Robert Hatten’s theory of virtual agency acknowledges the presence of characters in a musical texture portraying human actions and emotions. Through identifying an agent, we are able to understand its role and trajectory in the portrayal of musical narrative or drama. This theory implies human qualities present in the music and the texture having its own form of thought and development. The application of this theory has potential in being used to understand an individual composer’s style, in this case, the music of Claude Debussy. In this thesis, I will be exploring some of Debussy’s keyboard works in addition to one of his late instrumental works, Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, identifying the agential properties and narratives present in the music. Debussy stages varying actor roles for interpretation when addressing an agent and its trajectory in its virtual environment. This study will depict a variety of gestures and energies inferring agential presence and whether or not to interpret these gestures as part of a single agent, or additional agents pursuing a single narrative. This interpretive analysis has potential in awakening new findings and understandings in the music in which a conventional analysis would not accomplish in showing us.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/44785 |
| Date | 24 May 2022 |
| Creators | Edwards, Geoffrey |
| Contributors | Kopp, David, Burton, Deborah |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ |
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