Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Department

Music

First Advisor

Carlos Flores

Second Advisor

Trina Thompson

Abstract

A prominent feature among great composers is they often attempt to expand the boundaries of expectation and strive to discover fresh, new, and innovative styles. Throughout the musical periods, composers have established standard compositional forms; among these processes is the fugue. The specific goal of this project is to explore the compositional techniques of the 12-tone system developed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1921, and apply these techniques to fugal writing. In this process I am taking Bach’s fugue, BWV 847, and using it as a blueprint for my original 12-tone fugue. I follow the same overarching structural pattern of BWV 847—retaining the number of voices, related pitch selection and usage of the middle section, while submitting them to the paradigms of 12- tone serialism. I chose to employ techniques such as complex rhythmic patterns, pitch selection based on 20th century practices, and serial relationships that create the feeling of the traditional components of the fugue. This composition moves the fugue form in an unexpected and more progressive direction and attempts to give a meaningful definition to fugue writing with 12-tone principals.

Subject Area

Fugue., Canons, fugues, etc.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/101/

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