DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

Nancy Jane McKenney
The Chamber Music of Miklós Rózsa
(2002)

The Hungarian-American composer, Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995), is best known for his film music, which includes Oscar-winning scores for Spellbound (1945), Double Life (1948), and Ben Hur (1959). However, Rózsa also composed a substantial body of music for the concert hall, including chamber music. Nine of his numbered opuses fall under the category of chamber music (i.e. a work for two or more instruments with one player on a part): the String Trio, Op. 1; the Piano Quintet, Op. 2; the Variations on a Hungarian Folksong, Op. 4; the North Hungarian Folk Songs and Dances, Op. 5; the Duo for Violin and Piano, Op. 7; the Duo for Violoncello and Piano, Op. 8; the Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 15; the String Quartet No. 1, Op. 22; and the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 38.

In this study Rózsa’s chamber music is analyzed stylistically according to Jan LaRue’s parameters of melody, harmony, rhythm, sound, and form. The analyses reveal that Rózsa’s chamber works are strongly influenced by Hungarian folksong, particularly in regard to the types of themes he employs. Other influences on his musical style include French Impressionism and the contrapuntal style of the German composer Max Reger. Rózsa’s late chamber works, the two string quartets, also show the influence of motivic and developmental techniques Rózsa developed in his work as a film composer. The string quartets exhibit a much higher level of dissonance than the early chamber works. The string quartets may have been influenced by Rózsa’s experience writing music for film noir, a popular movie genre of the 1940s and 1950s characterized by dark, depraved characters in a violent urban environment. Rózsa’s music for such films is highly dissonant and filled with strong accents and jagged rhythms. As his string quartets also exhibit these characteristics and follow the film noir scores chronologically, the quartets may have been influenced by the film music. However, it was revealed that Rózsa’s music was gradually becoming more dissonant and less Impressionistic even before he began to compose for film noir. Therefore, though there are numerous stylistic similarities between Rózsa’s string quartets and his film noir scores, it is not possible to say conclusively which musical genre had the greater influence on the other.