“It’s Completely Mingus”: Compositional Techniques in Three Works by Charles Mingus for Contemporary Wind Ensemble
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“It’s Completely Mingus”: Compositional Techniques in Three Works by Charles Mingus for Contemporary Wind Ensemble

Abstract

Charles Mingus was one of the most important American musical figures of the twentieth century. During his five-decade career, Mingus contributed to many of jazz’s stylistic periods—including swing, bebop, cool, hard bop, modal jazz, and soul jazz—and collaborated with its most celebrated figures, including Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Miles Davis. As a bassist, he pushed the boundaries of the role and function of the instrument; as a bandleader, he had an unorthodox style of teaching that constantly pushed his fellow performers; as a composer, his endlessly imaginative writing created an output that often confounded critics and listeners. Recent transcriptions of Mingus’s works have enlightened the wind band field to the music of this unique and prolific composer and demonstrated that his music can be performed by contemporary wind ensemble. This dissertation examines two such transcriptions, Half-Mast Inhibition and Adagio ma non troppo, along with a previously published chamber ensemble piece, Revelations. These compositions represent works written by the composer in the early, middle, and late stages of his career.

This study analyzes these works through their orchestration, in order to demonstrate a compositional style of the composer in his large-ensemble writing. This style, as evidenced through recurring techniques, can be defined through the following characteristics: episodic, often segmented form, determined by changes in orchestration; quickly shifting ensemble colors; extremes in ensemble tessitura, both in tutti and chamber writing; and frequently shifting tempo and meter.

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