Music Theory Commons^™

A Survey Of The Sacred Choral-Orchestral Works Of Sir Henry Walford Davies (1869-1941), Martin C. Cook

Student Research, Creative Activity, and Performance - School of Music

In the closing years of the 19th Century, when Charles Villiers Stanford, Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar were at the height of their fame and influence in British musical society Henry Walford Davies emerged as one of the most promising talents of the day, receiving commissions from the provincial music festivals of Great Britain, which were a rite of passage for emerging composers.

Between 1904 and 1929 Davies produced eleven sacred choral-orchestral works for these festivals and one further work, which were received favorably in their day but are now almost forgotten. There are five large multi movement works: The …

Running Barefoot, Benjamin Marx

Senior Projects Spring 2012

I have been required by the registrar to submit an artist statement, and to be honest I do not know what I am supposed to say. If I am expected to explain a deep profound message about my music, I have none. And if I should to discuss the pieces in my concert, I would rather leave it up to the audience to figure out what the pieces mean to them. Now I am only on the cusp of my musical exploration. I have just this year glimpsed the vast world of music and begun to understand its endlessness. While …

The Count's Dilemma, Or, Harmony And Dissonance In Legal Language, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers have had a long, but ambivalent, relationship with metaphor. Viewed by some as a mere literary device, a trick of language that "adds little of substance to an argument," metaphor is seen by others as an essential component of legal language, a rhetorical device inseparable from thought. On one thing, though, all can agree: lawyers only have words to express their thoughts, so they have an obligation to use words, whether used metaphorically or not, as exactly as possible.

This article offers a critique of the way lawyers meet this obligation when they use metaphors based in musical language. …

A New Geometric Model And Methodology For Understanding Parsimonious Seventh-Sonority Pitch-Class Space, Enoch S. A. Jacobus

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Parsimonious voice leading is a term, first used by Richard Cohn, to describe non-diatonic motion among triads that will preserve as many common tones as possible, while limiting the distance traveled by the voice that does move to a tone or, better yet, a semitone. Some scholars have applied these principles to seventh chords, laying the groundwork for this study, which strives toward a reasonably comprehensive, usable model for musical analysis.

Rather than emphasizing mathematical proofs, as a number of approaches have done, this study relies on two- and three-dimensional geometric visualizations and spatial analogies to describe pitch-class and harmonic …

A Sonata-Theory Analysis Of Mozart's Piano Sonata In B-Flat, K. 333, I. Allegro, David Castro

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Faure's "Nocturne," Op. 43, No. 2, Jena Root

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

This analysis assignment includes a blank score for the piece, and includes an English translation of the French text, an annotated score, with suggested analysis answers, a study guide that contains questions that may be given as a homework assignment and/or used for class discussion of the work, and answers to the study guide and points for further class discussion.

Clara Schumann, Andante, Jennifer Snodgrass

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Ear Training With The Music Of Radiohead, Victoria Malawey

Victoria L. Malawey

No abstract provided.

Clarinet Performance Practices For Alberto Ginastera's "Variaciones Concertantes": Solutions For Orchestral Auditions And Performances, Thomas James Kmiecik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The principal clarinet part of Alberto Ginastera's Variaciones concertantes (1953) requires the performer to execute a number of exposed passages that are considered impractical by many clarinetists as published. The Boosey & Hawkes edition of Variaciones concertantes was published for the B-flat clarinet. On account of this clarinet choice, the part exceeds the traditional upper range of the instrument in the third variation (Variazione in modo di Scherzo per Clarinetto ). Moreover, it requires very awkward fingering patterns in passages because they are written in the Phrygian mode of C-sharp. To avoid some of these technical obstacles, many professional …

Faculty Wind Quintet: Five High School Tour, South And Central Oregon, Nicole Molumby, Jeanne Belfy, Leslie Moreau, Janelle Oberbillig, David Saunders

David Saunders

These performances spanned 150 years of wind quintet repertoire including works by György Ligeti, Carl Nielsen, August Klughardt, Jacques Ibert, Paul Hindemith, Sir Malcolm Arnold and Paquito D’Rivera.

Solo Composition Recital (October 14, 2011), Dominic Dousa

Dominic Dousa

Faculty Compositon Recital, presented by Gregory Luffey (soprano saxophone, UTEP), Melissa Colgin-Abeln (flute, UTEP), Mark Schuppener (violin, UTEP), and Dominic Dousa (piano).

