Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartók: Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the Unconscious

Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Backgrounds and Development: The New Musical Language and its Correspondence with Psycho-Dramatic Principles of Symbolist Opera
• 2 The New Musical Language
• 3 Trauma, Gender and the Unfolding of the Unconscious in the Debussy and Bartok Operas
• 4 Pelleas et Melisande: Polarity of Characterisations: Human Beings as Real Life Individuals and Instruments of Fate
• 5 Pelleas et Melisande:Fate and the Unconscious: Transformational Function of the Dominant-ninth Chord
• 6 Pelleas et Melisande: Musico-Dramatic Turning Point: Intervallic Expansion as Symbol of Dramatic Tension and Change of Mood
• 7 Pelleas et Melisande: Melisande as Christ Symbol - Life, Death and Resurrection- and Motivic Representations of the Whole-Tone Dyad
• 8 Pelleas et Melisande: Circuity of Fate and Resolution of Melisande's Dissonant Pentatonic Whole-tone Conflict
• 9 Duke Bluebeard's Castle:Psychological Motivation
• Symbolic Interaction of Diatonic, Whole-tone and Chromatic Extremes
• 10 Duke Bluebeard's Castle: Toward Character Reversal
• Reassignment of Pentatonic and Whole-tone Spheres
• 11 Duke Bluebeard's Castle: The Nietzschean Condition and Polarity of Characterisations
• Diatonic-chromatic Extremes
• 12 Duke Bluebeard's Castle: Final Transformation, Ambiguous Tonal Cycle, Retreat into Eternal Darkness
• Synthesis of Pentatonic/Diatonic and Whole-tone Spheres
• 13 Symbolism and Expression in Other Early Twentieth-century Operas
• 14 Epilogue