Identifier

etd-07112005-183504

Degree

Master of Music (MM)

Department

Music

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Scholars hold opposing views concerning the importance of large-scale key relations in Verdi's operas. Julian Budden states that, since Verdi often allowed transpositions of his music in performance, one must take care in assigning structural importance to Verdi's key schemes. Others, including David Lawton, place much significance on Verdi's choice of keys. Lawton describes methods by which Verdi intensifies dramatic situations through associative tonality and recurring musical themes. In La Traviata, several recurring musical themes undergo transposition, a device that Wagner scholar Robert Bailey calls expressive tonality, which is the repetition or recall of a passage transposed by semitone or tone, either up or down to underscore dramatic intensification or relaxation. Similar in dramatic value are reactive shifts, which are abrupt modulations or tonicizations, depicting a direct response to a statement or thought. This thesis will show how Verdi uses tonality on a local and global scale to support and intensify dramatic situations throughout La Traviata. Locally, he uses reactive shifts in tonality and recurring themes to propel immediate music and dramatic action. Globally, Verdi uses expressive tonality to intensify or relax dramatic situations, which works in conjunction with a referential use of keys as well as large-scale harmonic successions to unify the work as a whole. I begin with a detailed exposition of the aforementioned analytical tools and then apply those tools to La Traviata. I will close the thesis with a discussion of the revisions made to La Traviata after its initial performances and explore some results of the musical changes Verdi made.

Date

2005

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Robert Peck

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.952

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