Harmonic Study Of Albert Roussel's Symphony Of Forest Poem

Albert Roussel(1869-1937)was an important French composer and music educator at the turn of the century.In his creations,he followed classical principles and developed a modern musical language based on traditional music,forging his unique personal style.The orchestral work Symphony of Forest Poems is one of the important representative works of Russell in his early creation.Among them,the use of harmonic techniques such as tonal expansion,polytonality,linear progression,etc.is very personal.This paper takes Roussel’s Symphony of Forest Poems as the research object,taking harmony techniques as the starting point,and explores the creative characteristics and important role of harmony techniques through the analysis,sorting,and summary of the work’s harmony techniques,in order to improve Roussel’s research on harmony and reflect the current development of French music at that time from different perspectives.The article mainly analyzes and studies the works from the following four aspects.First,from the perspective of musicology,through the impact of Albert Russell’s own life experience and social history on the composer’s creative techniques,to understand the relevant creative background of the Symphony of Forest Poems.Second,starting from the mode and tonality,this paper conducts an in-depth study of the characteristics of the use of mode and tonality in this work,exploring how to establish its pitch system.Third,from two aspects of the use of harmonic materials and the characteristics of chords,this paper analyzes the techniques of harmonic use and explores the characteristics of harmonic language use.Fourth,sorting and summarize the characteristics of the use of harmony techniques in Albert Russell’s Symphony of Forest Poetry,and clarify the important role and artistic expression of harmony in his creation.The study found that Roussel used traditional major and minor as the basis of the mode,integrating special natural modes and pentatonic modes,presenting a rich melody connotation and harmony effects.The frequent expansion of tonality leads to the blurring and shifting of tonality,and the use of polytonality techniques greatly complicates harmony,displaying a new harmony feature.High stacked chords and additional tone chords are widely used in harmonic materials,and layered statements of harmonic texture are presented through composite thinking and harmonic functions.On the basis of traditional functional harmony,personalized innovation is carried out,using modal harmony and linear harmony in many places,showing a highly innovative harmony language.