Date of Award
2008
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Music
Program
Music
Supervisor
Dr. Omar Daniel
Second Advisor
Dr. Peter Paul Koprowski
Abstract
Quiet you with my love: lullaby, for solo soprano, women’s chorus, and chamber orchestra, is a piece that explores the lullaby and its presence as a musical form of expression in folk traditions around the world. On one level, Quiet you with my love: lullaby addresses this universal aspect of the lullaby by exploring commonalities between lullabies from different origins, both in musical structure and in the sentiments they hold - those of comfort and love, yet also of anxiety and sorrow. Spaced throughout the composition are four ‘meta-lullabies’ that are built out of approximately forty different lullaby fragments and sung by the women’s chorus, the voice of universal motherhood in the piece. On another level, Quiet you with my love: lullaby addresses the very intimate nature of the lullaby as a song usually sung by one voice to an audience of one child. The soprano soloist takes on the voice of the individual mother, with text drawn from several pieces of contemporary poetry written from the mother’s point of view. A third perspective present in the piece is that of the divine mother or parent, singing over the world in its own childlike vulnerability. The composition draws on the rhythmic, pitch, and formal materials provided by the collected lullabies; the design of the harmonic overtone series also informs much of the piece’s pitch content.
Recommended Citation
Vander Woude, Jodi S., "Quiet you with my love: lullaby" (2008). Digitized Theses. 4765.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4765