"Cesar Geoffray and ""a Coeur Joie"": A Study of Geoffray's Choral Writing Including an English Adaptation of the Cantata ""salut Au Monde"""
Hall, Robert George
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/72433
Description
Title
"Cesar Geoffray and ""a Coeur Joie"": A Study of Geoffray's Choral Writing Including an English Adaptation of the Cantata ""salut Au Monde"""
Author(s)
Hall, Robert George
Issue Date
1992
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Alwes, Chester L.
Department of Study
Music
Discipline
Music
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
D.M.A.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Music
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to examine the choral music of the twentieth century French composer Cesar Geoffray. Geoffray wrote a great deal of choral music,much of which was published, but his work remains largely unknown outside of the French-speaking world.
In order to place Geoffray's music within the proper historical context the introductory chapters deal with French music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the role of Geoffray in establishing the French choral organization A Coeur Joie. The study goes on to survey the scope of Geoffray's choral compositions and to investigate his compositional style. An in-depth analysis of his cantata Salut au Monde is carried out, followed by a more cursory examination of four more of Geoffray's larger choral works. Appendices include a catalog of Ball of Geoffray's choral works, a listing of all of the currently available choral works, and an outline of the complete French text of the cantata Salut au Monde, along with the corresponding English citations from the Walt Whitman poems. Musical examples in the study include four short a cappella works of Geoffray as well as the complete cantata Salut au Monde, both in the original French and in a newly adapted English version that utilizes, to a large extent, the original text of Whitman.
Geoffray's music is written in a style that is easily performed but utilizes a harmonic language that is of the twentieth century. Notable compositional techniques include planing and pedal tones while one of the most prominent characteristics of the music is a diversity of textures. The smaller pieces are almost exclusively a cappella; most of the larger works are accompanied but almost all are sectional and contain a significant number of a cappella sections, showing their indebtedness to Geoffray's more familiar small works. The study reveals Geoffray as a man who greatly influenced French choral music through A Coeur Joie, and as a composer whose chief goal was to supply a much needed repertoire of high quality for the many choirs in the organization.
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