My research explores how music participates in processes of narrative, memory, and cultural meaning, with particular interests in twentieth- and twenty-first-century orchestral music, film and media music, and the relationship between musical structure and cultural interpretation. My work combines close musical analysis with historical, literary, and cultural approaches.
Dissertation
The Musical Representation of Memory in John Williams’s Harp Concerto On Willows and Birches
Ph.D. dissertation, Claremont Graduate University — expected completion Fall 2026
My dissertation examines John Williams’s On Willows and Birches through the lens of memory, exploring how musical processes of recurrence, transformation, fragmentation, and reconstruction contribute to the concerto’s expressive meaning. Drawing on the literary contexts of Psalm 137 and Robert Frost’s “Birches,” the study considers how Williams’s musical language engages contrasting experiences of memory, loss, identity, and renewal.
The project combines structural, harmonic, motivic, and pitch-class analysis with literary and contextual interpretation, contributing to the growing scholarship on Williams’s concert music while considering broader questions about how music can represent and enact processes of remembering.
Research Interests
My current and developing research interests include:
- Music, memory, narrative, and cultural meaning
- Film and media music
- Twentieth- and twenty-first-century orchestral music
- John Williams and contemporary American music
- Music across media and processes of adaptation
- Musical recurrence, transformation, and recontextualization
Robert Normandie 