Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Peter Maxwell Davies’s ’Revelation and Fall’: Influence study and analysis Thesis How to cite: Rees, Jonathan (2011). Peter Maxwell Davies’s ’Revelation and Fall’: Influence study and analysis. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2011 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0000ed80 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk 0 º. ar2 ý ýrwz. t cl-c- Z1 JonathanRees PhD 1131 PETER MAXWELL DAVIES'S REVELATIONAND FALL: INFLUENCE STUDY AND ANALYSIS VOLUME ONE - TEXT A thesis submitted for the degreeof PhD in Music. Submitted: 17thSeptember 2010 ß'C' oc Awr% a: 20 _$ t 1Zc -t i ABSTRACT This thesis is an analysis of Peter Maxwell Davies's Revelation and Fall, through the influences that affect the development of its musical language and adoption of the expressionist aesthetic. Each chapter concentrates upon one aspect of the work: (1) its deployment of precompositional processes of thematic transformation; (2) the superimposition of different levels of structural organization; (3) motivic working within thematic transformation and contrapuntal devices; (4) experiments with timbre and the manipulation of temporal flow; and (5) the dramatic and aesthetic influences that shapethe presentationof the work. Throughout the thesis also runs a critique of certain trends in recent music analysis that seem to limit a full understandingof the analyzed work. I contend that restricting an analysis to the serial level of organization cannot prove the musical viability of the work. The other levels through which the work articulates its material must be identified by the analyst and given importance equal to this serial level. Through this thesis, I attempt to address Kevin Korsyn's complaint that some analyses (of music of all periods, not specifically Davies's) tend to view works as autonomous,synchronic entities, divorced from an artistic continuum of historical development, by focussing on the many connectionswith other music and ideas that inform the work's identity. Influence study is suggestedas a method whereby the shortcomings of these analytical trends can be countered and the Conclusion of the thesis opposesthe criticism of this method found not only in analytical studies, such as David Roberts's study of Davies's compositional techniques, discussedin Chapter One, but also a great number of commentaries on literary theory, particularly intertextuality. CONTENTS Introduction Page 3 ............................................................................................................. Chapter One: Serial Analysis Influence Study Page6 and ................................................. 1.1 Serial Analysis Revelation Fall Page6 of and ................................................ 1.2 Roberts Influence Page20 and .......................................................................... 1.3 Theories Influence Page22 of ........................................................................... 1.4 Musicology Influence Page27 and ................................................................... 1.5 St. Michael: CaseStudy in Influence Study Page34 ........................................ Chapter Two: Form Page48 ................................................................................................. 2.1 Long-Term Structures:Davies's Adaptation SonataForm Page48 of ............. 2.2 The Sonata-Fantasiaand Liszt's Piano Sonatain B Minor Precursors Page53 as ....................................................................................... 2.3 Formal Experimentation and Ambiguity in Sibelius's Seventh Symphony Page 56 ........................................................................................... 2.4 Sonata Form Principles and the First Movement of Mahler's Third Symphony Page62 ................................................................................. 2.5 ÜbergreifendeForm Page72 ........................................................................... ChapterThree: Thematic Transformation Contrapuntal Devices Page78 and .................... 3.1 Davies's Development of Transformation Processesin the SecondTaverner Fantasia Taverner Page79 and ............................................ 3.2 Precursorsto Davies's Transformation Processesin the Works Other Composers Page84 of ............................................................................ 3.3 ContrapuntalArrangement Linear Strands Page98 of ..................................... 3.4 SevenIn Nomine and the Integration of Taverner's Techniques........ Page 103 1 3.5 Adaptation of Medieval/RenaissanceCompositional Techniquesin Revelation Fall Page 107 and ............................................................................. Chapter Four: Timbre, Colour Temporal Manipulation Page 112 and .................................. 4.1 Different Layers Movement Page 112 of ........................................................... 4.2 Metrical Ambiguity Page 118 ............................................................................ 4.3 Colour Musical Moment Page 127 and the ........................................................ 4.4 Temporal Manipulation and Improvisation in Indian Rag Music...... Page 141 Chapter Five: Non-musical Influences: Aesthetics Theatre Page 157 and ............................ 5.1 The ExpressionistMovement Page 158 ............................................................. 5.2 Expressionismin Music Page 161 ..................................................................... 5.3 Georg Trakl: An Introduction his Style Page 164 to ......................................... 5.4 LanguageAspiring Condition Music Page 167 to the of .................................. 5.5 `Offenbarung Untergang' Page 169 und ........................................................... 5.6 Davies's Adoption of Expressionismand Reinterpretationof Trakl's Poem Page 172 ...................................................................................... 5.7 Musical Processes Drama Page 182 and ........................................................... 5.8 The Genre Music Theatre Page 192 of .............................................................. Conclusion Page200 ............................................................................................................. Bibliography Page209 .......................................................................................................... 2 INTRODUCTION Peter Maxwell Davies wrote Revelation and Fall in responseto a commission from the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, Washington, and it was first performed on 26th February 1968 at the Conway Hall, London, by the Pierrot Players with Mary Thomas as the soprano soloist, conducted by the composer.It is a setting for soprano and sixteen instruments of part of a long prose poem written by Georg Trakl in 1914, `Offenbarung und Untergang', which was given a semi-theatrical presentation.It is in many ways a turning point in Davies's career. Written during a period in which Davies was openly influenced by the works of the Tudor composer John Taverner - writing such responses to this influence as Seven In Nomine, the two Taverner Fantasias and the biographical opera Taverner - Revelation and Fall displays a distillation of many of the techniques that these works had introduced. The work also crystallized Davies's adoption of an expressionist style and catalyzed the deeper exploration of the genre of music theatre in later works such as Missa Super l'Homme Arme (1968) and Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969). The work is seldom performed, despite Davies's revision in 1980, which simplified the barring and notation to make it both more legible and more performable. It is, however, a work of great power and fascinating construction and deserves investigation. My analysis throughout this thesis is based on the 1980 revision of the work. At the heart of this thesis is the question of how a composer createshis own cogent musical language and also which methods of analysis can best decipher it. StephenArnold points out in an article about the opera Taverner the problems that faced composersof the mid-twentieth century in this respect: Tonality provided a context and a degree of `guaranteed' common experience, against the limits of which the truly inventive composer was able to compose without going (for too long) beyond the receptive and perceptive capabilities of his listeners. Since the `death' of tonality many composershave 3 attempted, with varying degrees of success, to evolve systems of comparable communality and compositional potential. (Twelve-tone compositions is but one of the more successful.) The result has been that the composer,in order to communicate,has to provide the terms of referencethat in a former era would have existed independentlyof him. The listener, for his part, has to come to terms with the languageof each individual composer.(Arnold 1972,22) My fundamental assertionthroughout this thesis is that the individual languagepresented by each composer requires an individual analytical approach, or an amalgamationof