Award Date

5-15-2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)

Department

Music

First Committee Member

Marina Sturm

Second Committee Member

Richard Miller

Third Committee Member

Taras Krysa

Fourth Committee Member

Margaret Harp

Fifth Committee Member

Kenneth Hanlon

Number of Pages

100

Abstract

Leonardo Balada (1933) is a Catalan born composer who came to New York City in 1956 and began teaching at Carnegie Mellon University in 1970, where I became acquainted with him. He studied composition with Vincent Persichetti, Aaron Copland and conducting with Igor Markevitch. He composes in a stylistic synthesis of a new level of surrealistic avant-garde. He is a postmodern composer that has clearly assimilated every possible trend or technique of the 20th Century and incorporated them into a vocabulary which is very specific and categorized as his own. His writing represents a true synthesis of styles that provides his works with a dynamic integrity. Balada’s collaboration with the prominent surrealist artist Salvador Dali had a profound influence on the formation of his style of composing. I will show how his compositional surrealistic approach works by using a style analysis. While attending Carnegie Mellon, I was fortunate to work with Maestro Balada during recording sessions of his clarinet compositions and this paper will focus on one of those clarinet works.

Keywords

Art; Balada; Clarinet; Leonardo; Music; Surrealism

Disciplines

Theatre and Performance Studies

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Available for download on Saturday, August 15, 2026


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