A Study On The Harmony In Chabrier’s Suite Dix Pièces Pittoresques

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) is a French composer and pianist in the late19thcentury.His representative works are: orchestra work Espa a, piano suit Dix Pièces Pittoresques, andopera L’étoile etc. As the musician who lived between the Romanticism and Impressionism,Chabrier created his unique music character on the basis of learning the ethnic of Romanticistmusic. The Impressionist elements and techniques shown in his work had a profound influenceon the Impressionist composers represented by Debussy and Ravel.This thesis takes Chabrier’s representative work—piano suite Dix Pièces Pittoresques, asexample and takes its harmonic technique as research object. Based on research on Chabrierfrom both China and abroad, music analysis and comparative study is employed as studymethods. A detailed analysis of10pieces of this suite in terms of the following four aspects:Mode, Tonality, Chord structure, and Harmonic progression. Then an exploration is made intothe characteristics of harmonic techniques and the elements of Impressionism in this piano suite.The stem of development from Romanticism to Impressionism in music is clearly traced.The thesis is divided into the following five parts:Chapter One Chabrier’s Life and the Main Features of His Musical Creation. Thischapter firstly introduces Chabrier’s life and his main works, and then discusses the typicalfeatures of his music.Chapter Two The Background and Overview Analysis of the Piano Suite Dix PiècesPittoresques. Firstly, this chapter talks about the background and generic feature of this pianosuite. Then it analyzes the music on the whole, including the style and music structure analysisof each piece in order to understand this work from a macroscopic angle.Chapter Three The Harmonic Techniques of the Piano Suite Dix Pièces Pittoresques. As acomposer who lived in the turn of the19thand20thcentury, Chabrier inherited the harmonictechniques from the Classical and Romanic music. On this basis, he made further explorationabout the color of music and the sound of harmony in order to make the harmony much morecolorful. This is the highlight of the whole thesis. It analyzes in detail the features of the techniques of harmony of this suite from Mode (Major-minor, church mode), Chord Structure(tertian chords and non-tertian chords), Harmonic Progression (relation of intervals rootprogression, parallel progression, continuing harmony, Linear harmonic progression, and modeharmonic progression), and Tonality (traditional tonality, bitonality, tonality layout)Chapter Four The Harmonic Techniques of Dix Pièces Pittoresques and the Influence ofthis Piano Suite. Firstly, it summarizes the harmonic techniques of this suite on the basis of theformer study in Chapter One to Three. Then it explores the influence on the representativecomposers of the Impressionist—Ravel and Debussy via comparative study.Conclusion This part is the summarization of the entire thesis. To sum up the maintechniques of Emmanuel Chabrier’s piano suite Dix Pièces Pittoresques and its importantinfluence on Impressionism Music.