Pentatonicism From The Eighteenth Century To Debussy

Description:
'Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy' offers the first comprehensive account of a widely recognized aspect of music history: the increasing use of pentatonic ('black-key scale') techniques in nineteenth-century Western art-music. Pentatonicism in nineteenth-century music encompasses hundreds of instances, many of which predate by decades the more famous examples of Debussy and Dvorak. This book weaves together historical commentary with music theory and analysis in order to explain the sources and significance of an important, but hitherto only casually understood, phenomenon.The book introduces several distinct categories of pentatonic practice - pastoral, primitive, exotic, religious, and coloristic - and examines pentatonicism in relationship to changes in the melodic and harmonic sensibility of the time. The text concludes with an additional appendix of over 400 examples, an unprecedented resource demonstrating the individual artistry with which virtually every major nineteenth-century composer (from Schubert, Chopin, and Berlioz to Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler) handled the seemingly 'simple' materials of pentatonicism. Jeremy Day-O'Connell is assistant professor of music at Knox College.

Review:
Like the pentatonic idiom itself, this book is readily accessible yet surprisingly rich in evocative associations. Music theorists and historians alike will find much of value in this sophisticated exploration of a largely neglected topic. -- William Caplin, author of Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven Jeremy Day-O'Connell has produced a richly textured study of the influence of pentatonicism in the central repertoires of European music. The topic bears on many crucial issues, from sacred music to the exotic, and it is handled with proper concern both for musical technique and for signification. This is a book that needed to be written. -- Julian Rushton, author of Mozart (The Master Musicians) and The Music of Berlioz From the late Middle Ages onward, mainstream theorists have regarded resolution by semitone as the hallmark of directed motion in music. In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Jeremy Day-O'Connell welcomes us to the anhemitonic counterculture. The catalogue of musical examples alone (an anthology in all but name) is worth the price of admission. -- William Rothstein (City University of New York), author of Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music

Author Biography:
Assistant Professor of Music, Knox College