Le 1er juillet 2017
de 9h00 à 9h30
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3209
Séance - Modern American Composers
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Chelsey Hamm
Drawing on archival research and primary documents, I study how one might reconstruct American modernist Charles Ives’s thoughts on connections between Kaiser Wilhelm II, aspects of autocracy, weakness, and features of tonal, consonant music; and likewise, how one might reconstruct his written connections between aspects of democracy, freedom, strength, and features of non-tonal, dissonant music (“Associations”). I study the musical effects of these associations on Ives’s works including the song “Sneak Thief” (1914) and the Orchestral Set No. 2 (1917). These compositions relate to World War I; the former reacts to the German “rape” of Belgium, while the latter to the sinking of the Lusitania.
I examine passages of music that feature tonal musical borrowings, which can be compared to consonant, tonal harmonic progressions and melodic lines, as shown through sketch study and my own recompositions. Ives may have marked or camouflaged such passages by the “addition” of dissonant musical structures for their political and ethical affect. Dissonant notes interact with and alter these underlying consonant, tonal harmonic progressions and melodies, and different kinds of alterations musically shape the affective qualities and compositional design of Ives’s music. I also describe how present-day listeners might constructively utilize Ives’s dissonant musical treatments for analysis and experience. My listening strategies allow for the understanding of some of Ives’s “difficult” dissonant music constructively, resulting in gains in structural knowledge and interpretation.
