Book Description

"Through the lens of a performer, this dissertation presents a comparative analysis offour fugal movements from multi-movement piano sonatas that were written in thefirst half of the twentieth century: Karol Szymanowski's Sonata No. 3, Op. 36 (1917),Paul Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata (1936), Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata (1945-46),and Samuel Barber's Sonata for Piano, Op. 26 (1949). Numerous scholars haveshown how twentieth-century composers have appropriated the fugue by highlightinghow these artists integrated contemporary musical idioms into traditional fugalprocedure. Yet, the literature remains relatively silent on how a performer can benefitfrom the analyses, especially when approaching these difficult works. Accordingly,this dissertation demonstrates how musical analysis can inform a performance ofthese works, and likewise, how an interpretation can influence an analytical approach.Based on current scholarship, this research examines the diverse ways in whichthe four composers appropriate their fugues from the eighteenth- and nineteenthcenturyfugal practices, yet seek to "update" the genre to suit their modernist outlooks.This dissertation fills a gap in current music research and performance studies bydemonstrating how an understanding of both traditional and modern musical elementsand techniques in these twentieth-century works-such as approaches to structure,motivic connection, twentieth-century harmonic and rhythm techniques, andtraditional contrapuntal device-can guide performers to project both large-scalerelationships (i.e. motivic connection and form) and small-scale considerations(interpretative details in phrasing, tone color, articulation, dynamics, timing, etc.), toachieve a balance between the intellectual and the emotional content."--