The Interaction of Thematic Design and Tonal Structure in the Keyboard Suites of J. S. Bach

This dissertation is a study of structure and style in J. S. Bach's keyboard suites. Seeking to move toward an understanding of Baroque structure comparable to Hepokoski and Darcy's sonata theory and Robert O. Gjerdingen's schema theory, it adopts their method of comprehensively analyzing a large repertoire to extract its most important generic norms. Chapter One constructs a model for the interaction of musical parameters in general and the two important parameters of thematic design and tonal structure in particular, developing three claims. (1) Repertoires (and analytical theories of those repertoires) are characterized not only by the relative importance they place on thematic design and tonal structure, but also by how independent the parameters are from one another. (2) Musical form is constituted within a repertoire by what structural events happen most consistently. (3) Finally, Chapter One suggests that the distinctive aspect of Baroque structure is that its parameters are more in dependent than those of later music, and that fewer structural events are seen consistently enough across Baroque repertoires to unproblematically constitute form. Chapter Two surveys recent analytical writing on Bach's music in several different genres with a special focus on how each genre constructs the relationship of musical parameters.;Chapters Three, Four, and Five work to develop a comprehensive understanding of structure at the beginning of the binary form's second reprise. Chapter Three introduces the standard harmonic idea, or "schema," for the second-reprise beginning, known as the V--I schema, and argues that it cannot be entirely reconciled with Schenkerian theory. Chapter Four analyzes dozens of instances of the V--I schema to demonstrate its prevalence and the stylistic diversity of its possible presentations, while Chapter Five completes the picture with a similar look at the two main alternatives to the V--I schema. In Chapter Six, several aspects of the complete binary form are analyzed, including overall tonal structure and the role of the second reprise's medial cadence, the structure of first reprises, and the rotational structure of Bach's binary forms.