Doctoral Music Composition: The Novel “Phet Pra Uma” for Synthesis Jazz Ensemble

Abstract

            Doctoral music composition: The novel “Phet Pra Uma” for synthesis jazz ensemble is aimed to create an innovation in background music. The first part of the novel was used as raw material to generate the composition with timbre, style, and tone of contemporary jazz. The composer combined the concept of jazz music composition with those of classical music and contemporary music. The integration also included other compositional techniques that the composer considered would create sounds relevant to the story. These techniques are such as modal jazz concept, twelve-tone concept, repetition and overlapping of rhythm patterns, the use of odd meter, ostinato, polychord, and contrafact. This composition takes approximately 35 minutes and consists of 6 movements as follows: 1^st movement - The Marvelous Jungle; 2^nd movement - Red Light in the Death Jungle; 3^rd movement - The Magic of Mayawin Scripture; 4^th movement - The Mystery of Puntummavadee Castle; 5^th movement - Nillakarn: The Valley of Peace; and 6^th movement - Route to the Emerald City. The composition was perfectly and successfully presented according to its purpose. Thus, this academic work, a blend of aesthetics of music with that of literature, has paved a way of new jazz music form. Moreover, it will be useful for music studies and will broaden the development of music education in Thailand.