| As one of the most celebrated America composer in the 20 th century,William Howard Shuman also is a successful music educator and arts administrator. This paper focuses on William Schuman's New England Triptych, and states its composition background, technique character from the perspective of music history and music analysis.From the analysis of the orchestration, we could understand Schuman's music style and composition character thoroughly. Orchestration plays a major role in Schuman's composition field, and New England Triptych is one of the most important orchestration. This paper will analysis three chapters of New England Triptych, that is Be Glad then, America, When Jesus Wept and Chester; it will focus on the stating of its composition technique in detail and through we could understand Schuman's music character further. There are four parts in this paper. The first chapter tells us Schuman's whole life and the composition background of New England Triptych, and we also trace back its composition elements. The second tells the structure, theme materials and development method of this pieces. The third chapter will focus on the mode and harmony, states its unconventional composition technique. The fourth chapter analysis the orchestration form different composition techniques, include polyphony orchestration technique, we will also sum up the characters of various composition technique in this piece.Through the analysis of this piece, Schuman combines a variety of musical principle to the form. We also could find that Schuman took both traditional triad structure of minor and major key and modern composition technique together, such as two degree structure, augment chord, and it also uses lots of pedal points, bilonality and polytonality. It is simplicity in the orchestrated, and the texture is clear and bright. Though this piece uses 18 th hymn of Billings, it contains new composition technique and combines traditional melody and modern technique together. |
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