A performer's guide to selected bassoon works composed by Alexandre Ouzounoff

Raymond, Christopher

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/109009 Copy

Description

Title

A performer's guide to selected bassoon works composed by Alexandre Ouzounoff

Author(s)

Raymond, Christopher

Issue Date

2020

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Tharp, Reynold

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

McGovern, Timothy

Committee Member(s)

• Dee, John
• Schleicher, Donald

Department of Study

School of Music

Discipline

Music

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

A.Mus.D. (doctoral)

Keyword(s)

• Ouzounoff
• Raymond
• bassoon
• basson
• Amok
• Vezelay
• Lawson
• Nairobi

Language

en

Abstract

This essay explores four works for bassoon by the French composer and bassoonist Alexandre Ouzounoff (1955-). Ouzounoff began his career as a solo performer and as part of a professional chamber music ensemble with the goal of advocating for the bassoon. Thanks to a grant provided by the French Ministry of Culture, he became a pioneer of contemporary French music by commissioning many composers to write music for the bassoon, all of which he premiered. As a composer for the last twenty-five years, he currently has a catalog of over fifty pieces, several of which are for the bassoon. There is currently no academic literature on Ouzounoff or his music. This work explores four contrasting pieces for bassoon and investigates the composer's inspirations from many interdisciplinary art forms such as ethnography, literature, forestry, and architecture. After an introduction and biography on the composer, Amok (2013), Lawson (2014), Vézelay (2016), and Nairobi, la nuit (1999) each receives its own contextual and analytical analysis, along with a discussion of performance practice issues such as extended techniques and other challenges presented by the composer. This essay’s larger aim is to encourage the future study of Ouzounoff’s music and other twenty-first century French composers.

Type of Resource

• text
• still image

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109009

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2020 Christopher Raymond

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