Struwwelpeter: a song cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble

Abstract

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on July 1, 2013Thesis advisor: James MobberleyVitaThesis (M.M.)--Conservatory of Music and Dance. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2013Der Struwwelpeter: A Song Cycle for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble, sets seven of the stories from the iconic, mid-19th century children's story by Heinrich Hoffmann. The text set is from a widely published, anonymous English translation, dating contemporaneously to the original work. Chief among the thematic and compositional problems presented by the text is the question of how best to subvert or embrace the sing-song cadence of the children's poetry and the grotesque imagery. The piece seeks a path that straddles the dual impulses of the poems, creating a work that is simultaneously cute as a button and ugly as sin.Abstract -- Score -- Vit