Desire in Chromatic Harmony

A Psychodynamic Exploration of Fin de Siècle Tonality
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-092342-6
Verlag: OXFORD UNIV PR

Buch, Englisch, 344 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 705 g

How does musical harmony engage listeners in relations of desire? Where does this desire come from? Author Kenneth Smith seeks to answer these questions by analyzing works from the turn of the twentieth- century that are both harmonically enriched and psychologically complex. Desire in Chromatic Harmony yields a new theory of how chromatic chord progressions direct the listener on intricate journeys through harmonic space, mirroring the tensions of the psyche found in Schopenhauer, Freud, Lacan, Lyotard, and Deleuze. Smith extends this mode of enquiry into sophisticated music theory, while exploring philosophically engaged European and American composers such as Richard Strauss, Alexander Skryabin, Josef Suk, Charles Ives, and Aaron Copland. Focusing on harmony and chord progression, the book drills down into the diatonic undercurrent beneath densely chromatic and dissonant surfaces. From the obsession with death and mourning in Suk's asrael Symphony to an exploration of "perversion" in Strauss's elektra; from the Sufi mysticism of Szymanowski's Song of the Night to the failed fantasy of the American dream in Copland's The Tender Land, Desire in Chromatic Harmony cuts a path through the dense forests of chromatic complexity, revealing the psychological make-up of post-Wagnerian psychodynamic music.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Kenneth M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musiktheorie, Musikästhetik, Kompositionslehre
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Einzelne Komponisten und Musiker
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgements

- Preface

- Chapter 1: A Linguistic Theory of Chromatic Harmonic Substitution and Progression in the Diatonic Unconscious

- Chapter 2: Romantic Provenance

- Chapter 3: Transcending Root Motion: Productive Death Drives and Cybernetic Cycles in Charles Ives and Aaron Copland

- Chapter 4: Karol Szymanowski's Dominant Drive Model and the Excess of the Cycle

- Chapter 5: Tragedy and the Gaze of the Living Dead: Functional Harmonic Rotation in Strauss's Elektra

- Chapter 6: The Thanatonic and the Hexatonic: Repetition, Mourning, and "Mother" in Suk's Asrael

- Chapter 7: When Octatonic and Hexatonic Collide: Skryabin's Accelerationist Last Piano Sonata

- Epilogue: The Way Forwards (and Backwards)

- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Kenneth M. Smith is Professor of Music Theory at University of Liverpool and serves as Vice President of the Society for Music Analysis. He is the author of Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis.