Medtner And His Piano Genre "Fairy Tales"

Nicolay Karlovich Medtner was a russian composer and pianist between 19^th century and 20^th century. His greatest contribution to history of musical genre was the creation of Fairy Tales: a genre of lyric-ballade for piano, and also a new type of romantism piano repertoire. My dissertation is consisted by five chapters which carefully analyse and research this outstanding composer and his Fairy Tales.Composing of Medtner was greatly influenced by the classic and romantic music, so his works often had a meaningful literary sense. The traditional cultures of both Germany and Russia, the germen classic and romantic composers , the Russian classic music tradition were embodied in his compositions, the first chapter "The Background of music composition of Medtner" addressed itself to this point. The second "The Genre Characters of Fairy Tales" dealed with four aspects: the originality of Fairy Tales, the comparison of Fairy Tales and the others program piece works, the programmatic meaning of Fairy Tales and six different image characters. The third "The different composing periods and their major characters of Fairy Tales" divided Medtner's 38 Fairy Tales into three style periods, after analyzing to their own content, character and musical structure, I concluded and classified the dominating earmarks of every period. The fourth chapter "Summarizing the composing techniques" based the third, I gave a concentrated analyzing for the high unity of materiel and the applying of various rhythms. The last chapter "Fairy Tales and Fairy Tales Sonatas" discussed the penetration of Fairy Tales in the others genres.By above analyzing, research and discuss, I want to make a new interpretation and definition to this composer who had not get a just recognition because of his unique and distinctive composing conceptions and techniques. In this dissertation, I chose the most representative works of Medtner: Fairy Tales as my subject and applied a method combining historical musicology and musical analyzing. I hope my research could obtain the resonance of scholars in this domain and estimate the reasonable historical status of Medtner.