Bell, Meredyth Leanne

Smith, Paul

Blackburn, Alana Jane

2025-02-10

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<p>Whether music contains essential meaning is contested within academic discourse. To examine, investigate and utilise music’s many functions within society, music is assigned various contextual meanings and consequently, meaning in music is always constructed. This research project involves constructing such meaning and exploring through the creative practice of composition the ways in which music can relate to literary media, specifically the literary works of author, L.M. Montgomery and the themes found within her work. Montgomery’s work, including the intertextual relationship between her novels and her private journals, has continued to be academically explored since the journals were published in the mid-1980s. Although numerous adaptations of her novels have been produced, including television series, movies and stage musicals, the music in these adaptations participates in the overall screen or stage narrative. Using an arts-based research methodology, this creative project has produced a folio of contemporary art music composed for acoustic instruments that intertextually represents the worlds created by Montgomery. Conceptual frameworks of intertextuality and hermeneutics have been employed during the textual analysis of Montgomery’s novels and journals and a hybrid of deductive and inductive coding with a descriptive approach aided identifying themes in her work. These prominent themes formed the basis of the compositions. This research will continue the growing academic work around Montgomery and broaden the field to include non-traditional research in music, as well as provide a new adaptation of Montgomery’s literature. </p>

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/64729

en

University of New England

Musical Worlds: Intertextual Representations of the Works of Author, L.M. Montgomery

Thesis Doctoral

Publication