Dissonance and the Body in Contextual Atonality A Phenomenological Analysis

Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Miles, Stephen

Keywords

Phenomenology, Music, Schoenberg, Arnold

Area of Concentration

Music

Abstract

This project is an attempt to rethink some traditional approaches to the early atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg, looking to their implications for embodiment and listening experience. Composed during a period of roughly five years from 1908-1913, Schoenberg's "freely" or "contextually" atonal music is considered a seminal moment in the history of musical modernism, and continues to spark debates in music theory and musicology. Importantly, many of these debates seem to hinge (either implicitly or explicitly) on the music's problematic history of reception. Schoenberg himself took an active role in the shaping of this history, making consistent and outspoken attempts to link his musical innovations to the key musical conceptions which preceded them. In this way, he meant to justify the newness of his music, and in the process, to win over an often hostile audience. The project begins by articulating a prominent stance on this issue, attempting to reformulate Schoenberg's claims to historical and theoretical legitimacy via the work of Charles Rosen and Ren� Leibowitz. Having established a viable sense of connection between Schoenberg's atonal music and the tonal tradition which received it, this theoretical continuity is subjected to the terms of a phenomenological investigation, weighed against Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of embodied perception, and re-contextualized for its implications in a musical experience.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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