Music Analysis and the Avant-Garde Compositions of Post-World War II: Four Case Studies (original) (raw)

This thesis examines four iconic piano works composed from 1949 to 1952 in relation to the discipline of music analysis: Olivier Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensités (1949), Pierre Boulez's Structures Ia for two pianos (1952), Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstück III (1952) and John Cage's Music of Changes (1951). The primary aim is to investigate how music analysis has engaged with these four works over the last fifty years. Investigating the nature and content of earlier analyses reveals various aspects of the discipline: its aims and functions, its governing ideologies and, most importantly, its achievements. This investigation also allows for recent criticism of the discipline of music analysis to be reconsidered. In total, 29 analyses of the four works are closely evaluated. Building on these observations, the author contributes a further perspective on each work by offering her own analytical insights, at times challenging some of the common analytica...