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"Mid-Winter Songs". Margaret Sue Hulley Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1998 A Study of the Influence of Text in Morten Lauridsen's "Mid-Winter Songs". Margaret Sue Hulley Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Hulley, Margaret Sue, "A Study of the Influence of Text in Morten Lauridsen's "Mid-Winter Songs"." (1998). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6742. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6742 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF TEXT IN MORTEN LAURIDSEN’S MID-WINTER SONGS A Monograph Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in The School of Music by Margaret Sue Hulley B.M.Ed., Sam Houston State University, 1983 M.M., Sam Houston State University, 1989 August, 1998 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9902644 Copyright 1998 by Hulley, Margaret Sue AH rights reserved. UMI Microform 9902644 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. AH rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ©Copyright 1998 Margaret Sue Hulley All rights reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................1 Introduction...................................................................................................1 Morten Lauridsen........................................................................................ 2 Robert Graves..............................................................................................3 2 CYCLIC ELEMENTS OF MID-WINTER SONGS.....................................................5 Cyclic Elements in the Poetry............................................................... 5 Cyclic Elements in the Musical Settings......................................... 22 3 POETIC AND MUSICAL FORM, RHYTHM, AND METER.................................36 “Lament for Pasiphae”........................................................................... 36 “Like Snow”................................................................................................41 “She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep”.....................................45 “Mid-Winter Waking”.............................................................................. 48 “Intercession in Late October”.........................................................51 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 57 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................................... 59 APPENDIX: LETTER OF PERMISSION......................................................................................... 62 VITA..........................................................................................................................................................63 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT A close examination of any composer’s work may yield a revealing picture of the importance placed on text by the composer. This paper focuses on the relationship between poetry and music in Morten Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs, settings of five poems of English poet Robert Graves. Chapter One’s biography of Morten Lauridsen contains the history of M id - Winter Songs, from its commission to its present form. The biography of Graves emphasizes those elements in his life that are referred to in the poems of M id-W inter Songs. Chapter Two demonstrates how the texts of Mid-Winter Songs share a common vocabulary of poetic imagery; in addition, the poems form a temporal and chronological progression from first poem through fifth. Lauridsen seems to use a common harmonic and melodic vocabulary in each movement, derived from the opening choral setting of text, that tie the movements together in much the same way as the vocabulary of poetic imagery unites the separate poems; these musical materials are described in this paper as a set of intervals based on the number of half steps from a given pitch. Thus, Lauridsen reinforces poetic unity by using common musical materials for the various movements, through use of a basic set of intervals and its subsets for construction of both harmonic and melodic structures. In each movement of Mid-Winter Songs, the meter and rhythm of the text have been a starting point for musical meter and rhythm, with exceptions made for important words or poetic concepts. Chapter Three points out the close correlation between poetic and musical rhythm, and the influence of poetic pace and form on the musical settings. i v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Through interviews with the composer and analysis of the work, this paper documents the features of the text Lauridsen used as the basis for its musical setting. Because of his close attention to details of the poems and the reflection of those details in the music, Lauridsen has created a synthesis of the two arts that is enjoyable to hear and to perform. v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Introduction The poet Robert Bridges relates the musical setting of a poem to a jeweler’s setting of a beautiful gem; the composer, according to Bridges, “is not to take the poem as his raw material and try to make something of it. Rather, he is to take it as a perfect thing . and to supply a setting which will emphasize its beauty.”1 Stein and Spillman state that song is based on equality of text and music;2 deliberate use of textual elements to influence musical materials has the effect of weaving the two into a unified work of art. A close examination of any composer’s work may yield a revealing picture of the importance placed on text by the composer. This paper will focus on the relationship between poetry and music in Morten Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs,3 settings of five poems of English poet Robert Graves. Chapter One will present biographical information about Lauridsen and Graves, and background information about Mid-Winter Songs-, Chapter Two will examine the poetry and its musical settings for cyclic elements; and Chapter Three will analyze and compare poetic structure and musical form, and will demonstrate the close relationship between poetic and musical rhythm
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