Gabriel Faure, a biographical study and a historical style analysis of his nine major chamber works for piano and strings

The purpose of this study was two-fold. The biographical study was undertaken to provide an English-language source which would incorporate materials not easily available to the English speaking reader and scholar and include interpolated information concerning historical and cultural events which affected Faure's life. The historical style analysis was undertaken to document ways in which the musical style of the nine chamber works seemed to evidence influences of cultural, educational, and historical forces which acted upon Faure's life and work. The biographical study pointed to certain specific forces which seemed to affect the style of the nine works: the attitude of nineteenth-century musicians towards the sonata as an influence on Faure's decision to use the sonata plan for the nine works and sonata-form for the preponderance of single movements; and the education Faure received at the Niedermeyer School--incorporating a study of Renaissance music and a unique method of plainchant accompaniment, and leading to Faure's long employment as a church musician--which affected his compositional choices, as seen in his melodic and harmonic syntax, which feeely mingles tonal and modal systems. Three style characteristics arising from this amalgam of systems were documented: major mode conclusions of final movements, which suggested Faure's hierarchical use of the major mode as his fundamental and conclusive mode; harmonic assertion of tonality--represented by cadential affirmation of tonality at first period closes and at the point of recapitulation entrances--which showed Faure's use of classical harmonic practice; melodic assertion of tonality, which suggested that Faure's melodic structures may independently affirm a tonality, as melodic formulas or patterns define a plainchant mode. Three rhythmic style characteristics not evidencing influences from a specific source have been included to complete the study.Thesis (D.A.