The musical language of Italian opera, 1813-1859 /

"Though studying opera often requires attention to aesthetics, libretti, staging, singers, compositional history, and performance history, the music itself is central. This book examines operatic music by five Italian composers - Rossini, Bellini, Mercadante, Donizetti, and Verdi - and one non-...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rothstein, William Nathan (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]
Series:Oxford studies in music theory.
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction : What is there to analyze?
  • Part I: La via Italiana. The anvil chorus
  • Theoretical contexts I : Nineteenth-century theory. Italian theory : an overview ; Theories of harmony, 1800-1840 ; Theories of rhythm, 1800-1840 ; Midcentury theorists ; Theories of harmony, 1840-1860 ; Theories of rhythm, 1840-1860 ; Conclusion
  • Theoretical contexts II : Schenker and Riemann. Heinrich in Italy ; Riemann, Paleo- and Neo-
  • Rhythm and meter. Poetic meters and their musical settings ; Four-cycles ; Rossini ; Verdi
  • Musical form. Symmetry ; Rossini and repetition ; Lyric form ; Multi-movement forms.
  • Part II : Rossini. Rossini's mediants. Diatonic mediants ; The mediant key in major (iii) ; The submediant key in major (vi) ; Chromatic mediants ; Chromatic mediants on a large scale ; Chromatic miracles in Mosè in Egitto ; Chromatic stupefaction in Il barbiere ; Summary of mediant relationships
  • Tonal coherence in Rossini's Italian operas. Semiramide, Finale primo ; Tonal coherence in La donna del lago ; Pathways through Otello, Act 3 ; Fusion of numbers
  • Guillaume Tell. Overture and Act 1 ; Act 2 ; Act 3 ; Act 4.
  • Part III : Between Rossini and Verdi. Bellini and the new diatonicism. Textual issues ; Recitative and Scena ; Characteristic foreground techniques ; Supplenti ; Local techniques with large-scale consequences ; Long-range linearity : The Scena of the Adalgisa-Pollione duet ; Tonal pairing : The end of La straniera ; Tonality and Sonorità : the end of Norma
  • Meyerbeer and the new chromaticism
  • Around 1840 : Mercadante and Donizetti. Mercadante's operas, 1837-1840 ; Il giuramento, Act 3 ; Donizetti's operas, 1838-1843 ; La favorite, Act 3 ; The end of Maria di Rohan.
  • Part IV : Verdi's Sedici Anni. Verdi's Chiaroscuro ; Gisi and Verdian tonality
  • Ernani to Attila (1844-1846). Ernani ; Giovanna d'Arco, Act 3 ; Attila, prologue
  • Rigoletto and Il Trovatore (1851-1853). Verdi and Meyerbeer ; Rigoletto and Il trovatore compared ; Some aspects of Rigoletto ; Tonality in Rigoletto : static or kinetic, ontic or gignetic? ; Tonality in Il trovatore ; Analysis of Il trovatore, No. 3 (Scena, Romanza, e Terzetto)
  • Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854-1859). Les vêpres siciliennes, Act 2 ; Simon Boccanegra (1857), Prologue ; Lyric form in Simon Boccanegra ; Boccanegra, Ballo, and the diminished seventh ; Un ballo in maschera, Act 2
  • Afterword : Verdi and his predecessors.