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Thwarted Patterns in the Organ Music of Alan Hovhaness
Van Hal, Shayla Rose
Van Hal, Shayla Rose
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Abstract
Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000) stands as an artist not easily placed into any categorical musical norms of the twentieth century. A Western-born composer with a love for Eastern thought and his Armenian heritage, Hovhaness combined Western forms and counterpoint with Eastern melodic materials. Though an extraordinarily prolific composer, he wrote only a handful of solo pipe organ works primarily in the last twenty years of his life. Through the application of modern theoretical devices to Hovhaness’s treatment of half-diminished seventh chords, scales, and voice leading within his solo organ works, certain expected musical patterns found in other canonical Western works can be shown to be consistently thwarted. These thwarted expectations may provide insight into and appreciation of Alan Hovhaness’s unique idiosyncratic organ music.
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2020-01-01
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Music theory, Music history, Music, Alan Hovhaness, Armenia, permutation theory, pipe organ, seventh chords, Twentieth-century music