Tina Tallon (1990-Present)

Introduction
Tina Tallon is a self proclaimed American composer, computer musician, soprano, and improviser from San Diego, California. She was born in 1990 in Pasadena, Maryland and is currently pursuing her doctorate form the University of California: San Diego. She is a very passionate not only about composition, but also about singing and vocal work. She holds degrees in Biological Engineering and Music from MIT, and an M.F.A in Composition and Music Theory from Brandeis University. She is very interested in the relationship of technology to music and vice versa. After graduation she helped develop a curriculum for computational musicology at MIT.

Work Analysis
The piece of Tallon's that I wanted to look at is "Song for Insomniacs". This is a piece for soprano and piano. The vocals are performed in a operatic fashion, but there is a specific lyrical content that tells the story of a person and a male figure. This song is very eerie is style and has a very ambient feel to the piano line. The piano goes back in fort between sections of ornamentation and repeating chords while the soprano line soars above. The lyrics do not seem to have any rhyme scheme, it seem like it is a through-composed pieces where each line is given its own melody, not really trying to make any themes throughout. The piece seems to be archiving the thoughts of the narrator as they stay up throughout the night. The end of the piece kind of sounds like a representation of the sun coming up.

Comparisons
I would directly compare this piece to Ewartung, the soaring soprano voice along with the dramatic backing music and lyrics that seem just like thoughts being sung just as fast fast as they are thought of give both of these pieces the some sort of feel. The influence from Ewartung is very apparent, even if it was intended or not. The legacy of this piece is the concept of utilizing a feeling or state fo mind in order to compose a story out of, and in terms of this piece, the concept of insomnia and a forever running mind.

Observations
I really enjoyed this piece, the added lyrics that were able to be followed allowed for a story that was easy to go along with and understand. The meaning of the piece was much more literal. I appreciate this from a piece because with other pieces with just instrumentation a lot of the meaning can be left up to the imagination, but this specific piece can be given a certain point of view because of the lyrics. From this piece I learned that I really appreciate lyrics and vocals in the song because of the emotion that can be given to them and the ability to directly get across a specific idea to your listener.