Valerie Tauro, FCLC 2025

Major: Music, English with a concentration in creative writing

Bio: Valerie Tauro is a Music and English double-major with a concentration in creative writing. She is a classical pianist, concert percussionist, and writer whose primary focus is exploring the intersection of music and language in storytelling. Valerie loves listening to film scores and writing short fiction, particularly pieces that encourage her audience to find the significance in the little things around them.

Title of Research: Lull of the Wind

Mentor: Daniel Ott, Music

Abstract: Song cycles are a form of Western classical music in which piano accompaniment is composed for a collection of poetry, typically written by someone other than the composer. For this project, however, I wrote both the poetry and music myself. “Lull of the Wind,” consisting of six songs written for voice and piano, tells the story of a leaf caught in the wind before a storm. The wind expresses its desire for a friend, and the two waltz together until the rain begins. Helpless against the storm, the wet leaf gets stuck to the ground, far from home and all alone as the wind moves on. My inspiration for this piece came from watching leaves swirling in the wind on a cloudy day. It was such a mundane scene, but I was enraptured by the leaves’ bright colors and a curiosity bordering on concern for their fate — safe in the grass, or trampled underfoot. In choosing to compose a song cycle about something as trivial as a leaf, I invite my audience to take the time to appreciate the stories and journeys that happen around us everyday. I chose this format because I was greatly inspired by the song cycles of Franz Schubert, and it served as the perfect combination of my majors and interests. Working with music and language simultaneously also allowed me to deepen my understanding of musicality in poetry and plot within music.