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"Singing I Go Along Life's Road": A Musician's Grapple with Theory and Surrender to Practice
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- Author / Creator
- Wylie, Dana O
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I would like the reader to accept the word “grapple” as the key piece of the title of this thesis, or at least as the most succinct and accurate descriptor for what it is and what it does. It applies reflection and storytelling to lay bare a research process that became the topic of the research project.
Throughout the course of the work, I came to realize that as a musician I wanted to understand exactly what music means to me, why and how it is unequivocally part of “who I am,” and why that fact has caused me so much pain. As a musician, I wanted an answer to this question so that it might put an end to my pain. (And it has.) As a music scholar I wanted to find an answer to the question in academic literature, and the surprising places where I found promise led me to the argument that a fruitful and rich understanding of “what music even is” can be found in understandings about reality that are fundamentally relational, in which the universe is made up of dynamic relationships that move through time.
But having come to this argument is not the point, because it is not new; I am not saying anything new. Now that I have the understanding I have come to have, I recognize it everywhere––particularly in the embodied understanding of my fellow musicians, and of countless other people who know how to live musically, whether they would describe it in those terms or (most commonly) not. If there is value to be found in this thesis, it is less in its conclusions or argument than in its story. -
- Graduation date
- Fall 2024
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Arts
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.