Past Dissertations

Historicity, Technology, and Compositional Process: an Analysis of Ingram Marshall's Dark Waters 2008

by Stephen Gorbos, Composition

This dissertation examines Dark Waters, a work for English horn, tape and digital delay, by American composer Ingram Marshall (b. 1942).  Though much of Marshall's work makes use of preexisting music, Dark Waters is distinct in that it is constructed almost completely from materials taken from Jean Sibelius's Swan of Tuonela.  Marshall uses these materials to create a piece that speaks to us in a unique voice while simultaneously invoking Sibelius.  My analysis explores this phenomenon, considering various critical frameworks that theorize the aesthetics of musical borrowing (chapter 1), the technology Marshall used to compose his piece (chapter 2), Marshall's source materials in their original context (chapter 3), and finally Dark Waters itself (chapter 4).

Committee: Roberto Sierra (Chair) , Steven Stucky, Kevin Ernste, Steve Pond