The Archives as a Muse: Incorporating Primary Sources into the Student Works of Undergraduate Composers

Abstract

When the author, in her third year of undergraduate music composition studies, decided to shift her career path towards music librarianship, one of her greatest struggles was figuring out how to tie her newfound field of study into the pieces she was writing as a student composer. What ultimately served to bridge that gap was the use of archival materials and other primary sources as a source of core inspiration from the outset of the composition process. This poster will outline the development of two pieces the author wrote as an undergraduate – “The Bird Fancyer’s Companion” and “je vous aime et aimerai jusqu'au tombeau” – and the primary sources they are derived from – two editions of “The Bird Fancyer’s Delight” (c.1717) from the Library of Congress’ Dayton C. Miller Collection and two published collections of correspondence between Princess Isabella von Parma (1741-1763) and Maria Christina, Duchess of Teschen (1742-1798). These experiences will be framed as a case study with the ultimate goal of showing how primary sources can be made most relevant to the undergraduate student composer when taken outside of the traditional realm of music history coursework and presented as a potential source of inspiration for their compositions.