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Summary:

Abstract: The Composers' Collective, founded by leftist composers in 1932 New York City, sought to create proletarian music that avoided the "bourgeois" traditions of the past and functioned as a vehicle to engage Americans in political dialogue. The Collective aimed to understand how the modern composer became isolated from his public, and discussions on the relationship between music and society pervade the radical writings of Marc Blitzstein, Charles Seeger, and Elie Siegmeister, three of the organization's most vocal members. This new proletarian music juxtaposed revolutionary text with avant-garde musical idioms that were incorporated in increasingly greater quantities; thus, composers progressively acclimated the listener to the dissonance of modern music, a distinctive sound that the Collective hoped would become associated with revolutionary ideals. The mass songs of the two Workers' Song Books published by the Collective, illustrate the transitional phase of the musical implementation of their ideology. In contrast, a case study of the song "Chinaman! Laundryman!" by Ruth Crawford Seeger, a fringe member of the Collective, suggests that this song belongs within the final stage of proletarian music, where the text and highly modernist music seamlessly interact to create what Charles Seeger called an "art-product of the highest type."

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Revolutionary ideology: the composers' collective and the social function of music
• The new proletarian music
• Crafting an ideal: the Workers' Song Books and Ruth Crawford Seeger's "Chinaman, laundryman!"
• Reception and legacy
• Appendix: Musical examples.

Author/Creator:

Chaplin-Kyzer, Abigail , author

Contributors:

McKnight, Mark, 1951- , major professor

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Searching for Songs of the People: The Ideology of the Composers' Collective and Its Musical Implications [by Chaplin-Kyzer, A.]

Related Series:

NT thesis, Music (Complete); [volume] 2018

Subjects:

Musicology

Music — Social aspects — 20th century

Composers — New York (State) — New York — 20th century

Music — Societies, etc.

1900-1999

Music — Social aspects

Music

Composers

New York (State) — New York

Genres:

Academic theses

Dissertation Notes:

M.A. ― University of North Texas, 2018.

General Notes:

Discipline: Musicology.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 128-133).
Description based on: Online resource; title from PDF title page (UNT Digital Library, viewed April 9, 2020).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 133 pages) : music.

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

Electronic Thesis

OCLC Numbers:

1269313041