Sprout

From my perspective, the beauty of life lies in its tenacity and endlessness. This beauty is especially reflected in the flowers that grow in the cracks in the rocks. It takes a lot of ups and downs to breakthrough. Therefore, struggling and blooming are the two core themes of my orchestral work, SPROUT. The work is divided into two sections: the first focuses on intense textures, the second is lyrical and has a thematic melody. At the beginning of the piece, I used the pointillism technique to draw the strings and keep them in the low register to portray an ambiguous atmosphere. The piccolo plays the pentatonic motivation in the extreme high register, which is contrasting to strings. This motive is gradually derived from winds to brass, strings, and constant variations to make texture dense. In this development process, the sound of percussions promotes the development of music and emotions-each small part has a lead percussion such as antique cymbals, Chinese Bass Drum, Congas to highlight the different emotions. Different timbres intertwine or collide against each other to push music towards a climax. After reaching a peak in the first section, the theme melody slowly entered. The arrangement of orchestration of this part is similar to the orchestra concerto. The thematic melody is developed on bassoon, string quartet, trumpet and is equipped with percussion instruments of different characters such as rain stick, wind chimes, and woodblocks. The “blossom” section is the climax of the whole orchestral work where two main materials interact with each other vertically. The theme melody features high pitches on winds except for bassoons and violins while the pentatonic motivic texture is supporting it. The use of polyphony on brasses and strings keeps the thematic melody appearing one after another to symbolize the core of the entire work: the tenacity and endless life.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.M. (Master of Musical Arts)

Level thesis:degree_level

M.M.

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Music Composition (UMKC)

Grantor

University of Missouri--Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Shi, Lan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chen, Yi, 1953-

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/73309

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/73309