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“THAT MUSIC ALWAYS ROUND ME”:
21st CENTURY CHORAL SETTINGS OF THE POETRY OF WALT WHITMAN
by
Amy Stuart Hunn
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS
(CHORAL MUSIC)
May 2012
Copyright 2012 Amy Stuart Hunn
Object Description
| Title | "That music always round me": 21st century choral settings of the poetry of Walt Whitman |
| Author | Hunn, Amy Stuart |
| Author email | hunn@usc.edu;amystuarthunn@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Musical Arts |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Choral Music |
| School | Thornton School of Music |
| Date defended/completed | 2012-05-01 |
| Date submitted | 2012-05-01 |
| Date approved | 2012-05-01 |
| Restricted until | 2012-05-01 |
| Date published | 2012-05-01 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Grases, Cristian |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Gilbert, Adam Knight Strimple, Nick |
| Abstract | Choral compositions, with few exceptions, begin with text. Text comes first, music comes second. This was true for the medieval cleric setting Gregorian chant, and it is true for the 21st-century composer creating a new work. The relationship between text and music is a complex one. There is a distinct element of music involved in the creation of poetry – and inherent to the poetic form itself, as a result. In setting a text to music, a composer does more than simply respond to the meaning of the words: there is the music of the text, expressed in its structure and form, its imagery, its sonic characteristics, its pace, and its affect, that determines a composer’s musical response to it. Like poetry, music has the potential to convey far more than just the information contained within its component parts. Its meaning goes well beyond what can be printed on the page, either in the form of written language or musical notation. The combination of music and poetry, each with its own distinctly indefinable component, makes choral music a particularly rich source of potential meaning, but also particularly challenging to analyze. ❧ That complex relationship between music and text is the real focus of this dissertation. The project itself employs a relatively narrow focus; it concentrates on Walt Whitman settings published by four American composers – Robert Maggio, Nico Muhly, Steven Sametz, and John Muehleisen – between 2004 and 2008. This allows for a more comprehensive examination of Whitman’s distinctive poetic style, and enables more direct comparisons between composer responses. However, the detailed poetic analysis and text-focused musical analysis demonstrated in this project can be broadly applied to any musical work incorporating text. ❧ In addition to the analysis forming the core of this project, each of the four composers was interviewed about his compositional process and his approach to choosing and setting text. Full transcripts of three of these interviews (the fourth could not be recorded due to technical problems) are included as appendices, and an analysis of general practices and attitudes among the four composers is included as a separate chapter. |
| Keyword | Walt Whitman; John Muehleisen; Steven Sametz; Nico Muhly; Robert Maggio; choral; poetry |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Hunn, Amy Stuart |
| Access conditions | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume4/etd-HunnAmyStu-706.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Full text | “THAT MUSIC ALWAYS ROUND ME”: 21st CENTURY CHORAL SETTINGS OF THE POETRY OF WALT WHITMAN by Amy Stuart Hunn A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS (CHORAL MUSIC) May 2012 Copyright 2012 Amy Stuart Hunn |
