Antokoletz E. Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartók: Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the Unconscious

Oxford University Press, USA, 2004. — 361 p.: tables: musical examples.Two early twentieth-century operas -- Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande (1902) and Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) -- transformed the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language. This new language was based almost exclusively on interactions between folk modalities and their more abstract symmetrical transformations. Elliott Antokoletz reveals not only the new musical language of these operas, but also the way in which they share a profound correspondence with the growing symbolist literary movement as reflected in their libretti. In the symbolist literary movement, authors reacted to the realism of nineteenth-century theatre by conveying meaning by suggestion, rather than direct statement. The symbolist conception included a new interest in psychological motivation and consciousness manifested itself in metaphor, ambiguity, and symbol.In this groundbreaking study, Antokoletz links the new musical language of these two operas with this symbolist conception and reveals a direct connection between the Debussy and Bartok operas. He shows how the opposing harmonic extremes serve as a basis for the dramatic polarity between real-life beings and symbols of fate. He also explores how the libretti by Franco-Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck (Pelleas et Melisande) and his Hungarian disciple Bela Balazs (Duke Bluebeard's Castle) transform the internal concept of subconscious motivation into an external one, one in which fate controls human emotions and actions.Using a pioneering approach to theoretical analysis, Antokoletz, explores the new musico-dramatic relations within their larger historical, social psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts.Backgrounds and Development: The New Musical Language and Its Correspondence with Psycho-Dramatic Principles of Symbolist Opera
The New Musical Language
Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the Unconscious
Pelléas et Mélisande: Polarity of Characterizations: Human Beings as Real-Life Individuals and Instruments of Fate
Pelléas et Mélisande: Fate and the Unconscious: Transformational Function of the Dominant Ninth Chord; Symbolism of Sonority
Pelléas et Mélisande: Musico-Dramatic Turning Point: Intervallic Expansion as Symbol of Dramatic Tension and Change of Mood
Pelléas et Mélisande: Mélisande as Christ Symbol—Life, Death, and Resurrection—and Motivic Reinterpretations of the Whole-Tone Dyad
Pelléas et Mélisande: Circuity of Fate and Resolution of Mélisande’s Dissonant Pentatonic–Whole-Tone Conflict
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle: Psychological Motivation: Symbolic Interaction of Diatonic, Whole-Tone, and Chromatic Extremes
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle: Toward Character Reversal: Reassignment of Pentatonic and Whole-Tone Spheres
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle: The Nietzschean Condition and Polarity of Characterizations: Diatonic-Chromatic Extremes
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle: Final Transformation and Retreat into Eternal Darkness: Synthesis of Pentatonic/Diatonic and Whole-Tone Spheres
Symbolism and Expressionism in Other Early Twentieth-Century Operas
Epilogue
Notes
Works Cited