Date of Award
5-1-2019
Degree Name
Master of Music
Department
Music
First Advisor
Walczak, Christopher
Abstract
Forgotten Names is a fifteen-minute programmatic work for wind ensemble and electronics. The piece represents my aim to express conceptually the memories of human lives being lost with the passage of time. The two salient vehicles used to convey the concept are melodic motivic development and pre-recorded electronic audio accompanying the ensemble. The prerecorded electronics work in tandem with the ensemble and provide the audience with inferable aural symbolism. These audio samples are to be triggered by a percussionist by using the free, downloadable program, Pure Data along with a performance file provided by the composer. Forgotten Names also draws its influence from similar works by well-known American composers. The pitch material used in this work is derived from On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams while the formal structure is influenced by Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question.
Access
This thesis is Open Access and may be downloaded by anyone.