Chimera: Orchestral Fantasy. (Original Composition).

Chimera is a musical composition in one movement of fifteen minutes, written for a st and ard large orchestra with woodwinds and brass in groups of three, four percussionists, harp, celesta, piano, and strings. The composition represents a musical realization of certain predetermined technical and aesthetic goals: an expansion of length and conceptual scope in the composer's work; an increased exploitation of orchestral sonic resources, notated in a manner practical for performance by a professional orchestra; and the achievement of a balance between traditional and non-traditional elements so that the listener will be both engaged by the familiar and stimulated by the unfamiliar. Relatively "familiar" elements of the work include a traditional sense of flow and dramatic structure. This sense of flow or continuous line is facilitated by the use of primary building materials that lend themselves to common-practice phrasing, such as an expansive melody and an original chorale-style unit. Relatively "unfamiliar" musical elements include tonally ambiguous or fully chromatic harmony and rather non-vocal chromatic leaps in the melodic writing. The mythological beast Chimera, with the head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail which is a serpent, first described by Hesiod in the eighth or ninth century B.C., is not meant to be a programmatic subject for the composition. Rather, the title refers to the general usage of the word, indicating the fantastic or dreamlike. Though not specifically programmatic, certain "heroic" musical symbols (e.g. a trumpet fanfare) are consistent with the image of a "fantastic dream adventure," and in that sense the composition has something of the flavor of a Strauss tone poem.Ph.D.MusicUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160457/1/8512043.pd