13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: collective composition of 12 graduate students and D. Constantinides

Abstract

13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird resulted from a collaboration between the LSU School of Music and the LSU Art Department. Student composers and artists used the Wallace Stevens’ poem “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” as a theme. Dinos Constantinides conceived of the basic idea for purposes of unity. The composers used the “Soggeto cavato” technique, in which musical subjects are derived by “carving out” vowels from words.