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Hines Thesis 2015 PDF.pdf (3.15 MB)
ETD Abstract Container
Abstract Header
Reinventing Tradition: Brahms, Progress, and Basso Ostinato
Author Info
Hines, Jane
Permalink:
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1399942904
Abstract Details
Year and Degree
2015, Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, Music History.
Abstract
In 1919, T. S. Eliot published "Tradition and the Individual Talent," a seminal essay in the development of early twentieth-century modernism. Eliot posited that a good poet must posses an understanding of history and of his predecessors, and therefore see historical tradition as vital to their craft. Instead of rejecting tradition as a crutch for unoriginality, Eliot advocated the embrace of tradition. Eliot's model of poetic tradition and influence bears many similarities to the work of Johannes Brahms, who frequently alluded to the past throughout his oeuvre. Although deemed "conservative" by many of his contemporaries, Brahms incorporated elements of tradition into his music through allusions to specific composers, genres, styles, and techniques. Although these very traits earned him the label "conservative," several authors have since revised this notion of Brahms. In his famous essay "Brahms the Progressive," Arnold Schoenberg identified certain aspects of Brahms's music that were progressive rather than traditional. In the same vein, scholars such as Michael Musgrave, Kevin Korsyn, and others have suggested that Brahms's "old-fashioned" leanings mark him as a progressive, or even an early modernist. Taking Eliot's ideal poet as a model, I examine two works by Brahms that utilize a specific compositional device distinctively lifted from earlier music: basso ostinato. The second movement of String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Opus 18 (1860) and the Variations on a Theme of Haydn for Orchestra, Opus 56a (1873) both utilize basso ostinato, through a hybrid chaconne and a passacaglia, respectively. These two pieces look not only look backward, but also forward, and display progressive qualities, such as those enumerated by Schoenberg. Through a retroactive association with Eliot's paradigm of tradition, Brahms's works that incorporate basso ostinato can be seen as examples of his innovation.
Committee
Eftychia Papanikolaou (Advisor)
Arne Spohr (Committee Member)
Pages
83 p.
Subject Headings
Music
Keywords
Johannes Brahms
;
opus 18
;
opus 56a
;
Arnold Schoenberg
;
Harold Bloom
;
anxiety of influence
;
Thomas Stearns Eliot
;
tradition and the individual talent
;
progress
;
tradition
;
influence
;
basso ostinato
;
passacaglia
;
chaconne
;
folia
;
orchestral variations
Recommended Citations
Refworks
EndNote
RIS
Mendeley
Citations
Hines, J. (2015).
Reinventing Tradition: Brahms, Progress, and Basso Ostinato
[Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1399942904
APA Style (7th edition)
Hines, Jane.
Reinventing Tradition: Brahms, Progress, and Basso Ostinato.
2015. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis.
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1399942904.
MLA Style (8th edition)
Hines, Jane. "Reinventing Tradition: Brahms, Progress, and Basso Ostinato." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1399942904
Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)
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Document number:
bgsu1399942904
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Copyright Info
© 2015, some rights reserved.
Reinventing Tradition: Brahms, Progress, and Basso Ostinato by Jane Hines is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.