The Music Of Alan Hovhaness

Abstract

This dissertation is an attempt to redress the dearth of serious scholarship on the music of the American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000). As Hovhaness's catalogue is one of the largest of any 20th-century composer, this dissertation sets out to provide as complete a picture as possible of his output without discussing all six-hundred-plus works. This involves giving a comprehensive account of the important elements of Hovhaness's musical language, placing his work in the context of 20th-century American concert music at large, and exploring the major issues surrounding his music and its reception, notably his engagement with various nonWestern musical traditions and his resistance to the prevailing modernist trends of his time. An integrated biographical element runs throughout, intended to provide a foundation for the discussion of Hovhaness's music. The first chapter of this dissertation is concerned with an examination of Hovhaness's surviving juvenilia, after which it is divided according to the following style periods: early, Armenian, middle, "Eastern," and late. An additional chapter dealing with Hovhaness's experiences at Tanglewood in 1942 and what they reveal about his artistic values appears between the chapters on the music of the early and Armenian periods. Other pertinent issues surrounding Hovhaness's work are discussed as they arise chronologically.