| dc.description.abstract | This work sets the poem “The Haunted Palace” by Edgar Allen Poe for soprano; a
chamber ensemble consisting of three woodwinds, piano, and five strings; and fixed-media
electronic playback. The six stanzas of the poem are each cast as an individual song,
comprising together a sort of monodrama as the ballad progresses. Songs two through four
are performed without a break, as are songs five and six.
The poem was originally published in the magazine American Museum in 1839, then
subsequently incorporated into the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” published
the same year, as improvised verses sung by the eponymous Roderick Usher while he
rhapsodizes on his guitar. The poem conjures an image of a once well-appointed and lavish
mansion that has since decayed into ruin. This serves as an allegory for a mind lost to
despair and disease, as various elements of the palace are compared to the hair, eyes, and
mouth of a human head. The poem ends morosely, lamenting the loss of reason and its
replacement by hollow laughter.
Musically, the work interacts with and combines elements of two musical threads
that wove through the twentieth century. The first of these is the that of melodramatic
works for solo voice and chamber ensemble, as exemplified by Arnold Schoenberg’s
foundational work Pierrot lunaire of 1912. The other is that of music for solo voice with
electronics, first possible in the middle of the 20th century, and epitomized in such works as
Philomel by Milton Babbitt, written in 1964. Babbitt’s simultaneous use of recorded and
live voice in that work has particularly impacted the construction of this work. | |
