City of Ambition.

City of Ambition is a musical composition for full orchestra in three movements, with an approximate duration of thirteen minutes. In this work I explore the connection between sound and image, drawing my inspiration from historic photographs of New York City. Movement one is inspired by Alfred Stiegliz's 1910 photograph, City of Ambition, which captures a view of towering skyscrapers and billowing smoke along the New York City waterfront. The beginning of the movement mimics both the shimmering surface of the water in the image as well as the photograph's hazy appearance Inherent in the photograph's title is the idea of a city bustling with energy and constant activity. In this movement I seek to portray these qualities of motion through persistent rhythmic drive, metric displacement, and abrupt shifts in orchestration. Movement two, entitled Night View (From Above), is based on Berenice Abbott's photograph Night View, taken in 1932 from atop the Empire State Building. This movement is evocative of sights and sensations I imagine one might have experienced while gazing down from the top of the building. A sense of suspension is created through the use of unresolved harmonies, fermatas, and ringing percussion. A collection of Lewis Hine photographs of steelworkers constructing the Empire State Building in 1930--31 motivated me to write the third movement, Steeling the Sky. The music depicts the complicated relationship between humans and machines. Several passages symbolize the strength, courage and toil of men as well as the fear and imminent danger posed by hazardous work. Descending gestures suggest the fear of falling, while the overall harmonic motion ascends to the instruments' highest registers, depicting the rise of the skyscraper. The overall form of this piece is similar to a skyscraper in its design. The three movements are arranged symmetrically in terms of tempo, with a slow second movement between fast first and third movements. All three movements have sections which climb stepwise through key areas, as if reaching toward the sky. The overall harmonic gesture of the piece is ascending as well, beginning in C-sharp minor and ending in D major.PhDCommunication and the ArtsMusicUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127113/2/3354330.pd