First Advisor
Dahlke, Andrew
Document Type
Dissertation
Date Created
5-2020
Abstract
Dorothy Chang’s saxophone works are significant contributions to modern saxophone repertoire. Chang’s music employs multifaceted construction that presents unique post-tonal vocabularies with significant motivic action within traditional frameworks, which creates a dialogue with the past and present. This provides a wealth of interpretive avenues for performers. Nonetheless, there is a lack of scholarship pertaining to Chang and her works. This dissertation’s analytical focus of Two Preludes for alto saxophone and piano (1993), Walk on Water for alto saxophone and cello (2004), and Afterlight for soprano saxophone and piano (2018) initiates the necessary conversation of Chang’s importance as a composer while providing a useful resource on performative and post-tonal interpretation. After tools of general analysis (which includes formal, thematic, motivic, and stylistic consideration) are applied, each piece is contemplated through the lenses of agency and narrative theories, most notably those of Hatten, Agawu, and Almén. This multi-tiered approach reveals how Chang’s three saxophone works possess commonalities of developing variation and simultaneous opposition, which both play integral roles in the cultivation of narrative. Agential roles and narrative can then be traced back through the different levels of analysis to reveal narrative parallelism, which iv reinforces the potential avenues of meaning inherent in Dorothy Chang’s work. Finally, performance suggestions are provided that are grounded in these analytical findings.
Extent
161 pages
Local Identifiers
Long_unco_0161D_10822.pdf
Rights Statement
Copyright is held by the author.
Recommended Citation
Long, Courtney Elizabeth, "Agency and Parallelism in Three Saxophone Works by Dorothy Chang: a Performative Analysis" (2020). Dissertations. 662.
https://digscholarship.unco.edu/dissertations/662