Dissertation
That’s the way the railroad went (2023): collective memory and the Central Iowa Railway Company
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.006904
Abstract
In this dissertation, I pilot a new framework for preserving and broadcasting collective memory. Rather than focusing on the reception and analysis of pre-existing collective memories, I seek a model to ensure that the artist and the canvas, or the composer and their subject, remain intact during the collection and experience of aural and oral histories. I track and narrate the experience of three collective forces–prosthetic intent, prosthetic storage, and prosthetic filters–in order to interrogate and better understand the process of building a collective memory.
I test this theoretical framework with a new composition that documents and de-privatizes individual memories of the Central Iowa Railway Company (1973-1975). This short-lived shortline ran between Montezuma, IA and Riverside, IA, in an attempt to return rail transport after the Rock Island abandoned the track in the early 1970s. Today, the story of how these communities tried to save their businesses and re-link their towns is only whispered by a few remaining artifacts. Five chapters outline the interpretation of archival sources, newly recorded oral histories, and the compositional integration of speech melody, culminating in a new forty-minute work for string quartet, saxophone quartet, piano, percussion, and tape. That’s the Way the Railroad Went (2023) represents a vast network of these collective forces interacting among interviewees, the musicians who embody the rhythms and melodies, the potential and actual audiences, and myself. By exercising the collective forces in a new piece of concert music, I hope to render the act of music composition as a productive, viable, and innovative tool for understanding collective memory.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- That’s the way the railroad went (2023): collective memory and the Central Iowa Railway Company
- Creators
- Mark Luke Rheaume
- Contributors
- Jean-François Charles (Advisor)David Karl Gompper (Committee Member)Nathan Platte (Committee Member)Sarah Suhadolnik (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Music
- Date degree season
- Spring 2023
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.006904
- Number of pages
- xii, pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Mark Luke Rheaume
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/19/2023
- Date approved
- 05/09/2023
- Description illustrations
- illustrations (some color), maps (some color), music
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 352-369).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
In this dissertation, I explore how music can help historians better understand how we perceive our past. I merge collective memory studies with music composition by establishing sound as a viable subject and material that bridges scholarship with creative work. My new composition, titled That’s the Way the Railroad Went, tells the story of the Central Iowa Railway Company by relaying a collage of interviews, found sounds, and newly composed music. In this forty minute piece, the sounds of memory and the memory of sounds figuratively reconstruct this seemingly forgotten railroad.
As both composer and historian, I seek a path that ensures that the artist and the canvas, the maker and their subject, remain intact, or amplified, during the creative process. I propose that understanding the collective forces of memory—prosthetic intent, prosthetic storage, and prosthetic filters—renders music composition as a powerful and ethical tool for preserving and sharing collective memories.
- Academic Unit
- School of Music
- Record Identifier
- 9984425391702771
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