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This is another paper from graduate school, dated March 7, 1992. As with other papers I’ve posted here, the examples are missing due to limits of technology at that time.

Igor Stravinsky often drew from Classical models in his composition.  Stravinsky himself admitted that when he was composing, he listened to works C especially symphonies C of classical masters such as Beethoven “to put myself in motion…”[1] When he began writing his Symphony in Three Movements in 1942, events of the 20th century (namely World War II), and over a century of tonal evolution had a profound influence on this piece.  It is often referred to as his War Symphony, a name Stravinsky himself did not reject.  While discussing the Symphony in Three Movements with Robert Craft, Stravinsky made these observations of the programmatic aspect of the piece:

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This term paper was written in graduate school, though I think it may have been in an undergraduate class. I don’t quite remember at this point. The class was Music 125 at UC Riverside, and the paper is dated 12/9/1992. I could not find the title page. I’m quite certain I received an A on this one. And since this was 1992 and I had no scanner, my examples were merely copied on a copy machine and glued onto the blank spots - so I no longer have the actual music samples for those examples.

Ludwig van Beethoven contributed a wealth of innovations to the evolution of music. One such contribution was his expansion of the symphonic coda to become an integral part of the sonata-allegro movements.

Through Beethoven’s nine symphonies, one may see a definite pattern of awareness that the composer took toward the treatment of the coda. First, the coda became functional as a second development section. It also became an avenue through which Beethoven introduced new ideas. Another new function of the coda was the extension of the final cadence to a point beyond the recapitulation. This was used in some works to divert attention away from the tonic by actually modulating in the coda. Finally, the sheer size of Beethoven’s codas demonstrates a shifting of emphasis toward the end of the work.

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I wrote this paper in  June 1993 for one of my graduate music theory classes at UC Riverside, which I believe was taught by the John Crawford mentioned in this paper.

Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand is a work which combines music with other elements, such as drama, visual effects, libretto, and art.  It is perhaps different than other musical works falling into the category of opera in that these non-musical elements are so closely connected to the music that they are strictly notated in the music score.  These non-musical factors could be problematic to an analyst seeking to discover structural elements of the work in a solely musical environment.  This paper will examine the various approaches toward this work, determine to what extent non-musical factors play a role in the decision of musical structure, and discuss the effectiveness of such analyses.  Based on the writings below, the areas of examination will be the influence of color (in this work, colored lighting) on the music, the approach to formal examinations of the work (including the influence of the text on the music), and the aspect of motivic processes (primarily the “leitmotif”).  The non-analytic aspects of the following articles will not be discussed in this paper.

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