![]() It engages with the structural, contextual, and perceptual aspects of music by mixing perspectives from music studies with postcolonial studies, situated cognition, and genre studies. This dissertation develops a framework to approach musical hybridity by considering style and genre interactions as an analytical layer of combinations of identities. Berlioz, Brahms, Schumann, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and other nineteenth-century composers also adopted Byronic plots or narrative elements and incorporated them into musical works.2 Aside from the polemical writing style and sensational authorial persona that mark his work as distinct, Byron also introduced a unique character type, the "Byronic hero." This novel hero manipulated standard behaviors and plot outcomes associated with earlier conceptions of the "hero" archetype, creating an entirely new standard character that revolutionized literature and art. ![]() The works of poet Lord Byron were a tour de force over the course of the nineteenth century-from the serial release of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818), ever-famous poetry like Don Juan (1819), and his dramatic stage works, such as Manfred (1817), Byron can be noted as one of the most highly influential authors and artists of his time.1 Though Byronic style and traits were adopted by a variety of authors and poets throughout Europe, Byron's influence stretched beyond the literary. The final chapter pulls together the many threads of this thesis and shows the value of analytically investigating a work from the perspective of the turn figure, providing a detailed study of the role of the turn in the finale of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. The third chapter identifies and examines the wealth of Wagnerian-style turn figures that appear across Mahler’s oeuvre and simultaneously uses Mahler’s works to demonstrate the turn’s topical status. Chapter two provides a case study examination of the five ‘turn motifs’ of Wagner’s Parsifal, exploring the purpose of the figure in each motif and considering the extra-musical associations the figure develops throughout the drama. The first chapter provides an introduction to the turn figure, reviewing its emergence and development as a musical ornament and its transition to obtaining a unique motivic status in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Consequently, it provides a re-evaluation of the topical lexicon and the terminology that is used for identifying and categorising new and emerging musical topics. ![]() By examining the turn through the lens of topic theory, this thesis provides an analytical framework for evaluating the expressive nature of the figure and argues that the remit of topic theory should be expanded to include it. ![]() Additionally, it offers a fundamental rethinking of the turn not as a musical ornament but as a highly expressive and motivic device in the music of the nineteenth century. In doing so, it acts as a key contribution to the field by unearthing the turn figure as a new and previously unconsidered Wagnerian allusion in Mahler’s works. This dissertation investigates the role of the turn figure as a musical allusion to the turn figures of Wagner’s music dramas, focusing on the finale of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and Wagner’s Parsifal. ![]()
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