Advisor
Ehle, Robert C.
Committee Member
Ehle, Robert C.
Committee Member
Montemayor, Mark
Committee Member
Elwood, Paul
Department
Music
Institution
University of Northern Colorado
Type of Resources
Text
Place of Publication
Greeley (Colo.)
Publisher
University of Northern Colorado
Date Created
5-1-2012
Genre
Thesis
Extent
185 pages
Digital Origin
Born digital
Description
Interregnum is a composition for orchestra and chorus based on the juxtaposition of musical elements from multiple historical periods. A number of successful works have used aspects of older music in a later context. This piece demonstrates the use of such archaic elements (modes, parallel perfect intervals, speech based rhythmic patterns, counterpoint prioritized over harmony, etc.) in a large-scale work. The accompanying study analyzes pieces by two composers known for a similar juxtaposition of compositional elements. The first is Carlo Gesualdo's madrigal Beltà poi che t'assenti, and the second is Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Both of these composers use aspects of older techniques in conjunction with elements of more progressive or later styles, one in a vocal work and one in an instrumental composition. Carlo Gesualdo's madrigals (vocal works, generally for five voices) are known for chromaticism, unusual and advanced treatment of dissonance, and aspects of the emerging changes of the beginning of the Baroque period in music, but they are still rooted in the modality and contrapuntal practices of the Renaissance. Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia is a twentieth-century instrumental orchestral work based on a sixteenth-century composition, and it uses many different musical techniques to evoke a sense of history and the archaic in the music. Interregnum involves both vocal and instrumental forces, and uses compositional elements associated with a number of different time periods in both. It sets the texts of four poems that comment on the state of the world. These poems also reflect the work's use of elements from different time periods; the years they were written range from c. 1600 to 1920. The four poems are John Donne's "Why Are We By All Creatures Waited On," William Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us," Francis Thompson's "Non pax- expectacio," and William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming."
Degree type
DMA
Degree Name
Doctoral
Date
1600-1750
Date
1400-1600
People
Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 1872-1958
People
Gesualdo, Carlo, principe di Venosa, approximately 1560-1613
Language
English
Local Identifiers
Graham_unco_0161D_10131.pdf
Rights Statement
Copyright is held by author.
