Abstract

This creative project is a film score for a documentary focusing on the Union Literary Institute, the first school in Indiana to allow the integration of both white students and students of color, and its connections to the Underground Railroad. For this project, I studied and analyzed American folk songs and spirituals, as the setting of the events in this film is the American Midwest in the late nineteenth century. I also analyzed the music of Aaron Copland, a twentieth-century composer who set preexisting folk tunes in a new context, and arrangements of spirituals and original compositions by Florence Price. I then used the compositional devices found in those genres to inspire a new collection of compositions that would ultimately be used for the film. The project is a demonstration of the compositional techniques and music creation software skills that I have learned in my time at Ball State University. Furthermore, the goal for the music composed for the film is that it will be an impactful musical representation of the events and stories portrayed within the film. The music is an amalgamation of the incredibly diverse musical genres and styles that influence my work, which ultimately creates a diverse soundscape for the film to live in. The accompanying paper to the creative project describes my process of analyzing several folk songs, spirituals, and twentieth-century compositions,composing the music, the musical language used, the recording techniques involved in creating the recordings, and the challenges of collaborating with a team of filmmakers to score their film.