An Analysis Of Brukner’s Eighth Symphony

Bruckner is the representative composer in the romantic doctrine later period,and this thesis will take his Symphony No.8 as the studying object to make an overall and systematic analysis of the theme materials,deformation methods,harmony,polyphony,orchestration and musical form of this work.This thesis will explore the Bruckner’s creative characteristics and sum up the technical skills in his musical creation.This thesis is composed of the introduction,five chapters and the conclusion.The introduction part involves the lifetime of the composer,his creative works and brief work backgrounds,the purpose and significance of this thesis topic,the studying trends at home and abroad,the studying contents and methods,research objective and his innovation.The five chapters make concrete analyses of the creation skills of Symphony No.8 in theme materials,harmony,musical form,polyphony and orchestration respectively.The chapter one introduces the theme archetypes of four movements and five methods of the metamorphosis of theme including interval displacement,interval expansion,thematic splitting,the changes in line direction and rhythm changes.These deformation methods are combined and spread in different ways in the displaying part and development part.The chapter two mainly discusses the features of harmony skills,and makes research on both chord structure and harmonic sequence.The chord structure can be divided into three types,including the tertian chord,high fold chord,and additional-toned chord and I will set detailed examples to analyze them respectively.The harmonic sequence involves functional sequence and colorful sequence.The former one can be divided into five octaves and transitions,and the later one is studied through the three degrees of tonal central sound relationship.The chapter three studies the technical skills of polyphony in the Symphony No.8 composed by Bruckner including the contrast polyphony,the contrast polyphony in the development of the theme,imitation polyphony and the reflection form.The chapter four mainly analyzes the orchestration of the Symphony No.8 ranging from the orchestra,to orchestral texture,tone application,playing dynamics,playing methods,and range and register.This piece of work has realized the sound effects utilizing different texture structures and changes of tone horizontally and vertically.All these deserve us to learn and explore.The chapter five makes an analysis and research on the musical form and tonality distribution of the whole symphony.The final chapter is the kind of thinking and conclusion to Bruckner’s Symphony No.8 and sums up the features of the theme,harmony,polyphony,orchestration and musical forms in it.I learn that he has developed and innovated the symphony with his own style on the basis of inheriting predecessors’ merits,which is worth for us to draw lessons from him to create the music pieces using composition techniques with our personal style.