Tonality in Schoenberg's music with particular reference to the Piano Concerto
This thesis examines Schoenberg’s use of tonal elements in various works written after 1909. The meanings of the terms, tonal and atonal, are first explored; subsequently, tonal aspects and their connection to a work’s structure are investigated in several of Schoenberg’s atonal and serial pieces. Schoenberg’s serial technique in his later works such as the Piano Concerto was less rigid than in works such as the Suite für Klavier; these later pieces also contain many retrospective, tonal, elements. A number of analyses of the Concerto, including those by Brian Alegant, Walter Bailey, Alfred Brendel, Kenneth Hicken, Martha Hyde, Guerino Mazzola and Benedikt Stegemann, Dika Newlin, and Rudolph Stephan, have attempted to take into consideration these elements. An overview of these analyses is presented here, followed by the author’s own assessment of the Concerto. This, it is proposed, offers an enlightened approach to the performance of Schoenberg’s piano music.
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