Performances of the following original compositions:

"A View from Within"

"Two Pieces for Flute and Piano"

"Sonata for Violin and Piano"

Introducing The Learning Portfolio Into Music Theory Core Pedagogy, Anna Ferenc

Music Faculty Publications

Undergraduate music programs at North American institutions of higher learning typically require music majors to complete successfully a core grouping of theory courses in order to fulfill degree requirements. These courses are considered foundational not only for further study of music theory, but for all areas of music specialization because they provide students with basic analytical and musicianship skills necessary to understand musical organization in the western tradition. Although specific curricular content may vary from one institution to another, the theory core usually includes the study of diatonic and chromatic harmony, form and analysis, aural skills and possibly instruction in …

Ars Musice, Johannes De Grocheio, Constant J. Mews, John N. Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys, Leigh Mckinnon, Carol J. Williams

TEAMS Varia

Ars musice, composed in Paris during the late thirteenth century, reflects Johannes de Grocheio's awareness of the complexity of the task of describing music. As the editors note in their introduction, "Grocheio is aware of the enormous range of types of music performed in different ways in different places. How can he impose order on this enormous subject matter? He decided to resolve this question by structuring his discussion around the practice of music that he observed in the city of Paris, organized into three main 'branches': music of the people (musica vulgalis), composite or regular, 'which they call measured …

Cognitive Processes For Infering Tonic, Steven J. Kaup

Student Research, Creative Activity, and Performance - School of Music

Research concerning cognitive processes for tonic inference is diverse involving approaches from several different perspectives. Outwardly, the ability to infer tonic seems fundamentally simple; yet it cannot be attributed to any single cognitive process, but is multi-faceted, engaging complex elements of the brain. This study will examine past research concerning tonic inference in light of current findings. First I will survey the recent history of experimental research in cognitive functions for memory retention and expectation as they relate to the recognition and learning of musical schemas. Then I will discuss distributional theories associated with the tonal hierarchy of major and …

An Explanation Of Anomalous Hexachords In Four Serial Works By Igor Stravinsky, Robert Sivy

Masters Theses

Igor Stravinsky's precompositional process was so methodical that his move to serialism is no surprise. After becoming acquainted with the music of Schoenberg and Webern, Stravinsky was moved to experiment with serial techniques. He rejected many of the conventional approaches developed by the serial architects, only to adopt the technique at its basic form—the use of a series of pitches—and cultivate it into his own compositional style. Stravinsky continued to refine his style throughout his serial period (1951–1966) as each composition grew increasingly more serial than the last. For each work composed after 1960, Stravinsky constructed rotation arrays, a serial …

Pianistic Imagery In Franz Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin, Kristen (Wargo) Kiekel

Senior Honors Theses

Franz Schubert's Die schone Mullerin was the first true song cycle of the nineteenth century. Known for his contributions and innovations in German Lieder composition, Schubert published this twenty-song cycle in 1824. Composed as a set of songs based on a collection of poems with a continuing story line, the influence of Die schone Mullerin on the art song is still in evidence today. Schubert's use of imagery, especially in the piano accompaniment, was one of his biggest contributions to the development of musical style in Lieder. Treating the piano part as more than just a simple chordal accompaniment, he …

Kevin Volans' She Who Sleeps Witha Small Blanket: An Examination Of The Intentions, Reactions, Musical Influences, And Idiomatic Implications, Peter D. Breithaupt

Masters Theses

Using and expanding upon a theoretical model for examining the meaning of music presented by ethnomusicologist Timothy Taylor, one of the leading scholars on composer Kevin Volans and his music, this research will attempt to properly position Volans' percussion solo, She Who Sleeps witha Small Blanket, composed in 1985, within Volans' African Paraphrase classification. It will also attempt to dissociate She Who Sleeps from the claims of hegemonic cultural appropriation that are attached to Volans' African Paraphrase pieces. In his model, Taylor talks about the "inseparable metatext" that surrounds a piece of music and includes the composer's intentions, the listener's …

Metrical Theory And Verdi's Midcentury Operas, William Rothstein

Publications and Research

Both historical and recent theories of meter have tended to assume that meter is a single phenomenon, definable in a single (though perhaps complex) way. Most U.S. theories of meter have been based on a limited repertoire: instrumental music by German composers. Examination of Verdi's mid-century operas, from Macbeth through La traviata (1846–53), suggests that different theoretical approaches may be appropriate for different repertoires. National traditions of composition, depending often on national poetic traditions, may require different ways of hearing and counting, and thus different ways of modeling meter. The metrical theories of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, David Temperley, …

Learning Mechanisms For Acquiring Knowledge Of Tonality In Music, Rikka Quam, Matthew Rosenthal, Erin Hannon

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

Most people think that musical knowledge is exclusive to trained musicians. Actually, casual music listeners have implicit knowledge of important structural aspects of music, such as tonality. Tonality contributes to the feeling of anticipation one would experience when hearing someone sing “do re mi faso la ti” without singing the final “do”. Knowledge of tonality may be learned through the statistics of music (Krumhansl, 1990). However, learning mechanisms have rarely been investigated experimentally (Creel et al., 2002). Artificial grammar learning experiments have shown that listeners can acquire highly structured knowledge such as syllable co-occurrence and language syntax through passive exposure. …

Solo Performance, Dana Wilson’S Liquid Ebony For Clarinet And Band, Bsu Symphonic Winds, Leslie Moreau

Leslie M. Moreau

No abstract provided.