Thesis Format

Alternative Format

Prufrock: a Monodrama for Baritone and Electronics

Daniel Gardner, The University of Western OntarioFollow

Degree

Master of Music

Program

Music

Supervisor

Daniel, Omar

Abstract

Prufrock is a musical dramatization of T.S. Eliot’s, The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock for solo baritone and electronics; a full performance of the work should take approximately forty (40) minutes.

The work uses text from both Eliot’s original publication and a section removed from the text called Prufrock’s Pervigilium—first published in Christopher Ricks’s Inventions of the March Hare—and superimposes a narrative onto Eliot’s monologue of a man whose internal experience differs wildly from reality. As such Prufrock emphasizes the psychodramatic elements of the original text, reflecting them through the use of “auditory illusions” (particularly those described by Diana Deutscher and Roger Shepard).

Summary for Lay Audience

Prufrock is an operatic work for solo, low, male voice and electronics. The work takes T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock as its text and superimposes a narrative of a man whose internal experience is wildly different from reality; the piece mixes elements from Eliot’s original poem and a section removed from the poem which was later published by Christopher Ricks.

Prufrock emphasizes the internal experience expressed in Eliot’s poem musically by exploiting cognitive and auditory quirks that aim to make listening experiences highly individualistic.

Recommended Citation

Gardner, Daniel, "Prufrock: a Monodrama for Baritone and Electronics" (2019). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6713.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6713