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2007-2008 Fellows

 

Jessica Payette

Stanford University
Music Department

Jessica Payette is a doctoral candidate in Music History at Stanford University. She received a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance and a B.A. in Art History from the University of Minnesota in 2001. She specializes in Western art music of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on Arnold Schoenberg’s vocal works. Her dissertation traces the development and reception of the style of musical Expressionism.

 

Project Summary

"Seismographic Screams: Erwartung's Reverberations through Twentieth-Century Culture" seeks to better delineate the stylistic markers of musical Expressionism, allegedly epitomized by Arnold Schoenberg’s 1909 monodrama Erwartung ("Expectation"), and demonstrate the degree to which they have been embraced throughout the twentieth century by both avant-garde composers and artists active in other realms. Tracing the work’s reception by a variety of interpretive communities, including composers of art music, film music composers, performance artists, and choreographers, indicates that the monodrama’s novel combination of vocal strain, unruly instrumental sonorities, and temporal obscurity frequently accompanies violent scenes of physical or emotional entrapment in dramatic art forms. This study explores how the general population grew to perceive atonal music as a sonic cultural signifier for psychological instability and corporeal brutalization.