Temporal and harmonic concerns in the music of Robert Carl

Abstract

Robert Carl is a composer-critic based in Hartford, Connecticut. His hyphenated career has involved creating, teaching, and commenting on music for the latter half of the twentieth century up to the present. Initially trained as a historian, Carl has maintained a keen interest in modern musical trends while developing his own distinct musical language. His music fuses stylistic and conceptual influences that bleed through aesthetic boundaries, making it difficult to label or associate with other composers. While the result is not a stereotypical postmodern pastiche of the past, his music does embrace a pluralism of historical and current methods in ways characteristic of a composer keenly interested in modern American culture. Moreover, Carl’s music relates to stylistic developments within late 20th and 21st century American art music. Studying his music helps reveal overall trends within contemporary American art music. This thesis introduces Robert Carl through a biographical sketch and examines the development of time-based and harmonic concerns within his works.