| Though historians have written extensively about Bartok, by comparison, theorists have offered little analytical information about Dance Suite for Orchestra. The existing analytical literature is abbreviated where this work is concerned and many important aspects of its design remain unexplored. The lack of related literature is central to the problem. The information gained from the research of the present document should begin to fill the void of analytical studies on Dance Suite for Orchestra .;The purpose of the study is to analyze Dance Suite for Orchestra as an example of absolute music, namely, a concert work not intended to be choreographed, that includes remote dance music influences, and conversely, to analyze Listen With Your Feet as an example of dance music, intended to be choreographed, that includes elements of concert music influences. The principal problem of the study is to discover whether or not distinctions between a twentieth century concert work and a twentieth century dance work are discernible and significant, and to describe the relationship of these classifications. The entire study is comprised of five chapters.;Chapter I traces dance music from its early roots in the ancient world, through the development of the multimovment suite in its most discernible form during the Baroque, to the twentieth century, where the suite becomes a musical type that allows composers to organize an array of independent pieces in an imaginative, convincing way.;Chapter II presents historical information that places Dance Suite for Orchestra within a context of other selected twentieth century works.;Chapters III and IV are the analyses of the respective works. Each chapter begins with an analytical overview, continues with a detailed study that incorporates linear-reductive techniques, and ends with commentary that interprets the compositional postulates of each work.;Chapter V draws conclusions about the compositional relationships between the two works, offers a meta-critique, and makes suggestions for future research. |
