The Music of Kenneth Mahy: An Examination of an American Art Song Composer

Kenneth Mahy is an American composer of art song and choral music. His neo-romantic style is perfectly suited to poets such as Poe, Yeats, Donne, Dowland, and Tennyson. Well regarded for his choral literature, Mahy's art songs are less well-known. This book examines those art songs, assessing their difficulty and analyzing their texts, seeking to establish Mahy as a composer worthy of note in the cannon of American art song in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As an accomplished singer and voice professor in his own right, Dr. Thomas provides expert pedagogical observations and performance notes of Mahy's songs, along with biographical information about the composer. Resources include source material gathered from Mahy's personal archives, manuscripts and scores, and personal interviews with the composer. Such comprehensive insight into Mahy's music firmly establishes the author as the reigning authority of this unique and deserving composer of modern American art song.