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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Brahms & "Edward": Asymmetry & Performance Issues in Ballade in D minor, Op. 10, No.1, Graduate Analytical Paper by Payman Akhlaghi (2000)

Brahms & "Edward": Asymmetry and Performance Issues in Brahms’ "Ballade in Dm, Op. 10, No.1" 

Also Includes Two Brief Discussions of
"Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118, No. 2" &
"Rhapsodie in E-flat Major, Op. 119, No. 4"


Author: Payman Akhlaghi (2000, UCLA)
Graduate Academic Paper Toward Degree of PhD in Composition (27 Pages, English)

Supervising Professor: Robert Winter (Music 261E)

(*) Please note that this essay was formatted at the time as a basic HTML text for maximum accuracy on an older online database sharing system. Thank you. (Author)

Excerpt:
"[...] Section Three: The Extra-musical Origins of Asymmetry in the ‎Music of Brahms

Especially the Intermezzo affords us with the opportunity to ask if one can account ‎for the origins of such irregularities not merely on purely musical grounds. ‎

There are many reasons for such reflections. At any given period, each artistic field ‎might resist changes in some of its parameters, while promoting progress and variety in ‎the others. Music of the first half of the nineteenth century, for example, was relatively ‎explorative in terms of its harmonic language, some aspects of its formal aspirations, and ‎its timbral ambitions. Nevertheless, it had developed a resistance toward a change in its ‎underlying binary design, which manifested itself in the widespread acceptance of the ‎Sonata form (ABA in essence) and the generally even number of phrase elements. Even ‎the meter too had stayed frozen in either 2 or 3 meters, with extremely rare exceptions.. [...]" Please read, download or print the article Here.

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