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An Examination Of Vocal Music By John Musto, Stephanie R. Thorpe

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

John Musto, a contemporary composer based in New York, is known for his vocal, piano, and orchestral compositions. Musto is an active performer, who accompanies his own compositions in performance and on recordings. Several festivals and foundations have commissioned his compositions, many of them vocal works.

This document will examine a song set, a solo song and two song cycles by John Musto, which represent the composer's developing vocal compositional style from beginning to present. Equally informed by classical and jazz techniques, his style is comprised of popular idioms, ambiguous key structures, irregular rhythms and meters, unpredictable intervallic movements, and …