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Wagner’s ‘relationship with music theory’, Alexander Rehding drily notes in his contribution to the present volume, ‘was complicated’ (p. 205). One could say something similar about music theory’s relationship with Wagner. On the one hand Wagner’s music, and especially its harmonic structure, has long served as a touchstone for theoretical models both old and new. At the same time, however, music analysts more often than not have appeared intimidated by the complexity of Wagner’s works, their multi-layeredness and their sheer unwieldiness. Already in 1981, the late Anthony Newcomb noted in the first of a series of remarkably forward-looking articles on Wagner analysis that American music theory was ‘unwilling to touch messy Wagnerian opera with [its] bright Schenkerian tools’.1 To be sure, much has changed since then: not only have Schenkerians (or at least some of them) embraced Wagner, but also the toolbox of both North American and global music theory has expanded considerably over the last three or four decades, not to mention how much broader the perspective of music theory and analysis in general (what they are, what they can do and what they can be about) has become. Still, a survey of general music theory journals or analysis of conference programmes from the past two decades quickly makes clear that Wagner’s music is not exactly one of the discipline’s main preoccupations.
Building on work by Karol Berger, this chapter analyses the lengthy final scene of Act 1 from Wagner’s Die Walküre (starting at Sieglinde’s re-entry right before ‘Schläfst du, Gast?‘) through the lens of the formal pattern common in Italian operas of the first half of the nineteenth century and known as la solita forma. The model not only serves to identify the various formal types Wagner uses over the course of this scene but also reveals an intense interaction between form and drama: the formal cues of the different stages of la solita forma, each with its specific dramaturgical implications, are shaped by the shifting dynamics in the game of seduction and recognition between the enamoured siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde.
While the music of Richard Wagner has long served as a touchstone for music-theoretical and analytical models both old and new, music analysts have often been intimidated by the complexity of his works, their multi-layeredness, and their sheer unwieldiness. This volume brings together ten contributions from an international roster of leading Wagner scholars of our time, all of which engage in some way with analytical or theoretical questions posed by Wagner's music. Addressing the operas and music dramas from Die Feen through Parsifal, they combine analytical methods including form-functional theory, Neo-Riemannian theory, Leitmotiv analysis, and history of theory with approaches to dramaturgy, hermeneutics, reception history, and discursive analysis of sexuality and ideology. Collectively, they capture the breadth of analytical studies of Wagner in contemporary scholarship and expand the reach of the field by challenging it to break new interpretative and methodological ground.
This chapter offers an introduction to Romantic form, focusing on ways of organising musical forms that were especially prevalent amongst composers working in Germany between 1825 and 1850 but that survived in the music of selected composers until the final years of the century. Using examples drawn from vocal and instrumental works by Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Clara Schumann, and Antonín Dvořák, it discusses a number of characteristics that are typical of Romantic form as well as the ways they relate to theoretical models that have been developed for classical music. The chapter is organised in two sections. The first addresses matters of formal syntax, that is, the construction and interrelation of musical phrases.The second explores issues of formal incompleteness as well as connections that go beyond the single-movement level.
Among the more striking developments in contemporary North American music theory is the centrality that questions of musical form (Formenlehre) have enjoyed in recent decades. Formal Functions in Perspective presents thirteen studies that engage with musical form in a variety of ways. The essays, written by established and emerging scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European continent, run the chronological gamut from Haydn and Clementi to Leibowitz and Adorno; they discuss Lieder, arias, and choral music as well as symphonies, concerti, and chamber works; they treat Haydn's humor and Saint-Saëns's politics, while discussions of particular pieces range from Mozart's arias to Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Running through all of these essays and connecting them thematically is the central notion of formal function.
CONTRIBUTORS: Brian Black, L. Poundie Burstein, Andrew Deruchie, Julian Horton, Steven Huebner, Harald Krebs, Henry Klumpenhouwer, Nathan John Martin, François de Médicis, Christoph Neidhöfer, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, Giorgio Sanguinetti, Janet Schmalfeldt, Peter Schubert, Steven Vande Moortele
Steven Vande Moortele is assistant professor of music at the University of Toronto. Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers is assistant professor of music at the University of Ottawa. Nathan John Martin is assistant professor of music at the University of Michigan.
In this book Steven Vande Moortele offers a comprehensive account of operatic and concert overtures in continental Europe between 1815 and 1850. Discussing a broad range of works by German, French, and Italian composers, it is at once an investigation of the Romantic overture within the context of mid-nineteenth century musical culture and an analytical study that focuses on aspects of large-scale formal organization in the overture genre. While the book draws extensively upon the recent achievements of the 'new Formenlehre', it does not use the overture merely as a vehicle for a theory of romantic form, but rather takes an analytical approach that engages with individual works in their generic context.
