The Aspects of the Developmental Method
(the sixth lecture from the Course “Fundamenthals of Music Analysis”)
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Keywords: analysis of musical compositions, musical form, episodic theme, derivative theme, variation, polyphonic variants, techniques of mobile counterpoint, polyphonic structures.
Author: Rein H. Laul
About the author
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2615-4342
e-mail: itf@conservatory.ru
Doctor of Art History, Professor, Leading specialist in creativity genres of the Research group of the Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory
2 liter A Glinki St., St. Petersburg 190068, Russia
Submitted on: 15.12.2019
Published on: 15.04.2020
Abstract
This material continues the series of publications of R. H. Laul’s lectures on music analysis at the Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory. The sixth lecture concludes the review of techniques for developing musical material. It discusses six of the twenty-five techniques in the author’s classification (episodic theme, derived theme, variation, polyphonic variants, mobile counterpoint techniques, polyphonic structures), which contributes to systematization of the development processes.
The author’s field of view includes non-specific Sonata methods of transforming the musical material, so that sonateness appears in a flexible and complementary interaction with other principles of formation.
Special attention is paid to the specifics of using polyphonic means of developing musical material in the context of Sonata formation. The detailed examination of the finale of Mozart’s Symphony Jupiter, shows that technological, compositional, dramatic, and stylistic aspects of the formation of a musical form appear to be closely related.
The final section summarizing the content of the lecture as a whole contains an
example of practical application of the methodology proposed by the author, proving its expediency and high efficiency not only in the aspect of analyzing the intonation drama of a musical work, but also of achieving the main analytical goal to form a reasoned judgment about the content of each stage in the deployment of a musical composition.
Works Cited
Abert, Hermann (1990). W. A. Mozart. Pt. 2. Iss. 2. Moskow : Muzyka. 560 p. (in Russian).
Laul, Rein H. (2015). Ob analize muzykal’nykh proizvedeniy (vvodnaya lektsiya kursa “Osnovy analiza muzyki”) [On the analysis of musical works (introductory lecture of the course “Fundamentals of music analysis”)]. In Оpera musicologica, 2015, no. 1 [23], рр. 17–25 (in Russian).
Mazel’, Lеv A. (1991). Voprosy analiza muzyki. [Questions of the analysis of music]. Moskow: Sovetskiy kompozitor. 375 p. (in Russian).
For citation: Laul, Rein H. The Aspects of the Developmental Method (the sixth lecture from the Course “Fundamenthals of Music Analysis”). In Оpera musicologica, vol. 12, no. 1 (2020), pp. 53–69 (in Russian). DOI: 10.26156/OM.2020.12.1.004.