Journal article
Toward a Renovation of Motivic Analysis: Corrupt Organicism in Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1
Theory and practice, Vol.42, pp.101-139
01/01/2017
Abstract
This essay takes up Theodor W. Adorno’s agenda for turning analysis around to show how Alban Berg’s music, specifically his Piano Sonata, op. 1, accomplishes a “permanent re-absorption back into itself” as the realization of a corrupt organicism, an organicism fixated on death and decay instead of growth (1982, 184). A hallmark of this corrupt organicism is the exhaustive use of backward development, where a leap forward in motivic development is filled to make the coherence of contrasting parts more comprehensible. Motivic analysis, traditionally focused on forward development, is ill-equipped to deal with this phenomenon. In order to understand the process of backward development in Berg’s music, then, this essay contributes to a renovation of motivic analysis. I will show that a fatalistic corrupt organicism is not only thematized in the sonata—“a tragic work” that ironically begins with the fated end of its “funereal” closing theme (Carner 1975, 100)—but pervasively effected through exhaustive backward development, liquidation, and harmonic re-absorption.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Toward a Renovation of Motivic Analysis: Corrupt Organicism in Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1
- Creators
- MATTHEW Arndt
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Theory and practice, Vol.42, pp.101-139
- Publisher
- Music Theory Society of New York State
- ISSN
- 0741-6156
- eISSN
- 2328-2665
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/2017
- Academic Unit
- Music
- Record Identifier
- 9984399618402771
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