Carly Rowley reports on her recent PhD success. Her thesis, titled ‘“Modes of Engagement” – Adaption within the Musical Works of Anthony Burgess’ was funded by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.
Here is more from Carly:
On Tuesday 19 July 2016, I graduated with a PhD in Music from Liverpool Hope University for my doctoral study of Anthony Burgess’s music. This interdisciplinary thesis examines four works where Burgess set words to music. Whilst Burgess is perhaps best known for his work as a writer, he also composed of over 150 musical works during his lifetime. The dual influences of literature and music permeate every aspect of Burgess’ output.
The thesis examines four works where Burgess set words to music: Section 1 discusses Burgess’s musical play version of A Clockwork Orange and his musical based on James Joyce’s Ulysses, entitled Blooms of Dublin. Section 2 discusses Burgess’s song cycle of Enderby’s poetry, The Brides of Enderby, and his setting of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry in the song cycle, (The) Song of A Man Who Has Come Through.
Rather than view Burgess’s compositional activities as separate to his writing, I want to situate these compositions as part of Burgess’ critical ‘working out’ of his views about his chosen source texts. Burgess’s opinions on the interactions between music and literature are particularly refreshing, and should be better known than they currently are. The project was supervised by Dr Laura Hamer and Dr William Blažek (Liverpool Hope University), and examined by Dr Helen Julia Minors (Kingston University) and Dr Alberto Sanna (Liverpool Hope University).
I would like to convey my sincere gratitude to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for funding my research for three years through a research grant. This grant was provided by Liverpool Hope University through a donation by the late Liana Burgess. Furthermore, I greatly benefited in my research from the use of the archives at the Burgess Foundation, and my thanks to all the team for their support throughout the project.
