| Popis: |
The music of Sergei Rachmaninoff tends to elicit polarized responses from its hearers; even expressions of supposed academic indifference may betray a degree of contempt by what they do not say. Much of this reaction, positive or negative, comes of a rather superficial appraisal of his style and the influences thereupon. Comprehension of the multilayered syntax of the composer’s late Russian and post-exilic works in particular—including the Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 39, Nos. 1-3, the subject of this document—requires study from multiple perspectives.Accordingly, the author subjects these Etudes to Schenkerian and Schoenbergian (i.e., Grundgestalt) analysis, critiquing Robert Cunningham’s Schenkerian analysis of No. 1 in the process. He also observes influences, not of the oft-cited Tchaikovsky, but of Rimsky-Korsakoff and other members and successors of the Mighty Handful (Kuchka)—including Rachmaninoff’s contemporaries Scriabin and Stravinsky. Especially noteworthy is his juxtaposition of symmetrical pitch structures and modality onto the common-practice model, creating a phenomenon for which Rachmaninoff scholar Blair Johnston has coined the term “hyperdissonance.” |
