Musical setting creation for a Yeats poem: an autoethnography with the propeller model approach

Abstract

Researchers and artists alike have their own unique challenges when it comes to engaging with their craft for the purposes of producing a final product. Both occupations hold their own respective identities when it comes to the labour of their work whilst holding other cultural and linguistic identities. This retrospective autoethnography completed in the third-person narrative aims to explore the experience of creating a musical setting in terms of cultural importance and identity dynamics between artist and researcher. The research attempts to convey how the Propeller Model Approach (PMA) can serve as a theoretical framework by deductively providing emotive codes for the memories analyzed. The researcher’s experiences of creating a musical setting for the WB Yeat’s poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus” are recalled in the context of a Canadian Irish recording artist. The secondary literature explores human creativity, philosophy of music and other autoethnographies in conjunction with the four thematic areas of PMA. The results from the research inform of a departure from an intellect-centric view on creativity and provide insight into the music making process.