Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok
Elliot Antokoletz
Table of 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 Bartók Operas
4. Pelléas et Mélisande: Polarity of Characterizations: Human Beings as Real-Life Individuals and Instruments of Fate
5. Pelléas et Mélisande: Fate and the Unconscious; Transformational Function of the Dominant-ninth Chord
6. Pelléas et Mélisande: Musico-Dramatic Turning Point: Intervallic Expansion as Symbol of Dramatic Tension and Change of Mood
7. Pelléas et Mélisande: Mélisande as Christ Symbol - Life, Death, and Resurrection - and Motivic Reinterpretations of the Whole-Tone Dyad
8. Pelléas et Mélisande: Circuity of Fate and Resolution of Mélisande's Dissonant Pentatonic-Whole-tone Conflict
9. Duke Bluebeard's Castle: Psychological Motivation; Symbolic Interaction of Diatonic, Whole-tone and Chromatic Extemes
10. Duke Bluebeard's Castle: Toward Character Reversal; Reassigment of Pentatonic and Whole-tone Spheres
11. Duke Bluebeard's Castle: The Nietzschean Condition and Polarity of Characterizations; 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 Expressionism in Other Early Twentieth-century Operas
14. Epilogue