Looking Back at My Graduate Thesis, Part 1

I’d like to talk about what I did for my grad school thesis.

The work began last summer, around 2019, when I began thinking through possible topics I could explore. That was hard. After all, how many things am I deeply passionate about that are also unique enough for a thesis? As a composer, I don’t have a particularly incredible origin story – I learned to play classical piano pieces in as a teenager, and I went to college because I liked classical music. So what fresh new ideas did I have to bring to the table?

I had to look to my nonmusical interests for inspiration, and I began with fantasy and mythology. I’ve spent most of my compositional life writing about myths. The idea that there could be fairies or dragons or banshees – maybe in the past, maybe in the future, or maybe hidden in the places I just don’t look closely enough – has fascinated me since I was a child. I would actually lie awake, sometimes, daydreaming that I might get whisked away to another world, just like in The Chronicles of Narnia. It hasn’t happened yet, but who knows. 

With that in mind, I began looking into a second interest: water. I don’t know why water is so important to me, but it is. Some of the most relaxing moments in my life involved sitting on beaches a good distance away from everyone else, gazing out over the ocean and thinking about life. Or leaning against the railing on a ferry over the Bosphorus canal, watching the waves and hearing the gulls and wondering why there were so many jellyfish in the water. There’s nothing I can say that quite explains how I feel in those moments.

So how could I combine music, mythology, and water? After some brainstorming, and after blending a few different ideas together, I found my answer: I would invent new water-based instruments, and then write a piece based on the myth of Atlantis that combined those instruments with a traditional orchestra.

I broke the project down into four steps. The first two steps ran more or less parallel to each other: invention and research. I ordered supplies and materials I thought might be useful, experimented with different ways water affected sound production, and learned as much as I could about composers who had worked with water before me. Once those steps were well underway, I began the third step: writing the piece itself. Finally, when the 10-minute piece was complete, I wrote a thesis chapter exploring the compositional process and the ideas undergirding it all.

Sadly, due to the general state of the world, I don’t expect the piece itself to be performed, at least not for a long time. But for now, I at least want to show off everything I did. I’m proud of my work. I invented new musical instruments, built out of fairly cheap materials (cheaper than what you have to pay for most instruments, anyway). I learned a lot of obscure facts about an obscure topic that most people know barely anything about. I wrote a really good piece for orchestra and water instruments.

So, over the next few blog posts, I’d like to give a sweeping overview of everything I did. Since I want to make sure I give credit where it’s due, I’ll start with my research into past composers and musical instruments. Then, I’ll move on to the instruments I developed on my own. Lastly, I’ll talk about the ideas that found their way into the finished composition – how water became a source of musical concepts, what it means to create an imaginary folk tradition, and other fun stuff.

For now, my best wishes to everyone, especially all the friends I can’t see face to face. Stay safe.