Stacy Garrop (1969-Present)

Introduction
Stacy Garrop is a composer with a very dramatic and storytelling musical style. She got her education from University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Chicago, and Indiana University-Bloomington. She taught for about 16 years after getting her music education, but after that time she decided to become more of a freelance composer. Her style is not limited to one genre of music. Her music catalog is composed of orchestra, wind ensemble, choir, art song, string quartet, piano trio, saxophone chamber group, and an evening-length oratorio. This wide range of styles has allowed for her to be very flexible in her commissioned works, in which she has had many.

Work Analysis
The work of Stacy's that I wanted to look into was "Tantrum", a piece for alto saxophone and piano. This specific piece is an interesting listen due to the subject of what the instruments are portraying. This piece is in 3 movements, I - Obsessive Behavior, II - Lost, and III - Fits and fists. This a very fitting progression and the music supports that progression as well with the aggression sort of building in the song until the very last movement where the dynamic of the instruments becomes so powerful. It is an amazing representation and sty telling of the thought process of a tantrum being thrown. The combination of these two instruments are brilliant, they are both instruments that can play with dynamics very easily so the combination of the two allows for the raw emotion of the piece to ebb and flow between the loud and soft dynamics in the piece.

Comparisons
I want to compare this piece to The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. Stravinsky always did a fantastic job of pulling the raw emotion out of a piece just by the dynamic and harmonic changes within the piece itself. Stacy Garrop does an excellent job of that same concept but just on a smaller scale with only 2 instruments here. The saxophone seems to be calling out and crying for help at times. The legacy of this piece is the ability fo characterization in a piece, just because an instrument cannot express the words of the emotion it is evoking, the way the notes are played can do just as well of a job of storytelling as actual lyrics can.

Observations
I really liked this piece, pieces that are able to fully tell a story that is easily grasped by the audience always appeal to me. It is much more interesting to follow a specific story or emotion through a piece of music than to jsyt be following blindly a score that does not seem to be trying to say anything. I learned a little bit more about what I specifically like in music through this piece.