Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)

Department

Music

First Committee Member

Timothy Hoft

Second Committee Member

Mykola Suk

Third Committee Member

Richard Miller

Fourth Committee Member

Ambroise Aubrun

Fifth Committee Member

Louis Kavouras

Number of Pages

61

Abstract

Chinese-American composers Tan Dun and Bright Sheng present culturally eclectic writing styles in their contemporary compositions by leveraging Chinese folk elements, which have gained them an international reputation. This paper examines folk music elements in Tan Dun’s and Bright Sheng’s piano works and their methods of incorporating them. Two main sources provide my methodological models. Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, a collection of essays that compares Asian-influenced Western composers and Western-influenced Asian composers, combines music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology to explore how composers construct and utilize Eastern and Western musical concepts. Le Kang’s 2009 “The Development of Chinese Piano Music” displays the cultural and political aspects that inform analyses and the aesthetics of these works’ compositional styles and characteristics. Through this examination, this paper hopes to help listeners appreciate the musical works of these two composers and get a deeper understanding of their styles as well as Chinese folk culture. Additionally, by helping pianists to appreciate these connections, it can help them to perform these pieces better and give them the interpretive guidelines to consider these pieces as part of their repertoire.

Keywords

Bright Sheng; Folk music elements; My Song; Piano Music; Tan Dun; Traces

Disciplines

Music

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/

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