Rhythmic and Contrapuntal Structures in the Music of Arthur Honegger

Best-known as a member of the iconoclastic group of French composer Les Six in the early 1920s, Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) composed over 200 works including five symphonies, twenty ballet scores, forty film scores. His diverse output presents a challenge to musicologists seeking to explore overall structural schemes in his music. - - Through analyses of a number of Honegger's compositions, including extended analyses of two of Honegger's orchestral works, Mouvement symphonique No. 2 (Rugby) and Symphonie pour cordes, Keith Waters examines the principles of musical organization in Honegger's music and shows how these principles are based on systematic rhythmic and contrapuntal strategies. Musical form in Honegger's work, the book argues, is articulated by contrapuntal and rhythmic structures rather than by tonal structure, and it is this that provides the source of compositional unity in Honegger's music. - - Waters also uses sketch material and examines the composer's own extensive prose writings to explain how Honegger sought to combine accessibility with compositional rigour to create music which, as figures such as Pierre Boulez identified, would become a point of departure for the direction taken by a later generation of composers.