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Modeling Compositional Grammars in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) Thomas William Posen

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Modeling Compositional Grammars in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) Thomas William Posen University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Music ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-25-2016 Modeling Compositional Grammars in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) Thomas William Posen Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/mus_etds Recommended Citation Posen, Thomas William. "Modeling Compositional Grammars in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957)." (2016). http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/mus_etds/1 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Music ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i Thomas W. Posen Candidate Department of Music Department This thesis is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Thesis Committee: Richard Hermann, Chairperson David Bashwiner Ana R. Alonso-Minutti Jack Douthett Falko Steinbach David Schepps Cármelo de los Santos ii MODELING COMPOSITIONAL GRAMMARS IN LEONARD BERNSTEIN’S WEST SIDE STORY (1957) BY THOMAS W. POSEN BACHELOR OF ARTS, PHYSICS & ASTROPHYSICS, 2013 BACHELOR OF MUSIC, PIANO PERFORMANCE, 2013 THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Music The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2016 iii Dedication To my father, William Posen, who showed me that anything is possible with persistence and dedication. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank my thesis advisor Dr. Richard Hermann who closely mentored me on this project. This thesis is a culmination of novel courses and one-on-one meetings under his leadership. Throughout my studies, Dr. Hermann pushed me to engage more deeply in music theoretical concepts, ask challenging questions, and grow intellectually. I am especially grateful for his willingness to review successive drafts and provide thoughtful and provoking comments throughout the process of writing this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. David Bashwiner for pushing me to improve the clarity and strength of my arguments, especially in the early stages of my master’s degree and this thesis. I am indebted to both Dr. Hermann and Dr. Bashwiner for their close mentorship throughout my studies as an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of New Mexico. The scope of this project integrates multiple disciplines such as mathematics and musicology and has benefited greatly from the help of Dr. Jack Douthett and Dr. Ana Alonso-Minutti. I would like to acknowledge the support of Dr. Douthett for his help with some of the mathematical modeling in chapter five, and Dr. Alonso-Minutti for her helpful comments and suggestions throughout the thesis that have enabled me to reach a wider readership. I am thankful for Dr. Falko Steinbach, who pushed me to sign up as music major at the beginning of my undergraduate studies. I am fortunate that he was willing to accept me as a piano student and encourage my musical development as an undergraduate and graduate student. Finally, I must express my profound gratitude to my mother, Joanne, for providing me with unfailing support throughout my undergraduate years as both a physics and music student, and my graduate years as as a piano performance and music theory student. Without her support, these accomplishments would not have been possible. v MODELING COMPOSITIONAL GRAMMARS IN LEONARD BERNSTEIN’S WEST SIDE STORY (1957) by Thomas W. Posen B.A., Physics & Astrophysics, University of New Mexico, 2013 B.M., Performance (Piano), University of New Mexico, 2013 ABSTRACT As a result of Leonard Bernstein’s numerous didactic lectures, he is generally recognized as a tonal composer who misrepresented or even misunderstood other compositional grammars. But, while scholars criticize Bernstein for these reasons, close analysis of his own music reveals a different story. Using post-tonal theory and semiotics, I examine Bernstein’s music from the perspective of compositional grammars—some not tonal—through analysis of three pieces from West Side Story (1957), “The Rumble,” the “Tonight” ensemble, and the “Cool Fugue.” I demonstrate that although Bernstein passionately defended tonality as the means to unite composers and audiences—especially Broadway audiences—analysis of West Side Story reveals varied musical syntaxes, including particular intervallic structures, pitch centric passages, and twelve-tone serialism. Analysis of West Side Story challenges illusory notions of supposed binary oppositions: opera versus Broadway, highbrow versus lowbrow, and tonal versus atonal. By closely interpreting how various compositional grammars in West Side Story blur supposed opposing binary musical aesthetics, genres, and styles, this thesis opens new and perhaps unexpected avenues for Bernstein research. vi Table of Contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Scope and Audience .................................................................................................................. 2 1.3 Background: Bernstein’s Lectures .......................................................................................... 3 1.4 Criticism of Bernstein’s Lectures ............................................................................................ 6 1.5 Early Reception History of West Side Story, Part 1 ................................................................ 8 1.6 Reception History, Part 2: Recent Research on West Side Story .................................... 10 1.7 Organization of Chapters ....................................................................................................... 12 Chapter 2 Methodologies ................................................................................................................................ 16 2.1 Post-Tonal Theory .................................................................................................................. 17 2.2 Transformational Theory ....................................................................................................... 21 2.2.1 Klumpenhouwer Networks ........................................................................................... 24 2.2.2 Uniform Triadic Transformations ................................................................................ 26 2.3 Semiotics ................................................................................................................................... 30 2.4 Analytical Focus: Modeling and Perception ........................................................................ 35 2.5 “Highbrow” and “Lowbrow” Aesthetics ............................................................................ 39 Chapter 3 More Than a Tritone .................................................................................................................... 44 3.1 Introduction: The Great Modern Composer ...................................................................... 44 1.1 Post-Tonal Theory and Transformations ............................................................................ 48 3.2 Modernizing the “Old-Fashioned Notes” ........................................................................... 51 3.3 More than Triads and Tritones ............................................................................................. 56 3.4 Transformer Tetrachords ....................................................................................................... 58 3.5 From Building Blocks to Large Scale Structures ................................................................ 64 3.6 Dramatic Narrative to Abstract Musical Structure ............................................................ 65 3.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 70 Chapter 4 The Patterns of Grand Opera On Broadway ........................................................................... 72 4.1 Introduction: Broadway and Opera ..................................................................................... 72 4.2 Ensemble Finales and Broadway Aesthetics ....................................................................... 73 vii 4.3 Form in Ensemble Finales ..................................................................................................... 75 4.4 Semiotic Framework ............................................................................................................... 81 4.5 Analysis Part 1: A Semiotic Approach to the “Tonight” Ensemble ............................... 83 4.6 Analysis Part 2: Contrapuntal Combinations ...................................................................... 87 4.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 92 Chapter 5 Playing it “Cool”: Serialism on Broadway ................................................................................. 94 5.1 Bernstein and Serialism .........................................................................................................
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