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.

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