This book explores the means by which the operas of Debussy and Bartók transform the structures of the traditional harmonic system into a new musical language. Antokoletz formulates new theoretic-analytic principles and describes how these principles link various historical and cultural as well as philosophical and psychological issues of the early twentieth century within the operatic milieu. The new musical language described here is based almost exclusively on interactions between folk modali...

• Preface;Acknowledgments
• 1:Backgrounds and Development: The New Musical Language and its Correspondence with Psycho-Dramatic Principles of Symbolist Opera
• 2:The New Musical Language
• 3:Trauma, Gender and the Unfolding of the Unconscious in the Debussy and Bartok Operas
• 4: Pelleas et Melisande: Polarity of Characterisations: Human Beings as Real Life Individuals and Instruments of Fate
• 5: Pelleas et Melisande:Fate and the Unconscious: Transformational Function of the Dominant-ninth...