Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Goldstein, Perry | Semegen, Daria | Dillon, Lawrence. | Winkler, Peter
Date
2014-12-01
Keywords
Music
Department
Department of Music.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76562
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
The inspiration and foundation for And Yet... is a collection of home recordings made during the late 1930s on 78 RPM discs. Of these, most feature performances by my maternal grandfather, Gilbert Patten, a gifted bass singer who might well have pursued a professional career had it not been for the demands of family, financial necessity, and eventual poor health. Additional discs in the collection capture the singing voices of my great-grandmother near the end of her life, and my maternal aunts not long after the beginning of theirs. In And Yet... | I have integrated selections from these recordings into an orchestral narrative that, though continuous, can broadly be divided into four movements. The first of these, " Big Profundo" , is a kind of stylized recitative in which the tuba emerges as a prominent soloist, engaging in a free-spirited dialogue with my grandfather's recorded voice that varies between witty banter, pointed remarks, and obstreperous declamations. In the second, " Plain Folks" , my great-grandmother's wonderfully homely voice serves as the point of departure for a lilting, waltz-like theme. As the music progresses, this melody is gradually fragmented and playfully transformed, and is ultimately subsumed into a meditative passacaglia featuring rich jazz harmonies. The third movement, " Feed the Doggie" , is a jaunty scherzo in a fast compound meter, whose quirky harmonic palette is largely based on sixths and sevenths. Only at the end is the source of this material revealed: the voices of my aunts as young children, supplying a spontaneous and endearingly erratic reharmonization of a popular tune. Immediately after this comes the final movement, " Epilogue (And Yet...)" , which introduces the piece's narrator for the first time. In a text based in part on a fragment by Mark Twain, he explicitly reflects on my grandfather's life, while the orchestra accompanies him on a journey of loss, sorrow and, ultimately, redemptive love. In the closing bars of the piece, the narrator bursts into song at last, just before the work ends on a note of unexpected ambivalence. | 71 pages
Recommended Citation
Salathé, Philip Frederick, "And Yet..." (2014). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2460.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2460