools developed for analysis of registral space are limited in number and are generally geared toward the study of 20th century music, where register is more frequently engaged with as an important component of musical structure. In this dissertation, I outline a new method I have created for the analysis of registral space and apply it to three compositions from different stylistic periods: György Ligeti's Continuum (1968), Josquin's "Benedictus" from his Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales (c. 1490-5), and Beethoven's Bagatelle in G major, Op. 126, No. 2 (1824). In so doing, I show how registral form can contribute equally, along with parameters such as melody and harmony, to the meaning of a composition. The first chapter of this dissertation outlines and demonstrates the analytic procedure using a short passage from Frédéric Chopin's C minor étude from Op. 25. Registral space, a conceptual, two-dimensional space created by the coordinates of pitch and time, is represented graphically where pitch is notated along the vertical axis and time along the horizontal axis. From the pitch graph, I define and quantify four types of registral space: positive, upper negative, lower negative, and inner negative space. This data is then used to create a series of graphs that elucidates a composition's registral form at both global and local levels. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 contain full analyses of the Ligeti, Josquin, and Beethoven works respectively. Though these pieces are written in different styles, they share a number of common features with regard to the treatment of registral space. For example, all three pieces exhibit self-similarity at multiple structural levels. Additionally, they each appear to have been conceived with deliberate consideration of the pitch shape's placement within the range of the piece, often employing some form of registral centering or balancing. By considering registral space in a new and meaningful way, this method of analysis can be applied to a diverse body of music and reveals aspects of musical structure that might otherwise remain hidden.Item The Electronic Works of György Ligeti and their Influence on his Later Style(2006-05-02) Levy, Benjamin Robert; DeLio, Thomas; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation, entitled The Electronic Works of György Ligeti and Their Influence on his Later Style investigates the connections between the composer's pieces for electronic tape written in the late 1950s and the instrumental music he composed thereafter. There are numerous reasons to suspect such a chain of influence, including suggestive comments Ligeti has made in interviews. Moreover, these works, Glissandi (1957), Artikulation (1958), and the uncompleted Pièce électronique no. 3 (1957-58), were written at a critical point in the composer's career, falling between two major stylistic periods. Before he fled Hungary in December 1956 his compositions were influenced by Bartóok, but his orchestral pieces Apparitions (1958-59) and Atmosphères (1961) were much celebrated for their strikingly original textures and timbres. While these orchestral pieces secured Ligeti's reputation as an important avant-garde figure, the first works he composed in the West were the electronic pieces, which have suffered relative neglect. There are difficulties inherent in analyzing electronic music, and thus the first chapter of this dissertation focuses on theoretical literature in this growing field, including discussion of musical timbre, different means of notation, and in particular, the work of theorist Robert Cogan. Chapters 2 and 3 are analytical studies of Ligeti's finished tape piece, using spectrographs and information from Ligeti's sketches to focus on the use of sonic material in the construction of form. Additionally each study is put in the context of Ligeti's contemporaries, composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig, as well as figures such as the philosopher T.W. Adorno. The fourth and final chapter focuses on the historical chain of influence and examines some of Ligeti's instrumental music, particularly Apparitions, in light of the their electronic precedents. These examples illuminate connections between the electronic and instrumental, ranging from the slightest nuances in individual gestures-many of which are translated directly from one medium to the other-to methods of constructing entire forms, which continue to appear throughout Ligeti's oeuvre; thus, the final aim of this dissertation is to provide groundwork for further studies which will deepen the understanding of other works by this innovative composer.