Articulating Continuums: Gestural Analysis of works by Steven Mackey, Stravinsky, Brahms, and Mozart

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This dissertation seeks to bring resonance and clarity to the notion of "gesture" as applied in music-analytic discourse. Exploring the element of continuity in sounding musical gestures, as first outlined by Robert S. Hatten, I describe the action that signifies strong gestural content in a musical moment or work as one in which musical continuums are articulated. To clarify musical gesture, I seek to clarify the role of continuums in theoretical discussions of musical parameters such as pitch, rhythm, harmony, dynamics, and events. All musical passages might be construed as "gestural" to some extent by virtue of the continuums embedded within musical elements; the relevant question becomes, when is a gestural perspective most revealing? What fresh insights can be found by translating musical parameters into the language of gesture? I seek to illuminate these questions in four case studies of music by Steven Mackey, Igor Stravinsky, Johannes Brahms, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. By analyzing music that progresses backwards in historical time, I hope to show that gesture is a perspective relevant to contemporary music that nonetheless contains the capacity to create fresh re-hearings of older works, and can connect our musical present to its past.