Who Speaks for the Gods?: For Baritone and Piano

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2014
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Haverford College. Department of Music
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
Who Speaks for the Gods? is a song cycle based on a course I took as a student at Millsaps College with Dr. James E. Bowley. The class dealt with the issue of interpreting ancient religious texts and how different religious extremist groups throughout history have validated their severe social agendas by using these texts according to their own interpretations. In this sort of process, the original message of the text can become quite adulterated or distorted. I attempt to explore these same issues by using the song cycle in a novel way. Specifically, I focus on the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). In my piece, each song's text is composed of passages from the Bible that the WBC has used to legitimize one of their claims. Thus, each song represents one of their infamous picket signs. The Biblical text is presented in Latin so that the listener cannot readily comprehend the message. This emphasizes the text's vulnerability to subjective interpretation. In keeping with this concept of misrepresentation and misinterpretation, the "mistakes" in the text setting are actually intentional. At times, the text is misaligned so that the stress does not fall on a strong beat. The motivation behind this choice was to allow the text itself to feel misunderstood or distorted. As a musical vehicle for these texts, I seek to reflect the nature of the distortion at play in the religious message by taking inspiration from traditional, mainstream religious music constructions and twisting them in harmony, rhythm, and structure. The music also seeks to evoke pain, isolation, joy, confusion, and other psychological and emotional complexities that seem to exist with members of the WBC. The performance of the piece must incorporate visuals to enhance the experience. For each piece, there will be a projection or representation of the corresponding picket sign used by WBC members (i.e. "God Hates Fags," "God Hates Islam," etc).
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