Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: The article discusses theoretical and methodological origins of Alban Berg’s creative process. A study of how methods of analysis and theoretical concepts of the corresponding period affect the genesis of the musical work and meet the peculiarities of a composer’s musical thinking, reveals the points of contact between the theory of music and composition. Our hypothesis is that energeticism as the most influential theoretical concept determined not only how music was listened to, analyzed and interpreted, but also how it was composed. Our aim is to share the results of the study by R. Schäfke (1934) with the scientific community. One of its chapters focuses on energeticism as a key area of modern musical aesthetics represented by Heinrich Schenker, August Halm, Ernst Kurth, Hans Mersmann, Fritz Jöde, Hermann Roth, Wilhelm Werker, and Walter Krug. The study is based on an extensive body of sources including letters, diaries, notes as well as articles written in different years. It focuses on the reception of energeticism, primarily the concepts of Schenker, Kurth, and Werker, in the Schoenberg circle. It is obvious that Alban Berg adopted the ideas of energetism which is evidenced, first and foremost, by his music. Unaware of contemporary theoretical concepts, Berg intuitively approached them in his creative process, whose early stages are marked by “energy-structural dualism” (according to T. Tsaregradskaya). The closest analogy in the algorithm of Berg's composition is Schenker's idea of the primary structure as an embryo of future composition (except for the cases of classical harmony).
Source: Contemporary Musicology
Authors: Nizhny Novgorod Glinka State Conservatory, Yulia S. Veksler
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4389635211