Playing Words, Speaking Music : An Autoethnographic Study on Intertextual Approach to Classical Composition

Sammanfattning: This master thesis is an autoethnographic study, wherein the author presents and analyzes her approach to composition practice through intertextuality. Drawing on previous research in literary and musical studies, she aims to identify and/or define the types of intertextuality that she uses in her compositional practice, and their interaction within compositions. She also investigates, in which ways different musical and literary texts can mutually influence and enhance each other, as well as how these forms of intertextuality function in specific performance settings. Finally, the author contemplates on the question how intertextual elements might mediate in translating the author’s intentions to the audience, at least from the perspective of the composer. After a quick overview of ten of Astar’s musical works, making use of intertextuality as a composition strategy, the study focuses on a detailed analysis of two pieces, Escape and The Checkered Flag Villanelle, that rely upon contrasting ways of building cross-textual relationships. The analysis utilizes, among others, the topologies found in the works by Genette, Burkholder and Kawamoto. The author also makes an attempt at extending the existing terminology by suggesting such new terms as concept borrowing, interpermeating intertextuality, imposed intertextuality, transverbal prosodization and some other. This terminology is applied in the work to describe the types of cross-textual strategies used in Astar’s classical compositions that do not appear to be covered by any of the aforementioned topologies. The work also offers a first-person perspective at a close collaboration of a composer and a poet, where the result is a variety of artistic works, all of which employ multi-layered intertextuality and an intermedial approach.