UC San Diego

This dissertation discusses a portfolio of five recent compositions: 'Onomastic Gymnastics' (2019), a three-part contrapuntal song for flexible instrumentation; 'a loose affiliation of alleluias' (2019), a concerto for an instrumental improvisor, three offstage vocalists, and orchestra; 'the way we look to a song' (2020), for three voices; 'Pierre' (2021), an orchestral score for the dance-theater work by Bobbi Jene Smith; and 'the power of moss' (2021), for voice and instrument. In all five works, the singing voice plays a central role: both in the performing musical forces, as well as in the processes by which the works were composed. My discussion of these pieces therefore reflects on the various ways in which my compositional practice navigates between historical knowledge and technique—especially that which guides and shapes my singing voice—and creative agency. Drawing from scholarly frameworks such as Ben Spatz on technique, Carrie Noland on agency, and Diana Taylor on the “scenario” and the “repertoire”, I understand this negotiation of historical knowledge to be neither limiting nor regressive, but rather precisely the means by which creative and artistic agency can be exercised.

At the same time, I discuss my critical engagement with historical materials and technique in my compositional practice, which seeks to excavate the socio-political structures within which musical practices resonate, both historically and in the present day. These reflexive efforts to trace and highlight the historical formations which shape and animate my compositional practice I liken to Edward Said’s insistence on making explicit the “affiliations”—between practices, individuals, classes, and formations—which tend to be covered over, but whose excavation is a precondition for political change. All in all, I see this creative practice as contributing to a broader artistic and scholarly current of efforts to challenge the cultural and artistic hegemonies inherited from Eurological classical music, and instead build creative practices out of highly particular, provincial, and personal inflections of our musical inheritances.