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Form in the Music of John Adams

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Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2018 Form in the Music of John Adams Michael Ridderbusch Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Ridderbusch, Michael, "Form in the Music of John Adams" (2018). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 6503. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/6503 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Form in the Music of John Adams Michael Ridderbusch DMA Research Paper submitted to the College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Theory and Composition Andrew Kohn, Ph.D., Chair Travis D. Stimeling, Ph.D. Melissa Bingmann, Ph.D. Cynthia Anderson, MM Matthew Heap, Ph.D. School of Music Morgantown, West Virginia 2017 Keywords: John Adams, Minimalism, Phrygian Gates, Century Rolls, Son of Chamber Symphony, Formalism, Disunity, Moment Form, Block Form Copyright ©2017 by Michael Ridderbusch ABSTRACT Form in the Music of John Adams Michael Ridderbusch The American composer John Adams, born in 1947, has composed a large body of work that has attracted the attention of many performers and legions of listeners. In addition, this work has drawn the attention of scholars intent on understanding its historical and theoretical context. Among the theoretical writings are two papers by Catherine Pellegrino: Formalist Analysis in the Context of Postmodern Aesthetics: The Music of John Adams as a Case Study of 1999, and its offshoot article Aspects of Closure in the Music of John Adams of 2002. In these writings she conducts analyses of music by John Adams in order to determine if it is understandable in terms of formalist musical analysis, specifically by the metrics of closure and hierarchy. Closure is attained through pattern-completion. Hierarchy is attained through organic generation of surface content from background content of a single idea; Schenkerian theory and analysis is the classic means of demonstrating this. Pellegrino ultimately determines that Adams "problematizes closure," and when she attempts to abstract the large scale tonal organization of a number of works by Adams in order to determine if a logical hierarchy is consistently operative, she asserts that the analyses fall short "with regard to the requirement of comprehensiveness." In addition, music composed by John Adams later in his career can be characterized as disunified as a consequence of an intuitive compositional approach documented by researcher K. Robert Schwarz, and demonstrated through analyses by Pellegrino. For Pellegrino, these disunified works are inaccessible via the methods of formalist analysis, nor is there a good theory of disunified music to apply to them as well. The purpose of this research paper is to demonstrate that there is music by Adams that is formalist, specifically Phrygian Gates (1977-1978), and that its formalism can be corroborated by testing for closure and hierarchy by analytical means. The purpose of this paper is also to show how works by Adams that are non-formalist and disunified can be rendered analytically accessible. This will be accomplished by first determining the goals appropriate for analyzing disunified music, and by providing a historical context for disunified music in practice and theory; and secondly by creating a method for analyzing non-formalist music, applying the method to two works by Adams, including Century Rolls (1996) and Son of Chamber Symphony (2007), and summarizing the results. Acknowledgements I extend thanks to my advisor Dr. Andrew Kohn for his patient and astute guidance during the research and writing of this paper on the music of John Adams. Any merit that may be found in the results are in large measure due to him. I am also thankful for the guidance of Dr. Matthew Heap in matters of composition, and in assisting with the final editing of my paper. I am grateful for financial assistance from the Dissertation Research Support Program at WVU for helping me with translation work. I must thank Dr. John Beall for sharing his extensive knowledge of compositional craft; Dr. David Taddie for teaching and demonstrating the possibilities that technology can have for enlarging the scope of musical creativity; and Dr. C. B. Wilson for his engaging course on the history of orchestration, and for the latitude to choose my research projects. Finally, I must also extend thanks to Dr. Christopher Wilkinson for the high standards he held me to when researching and writing history; and to Dr. John E. Crotty for his insightful lectures on theory that further kindled my interest in the subject. iv Table of Contents Outline of Project .......................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Purpose ....................................................................................................................................... 5 Procedure ................................................................................................................................... 5 Scope and Limitations ............................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: Process and Form ...................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 9 1.2.1 Phrygian Gates and Closure: Introduction .................................................................... 9 1.2.2 Phrygian Gates and Closure: Classic-Romantic Formal Rhetoric and Minimalist Process ...................................................................................................................................... 10 1.2.3 Phrygian Gates and Closure: Tonality as a Problem .................................................. 11 1.2.4 Phrygian Gates and Closure: Tonality as a Solution .................................................. 13 1.2.5 Phrygian Gates and Closure: Modernist Appropriation of Tonality ........................ 16 1.3.1 The Music of Adams and Hierarchy: An Introduction .............................................. 18 1.3.2 Phrygian Gates and Hierarchy: A Post-Tonal Lens .................................................... 19 1.3.3 Phrygian Gates and Hierarchy: A Post-Tonal Lens — Summary ............................. 24 1.3.4 Phrygian Gates and Hierarchy: Tonal Analysis .......................................................... 25 1.3.5 Phrygian Gates and Hierarchy: Formal Analysis ....................................................... 28 1.3.6 Phrygian Gates and Hierarchy: Special Considerations ............................................ 31 1.4 Phrygian Gates, Closure and Hierarchy: Summary ...................................................... 35 1.5.1 Phrygian Gates, Temporal Processes: Introduction ................................................... 35 1.5.2 Phrygian Gates, Temporal Processes: Large Scale ..................................................... 35 1.5.3 Phrygian Gates, Temporal Processes: Small Scale ...................................................... 38 Chapter 2: Disunity and Form .................................................................................................. 44 2.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 44 2.2 Formalism in Tonal and Post-Tonal Practice ................................................................. 45 2.3.1 Closure and Formalism: Introduction ......................................................................... 47 2.3.2 Closure and Type 1 Tonal Formalism .......................................................................... 47 2.3.3 Closure and Type 2 Post-Tonal Formalism.................................................................. 47 2.3.4 Closure and Type 3 Post-Tonal Non-Formalism ......................................................... 48 2.3.5 Closure and Formalism: Summary .............................................................................. 51 2.4.1 Hierarchy and Formalism: Introduction..................................................................... 52 2.4.2 Hierarchy and Type 1 Tonal Formalism ...................................................................... 52 2.4.3 Hierarchy and Type 2 Post-Tonal Formalism ............................................................. 53 v 2.4.4 Hierarchy and Type 3 Post-Tonal Non-Formalism ....................................................
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