Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

148

Date

2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Musical Arts

Major

Music

Concentration

Performance

Committee Chair

Joan Gilbert

Committee Member

John Baur

Committee Member

Angeline Case-Stott

Committee Member

Kenneth Kreitner

Abstract

The late-Romantic Austrian composer Joseph Marx is best known today for his art songs. He did, however, compose chamber music, choral works, large symphonic works, two piano concertos, and six pieces for solo piano. This paper will focus upon Marx's Sechs Klavierstücke, composed in 1915 and published in 1916. Although Marx was an outstanding pianist and employed the piano in most of his art songs, chambermusic and orchestral scores, his onlypublishedworkforsolo pianowas this set of sixcompositions. The six late-Romantic character pieceswithin thiscollectionarerife with allusions to pre-existing piano worksby composers whom Marx admired, such as Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Scriabin, Reger, and Debussy. Not only did Marx quote motives from these composers'piano works, he also adopted keyboard textures that were characteristic of their styles of writing for the piano. Marx may have composed this way as an homage to the most illustrious of his predecessors as well as ameans of placing himself within the lineage of the greatWesterncomposers. This paper will examine each of the six piano pieces within its own chapter in terms of the influences brought to bear upon itand the specific pre-existing pianorepertoire to which the piece seems to allude.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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