Thesis (D. Mus. Arts)--University of Washington, 1999. / For baritone and orchestra; originally for tenor and piano. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 91).

Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Faculty of Music. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/07/24). Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation is a tonal modular work for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and baritone solo voices and large orchestra (3343, 4331, Timp.+4, Hp., Pno., Strings) with an accompanying narrative. The text is drawn from eighteen of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s sonnets. This work consists of four interlocking song cycles, one for each solo voice, and two added songs for the combination of two or more of the solo voices. There are shared tonal and thematic relationships across the work as a whole as well as within and among the individual song cycles. The unique modular nature of the work allows for performance of the whole, but also allows for extracting the individual song cycles—or even individual sonnets from the work as free-standing pieces, complete in themselves. The modular nature of this work makes it attractive as a programming option for orchestras and choirs with featured guest soloists, and also as an addition to singers’ repertoires. Chapters 3–7 of the narrative address the songs in each individual module or cycle, thus providing a useful reference for a singer wishing to program one or more of the songs for her or his voice classification. The complete transposed orchestral score follows the conclusion of the narrative. This dissertation holds potentially helpful information for research on the topics of contemporary classical music, Indiana composers, and/or orchestral song cycles. / School of Music

For his first work composed without Schoenberg's supervision, Berg chose to set five short poems by his friend and intellectual idol, the controversial poet Peter Altenberg. Carrying the title Filnf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskarten-Texten von Peter Altenberg (1912), the cycle is at once aphoristic (with respect to the songs' duration) and titanic (with respect to their orchestration and motivic density). But the title invites the question: what imagery might the composer have hoped to illustrate with these musical postcards? This thesis investigates text-music relations in Berg's opus 4 with the objective of showing that the music's structure, far from being semantically neutral, participates actively in the création of rich poetic imagery anchored in the socio-cultural context of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Previous studies focus on the work's cyclic motives its interval-cycle substructure. The present study focuses on text-music relations and voice leading - the contrapuntal and harmonie procedures which govern the music's surface and determine its deep structure. It is shown that the voice-leading structures of the individual lieder - in both local detail and at a more broadly conceptual level - give form, meaning, and nuance to the poetic image that emerges in each song, and help define the different facets—physical, emotional, and spiritual — of the protagonist that inhabits them.

No description available.

Season Songs is a song cycle for mezzo-soprano (or tenor) and medium sized orchestra (a perfoming version for voice and piano is appended). There are four songs and an orchestral prelude. The poems are by various authors and provide the programmatic elements of the cycle in that each poem is set in a different season of the year and time of day: winter/morning, spring/afternoon, summer/evening, and autumn/night respectively. The title of the prelude sets it just before dawn. The music of the prelude and the last song is closely related both motivically and tonally, thus reinforcing the cyclical nature of the work. The accompanying commentary seeks to explain the compositional processes and aesthetic principles which guided the creation of Season Songs. The music explores nonfunctional tonality, in that means other than traditional tonic-dominant (i.e., V-I) relationships are sought by which to create a sense of forward propelled harmonic motion. This sense of harmonic "trajectory", in conjunction with appropriate rhythmic proportions, is held to be one of the most important factors contributing toward the sense of departure and return, tension and resolution in the music. The main means used toward this end is a four-note source cell which governs much of the harmonic and motivic activity in the work, from the most local level of leading motives of individual songs to the broadest level of key relationships among songs. The harmonic manifestation of the source cell promotes root movement by major thirds and minor seconds on the local as well as broad levels. Sonorities associated with traditional tonality, such as open fifths in the bass and major or minor triads, are common, although the contexts in which they are heard are usually non-traditional. The metric pulse is usually distinctly articulated and readily intelligible, although changes in metre are frequent in most of the songs. The text setting aspires to a directness of expression. The words will be intelligible in performance and the music reflects and magnifies the emotional content of the the text. While there are several levels on which the music can be appreciated, over-obscurity is avoided, as a rule, especially in the composition of the musical surface. / Arts, Faculty of / Music, School of / Graduate