Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 76-11(E), Section: A.

Adviser: Daniel Harrison.

This dissertation develops a model of enharmonic modulations based on "tendency transformations," changes in the directional tendencies of scale degrees. Extending scale-degree-based accounts of chromaticism given by Daniel Harrison, Steven Rings, and others, the dissertation registers the evolution of tendency-transformational procedures in Western music over the course of the nineteenth century. Chapter One introduces the basic concepts and methods of tendency-transformational theory through two sample musical analyses. It distinguishes different types of transformations, defines a measure for modulatory strength, and lays the methodological groundwork in musical semiotics and narrative for analyses in later chapters.

Chapters Two and Three explore the motivic, formal, and expressive functions of enharmonic modulations in the early nineteenth century. Chapter Two begins by surveying musical and scientific literature concerning how the body mediates the experience of pitch contour. This review yields a template for relating structural features of enharmonic modulations (chiefly mode, dynamics, and directionality and strength of tendency transformations) to musical meaning. There follow analyses of several short passages by Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin, organized by the common enharmonic procedures and expressive effects these passages involve. Chapter Three extends this project by analyzing whole pieces, songs, and movements with long-range enharmonic compositional strategies.

Chapter Four continues to chart enharmonic procedures in the mid-nineteenth century, examining works by Liszt, Wagner, and Brahms. The chapter gives special attention to the correspondence of enharmonicism with text and the further development of long-range compositional strategies; to this end, it introduces a new graphing technique (the "hopscotch diagram") for generating and recording observations about enharmonic modulations. Chapter Five explores the transition from mid-century enharmonicism to atonality by analyzing the music of Hugo Wolf. Finally, it addresses conceptual issues raised by tendency transformations, noting problems with traditional, notation-based accounts of enharmonicism and showing how tendency transformations avoid these problems.