An angelic alter ego - a style-critical analysis of Einojuhani Rautavaara's Violin Concerto

Vavatzanidis, Alexandros

An angelic alter ego - a style-critical analysis of Einojuhani Rautavaara's Violin Concerto

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

College of Music

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Einojuhani Rautavaara has recently become a contemporary classic of Western Art Music. His music's broad appeal is inherently due to his eclectic stylistic choices, particularly in his later works. Over the past few decades, a growing body of research has emerged on Rautavaara's music. This dissertation provides a stylistic analysis of his Violin Concerto from 1977, a composition which displays the embryonic traits of his later period. Previous academic works have failed to address this composition, and it has thus received no analytical attention yet. This dissertation seeks to discover the inner structure and mechanisms of the Violin Concerto. It does so by utilising Jan LaRue's style-critical analysis method. By doing so, one can extrapolate how smaller dimensions of music morph and combine to structure the composition; and determine which harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and textural manipulations and techniques are used within the music. The analysis is then contextualised within Rautavaara's various periods of composition, seeking to discover where it is categorised. By extension, it is then posited whether such a composition falls into a categorisation of Modernist, or Postmodernist ideals. Finally, a large rationale behind much of Rautavaara's music draws connections between semiotic imagery/concepts, and musical figures/titles. This allegorical connection is uncovered as the Violin Concerto is compositionally followed by Rautavaara's “Angel” trilogy of compositions. The final objective is to explore what we can learn about the composer's music in this period; and how the Violin Concerto may signal his change in musical aesthetics, or perhaps even stand in contrast to the “Angel” triptych's musical characteristics, and meta-physical allusions. This research paper concludes that the Violin Concerto exhibits traits found in Rautavaara's later Angelic compositions serving as an imperfect antithesis, are indeed Postmodern in attitude, providing an ironic metaphor of Rautavaara's own belief of mortality.

Keywords

Einojuhani Rautavaara

Western Art Music

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