Abstract
The English composer Jonathan Harvey was a distinctive and major presence in contemporary music since the early 1960s up to his death in 2012. His output in the 1970s and 1980s reflects a key transition in the development of his style and through such works as the Inner Light Trilogy, Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco and Bhakti could be seen to reach a zenith in his 1986 work Madonna of Winter and Spring. A major element of this work and those that precede it was the composer’s interest in techniques and approaches providing the structural depth the composer was endeavouring to realise. The purpose of this thesis has been to understand his use of structural depth within “Conflict”, the first section of Madonna of Winter and Spring¬. Through an analysis of earlier works by Harvey, and those of Messiaen, Stockhausen and other composers, clear influences on his compositional aesthetic are identified. Various other contextual influences, and experiences are shown to have also strongly influenced his approach. Discourse reveals the detailed systematic approach undertaken by the composer in structuring his works, and the importance of the concepts of unity and ambiguity, and the significance of live electronics in that regard. It is shown that Harvey’s use of structural depth in “Conflict” was based on a coherent model, influenced by the philosophies of Steiner and Schenker, which embraced all musical elements (pitch, harmony, timbre and narrative) within a single unity. The model is described in terms of these musical elements functioning on vertical and horizontal planes. Madonna of Winter and Spring is a key work of this increasingly important English composer and reflects a milestone in his developing methodology. An understanding of its purpose and place within his oeuvre is of interest to composers, musicologists and listeners alike.