Music as a communicative art: Kurtág, Lachenmann, Pearson

In this dissertation I introduce and defend the notion of ‘communicative music,’ describing it both as a compositional orientation and applying it as an analytical lens to three works of music: Helmut Lachenmann’s Ein Kinderspiel for solo piano, György Kurtág’s Játékok Vol. I for solo piano, and my own Crazy Weather for chamber orchestra. In this paper I define communication as an interpersonal activity aimed at understanding what is meant and/or being understood in what one means. Communicative music, by my lights, is not simply ‘music that communicates’ or even ‘music that communicates particularly effectively,’ but is instead music that is preoccupied with, focused on, or particularly guided by the elements and challenges of the communicative activity. To begin, I contextualize the musical artform and its communicative potential relative to other artforms, primarily painting, photography, and poetry. I use the scholarship of various critics, historians, theorists, and philosophers to derive a set of artistically wrought communicative characteristics and articulate a nascent vocabulary for describing communicative art: as anti-theatrical, anti-affective, phenomenological, and ostensive. I then present the artform of music as posing particular challenges to the communicatively- minded composer—the multiplicity problem, the language problem, and the passive listener problem—and describe potential strategies composers might therefore employ to deal with such problems: using ostension, eliding together communicative junctures, and employing flexible or ‘pedagogically shaped’ musical structures. I analyze the three works listed above, describing how each work employs these communicative strategies in different ways. Finally, I conclude by considering the potential value of this communicative approach for composers os music who are interested in unifying or harmonizing their compositional process with their pedagogical and ethical lives.

Name thesis:degree_name

A.Mus.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Music

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Pearson, William Ralph

Contributors dc:contributor

• Taylor, Stephen
• Carrillo, Carlos
• Tipei, Sever
• Gee, Erin

• music composition
• communication
• ostension
• Lachenmann
• Kurtág
• aesthetics
• philosophy of music

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 William Pearson

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115339

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115339