Sherman, Ashley
(2018)
THE OBOE'S EVOCATION OF THE LAMENTING VOICE IN BENJAMIN BRITTEN'S "NIOBE" AND POULENC'S SONATA FOR OBOE AND PIANO.
Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
The oboe, as an orchestral and solo instrument within Western art music, has often acted mimetically as an imitator of some kind, whether that of other instruments, bird song, Morse code, or the human voice. This thesis investigates the vocality of the oboe as a nonliving, nonhuman instrument, as viewed through lament in these two oboe solo standards: Francis Poulenc's Sonate pour hautbois et piano (FP 185) and the movement “Niobe” from Benjamin Britten's Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (Op. 49). “Niobe” is named after the tragic Greek mythological character who brought death upon her family through her hubris. Britten’s subtitle for “Niobe”—“who, lamenting the death of her fourteen children, was turned into a mountain"—underlines the mournful aspect of the myth and, by extension, the movement. Additionally, Poulenc's Sonate, which was composed in 1962, is dedicated to the memory of Sergei Prokofiev, Poulenc's once close friend; and is Poulenc's last completed work before his death in 1963.
These much-beloved pieces provide the oboist with opportunities to perform in an emotional modality, drawing out sympathetic feelings of pain, sorrow, grief, and anger. The slow lyrical passages in these pieces demand dynamic shaping in performance, while also providing opportunities for more iconic imitation of the cries and anguish of the human voice. Beyond generally imitating the sorrowful voice, both composers evoked specific musical conventions of the operatic lament tradition. Through a hermeneutic and generally interpretative analysis of these movements, supported by awareness of their engagement with the Western tradition of composed lament and with social and psychological experiences of grief as written about by Judith Butler
and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, this study seeks to investigate the manner in which the oboe is used to imitate the voice, times in which the mimicry is and is not present, as well as the emotions that are interpreted and thus mediated by the performers and then portrayed to an audience, as an approach to understanding the social and psychological aspects of grief that appear in these two lamenting pieces.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
14 June 2018 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
23 March 2018 |
| Approval Date: |
14 June 2018 |
| Submission Date: |
19 March 2018 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
69 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Music |
| Degree: |
MA - Master of Arts |
| Thesis Type: |
Master's Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Music, Lament, Oboe, Grief, Mourning |
| Date Deposited: |
14 Jun 2018 14:37 |
| Last Modified: |
14 Jun 2018 14:37 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/33898 |
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