Date of Award

2014

Type

Thesis

Major

Music Performance - Instrumental Concentration

Degree Type

Bachelor of Music in Music Performance

Department

Schwob School of Music

First Advisor

Dr. Lisa Oberlander

Second Advisor

Dr. Ronald Wirt

Third Advisor

Dr. Susan Tomkiewicz

Abstract

Claude Debussy's music developed as a product of his environment and culminated in the creation of a unique harmonic vernacular that permeates the twentieth century's tonal language. Through a historical and musical context, his early life through his formative years as a composer will be examined as a natural progression of his environment. The first section of this work will discuss these developments while the second part will analyze the structure and form of the Premiere Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano to illustrate the culmination of this trajectory.

Late Romanticism pushed tonality to its breaking point. Composers were forced to either extend Wagnerian chromatic harmonies to their limits or make a conscious determination to strike against this path. While composers like Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School expanded chromaticism to a completely atonal application in the creation of the twelve-tone method, other composers forged toward alternatives by creatively reshaping tonality. Claude Debussy (1862-1918) developed a new treatment of tonality that would remove "the fixed need for chordal or intervallic resolution, this open ended chordal concept resulting in the free play of any chromatic interval above a root, that makes up the chromatic homophony of Debussy's mature style" (Nadeau 71). Multiple influences allowed Debussy's transformation from traditional tonal progression to his new expanded harmony including the infamous Richard Wagner, Russian musical influence, the French symbolists, and the orientalism that was in vogue throughout Paris. Debussy's unique ideas stemmed as much from his environment as they developed from his own genius. Claude Debussy molded these influences to expand and morph the function of German Romantic harmony and develop his unique style.

Comments

Honors Thesis

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