Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok [Paperback]

Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bart?kexplores the means by which two early 20th century operas - Debussy'sPell?as et M?lisande(1902) and Bart?k'sDuke Bluebeard's Castle(1911) - transformed the harmonic structures of the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language. It also looks at how this language reflects the psychodramatic symbolism of the Franco-Belgian poet, Maurice Maeterlinck, and his Hungarian disciple, B?la Bal?zs. These two operas represent the first significant attempts to establish more profound correspondences between the symbolist dramatic conception and the new musical language.Duke Bluebeard's Castleis based almost exclusively on interactions between pentatonic/diatonic folk modalities and their more abstract symmetrical transformations (including whole-tone, octatonic, and other pitch constructions derived from the system of the interval cycles). The opposition of these two harmonic extremes serve as the basis for dramatic polarity between the characters as real-life beings and as instruments of fate. The book also explores the new musico-dramatic relations within their larger historical, social psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts.

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Backgrounds and Development: The New Musical Language and Its Correspondence with Psycho-Dramatic Principles of Symbolist Opera
2. The New Musical Language
3. Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the Unconscious in the Debussy and Bart?k Operas
4.Pell?as et M?lisande:Polarity of Characterizations: Human Beings as Real-Life Individuals and Instruments of Fate
5.Pell?as et M?lisande:Fate and the Unconscious; Transformational Function of the Dominant-ninth Chord
6.Pell?as et M?lisande:Musico-Dramatic Turning Point: Intervallic Expansion as Symbol of Dramatic Tension and Change of Mood
7.Pell?as et M?lisande: M?lƒ!