ABSTRACT
In the decade immediately following the end of World War II, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) laid two foundations of English-language neoclassic opera: The Rake’s Progress and The Turn of the Screw. Employing the scaled-down resources of a classical-sized orchestra and a chamber ensemble, respectively, the works shared other notable commonalities: both were premiered at La Fenice in Venice. Typical of extroversive semiosis are countless examples of referential musical topics, dialogized language styles, and intertextuality. The trajectory of Miles’s performance culminates in something akin to a twentieth-century Hitchcock-Herrmannesque angst-ridden frenzy of “irrational” harmony in Variation XIV. In Miles’s piano playing, the introversive tonal-serial trope is mirrored on the extroversive level of musical topics: the trope of the diametrically opposed galant style and learned style contrapuntal weaving of the Screw theme. This trope, in turn, effects the perceived subjectivity of the musical moment.
