Music, language, and the tone poem: Interpreting Richard Strauss\u27s Tod und Verklaerung , Op. 24

This study concentrates on the analysis and interpretation of Richard Strauss\u27s Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24 (1889). The question of the relationship of music to language inherent in the genre of tone poem mirrors the issue of how to analyze and interpret it. Two different analytic strategies relating to the tone poem are identifiable: the “heteronomy aesthetic” in which the program is generatively essential, requiring analysis to take poetic logic into account; and the “autonomy aesthetic” in which the program is an unnecessary addition, meaning that musical logic can be the sole criterion for analysis. These two opposite positions determine which, music (tone) or language (poem), has priority. This dissertation is divided into four chapters. The first chapter traces the changing relationship between music and language as relevant to the tone poem as a genre, represented by the works of Rousseau, Forkel, Hegel, Hanslick, and Liszt. The second chapter examines two of the most thoughtful readings of Tod und Verklärung. The first, by Carl Dahlhaus, argues the autonomy-aesthetic position, while the other, by Daniel Harrison, begins from the heteronomy-aesthetic position. The chapter evaluates the virtues and shortcomings of these opposing perspectives. The third chapter presents the author\u27s detailed reading of Tod und Verklärung as a chronological narrative. These readings are brought together in the final chapter which offers an in-depth discussion of the “Ideal” motive and its interaction with the tone poem as a whole. Adorno\u27s notion of “exact imagination,” fusing “atomistic hearing” and “structural hearing,” allows us to consider the various appearances of the “Ideal” motive. This becomes the key to listening to Tod und Verklärung locally and globally at once