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The Department of Music presents music theorist and film musicologist Frank Lehman in his talk, “Singing in Tongues: Myth and Musical Mistranslation in John Williams’ ‘Duel of the Fates.’” Lehman is an Associate Professor of Music at Tufts University and an alum of Brown University, class of 2006. This lecture takes place in Grant Recital Hall at 5pm on Thursday, October 15. Admission is free and open to the public. RSVP at the link below.About this Lecture
Abstract Composer John Williams is an avowed dendrophile—a lover of trees. It is fitting, then, that for the score of Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace—his return to the series after a 16-year hiatus—he should channel his fondness for all things arboreal. The soundtrack’s biggest barnburner, “Duel of the Fates,” is one of the few iconic souvenirs of Williams’s latter-day work on the franchise, and it was inspired by a medieval Welsh poem entitled “Cad Godeau,” or “The Battle of the Trees.” “Duel of the Fates” is one of the bigger, bolder swings Williams took with the Star Wars Prequels: a choral set piece whose vowel-rich, de-semanticized pseudo-Sanskrit text gives an impression of oracular meaningfulness not despite, but by virtue of, the fact that its actual words are nonsense. This talk traces the twisty journey from “Cad Godeau” to the London Voices, examining how Williams, seeking to conjure the absolute past, manufactured a sense of distance and obscurity—and how the final cut of The Phantom Menace did the same to his score.
Learn more about Frank Lehman at his website: https://franklehman.com/
Illustration © Estelle Senzier
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Event venue
Grant Recital Hall at Brown University, 105 Benevolent St, Providence, RI 02906-3154, United States
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