DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

John William Schuster-Craig
Compositional Procedures in Selected Works of Clermont Pépin (1926 - )
(1987)

This dissertation is an introduction to the music of the contemporary French-Canadian composer Clermont Pépin. Pépin was born in 1926, and studied composition with Claude Champagne, Arthur Honegger, and André Jolivet, and analysis with Olivier Messiaen. Seven major works are analyzed, including Guernicaand Le Rite du soleil noir, two symphonic poems which make extensive use of the octatonic scale. The one-movement Variations pour quatuor á cordes (Quatuor no. 2) was the composer’s first dodecaphonic work. Monade I, for fourteen solo strings, was influenced by the experiments in musique concrète of Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer, and introduces the notion of the vector as a formal principle. Interactions is a graphic score for seven percussionists and two pianists. The final chapter is devoted to the Third and Fifth symphonies, both of which make use of “Morsic” rhythms based on the long-short patterns of Morse code. The two symphonies, entitled “Quasars” and “Implosion,” respectively, are similarly based on programs derived from Pépin’s interest in astronomy.