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ETD Abstract Container

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THE SINGING BRIDGE

BARNHART, MICHAEL ROBERT
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1195667467

Abstract Details

2007, DMA, University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music : Composition.
The Singing Bridge is a piece for percussion trio with recorded electro-acoustic music inspired by and utilizing samples from the sonic environment surrounding the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge across the Ohio River. Built in 1867 by John A. Roebling, it is an elegant steel spider-web towering 230 feet above the low water mark, with two central suspension cables that contain 5206 small wires each. It was Roebling's second to last design, predating his triumphant Brooklyn Bridge by 16 years. With the advent of automobiles, a steel grate driving surface was added that gave rise to it's popular name "The Singing Bridge," from the sound that tires make while humming across it. During the Great Depression, my grandfather braved the heights with the work crews that painted it. As a child I often begged my mother to cross it so we could sing along. Finally awakening to the personal and public significance of the sound I began regularly visiting the bridge to record it and to assemble an audio catalog of the humming tires, tugboat engines, foghorns, cable clanks, calliope music, and blasts of radios from car windows and pleasure craft that are all part of the sound life there. In collaboration with Percussion Group Cincinnati I developed a palette of corresponding instrumental sounds, many of which use rolling objects as a means of excitation similar to the tires. Tiny phrases trimmed from recorded days, were mixed, duplicated and retuned on a computer, allowing the piece to combine the bridge's sonic vocabulary with several instrumental translations. The bridge sounds are altered and superimposed more and more as the piece progresses representing the way our memories are edited by the mind the longer they are held.
Dr. Mara Helmuth (Advisor)
21 p.
Music
Singing Bridge; music; Roebling Bridge; music composition; percussion; computer music; electro-acoustic; Cincinnati

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • BARNHART, M. R. (2007). THE SINGING BRIDGE [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1195667467

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • BARNHART, MICHAEL. THE SINGING BRIDGE. 2007. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1195667467.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • BARNHART, MICHAEL. "THE SINGING BRIDGE." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1195667467

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1195667467
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© 2007, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.