Without fear Max Johnson

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Max, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Music., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Musical composition.

Music.

0214.

0413.

Local Subjects:

Musical composition.

Music.

0214.

0413.

Genre:

Academic theses

Physical Description:

1 online resource (119 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-12A

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2026

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Without Fear is a concert-length dissertation composition for mixed sextet that represents my most complete attempt to bring together the many musical languages, histories, and communities that have shaped me as a musician. Having spent years working across jazz, free improvisation, bluegrass, folk, classical music, progressive rock, and other traditions, I gradually came to feel less interested in treating these musics as separate worlds and more compelled to imagine a space in which they could coexist as part of a single, integrated musical practice. The work draws inspiration from large-scale musical models such as Mahler's Fifth Symphony, Charles Mingus' Epitaph, Carla Bley's Escalator Over the Hill, and Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick, as well as from the narrative pacing of comic book writers including Geoff Johns, Mark Gruenwald, Jim Starlin, and Deniz Camp. Rather than relying on a conventional developmental scheme, Without Fear unfolds through the introduction, return, transformation, and collision of distinct musical "characters," allowing form to emerge through relationships of contrast, memory, interruption, and recontextualization. Scored for Anna Webber, Yuma Uesaka, Nate Wooley, Lester St. Louis, Jeff Davis, and myself, the ensemble was chosen for its ability to move fluidly between composed and improvised music, chamber textures, groove-based materials, and stylistically blurred spaces in between. Throughout the piece, materials drawn from earlier works and long-standing compositional concerns reappear in new contexts, not as quotations, but as recurring presences reshaped by the larger narrative. Without Fear is not concerned with resolving questions of genre or stylistic belonging. Instead, it seeks to build a musical world capacious enough to hold contradiction, memory, sincerity, and change; a world in which the many sounds I love can interact freely as part of one continuous story

Notes:

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-12, Section: A.

Advisors: Sorey, Tyshawn Committee members: Diels, Natacha; Weesner, Anna

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2026

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798247973713

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license