Deborah Burton 
Recondite Harmony 
Essays on Puccini’s Operas

Who is Puccini? Most debates about the composer are focused on his cultural and musical identity: is his music traditional or progressive? The thesis of this volume is that the diametrically opposed forces of the traditional andthe progressive live together in Puccini’s music, embedded deeply within his harmonic constructs and in many musical parameters. Recondite Harmony is a study of all of Puccini’s operas examined through a primarilyanalytic lens. It offers essays on salient aspects of each of the operas while tracing in them both progressive and traditional elements. The volume is divided into two parts: in the first, approaches that inform the entire corpus of Puccini’s operas are examined. The second half of the book is devoted to brief essays discussing interesting aspects of each of his operas. Techniques in each opus that merit analytic attention are highlighted and discussed in relation to the drama at hand, individuating more fully musical aspects special to each score. Included are also previously unpublished source material and autograph sketches.