| Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940) was an influential composer, musician, and writer on music. Tovey's writings have functioned as a battleground for some of the debates that have shaped musicology and music theory, and so his contributions are often politicized. As music theorists took on a more rigorous approach to musical analysis in the mid-twentieth century, the chief complaints they leveled against Tovey were that his writings were not "rigorous" or "systematic." There is no one methodology that Tovey employs consistently in all his work, but this dissertation shows that Tovey systematically brings to bear the same musical values again and again in his analyses. His approach is a listener-centered approach to the perception of the artwork's unfolding unity.;This approach was shaped by his experience with the musical forms of the late-eighteenth century, especially those of Beethoven. Unlike some later theorists, Tovey didn't undertake musical analysis for its own sake---he turned to the musical material to provide evidence for a particular historical narrative, to elucidate the listening experience, or to understand the compositional process. This dissertation examines the ways in which Tovey applies musical analysis to these ends through the lens of his writings on Beethoven.;This dissertation consists of a systematic examination of Tovey's most important critical writings, including the Essays in Musical Analysis, the monographs and lectures on Beethoven, and the musical articles from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Scholarship that pertains to Tovey has typically scrutinized small samples of his writing, and the primary goal of this dissertation is to get beyond the politicized uses of Tovey and construct an image of him shaped by the extent and diversity of his critical endeavors, rather than, as other studies have done, to focus on one category of his writings. |
