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ucin1296593846.pdf (5.55 MB)
ETD Abstract Container
Abstract Header
An Exploration of Pitch Organization in Krzysztof Penderecki’s Passion According to Saint Luke
Author Info
Kelly, Michael
Permalink:
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1296593846
Abstract Details
Year and Degree
2011, M.M., University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music: Theory.
Abstract
At this time, the extant analytical work on Krzysztof Penderecki’s music falls into two basic categories: those works that address his earlier, more strictly avant-garde compositions in terms of Sausseurian binary parametric oppositions, or those that consider his more mature works, such as the St. Luke Passion, solely in terms of foreground motivic content. As insightful and valuable as many of these studies are, none has addressed the notion of an emergent comprehensive pitch structure in works such as the Passion, in which Penderecki was developing a personal and thoroughly contrapuntal compositional style based on what was for him a new method: the use of twelve-tone serialism. My assertion is that a unified and pervasive organization of pitch, beyond Penderecki’s purely aesthetic intuition, does indeed exist in the Passion. At the heart of this organization is the structure of the work’s two twelve-tone rows, i.e. how the rows and subsets thereof “carve out” pitch-class space as they unfold in musical time, which proves to determine the intervallic content of the work’s seemingly disparate motivic elements despite the fact that few of these motives even partially constitute literal row segments. My study provides an explication of this relationship between the Passion’s twelve-tone rows and the work’s foreground material as well as analyses that address excerpts from the be-ginning, middle, and conclusion of the work. The composite image that these analyses reveal is that of a basic serial structure, extrapolated through various intervallic and graphic connections into a multitude of motives, the newly evident relationships among which form a narrative that interacts meaningfully with the passion story itself. Penderecki’s compositional ingenuity and originality are already well-known; what this study demonstrates is his consummate mastery of motivic organization and text setting, the acknowledgement of which is long overdue.
Committee
Miguel Roig-Francoli, PhD (Committee Chair)
David Berry, PhD (Committee Member)
Cristina Losada, PhD (Committee Member)
Pages
86 p.
Subject Headings
Music
Keywords
Penderecki
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Refworks
EndNote
RIS
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Citations
Kelly, M. (2011).
An Exploration of Pitch Organization in Krzysztof Penderecki’s Passion According to Saint Luke
[Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1296593846
APA Style (7th edition)
Kelly, Michael.
An Exploration of Pitch Organization in Krzysztof Penderecki’s Passion According to Saint Luke.
2011. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis.
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1296593846.
MLA Style (8th edition)
Kelly, Michael. "An Exploration of Pitch Organization in Krzysztof Penderecki’s Passion According to Saint Luke." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1296593846
Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)
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Document number:
ucin1296593846
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© 2010, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.