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Abstract
This dissertation examines three piano works by American composer John Corigliano (b.1938): Gazebo Dances for Piano Four-hands (1972), Fantasia on an Ostinato (1985), and Chiaroscuro for two pianos (1997) to explore the role of musical borrowing in his creative process. Using the stylistic allusion and quotation frameworks of David Metzer and J. Peter Burkholder, I argue that Corigliano’s explicit and varied references to compositions and styles of the past reflect his aesthetic stance that no work of art can be created ex nihilo, but rather, is inevitably linked to and built upon established traditions. The past is thus respected and incorporated into a new musical language.
Each of the three piano works examined in this study reflects different periods in Corigliano’s career and contrasting approaches to his earlier musical materials. The piano four- hands suite Gazebo Dances, one of Corigliano’s early compositions, employs medieval church modes and traditional dance forms; such hidden borrowing techniques evoke musical styles and structures from the past without quotations. Fantasia on an Ostinato, composed in the middle of Corigliano’s career, makes more explicit references to earlier compositional techniques (ostinati, minimalism, aleatoricism) while incorporating direct quotation from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. In Chiaroscuro, which calls for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart, pungent dissonances and varied textures reflect contrasts between light and dark. In addition, a self- quotation of the tarantella form from Gazebo Dances displays his intention of using tarantella as a powerful expression against disease and death; as well as another quotation from J. S. Bach’s Chorale Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir, BWV 130 in the final movement, express the nostalgia for traditional harmonic progressions, but also the text in Bach’s cantata intersects with the musical message of this work.
Corigliano’s piano works reveal the composer’s continued engagement with old musical materials in his compositions, and a variety of different approaches for borrowing, quoting, and resuscitating music from the past. This analysis will aid performers to better understand the many stylistic references and quotations in these works in order to shape their musical interpretation. At the same time, this research contributes to a more nuanced view of the aesthetics of musical borrowing and quotation in the late twentieth century, a practice that extends well beyond the 1960s.
