Giacomo Puccini is one of the most frequently performed and best loved of all operatic composers. In Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini's Late Style, Andrew Davis takes on the subject of Puccini's last two works to better understand how the composer creates meaning through the juxtaposition of the conventional and the unfamiliar-situating Puccini in past operatic traditions and modern European musical theater. Davis asserts that hearing Puccini's late works within the context of la solita forma allows listeners to interpret the composer's expressive strategies. He examines Puccini's compositional language, with insightful analyses of melody, orchestration, harmony, voice-leading, and rhythm and meter.

Music and meaning in Puccini's last works

About the Author

Andrew Davis is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Houston Moores School of Music.

Reviews

Conversant in a wide range of disciplines, Davis has contributed an important addition to the field of Puccini studies and 19th-century Italian opera literature. . . . Recommended.

* Choice *

[T]o undertake analyses of four operas in one book is no easy task, but [Davis] accomplishes it adeptly. Despite potential contradictions in the identification of his proposed style characteristics, his analyses are insightful, challenging the reader to hear these operas in new ways. He has made tangible aspects of Puccini's music dramas that we may take for granted as intuitive, illuminating how dramatic moments move us and interact with the work as a whole.

* Music Theory Online *

[I] applaud Davis for his close readings of this much-loved but insufficiently studied repertoire, and for the pluralism of his methodology, which is in keeping with Puccini's seemingly conscious exploration of multiple styles, formal traditions, and harmonic dialects. . . The book deserves a wide readership for the important questions it answers, and for the additional questions it raises that call for further research.Dec 2012

* Nineteenth-Century Music Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253355140
Author Andrew Davis
Format Hardback
Page Count 328
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 590g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 28mm