Albeniz’s Music and the Sentence Principle

The proposed research project will examine the applicability of William Caplin’s theories of formal functions to the music of the 19th-century Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz. Caplinian formal-function theory considers the “syntactical” roles played by various parts/sections of particular musical work in relation to the whole, and the capacity of different compositional techniques to express musical temporality, all resulting in well-defined archetypical formal constructions. The importance of this research lies in the fact that it will contribute to diversify our discipline by enlarging the repertoire traditionally dealt with in Music Theory and Analysis. In particular, I will focus on Albéniz’s use of one of Caplin’s “formal types”: the sentence. This work will form one of the chapters of my PhD dissertation, while my larger dissertation research project seeks to elucidate the weight of 18th-century tonal and formal syntax in the music of Albéniz.

Faculty Supervisor:

William Caplin

Student:

Partner:

University of Southampton

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

McGill University

Program: