Music and Dance Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Open Access
Pretty Pretty Princess vs. The Underworld: A Song Cycle in Seven Movements for Alto and Chamber Orchestra
(University of Oregon, 2019-09-18) Haxo, Cara; Kyr, Robert
This song cycle, which is scored for alto and chamber orchestra, is a setting of excerpts from Emily Corwin’s beautiful poetry. It explores the archetypal themes of love, loss, identity, and obsession. In regard to the text, the pretty pretty princess of Corwin’s pretty pretty princess vs. the underworld (2016) does something Orpheus himself was never able to achieve: she rescues her lover from the Underworld. For his part, the tall handsome emerges relatively unscathed, his beauty left intact. The same cannot be said for the princess. She sacrifices her identifying princess characteristics—her “pretty princess hair, glitter tongue, and white swan”—in order to save her lover. When this does not work, she gives up an eye, a tooth, and ultimately an ovary. Unlike Orpheus, the pretty pretty princess successfully rescues her tall handsome with this final gift, but she loses her own princess, feminine identity in the process. In the finale of the work, the princess has saved her lover and grows delirious with love. It is only with her final, gasping breath that she rediscovers her own identity.