Imagining tonal spaces: Conceptions of hierarchy, chromaticism, and social constructs in Schubert's music.

This dissertation explores the diverse analytic and hermeneutic methods that music scholars have developed to interpret Schubert's use of tonality. Three interpretive traditions are discussed here: diatonically based theories, chromatic-tonal theories, and hermeneutic approaches. Through the lens of literary theory, philosophy, and historiography, this dissertation asks how these methods, along with various historical frameworks and aesthetic ideological values, have led to different interpretations of tonality and meaning in Schubert's music. This research addresses: (1) what our methods enable us to say about Schubert's music, and what they omit from our discourse; (2) what preconditions influence our conceptions of Schubert's tonal procedures; (3) how seemingly different approaches can suggest similar aesthetic ideological constructs; (4) the extent to which Schubert's music challenges these methods and how scholars have responded to these difficulties; (5) the boundaries between text and context in practices that have been adopted to interpret Schubert's music. In hopes of offering a new path toward understanding Schubert's music, this dissertation proposes an alternative model to the current systems---one based on the concept of dialogic space---which extends writings by Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich von Schlegel on German romantic irony. To demonstrate this model, this dissertation analyzes several of Schubert's works, including the Moment Musical, op. 94, no. 2, the Sonata in A minor, D. 537, and the Sonata in A Major, D. 959.Ph.D.Communication and the ArtsMusicUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126663/2/3276132.pd