Identifier

etd-11122009-112612

Degree

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)

Department

Music

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

American composer, Lori Laitman, has published over fifty works for solo voice and piano. She has become an important contributor to contemporary art song composition, the genre in which she primarily focused her compositional efforts. Laitman may, at any time, be working on a variety of projects, predominately commissions. Though not an extensive amount of information has been published about her creative life, over the past eight years much interest has arisen in her repertoire, both artistically and scholastically. This paper will focus on Laitman’s settings of the Sara Teasdale poetry including three song sets: The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs, for soprano and piano (this set includes Laitman's first art song along with five other songs); Mystery, for mezzo-soprano or baritone and piano (five songs); and The Years, for soprano and piano (five songs). The purpose of this study is twofold: to serve as an introduction to a contemporary composer who is becoming important to the genre of art song composition and to provide a performance guide for the song repertoire discussed. Chapter One provides biographical information on Lori Laitman. Chapter Two includes biographical information about Sara Teasdale. Chapter Three gives a thorough examination of the sixteen song texts. Chapter Four consists of an examination of the musical settings. Conclusions will be drawn and contained in Chapter Five, where, among other points, the usefulness, beauty and importance of these songs from both the pedagogical and recital programming perspective is discussed.

Date

2009

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Bade, Lori

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.1795

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