Doctor of Musical Arts Dissertations
Identity in the clarinet music of Michael Finnissy and Evon Ziporyn
Date of Award
2021
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)
Department
Contemporary Music
First Advisor
Kevin Schempf (Advisor)
Second Advisor
Jerry Schnepp (Other)
Third Advisor
Susan Nelson (Committee Member)
Fourth Advisor
Katherine Meizel (Committee Member)
Abstract
Several works for clarinet by composers Michael Finnissy and Evan Ziporyn feature elements, styles, or inspirations from music of non-Western cultures. However, these compositions resist categorization within the spheres of Western art music and non-Western musical traditions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The collision of these worlds in the context of music, is inherently fraught with many of the same negative attributes a misunderstanding of cultural context has on social, historical, and political polemics. This scholarship seeks to understand how the construction of identity and its frameworks can be used to negotiate these traps of misunderstanding for the clarinetist performing their work in a globalized twenty-first century. This is achieved through investigating these composers and their influences, via interviews, and through a cultural analysis of their compositions with performance notes. The analysis of identity on culturally influenced music serves to offer performers of these and similar works for clarinet, a perspective that removes a musical idea from that of an object, to one of significant and thoughtful recreation. A perspective that in turn, will create audiences that are intellectually engaged and respectful to non-Western influenced and inspired music, rather than culturally ignorant to what they are hearing and experiencing.
Recommended Citation
Hirthe, Gunnar Owen, "Identity in the clarinet music of Michael Finnissy and Evon Ziporyn" (2021). Doctor of Musical Arts Dissertations. 44.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/dma_diss/44