Pianists’ Interpretive Insights: Exploring Hunt, Military, and Pastoral Motifs through Monelle’s Topic Theory

Topic theory in musicology examines how musical elements and structures convey emotions or topics in music. Despite its potential to provide a framework for understanding musical expression, topic theory has rarely been applied to piano pedagogy. This study aimed to explore participants’ perceptions of Raymond Monelle’s topic theory, specifically the hunt, military, and pastoral topics, in piano interpretation and teaching. Participants included six music lecturers from Chinese universities and nine university music students from Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, and the United States. Data was collected through a listening survey and semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. The listening survey used excerpts from Dussek’s La Chasse, C.146, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101, Second Movement, and Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage, Première année - Suisse, No. 3, Pastorale. The results showed that more than half of the participants matched the selected topics with the musical excerpts, with some confusion between the hunt and military topics. All participants agreed that topic theory enriches the interpretation of piano pieces and provides a complementary method in piano pedagogy. Two main themes emerged regarding the application of topic theory in piano interpretation: enhanced expression and imagination. Participants also believed that topic theory could serve as an analytical framework for interpreting musical works and increase the musical knowledge of both teachers and students.