Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Music history|Musical composition|Music theory'

Ondo was written for my grandmother’s 88th birthday. The composition comprises six sections based on a popular folksong, called “Tanko-Bushi,” which can be heard in every Japanese town during the Bon festival. Obon is a holiday in August, when we return home once a year to pay respect to our elders and ancestors. “Tanko-Bushi” became popular in Japan around the end of the Second World War and was based on a popular song from the early part of the twentieth century, around the time my grandmother was born, and has taken many forms since; it continues to do so under varied contexts and the versions I encountered there as a child, while attending the summer festivals with her, would have been but a small sample of these. As I worked on Ondo, I tried to imagine what it might have been like to live through all of the changes that took place in Japan over the past century. I think of the composition as a commentary on the westernization that has been taking place there and on the orientalization of Japanese identity—as an act of harmonizing disparate values. Between and within the sections, I explore varying degrees of fragmentation as they relate to, or disrupt, unifying threads that run through the four main sections (1, 3, 5 and 6). Above all, I wanted the piece to be enjoyable for my grandmother to listen to. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra gave a reading of the four main sections of Ondo on 28 January 2011 at the SPCO Center in Saint Paul, MN. Subsequent to the reading, two interludes (sections 2 and 4) were added as contrasting materials and as expansions upon the relationships explored between the diverse approaches to formal considerations in the piece.

This project report analyzes Eric Whitacre’s choral piece When David Heard, a work about grieving the loss of a son, alongside psychologist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief. The paper serves to better understand the lamentation of King David in Whitacre’s piece by seeing where each of the five stages fit into the process of grief throughout the piece.

The analysis observes Whitacre’s variety of musical devices such as tonal clusters, intermittent silences, and polyrhythms, as a means to describe the stages of grief that David is experiencing. By understanding these different stages of grief within the piece, one can conduct or sing the performance of this piece with better understanding of this grief.

This doctoral document and accompanying lecture recital seek to illuminate and bring clarity to aura (2011) for three percussionists and AURA (2015) for four percussionists by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir. This composition is examined through a thorough musical and formal analysis to show that there is a guiding force to be found behind the sustained drones and complex bell themes of the piece. A performance guide to reduce the composition’s logistical and musical challenges is included in the hopes that it will shorten the learning curve for a new ensemble as they learn the piece. It is this author’s aim that this resource will make this composition accessible to a wider range of ensembles and thereby bring more exposure to the music of Anna Thorvaldsdóttir.

In addition, biographical information and a survey of the composer’s compositional process and style is included to increase the limited amount of scholarly research that currently exists on Dr. Thorvaldsdóttir and her works.

Viator, Landon Bachelor of Music, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Fall 2015; Master of Music, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Spring 2017 Major: Music Title of Thesis: Thanatos Thesis Director: Dr. Quincy Hilliard Pages in Thesis: 68; Words in Abstract: 94 Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to provide a theoretical analysis of my composition as well as demonstrate the techniques used to compose and compile electroacoustic music in the digital realm using a DAW software. I have demonstrated how to use MIDI instruments to compose music, how equalization was used to digitally change the timbre of the guitar and drums, how compression was used to control the dynamic range of the drums and add fullness to their sound, and I have demonstrated how to create MIDI notes to be played by the software instruments.

The aim of this study is to provide insight into the percussion music of Dave Maric through an analysis of a trilogy of pieces with backing track, Trilogy (2000), Sense & Innocence (2002/2014), and Thrice Into Flames (2017). The present study examines Maric’s influences, analyzes his compositional style, and provides a performance guide. Brief biographical information is provided to introduce Maric. His compositional style is examined by analyzing tonal language and formal structures. The tonal language of these pieces combines octatonic scales and diatonic scales. In terms of form, Maric uses mathematical sequences to determine proportions between sections, including the Fibonacci sequence. The performance guide includes sticking suggestions, transcriptions of backing track cues, and additional comments.

Throughout his career, Alexander Scriabin created a bridge between traditional romantic harmony and modernistic, chromatic tendencies that ultimately led to the post-tonal era. Scriabin’s middle period after Opus 32 displays several examples of his progressive harmony. However, Scriabin’s transition into harmonic exploration is quite apparent in his Fantasy in B minor , which was written three years before his middle period is observed. This may demonstrate that Scriabin was developing his harmonic techniques much earlier in his career.

Furthermore, the thorough documentation of Scriabin’s color associations shows that Scriabin conceived his music with a strong integration of sound-color awareness. Many moments in the Fantasy appear to possess relationships between sound and color, which can be found in expanded harmonic techniques and multi-timbral textures within the pianistic writing. This essay will first discuss the existing research completed on Scriabin’s harmonic tendencies within earlier works, and then analyze the similar techniques used in the Fantasy. Using previous knowledge gathered about synesthesia, this essay will then examine the connections between Scriabin’s perspective on composition and his connection to synesthesia.

In summary, Scriabin’s unconventional voice leading, chromatic harmonic progressions, and altered tertian voicing, will be analyzed in Opus 28. Afterwards, synesthetic and multi-textural analysis will be demonstrated for the purposes of observing Scriabin’s exploration of the pianistic soundscape and synesthetic-inspired compositional techniques.

