Three Songs by John Duke, Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson Luke Havergal, Miniver Cheevy, Richard Cory

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/9s161782x

Abstract

John Duke is a composer who strongly believed that in a good song words became assimilated by the music. Although John Duke was an active pianist, having much knowledge of keyboard music, he devoted himself to writing art songs. The reason why his compositions include so few piano works and many songs is that he had a core belief, i.e., vocal utterance is the basis of the music's mystery.

I, as a singer, discovered that Duke's choices for the texts of songs are tasteful. The range in mood of the poems that he used for his songs runs from sprightly wit to biting irony, sometimes to unabashed romanticism or even to a meditation. Most of his songs create a mood based on meanings of the texts, and Duke used the music to support the stories of the texts.

The poems that I would like to present in my performance research document areby Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Luke Havergal," "Miniver Cheevy" and "Richard Cory ". These quite serious poems depict ironies as well as human emotions in a brokensociety. John Duke did not follow the traditions in composition of American art songs inthe twentieth century, but created his own musical language, a great mixture of sounds oftraditional European classical music and sophisticated modem American poems.I would like to discuss the general styles of Robinson's poetry, emphasizing poeticmeanings of three songs and the musical characteristics of each setting by John Duke.

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