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Temporal and Harmonic Concerns in the Music of Robert Carl

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TEMPORAL AND HARMONIC CONCERNS IN THE MUSIC OF ROBERT CARL A THESIS IN Musicology Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF MUSIC by DANIEL ERIC MOREL B.A., Bucknell University, 2003 B.A., Bucknell University, 2003 M.M., The Hartt School, University of Hartford, 2011 A.D., The Hartt School, University of Hartford, 2013 Kansas City, Missouri 2018 © 2018 DANIEL ERIC MOREL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TEMPORAL AND HARMONIC CONCERNS IN THE MUSIC OF ROBERT CARL Daniel Eric Morel, Candidate for the Master of Music in Musicology University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2018 ABSTRACT Robert Carl is a composer-critic based in Hartford, Connecticut. His hyphenated career has involved creating, teaching, and commenting on music for the latter half of the twentieth century up to the present. Initially trained as a historian, Carl has maintained a keen interest in modern musical trends while developing his own distinct musical language. His music fuses stylistic and conceptual influences that bleed through aesthetic boundaries, making it difficult to label or associate with other composers. While the result is not a stereotypical postmodern pastiche of the past, his music does embrace a pluralism of historical and current methods in ways characteristic of a composer keenly interested in modern American culture. Moreover, Carl’s music relates to stylistic developments within late 20th and 21st century American art music. Studying his music helps reveal overall trends within contemporary American art music. This thesis introduces Robert Carl through a biographical sketch and examines the development of time-based and harmonic concerns within his works. iii APPROVAL PAGE The faculty listed below, appointed by the Dean of the Conservatory of Music and Dance have examined a thesis titled “TEMPORAL AND HARMONIC CONCERNS IN THE MUSIC OF ROBERT CARL” presented by Daniel Morel, candidate for the Master of Music degree, and certify that in their opinion it is worthy of acceptance. Supervisory Committee Andrew Granade, Ph.D. Committee Chair Conservatory of Music and Dance William Everett, Ph.D. Conservatory of Music and Dance Reynold Simpson, D.M.A. Conservatory of Music and Dance iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 Biography .......................................................................................................................... 2 Literature Review .............................................................................................................. 8 Historicism, Pluralism, and Temporality ........................................................................ 10 2. HISTORICISM AND TIME........................................................................................... 14 Analysis of Nact(t[raum]) ist Kommen ........................................................................... 21 Analysis of Swing Shift ................................................................................................... 28 3. HARMONIC AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES ............................................................. 39 Rotating Structures .......................................................................................................... 39 Harmonic ladders ............................................................................................................ 42 Analysis of River’s Bend ................................................................................................. 51 4. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 59 Appendix A. INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT CARL, NOVEMBER 16, 2016 .................................. 65 B. INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT CARL: FEBRUARY 23, 2018 ................................... 89 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 111 VITA ..................................................................................................................................... 114 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 2.1. HARMONIC ANALYSIS OF DIE NACHT IST KOMMEN ......................................................... 24 2.2. CADENTIAL CHORDS FROM NACHT IST KOMMEN ............................................................. 25 2.3. CODA OF NACH(T[RAUM]) IST KOMMEN .......................................................................... 28 2.4 METRIC AND DURATIONAL CHANGES IN MEASURES 35-42 OF SWING SHIFT .................... 34 2.4. 8-BAR BLUES PROGRESSION AT MEASURE 59 OF SWING SHIFT ........................................ 36 3.1. OVERTONE SERIES AND RESULTING HARMONIC LADDER ................................................ 42 3.2. NETWORK OF FOUR HARMONIC LADDERS ....................................................................... 43 3.3. SCORE FOR ROBERT CARL’S CHANGING MY SPOTS ........................................................ 45 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page 2.1. STYLES AND SECTIONS IN NACH(T[RAUM]) IST KOMMEN ................................................ 23 2.2. PHRASES FROM DIE NACHT IST KOMMEN AND NACH(T[RAUM]) IST KOMMEN .................. 26 2.3. SECTIONS OF SWING SHIFT ............................................................................................. 31 3.1. CHANGES IN SLIDE POSITIONS AND PITCH-CLASSES WITHIN UPDRAFT ........................... 46 3.2. HARMONIC LADDERS WITHIN NIGHT GARDEN ............................................................... 48 3.3. PHRASE REPETITIONS AND DURATIONS WITHIN NIGHT GARDEN .................................... 50 3.4. DIVISION OF SECTIONS WITHIN RIVER’S BEND ............................................................... 52 3.5. MAXIMUM PARTIAL (MP) FOR EACH MEASURE (MM) OF RIVER’S BEND ........................ 56 vii DEDICATION To Kelly, my inspiration to be better. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Robert Carl is a composer-critic based in Hartford, Connecticut, where he teaches at The Hartt School. His hyphenated career has involved creating, teaching, and commenting on music for the latter half of the twentieth century up to the present. Initially trained as a historian, Carl has maintained a keen interest in modern musical trends while developing his own distinct musical language. Despite recognition from groups as prestigious as the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts, his music has not received widespread attention.1 This may be a byproduct of the openness Carl brings to his own musical language, a fusion of stylistic and conceptual influences that bleed through aesthetic boundaries, making it difficult to label or associate with other composers. While the result is not a stereotypical postmodern pastiche of style, his music does embrace a pluralism of historical and current methods in ways characteristic of a composer keenly interested in modern American culture.2 Representing his output under an umbrella of 1 Robert Carl’s awards include the C.D. Jackson Award at Tanglewood (1979), an Individual Artist Grant from the National Endowment for Arts (1980), a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), a Copland Award (1999), a Chamber Music America commission (2005), and an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2016). 2 The Ashgate Research collections on late 20th century music adopt no capitalization when referencing modernism, postmodernism, minimalism, and postminimalism. I am adopting the same convention for this thesis. 1 openness may best encapsulate the many features found in his works, including attention to space, pluralism, and temporality. Carl achieves these ideas in his music through an application of various techniques rooted in twentieth century musical developments linked to his teachers and influential composers. Carl’s music deserves more scholarly attention because of its relation to prominent trends in American art music. His music shares characteristics with that of more recognized contemporaries but also extends into realms different from the most prominent of current American composers. This chapter discusses those characteristics and the path that led him to choose those traits within his music. Biography The best place to start looking at Robert Carl’s music is to understand his background. Robert Bradford Carl was born on July 12, 1954, in Bethesda, Maryland, to Robert Arthur Carl, an aviation engineer, and Ruth Miller Carl, a technical editor. Young Robert did not receive a rigorous musical education until college; however, his musical output is tied to seeming coincidences of time, place, and family, a synchronicity that can be seen in his childhood through graduate school. It is no wonder the composer who shares a birthday with Thoreau (also the subject of Ruth Carl’s thesis for a Masters in English) is so driven by extra-musical concerns in his compositions. Carl spent the majority of his youth in Atlanta, Georgia, where his family moved in 1957 in order
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