The Memetic Evolution Of Musical Idea

"All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities." "Gurrelieder" is the work which Schoenberg composed with a longest span from 1900 to 1911 for five vocal soloists,one narrator,chorus and large orchestra,goes through the turn of Schoenberg's different styles.Schoenberg attached great importance to this work,he always said "Gurrelieder" was the key to his whole development in the writings,essays and the letters to Berg and others.This paper cites the "Memes theory" of UK Evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins's notion,selects"Gurrelieder" as the research object,with the music thoughts and skills of harmony?phrase rhythm as the main content for research,to demonstrates the musical idea process of Schoenberg is similar to Richard Dawkins's "Memes theory" which replicates,mutates and selects the traditional music.It is the natural evolution result of music,as Schoenberg wrote in "Style and Idea":"They are organisms grow from a natural and reasonable results.The organism with ever growing just as full of vitality in the phrase,rhythm,motive and melody".In this thesis,the study is mainly divided into three parts.The first part discusses the traditional inheritance of "Gurrelieder",includes two chapters.Chapter 1 briefly summarizes the creation background of "Gurrelieder".Chapter 2 discusses the expansion and deepening of Tonal technique in "Gurrelieder" and which influences on the organic structure of music.Section 1 focus on chord constructions.chord progressions and tonal state.Section 2 discusses the organic form of"Gurrelieder" from the structure function of harmony,and the development and variation of thematic motivation.The first part is the microcosmic analysis and the overall overview of the works.It is the foundation to the Memetic evolution research in this dissertation.The second part of this paper is based on the harmonic skills evolution as the research content.Chapter3 starts from the dimension of three historical route harmony theory(Scale-degree theory,Fundamental-Bass Theory,Harmonic function theory),takes the music text of "Gurrelieder" as an example,demonstrates the Memetic evolution of traditional theory in Schoenberg's theory respectively with the interaction manner of theory and practice.It embodies Schoenberg's music thought and fills the gap between creation and theory in the transition of style.Its creation is undoubtedly supported by strong theoretical support.If "Gurrelieder" is the key to Schoenberg's music style evolution,"Tauben von Gurre!," is the key to change the scenery line of"Gurrelieder".Chapter 4 mainly focuses on the harmonic technique of "Tauben von Gurre!"and the structural form of its influence.It is demonstrated that "Tauben-chord" is a new type of reproduction factor.As a harmonic cause of musical idea,it is the most important symbolic chord in the evolution of Schoenberg's musical language.In addition,the text accompanies with "Tauben von Gurre!" is also mapping the harmonic development of "Gurrelieder9".If Schoenberg hadn't flown far from his tonal home before the end of Part I of "Gurrelieder",the atonal home would not be existed.Tonality expansion directly leads to the evolution of related phrase rhythm.Classicism phrase rhythm can no longer accommodate the most varied harmonic techniques in the late nineteenth Century.The evolution of the structure of the sentence emphasizes the relationship between the sentence and the large-scale rhythm unit or the super rhythm.It is determined that the structure of the music is mainly in the essence of the regulating nature.Once it is out of this scope,the main objective of the analysis will turn to the study of phrase rhythm.In the third part of this paper,the focus is mainly on the phrase rhythm of "Gurrelieder",the declining tonality directly causes the evolution of phrase rhythm.In addition,of course Wagner and Brahms,the two figures who tower above all others in the second half of the nineteenth century,represent two distinct historical streams which impact on the early works of Schoenberg-A large number of selected examples from "Gurrelieder" account for the endless melody and musical prose of Wagner's notion,and the Brahms'hythms/meter on the complex structure,level which produced great effection on the evolution of phrase rhythm,reflect Schoenberg's mame evolution of phrase rhythm is the dominant performance to balance the harmonic skills."Gurrelieder" not only reflects the preservation from the traditional music gene,but also shows the innovative new thinking of Schoenberg.Through the tonal expansion?harmony skill's evolution,phrase rhythm and other practices in the embodiment of this work,with the multifarious methods such as traditional harmonic analysis method,Schoenberg's harmonic theory,the analysis theory of contemporary theorists as Charles J.Smith,Kevin Swinden,and William Rothstein's rhythm theory,this paper tries to reveal the evolvement process of the music creation thought and the technique development of an impotant school in the first half of the 20th century,and in order to comprehensive understanding the primary reason that Schonberg towards to tonal extremes and even breakthrough It in the very late nineteenth and early twentieth century,and then a more in-depth understanding the inherent law of music thinking development will be present.In the history of the music river,Schoenberg is just as one "Meme" carrier of the evolution,the 19?20 century transition was achieved by the development of music thought organisms with the capacity for selectively exploiting music population(style and school)in order to survive and perpetuate their kind.