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Transcendentalist Sympathies: A Contextual Study of the Wound-Dresser
Abstract
My document takes as its subject The Wound-Dresser by American composer John Coolidge Adams (b. 1947). Published in 1988, this twenty minute work for baritone voice and orchestra remains Adams’s sole contribution to the non-operatic solo voice repertoire.In The Wound-Dresser Adams grapples with the historical churning of his own times by looking to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Charles Ives. A brief biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson begins the document in order to elucidate Emerson’s connection to Adams and Whitman. I then introduce Walt Whitman, the author of the text used in The Wound-Dresser and suggest that Whitman’s literary voice can be seen as resonating with Adams’s compositional voice in The Wound-Dresser. I will argue that Whitman’s work of care is central to Adams’s reading of Whitman in his conception of The Wound-Dresser.Next I give a biographical sketch of John Adams, with a focus on his geographical association with the Concord School, identification of his primary artistic influences, and a discussion of his own personal search for a unique and authentic compositional voice. I illustrate that in Adams’s self-proclaimed “post-style,” he looks to create a fertile emotional environment that is motivated by his conception of a Whitmanian authenticity. This “post-style” utilizes minimalist techniques and electronic components, but rejects what Adams understands as the aesthetic of minimalism (non- narrative/process oriented).After a brief discussion of the musical language and forces Adams uses in The Wound-Dresser, I will argue that Adams’s composition can be viewed as a musical avatar for Whitman’s text. I conclude by stating that Adams’s clear intention in The Wound-Dresser and the context provided by Whitman’s text provide substantial evidence to say, in the Ivesian sense, that the work has “caught in [its] canvas” a “sympathy” of Transcendentalism.
Subject Area
Music
Recommended Citation
Hiscock, Jared Schuyler, "Transcendentalist Sympathies: A Contextual Study of the Wound-Dresser" (2020). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI28258062.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI28258062