ABSTRACT
The energy so frequently projected by Shostakovich’s music is brought about by patterns within a range of musical dimensions: unstable-to-stable voice leading, rhythmic figures and hypermetric symmetries and asymmetries, thematic and tonal contrast and its resolution, timbral and stylistic patterns and form as a process. The ways in which these dimensions interact with one another also contributes to the large-scale dynamism of the music, and we have seen how the principle of energy can serve as an analytical framework within which broader issues, such as the chronological evolution of Shostakovich’s musical language, can be approached. What has not yet been considered in detail is how golden section and energy might be related.