In a letter from July 21, 1840, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847) shared with his friend Karl Klingemann that in his Symphony No. 2 in B-flat Major, the Lobgesang, “all the movements, vocal and instrumental, are composed to the words ‘Everything that breathes, praise the Lord’; you understand that the instruments first praise in their own way, and then the chorus and the individual voices.” This tantalizing passage is not a direct profession of faith, but the language of praising God through music does raise questions about Mendelssohn’s personal religious philosophy. The topic of Mendelssohn’s faith has been the subject of much speculation; some have assumed as the grandson of eighteenth-century Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he ought to be considered Jewish, while others, such as R. Larry Todd, have posited that “despite a willingness to compose sacred music for different faiths, in his personal convictions Mendelssohn adhered to the Protestant creed.”

Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang contains evidence of his deeply-held Protestant identity. Its “motto” theme appears at the beginning, middle, and end of Lobgesang. The first time with instruments alone; the second time sung with the text, “Alles, was odem hat, lobe den Herrn” (“Everything that breathes, praise the Lord,” Psalm 150:6), and lastly, at the end of the work, by the instruments alone, suggesting the associated text even though it is not uttered aloud. Combining this cyclical quality with the appearance of self-quotations and the Christo-centric thrust of the rest of Lobgesang’s text, we are invited to view Lobgesang as a lens through which to view other works as having been composed for the glory of God—specifically, the God Mendelssohn knew from a Protestant perspective.

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about the relationship between music and identity, with a focus also placed on the continuing conversation about musical quotation and reference.

This thesis explores the potential advantages of incorporating color into musical analysis and musical concepts into art analysis. Music and the visual arts are vehicles of expression using two different perceptible waves as a medium. By comparing the physical attributes of these waves, analogous terminology between the disciplines is highlighted. Terminology parallels allow us to identify relationships between musical ideas and sonorities and color theory concepts and color harmonies. Cross-modal relationships have been explored in synesthetically inspired works in both disciplines. In Scriabin?s Prometheus, the luce presents the colors to the audience. These colors emphasize the harmonic, formal, and mystical elements of the piece. Messiaen?s Des Canyons aux etoiles features chords that were specifically included to paint the colors of the places he had visited. Sonata No. 6 by Ciurlionis is a painting that includes the three major sections of sonata form with the color changes to match. Symphony verte by Valensi includes complex structural variations and the various shading and saturations found in the timbral diversity of a symphony. Accounting for the bimodal aspects of these pieces provides us with a more concise holistic understanding of the artist?s purpose.

Studies of musical agency have been growing in the field of music theory since the publication of Edward T. Cone's book The Composer's Voice (1974). Indeed, recent publications by scholars such as Robert Hatten and Seth Monahan demonstrate that musical agency continues to be a topic worthy of investigation today. These authors tend to explore the function of agents within a piece, virtually ignoring the way agents arise in music. In this dissertation I work toward a solution to this problem by developing a theory of musical agency that explores the following questions: (1) How do virtual agents emerge in music? (2) What is the relationship between agency and narrative? (3) Can virtual agents influence music at levels deeper than the surface?

I propose that the concept of musical intention provides music theorists with a possible answer to this question. Action Theory, a robust subfield active in philosophy and sociology, views intentionality as a focal point in research on human agency—research that deserves more attention in studies of musical agency. Following assertions by action theorists Donald Davidson and Alfred Mele, I argue that an entity only attains the status of an agent when it performs an intentional act. With respect to music, then, I outline six categories of intentionality that can offer support to an agential hearing: gesture, contradiction of musical forces, unexpected event, conflict, repetition/restatement, and change of state. Further, I suggest that certain passages of music can be interpreted as intentional acts performed by virtual musical agents.

I begin by reviewing the literature surrounding Action Theory in philosophy and sociology, and Agency in music theory in Chapter One. After defining each category of intentionality in Chapter Two, I investigate how the categories of intentionality interact with recent theories of musical narrative and Schenkerian analysis in Chapter Three. To demonstrate how my insights apply to analysis, I examine Beethoven's Bagatelle Op. 126, No. 2 and Mendelssohn's Song Without Words Op. 30, No. 6. These two analyses also serve as an introduction to the way in which my methodology is applied in analysis. In Chapter Four, I use the categories of intentionality in combination with both narrative and Schenkerian analysis to develop an agential reading of Schubert's Piano Sonata in A, D. 959. My agential analysis adds nuance to Hatten's (1993) and Charles Fisk's (2001) readings of the work. I suggest that two agents are present at the beginning of the movement, and I investigate how these agents act throughout all four movements of the piece. In the first three movements, the two agents are in conflict with one another, and by the end of the fourth movement the two agents achieve a synthesis that resolves their conflict. Not only does an understanding of intentionality in music clarify earlier work on musical agency, but it also provides opportunities for richer interpretive analyses. To conclude my dissertation I suggest possible avenues for further investigation, and I briefly apply my methodology to a passage of post-tonal music.

Influenced by the 1960's vanguard movement of Tropicália, Itamar Assumpção became a leader of the so-called Vanguarda Paulista. He offered a new critique of the establishment while taking part in an independent DIY scene. This critique took the form of a detached and ironic narrative voice, and the exploration and reimagining of Samba and Pan-Africanism through polyphony and dissonance. Assumpção stands out as someone who was able to generate a new synthesis of Pan-African traditions and the Brazilian Popular Song tradition. Though today there's a current generation of musicians from São Paulo who are influenced by Assumpção, he still remains largely unknown in Brazil and the rest of the world. I analyze selected pieces from his discography by looking at his lyrics and compositional procedures in order to demonstrate a vast scope of artistic thought that utilized influences from contemporary theater to Reggae.