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Sonority And Linear Structure In Three Early Works Of Olivier Messiaen, Krista Lenore Beckman
Sonority And Linear Structure In Three Early Works Of Olivier Messiaen, Krista Lenore Beckman
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In this study I examine three early works of Olivier Messiaen: the motet O sacrum convivium (1937), "La colombe" from the eight piano preludes (1928-9), and the closing passage of "La fiancée perdue" from the song cycle Trois méodies (1930). All three works exhibit varying degrees of tonal behavior in combination with a foreground focus on harmonic sonority. As such, I approach each of them with two contrasting analytic methods: modified Schenkerian linear-reductive analysis, informed by the interaction of diatonic and octatonic collections, and set-class analysis. The latter approach incorporates the harmonic complexity index (HCI) as an innovative harmonic measure …