Text and intertextuality: words about music about words

The writings embodied in this thesis relate to five of the six musical works in the accompanying folio in that they consider the range of relationships between words and music in a musical setting of a literary (or at least verbal) text. The musical examples discussed range from the art song to rock and roll, from music-theatre to solo vocal pieces employing extended vocal techniques. Texts range from compl ex poetry to paralinguistics to simple pop lyrics. The thesis draws on the writer's experience as a composer and performer of vocal music, as well as a variety of secondary sources, analytical, musicological and descriptive. A unifying theoretical thread is provided by the poststructuralist concept(s) of intertextuality, both in specific senses proposed by Barthes, Eco and others, and in the more inclusive sense advanced by Kristeva. Part 1 of these writings consists of four, informal radio talks scripted and presented by the author for ABC Radio National in 1989.