This study focuses on analyzing and discussing the interpretation of the vocal chamber music Ariel by the 20th century American composer Ned Rorem. (1923-) In 1971, Rorem was commissioned to compose a vocal chamber music for soprano, clarinet and piano by one of his good friend, an American well-known soprano, Phyllis Curtin(1921) . He picked up five pieces of works from the anthology, Ariel, of Sylvia Plath(1932-1963), the American female poet, for this composition. With a tie-in of Plath¡¦s poems and the poetry¡¦s life experience, Rorem used various musical language to reveal the sorrow and frustration in the mind of a woman whose husband has affair, and also the ideology of death in these poems . This essay consists of five parts: 1. Composer Ned Rorem¡¦s life, 2. Rorem and his art songs, 3. Poet Sylvia Plath's life, 4. The composed background of the vocal chamber music, Ariel, 5. Analysis and interpretations of the five lyrics and songs of Ariel. Through my study of Ned Rorem¡¦s Ariel, I hope to assist the readers having a better understanding to this work, as well as providing useful ideas for the interpreta-tion.

abstract: A resurgence of the American art song is underway. New art song composers such as Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, and Georgia Stitt are writing engaging and challenging songs that are contributing to this resurgence of art song among college students. College and University musical theatre programs are training performers to be versatile and successful crossover artists. Cross-training in voice is training a performer to be capable of singing many different genres of music effectively and efficiently, which in turn creates a hybrid performer. Cross-training and hybridity can also be applied to musical styles. Hybrid songs that combine musical theatre elements and classical art song elements can be used as an educational tool and create awareness in musical theatre students about the American art song genre and its origins while fostering the need to learn about various styles of vocal repertoire. American composers Leonard Bernstein and Ned Rorem influenced hybridity of classical and musical theatre genres by using their compositional knowledge of musicals and their classical studies to help create a new type of art song. In the past, academic institutions have been more accepting of composers whose careers began in classical music crossing between genres, rather than coming from a more popularized genre such as musical theatre into the classical world. Continued support in college vocal programs will only help the new hybrid form of American art song to thrive. Trained as a classical pianist and having studied poetry and text setting, Georgia Stitt understands the song structure and poetry skills necessary to write a contemporary American art song. This document will examine several of Carol Kimball’s “Component of Style” elements, explore other American composers who have created a hybrid art song form and discuss the implementation of curriculum to create versatile singers. The study will focus on three of Georgia Stitt’s art songs that fit this hybrid style and conclude with a discussion about the future of hybridity in American art song. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2018

The purpose of the document is to present Ned Rorem’s Sun (1966): Eight Poems in One Movement for Solo Voice and Orchestra. the eight songs are “To the Sun,” “Sun of the Sleepless,” “Dawn,” “Day,” “Catafalque,” “Full Many a Glorious Morning,” “Sundown Lights,” and “From What Can I Tell My Bones?” the document is divided into four main chapters: 1) Background; 2) Poet and Poem Background; 3) Musical Analysis; 4) Performance Guide. Chapter 1 contains biographical information on Ned Rorem, and basic information of the work, Sun. Here, a relationship between the eight songs is presented. Chapter 2 discusses biography of poet and background of the poem. the poetry is examined to determine the theme and to identify imagery, and metaphor. Chapter 3 offers detailed musical analysis for each of the eight songs and interludes. Chapter 4 provides performance guide which offers assistance in forming personal interpretation and brief specifies to singers who wish to perform this work. Appendix a includes tonality, difficulty, tempo, form, theme, range, and orchestration of each song and interlude. This study serves as a reference guide for performers of Sun.

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There exists between lyric poetry and music a bond that is at once tangible and grounded in practice, and yet that is indeterminate, a matter of perception as much as theory. From Graeco-Roman antiquity to the modern day, lyrical forms have brought together music and text in equal partnership: in archaic Greece, music and lyric poetry were inextricably (now irrecoverably) coupled; when lyric poetry flowered in the eighteenth century, composers harnessed text to music in order to create the new and fully integrated genre of Lieder; and in our contemporary age, the connection between word and music is perhaps most keenly felt in pop music and song 'lyrics'. In 2016, the conferral of the Nobel Prize for Literature on Bob Dylan brought to wider public attention the nature of lyric's poetical-musical bond: can Dylan be considered a poet if the meaning, syntax and expression of his words are dependent upon music? Is music supplementary to the words or are the two so harnessed that the music is in fact a facet of the poetic expression? The connection between music and poetry is perfectly clear in such integrated lyric forms as these, but a more indeterminate connection can also be felt in 'purely' musical or poetic works - or at least in the way that we perceive them - as our postRomantic, adjectival use of the word 'lyrical' shows. Describing music as lyrical often suggests that it carries an extra-musical significance, a deeply felt emotion, something akin to verbal expression, while a lyrical poem brings with it an emotive aurality and a certain musicality. Text and music of lyrical quality may, therefore, invoke the other for the purpose of expression and emotion so long as our understanding of lyric forms remains conditioned by the appreciation of an implied music-poetry relationship This thesis works within the overlap of music and poetry in order to explore the particular lyric voice of Catullus in the context of his twentieth-century musical reception. Whilst some of Catullus's poems may have been performed musically, what we know of poetry circulation, publication and recitation in first-century BCE Rome suggests that the corpus was essentially textual. Nevertheless, Catullus's poetry was set to music centuries later, not in reconstruction of an ancient model, but in new expression, suggesting not only that composers of the twentieth century found themes in Catullus's poetry that resonated in their own contemporary world but that they found a particular musicality, something in the poetry that lent itself to musical form. I argue that it is in these works of reception that we can most clearly identify the essence of Catullan lyricism. Moreover, by considering the process of reception, this thesis is able to take a broader view of lyric, identifying traits and characteristics that are common to both music and poetry, thus transcending the boundaries of individual art forms in order to consider the genre in larger, interdisciplinary terms.

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American mezzo-soprano, Beverly Wolff has not received the credit or respect that she deserves in operatic history. Her career began in 1952 and flourished until her retirement from the stage in 1981. Her intense characterizations, innate musicianship, and intelligence made her one of the most sought-after performers from the 1950s to the 1970s. For thirty years, she worked with some of the operatic world’s finest musicians, including Leonard Bernstein, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem, Beverly Sills, Norman Triegle, Placido Domingo, among others. She was represented by Columbia Artists Management Inc (CAMI), one of New York’s oldest and most prestigious management companies, and maintained an active performance schedule that often included operatic, concert, and recital performances in the same week. She trained at the American Vocal Academy in Philadelphia and was inducted into its Hall of Fame. She performed in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New Orleans, and Atlanta and was an active member of the New York City Opera, Handel Society, Tanglewood, and the Handel Society of Washington, D.C. Wolff is credited with over sixty recordings. She also appeared on several of NBC’s live operatic programs, which brought opera to the masses. Perhaps most importantly, she created and debuted several important roles in American opera. Few have heard of her; the purpose of this document is to fill in this gap in operatic history, and to clarify and correct misinformation about her. In this document, I will answer the following questions: What determines a performer’s worth? What secures a performer’s place in history? Finally, and more specifically, what imprints did Beverly Wolff leave for posterity?

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