articles+ search results

MUSIC theorists, MUSIC theory, MUSICAL analysis, and REPETITION in music

The songs of Hugo Wolf continue to intrigue music theorists, not least because of their characteristic fusion of traditional tonal conventions with sophisticated chromatic processes. This article analyses a particularly intricate example: ‘Mühvoll komm ich und beladen’ from the Spanisches Liederbuch. The song projects a complex pattern of tonal relationships that reinforces an obsessive sense of repetition and circularity – issues that are explicit in the song's poetic text. The present reading engages a number of external sources, including the philosophy of Nietzsche, the operatic figure of Kundry and the myth of Sisyphus. These elements provide a series of cultural co-ordinates that together serve to illuminate primary facets of the song's structure, including its formal design and distinctive harmonic syntax. Each of these topics is considered in the service of a larger, overriding purpose: to reveal the ways in which the composer seeks to characterise sin and spiritual torment using techniques of cyclic organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MUSICA ficta, CHROMATICISM (Music theory), MUSICAL intervals & scales, SONGS, MUSICAL analysis, MUSIC theory, and HERMENEUTICS

This article analyzes Hugo Wolf's Auf eine Christblume I and II in relation to Robert Bailey's concept of the "double-tonic complex." These songs project an intricate pairing of D and F# tonalities that often result in various hexatonic relationships. My interpretation associates the D/F# complex with the central poetic subject: the Christmas rose. The article introduces Wolf's setting, reevaluates Bailey's idea, and offers an in-depth hermeneutic analysis of the two songs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]