By: Brian Moseley, University of Buffalo
Abstract of Video:
This video explores Thomas Adès’s Third Mazurka, a piano work that engages with 12-tone technique without adhering strictly to its typically understood principles. Although the piece is built around a 12-tone row, much of its material cannot be derived from the row alone. The analysis reveals a striking interplay between chromaticism and diatonicism and, drawing on surrealist aesthetics, suggests that Adès recontextualizes familiar diatonic sounds to defamiliarize them.
Bibliography:
Massey, Drew. Thomas Adès in five essays. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Moseley, Brian. “Musique Automatique? Adèsian Automata and the Logic of Disjuncture.” Thomas Adès
Studies. Ed. Edward Venn and Philip Stoecker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 163–87.
Richard Taruskin, ‘A Surrealist Composer Comes to the Rescue of Modernism’, New York Times, 5
December 1999; reprinted with a postscript in The Danger of Music and Other Anti-utopian
Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 144–52.
About the Author:
Brian Moseley is an associate professor of music theory at the University at Buffalo, specializing in 20th and 21st-century music, particularly the works of Anton Webern and Thomas Adès. His research explores topics such as surrealist automatism, time and memory in music, and the influence of Webern on contemporary composition. Moseley is a prolific scholar, with publications in leading journals like Music Theory Spectrum and the Journal of Music Theory, and contributions to award-winning edited collections. Active in music theory pedagogy, he co-authored the open-access textbook Open Music Theory. A dedicated member of the music theory community, Moseley has served in leadership roles for the Society for Music Theory and the Music Theory Society of New York State. Beyond academia, he is deeply involved in Buffalo's non-profit arts world, serving on the boards of Buffalo String Works and Nusantara Arts.