The Poetics for Ten Instrumentalists; Rainy Days Vol. 1 for Harpsichord and Electronics; and An Exploration of Musical Meaning in Tan Dun’s Water Concerto: Expectations, Assumptions, and the Problem of “Chineseness”
Date
2024
Authors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Repository Usage Stats
views
downloads
Abstract
This dissertation consists of three distinct parts. The first and second components are my original musical compositions: The Poetics for ten instrumentalists, and Rainy Days Vol. 1 for harpsichord and electronics. The third part is an article that discusses cultural identity through an exploration of musical meaning in Tan Dun’s Water Concerto. Chapter 1, The Poetics, is written for flute, saxophone, two percussion, two pianos, and string quartet. When writing this piece, I was particularly interested in Yuri Lotman’s notion of the semiosphere, which is a realization of a meta-cultural system characterized by heterogeneous communities that are constantly dynamic and asymmetrical; the internal boundaries of the semiosphere’s inner modules are being constantly negotiated, which creates a tension that drives forward the development of our world. I thought this notion to be particularly relevant to our society, which is a multilayered network consisting of small and large communities that are interconnected and in a constant and dynamic state of negotiation. The Poetics explores a musical realization of such a multilayered and tightly connected network. How the seven movements are musically connected will be illustrated in detail in the Introduction. Chapter 2, Rainy Days Vol. 1, is a set of pieces for harpsichord and electronics about rain and Durham North Carolina, where I completed my graduate training. In 2022, I registered a one-minute field recording on my porch of every rain heard from March to May and subsequently logged journal entries for each. Volume 1 of Rainy Days therefore concerns March 2022 and consists of five movements that memorialize and interpret four rains that occurred during the month. I premiered the piece on December 2, 2023 at Nelson Music Room, Duke University. Chapter 3 is an article entitled “An Exploration of Musical Meaning in Tan Dun’s Water Concerto: Expectations, Assumptions, and the Problem of ‘Chineseness’.” Through an examination of Tan’s Water Concerto, I propose that identity is a situated social action that is dynamic and emergent, and therefore never a fixed status. Furthermore, I advocate that as practitioners of Western art music and its theoretical discourse, we should, on the one hand, strive to study and understand the materials we use and avoid insensitive actions such as removing musical elements from their context. On the other hand, we should recognize that today’s world is a multicultural one, and that as the boundaries between different cultures are becoming increasingly blurry, trying to locate the “Asianness” that is synthesized in composers’ musical language is no longer a viable practice of critical inquiry.
Type
Department
Description
Provenance
Citation
Permalink
Citation
Ling, Huijuan L (2024). The Poetics for Ten Instrumentalists; Rainy Days Vol. 1 for Harpsichord and Electronics; and An Exploration of Musical Meaning in Tan Dun’s Water Concerto: Expectations, Assumptions, and the Problem of “Chineseness”. Dissertation, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/30836.
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, student scholarship that was shared on DukeSpace after 2009 is made available to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial / No derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license. All rights in student work shared on DukeSpace before 2009 remain with the author and/or their designee, whose permission may be required for reuse.