Abstract

This dissertation examines the ways in which mythological thought, with all its specific characteristics, reveals itself in twentieth-century artistic consciousness. According to modern scholarship, a mythological component has always been present in culture, whether archaic or modern. The mythological features of many twentieth-century compositions are often obvious and are commonly mentioned in various sources, from program notes to scholarly works. There has not been yet, however, any research that focuses specifically on this century's music and its unique correlations with mythology. Three recent monographs and a series of articles pertinent to the topic only begin to investigate many facets of this subject. A large number of contemporary composers have yet to be considered from the perspective of various mythological features inherent to their artistic languages and methods. Almost every major composer of this century explores these features in his or her own way. ;In neo-mythologism features that are typical of archaic mythologia are combined with ironical estrangement from or questioning of a commonly shared orthodoxy, and the search for an individual language and individual myths. The term neo-mythologism is borrowed from contemporary literary criticism, where the application of myth by modern writers has received much fuller discussion than in the field of music. Yet Levi-Strauss considered music to be a sign system no less closely related to myth than literature. ;It is not only in the extra-musical that a myth can reside and influence a musical work. The intrinsic musical forms and devices themselves can be considered in terms of the mythical inherent in them. The structuralist method needs to be further explored, especially in the field of the twentieth-century music, for in this repertoire, which in large part abandoned traditional forms, some prime forms of musical organization repeat the major structural features of myths. These features include variability, repetitiveness, combinatorial techniques, binary opposition, and numerical organization. With the rejection of classical tonality, composers often expressly turn to these general structural principles, which also appear to be the 'first principles' used in archaic mythology