AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

To answer the question “who am I as a composer?” I felt a strong desire to compose a serious work. Throughout my time in academia, and especially during my master’s degree, I became convinced that the only music that could be considered serious or interesting was music that was modern in nature. Meaning that it used dissonance language, extended techniques, and dynamics as the primary structures for interest. Therefore, something that didn’t meet that criterion wasn’t bad music; rather it just wasn’t serious music.CCM challenged me to break through these notions, and since then I’ve been at a crossroads: Do I want my music to focus on timbre, rhythm, and dynamic exploration, or do I want to pursue music that is based on harmony, melody, and pulse? I suspect that the answer is somewhere in between. Chamber Symphony is an attempt of writing a serious piece that bridges both those gaps.More broadly, Chamber Symphony comments on the way people disengage or lose focus on something only after a short time. For example, film directors typically edit their movies to change a certain shot every five to ten seconds. Similarly, my work is composed using several short ideas (usually lasting around a minute or less) that piece together a narrative. Advisors/Committee Members: Fiday, Mike (Committee Chair).