First Advisor

Jonathan Bellman

Second Advisor

Deborah Kauffman

Degree Name

Master of Music

Document Type

Thesis

Date Created

8-1-2024

Department

College of Performing and Visual Arts, Music, Music Student Work

Abstract

Between the end of the Baroque era and the end of the Classical era, there was a shift in the way music was composed. This shift allowed composers to employ multiple topics in one work as opposed to the single-affect-per-movement that was standard under the Doctrine of Affections. Despite plenty of scholarship about both of the eras, the transition from one to the other has been relatively unexplored. Early musicologist Charles Burney noted in a volume of his General History of Music that there was a composer who was the first to employ “contrast as a governing principle”, and this comment functions as the starting point in examining Johann Christian Bach as the crux of the transition between eras. The extant scholarship surrounding how music was composed at the start of his life is examined in conjunction with his musical biography to contextualize the unique position Bach held in his day. He was a composer whose early musical education laid in Baroque tradition, but broke away from certain parts of it as his career took him from Berlin to Italy to London, where he soaked up the new and different music of the respective areas before incorporating them into his own works. This resulted in compositions like his Opus 5 sonatas, three of which are surveyed with Burney’s comment in mind. The analyses reveal different ways that Bach employed contrast, including different perspectives of the same topic, contrasting high- and low-class styles, and more. This kind of contrast paved the way for music in the later decades of the Classical era that used topics in a faster, wittier manner that would not have been possible without Bach’s particular approach to contrast.

Abstract Format

html

Keywords

Music; Music History; Bach; Baroque; Classical; Topic Studies; Topics; Contrast; Sonata; Piano

Extent

82 pages

Rights Statement

Copyright is held by the author

Download

Share

COinS