What is it about?
This book chapter offers a comparative analysis of the first movements of Bruckner's Ninth and Mahler's First Symphonies relying on the cross-fertilization of Kurth's 'energetic' and Adorno's 'material' theories of form. The main aim is to show how the compositional and formal strategies of the two composers are related in terms of a new structural function of highpoints. Detailed diagrams of formal tensions in the two symphonic movements are provided.
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Why is it important?
The chapter focuses on the role of secondary parameters in the late-19th-century Austrian symphonic tradition. Here, the convergence of dynamic, density and melodic peak in climactic moments ("highpoints") offers a significant criterion for formal organization, which encourages a re-consideration of the relation between "structural" and "rhetoric" aspects in sonata movements.
Perspectives
This is integral part of the new perspectives on Gustav Mahler emerging from the book "Rethinking Mahler" (ed. by Jeremy Barham, Oxford University Press, 2017).
Dr Alessandro Cecchi
Universita degli Studi di Pisa
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This page is a summary of: Forming Form through Force, August 2017, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199316090.003.0005.
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