Summary of Dissertation Recitals Three Programs of Piano Music

Abstract

Three piano recitals were given in lieu of a written dissertation.

In this series of programs I have demonstrated various ways that American composers have organized their music into large-scale structures in the twentieth century, whether following or differing from recognizable European models. The first recital presented Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 106 as a European model of large-scale formal construction. The second lecture-recital explored the music of Australian-American Percy Grainger, juxtaposing shorter works and transcriptions with his multi-movement suite, In a Nutshell. The third recital presented Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata, paired with a short arrangement which provided an introduction to simple bitonality, useful for understanding Ives’s musical language.

Sunday, October 18, 2015, 5:00 p.m., Walgreen Drama Center, Stamps Auditorium, The University of Michigan. John Luther Adams, Nunataks; Franz Schubert, Drei Klavierstücke D. 946, no. 2, in E-flat major; Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata in B-flat Major, op. 106.

Saturday, February 20, 2016 5:30 p.m., Earl V. Moore building, Britton Recital Hall, The University of Michigan. Lecture and recital on Percy Grainger, Blithe Bells; In a Nutshell; Irish Tune from County Derry; Ramble on the Last Love-Duet in Richard Strauss’s Opera “The Rose-Bearer”; “One more day, my John” from Sea Chanty Settings; In Dahomey “Cakewalk Smasher.”

Sunday, April 10, 2016, 5:00 p.m.; Walgreen Drama Center, Stamps Auditorium, The University of Michigan. Stephen Foster (arr. Cole Anderson), Old Folks at Home; Charles Ives, Piano Sonata no. 2 “Concord, Mass., 1840—1860.”