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Recondite Harmony: Essays on Puccini's Operas

Author: 
Year:
Pages:348
ISBN:1-4955-1169-3
978-1-4955-1169-1
Price:$219.95
"[T]he thesis of this volume is that the diametrically opposed forces of the traditional and progressive live together in Puccini's music, embedded deeply within his harmonic constructs and in many musical parameters. The author hopes that the observations set forth in these pages will help frame Puccini studies in a way that helps to reconcile previously contentious issues." -Deborah Burton [Introduction]

This book was originally published by Pendragon Press in 2012.

Table of Contents

I. Part One: Puccini's Musical Techniques
Chapter 1: Puccini the Progressive?
Chapter 2: Hidden Harmonies and pitch resources
Chapter 3: Motivic elaboration and the MPI
II. Part Two: Puccini's Operas
Chapter 4: An individual voice: traditional and progressive elements in Le villi
Chapter 5: The Scattered jewels of Edgar
Chapter 6: Towards a new country: Form and Deformation in Manon Lescaut
Chapter 7: Sfumature: La Boheme's fragmentation and sequential motions
Chapter 8: Structural symmetries and reversals in Tosca
Chapter 9: Madama Butterfly's transformations
Chapter 10: Rhythms and redemption in La fanciulla del West
Chapter 11: La rondine's Masquerades and Modernisms
Chapter 12: Amore, dolore e buonumore: dramatic and musical coherence in Il trittico
Chapter 13: Dawn at dusk: Puccini's trademarks in Turandot
Appendix: Plot summaries of the operas
Select Bibliography
Index