Anne of Green Gables and Prince Edward Island

Lecture and World Premiere for Piano and Strings

In this concert and presentation, University of New England PhD researcher and composer Merri Bell will discuss Canadian author L.M. Montgomery, who is best known for the novel Anne of Green Gables. In addition to the seven books of the Anne series, Montgomery completed another thirteen books exploring the life and experience of young women in the early 19^th century. Montgomery was also an extensive diarist revealing how much of the content of her books was adapted from her own life experiences. Merri’s research examines the construction of meaning in music and, through the creative practice of composition, demonstrates the ways in which music can relate to literary media. Montgomery’s novels and her personal journals are intertextually linked, and are a rich source of thematic material on which to base compositions, creating a new intertextual link. The result of the research is a folio of contemporary art music composed for acoustic instruments that represents the worlds created by Montgomery.