Tonal Ambiguity in Debussy's Piano Works
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Date
1990-12
Authors
Uchida, Rika
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Claude Debussy lived at a special point in the history of
Music: .the turning point from the nineteenth to the twentieth
century. As many of his contemporaries did, he tried to free
himself from all the limitations of functional harmony and
tonality. Instead of using. extreme chromaticism, he employed
medieval church modes, whole-tone and pentatonic scales,
planing, stepwise root movement, and harmonies built on
intervals other than the third. All these factors tend to
reject local tonal hierarchies and help to achieve tonal
ambiguity.
This study traces the gradual shift from clarity of
tonality towards tonal ambiguity in Debussy's piano music and
examines a variety of compositional techniques that he
applied to achieve tonal ambiguity in each work.
Description
112 pages