Thomas Pasatieri is a prolific American composer of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although Pasatieri is best known as an opera composer, he has composed in many different genres, and his numerous art songs have often been overlooked. This study evaluates Pasatieri's currently published song catalog and divides it into three groups of songs that correspond to the varying pedagogical needs of students.
The first group presented in this document addresses the needs of the beginning vocal student. The songs are harmonically tonal, textually accessible, rhythmically uncomplicated, and metrically stable. The second group is more appropriate for the intermediate singer. The songs are highly chromatic and their harmonic progressions do not necessarily follow the rules of functional tonality; the texts are longer and more complex, the rhythmic and metric content are likewise more difficult, and the melodies are more disjunct, often exploring the extremes of the vocal range. The third and final group is most suitable for the advanced singer. The harmonies are challenging and explore an array of organizations, the texts are esoteric, the melodies are often unified through recurring motivic gestures, and the songs rarely contain any formal repetition.
These groupings are intended to help teachers and students choose repertoire from Pasatieri's oeuvre that suit each individual student. This study includes a discussion of representative songs from each group within the chapters and a catalogue of all of Pasatieri's published songs arranged by group in the appendices.