A Study On Réti's "Thematic Process" Analysis

In the early 20th century, people started to research whether use the traditional theory to analysis 20th century works is a valuable and long-term way, since the characteristic of the later works mostly emerged in a theoretical system with a large number of individual personalities, when the original language and form of the rules of music are no longer in a dominant position. In the field of music theoretical analysis, various new methods are emerging. "Thematic Process" which was researched by the American theorist Rudolf Reti was one of those new methods. This controversial method maintains a certain status in the academic community. Reti used the theme which represents the role of the music as the basic idea and made a large number of experiments to demonstrate how to use the theme to unify large-scale works. In one word, he thought that the structure of theme supports the framework. In this paper, Réti's "Thematic Process" Analysis is the research object. The purpose is to lead the scholars to focus on this analysis method and make further discoveries in the contemporary analysis of the theory.This paper contains the introduction, context, conclusion and the context includes three chapters.The first chapter is a summary based on theory and practice of "Thematic Process" Analysis, so that readers can learn the analysis comprehensively and systematically as well as a basis for scholars' research. The second chapter is to compare the "Thematic Process" Analysis to several other related methods and emphasize the characteristics of "Thematic Process " Analysis. Let the reader understand and grasp the analysis more deeply. The third Chapter is mainly based on former chapters and point out a historical view objectively of the "Thematic Process" Analysis. Meanwhile, we try to discuss whether this analysis could be used in contemporary work as well as how to apply to traditional works.