On The Arched Structure

Arched structure has been employed in music for several centuries. In the 20th century, it appeared in great amount, and composers regarded it as a way of thinking for various kinds of composing techniques, so much so that it has become a typical structure in contemporary musical works.The dissertation consists of two sections with five chapters.Part One, "Arched Structure and Its Evolution: An Analysis", in three chapters, focuses on this structure's application to different genres and its forms in different historical periods. Chapter One, "Definition of Arched Structure", a starting point of this dissertation with the origin of the term "arch" in architecture, its structure and dynamic principle, tackles its equivalent in music, referring to musical forms and pertinent concepts. Chapter Two, "Application of Arched Structure Principle", the main body of this writing, with analysis of musical works up to 100, Chinese and Western, ancient and contemporary, discusses a series of problems, including the principal forms and features of this structure; its application, as "a way of thinking", to large-scaled musical forms; its forms as reflected in the organization of various musical elements. Chapter Three, "Evolution of Arched Structure", in an historical perspective of this structure, sums up its development and process in application to music.Part Two, "Thoughts of Arched Structure and Its Evolution", with the last two chapters, concentrates on the nature of musical materials and the means of techniques, vital factors for structural forms, and also on the tendency to the gradual ordering in music's inner structure, which reflects composers' gradual knowledge of this ordering. Therefore, Chapter Four, is a discussion of "Musical Elements", as reflected in arched structure and its evolution, from the perspectives of materials and structures.Chapter Five, first from Gestalt theory, suggests that "the principle of musical structure should be an embodiment of Gestalt"; then on this basis, it tackles the relations between this structure and the balanced development of aesthetic psychology. Furthermore, from the perspective of musical remembrance, an explanation is made that arched structure, as a thinking of musical organization and arrangement, highly balances and unifies a musical work as a whole, while the thinking of arrangement as musical cells satisfy to some extent the 20th century's musical writing and aesthetics, so that this thinking is favored by contemporary composers.This dissertation, with the above analysis and research of the 20th century's typical structure and its thinking, attempts to dig into the origins and variants of this structure and the internal relations between its variants; meanwhile, the writer hopes to provide some new perspectives in the studies of musical structure and to evoke musicologists' concerns with the interactions between musical forms and aesthetics.