Musicology Commons^™

Arvo Pärt: Sounding The Sacred [Toc], Peter Bouteneff, Jeffers Engelhardt, Robert Saler

Religion

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology (analyzing Pärt’s signature “tintinnabuli” method), cultural and media studies (Pärt’s audience is uncannily broad within and beyond the contemporary classical world) and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality (Pärt is primarily a composer of sacred music). For the most part, this work is centered around the representational dimensions of Pärt’s music (including the trope of silence), writing and listening past the fact that its storied effects and affects are carried first and foremost as vibrations through air, impressing themselves on ...

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: A Composer On The Fault Line Of Ideological Change, Stephen J. White

Musical Offerings

While there has been a renewed interest in recent years on Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and his place as a transitional figure in Western music history, little academic thought is given to his musical philosophy. Emanuel’s father, Johann Sebastian Bach, taught him the German-Protestant view that the primary purpose of music was to highlight scripture. Through his education, Emanuel gained an appreciation for the secular philosophies of humanism and the Enlightenment. In contrast to J. S. Bach’s Protestant views, the philosophies of the Enlightenment asserted that the primary purpose of music was to highlight the essence of humanity ...

Gesualdo's Late Madrigal Style: Renaissance Or Baroque?, Landon K. Cina

Musical Offerings

Carlo Gesualdo Prince of Venosa’s sixth and final book of Italian madrigals has puzzled scholars since its resurgence in the early twentieth century. Written during a transition between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Gesualdo’s late madrigals present a musical style that seems to deny any attempt at precise classification with a stylistic movement. So where does Gesualdo’s astonishing style fit within its historical context? And what about his music has drawn the attention of so many scholars? By analyzing representative madrigals of the Mannerist style, a stylistic movement of the Late Renaissance, and the emerging Baroque style ...

The Compositions Of Thomas Tallis: How The English Reformation Informed His Style, Joshua L. Gore

Musical Offerings

Thomas Tallis, known by some as the "Father of English Church Music," accomplished one of the most impressive feats in the history of musical service: surviving in the Chapel Royal through the reigns of vastly different monarchs during one of the most volatile political climates in the country's history. A clear streak of pragmatism shines through this stability and success, but exactly how did that pragmatism demonstrate itself within his compositional style? Through exploration and analysis of Tallis's musical style in different political and religious periods, one discovers the answer to how he managed to navigate the winds ...

What We’Ve Managed To Transcribe Thus Far: Lessons From The Blythe Owen Letter Transcription Project, Marianne Kordas

Faculty Publications

In 2016, the music librarian at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI launched a project to transcribe approximately 2,000 by twentieth-century American composer Blythe Owen into typed, keyword-searchable documents. The goal of the transcription project is to make these letters more accessible beyond their current archival setting, and thereby lay the foundation for further inquiry into Owen, her works, and the people she knew – among them pianist and pedagogue Rudolf Ganz, African-American composer Florence Price, and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Managing such a large project has proven challenging, but worth the effort. This article describes the methodology, successes, challenges ...

Recalling The (Afro)Future: Collective Memory And The Construction Of Subversive Meanings In Janelle Monáe’S Metropolis-Suites, Anders Liljedahl

Third Stone

Focusing on the intersection of collective memory, technology, and African American popular music, this paper use aspects of the sonic narratives in Janelle Monáe’s Metropolis-Suites I–V to introduce core concepts of Afrofuturism. The paper challenges the positioning of collective memory as being exterior to the sphere of individual cognitive memory. By inhabiting past, present, and future at once, Afrofuturism is able to critically revisit collective memory not only as a social framework but also as actual individual memory. Afrofuturist discourse questions the status of the human being by examining African Americans as always already robotic, and posits ...

Annotated Bibliography - Grace Jones, Slave To The Rhythm, Bennett Brazelton

Third Stone

Annotated Bibliography entry for Grace Jones' album, Slave to the Rhythm (1985).

All Day In The Trey-Fold: Sound, Objecthood, And Place In The Mixtapes Of Dj Screw, Matthew K. Carter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the impact of the mixtapes of DJ Screw on the emergence of Houston hip hop culture in the 1990s. The relationship between these “screwtapes” and local culture resists demonstration through conventional modes of representational analyses, due in part to the screwtape’s preponderant use of hip hop tracks that originally represent other places. I suggest that representation itself is the result of the structuring tension emerging from a threefold field of representation of sound, objecthood, and place, and that when a hip hop artist or critic or fan claims to "represent" Houston (or any other constituted and ...

“From The Heart, May It Go To The Heart”: Liturgy And Embodiment In Beethoven’S Missa Solemnis, Brigid J. Coleridge

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since its 1824 premiere in St. Petersburg, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Op. 123 has only ever been performed in secular concert settings. This performance history is reflected in critical trends in Missa solemnis scholarship. Following Adorno’s 1959 essay that characterized the Missa as “alienated,” critical perspectives on Beethoven’s last Mass have largely responded to the work as "absolute" music, indifferent to or disregarding the Mass text. Despite its exclusively secular performance history, however, the Missa solemnis was written for use in the Mass liturgy (at the installation of the Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olmütz). Moreover, the Missa ...

Mashing Through The Conventions: Convergence Of Popular And Classical Music In The Works Of The Piano Guys, Alina Kiryayeva

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is dedicated to examining the symbiosis between popular music and Western classical music in classical/popular mashups––a new style within the classical crossover genre. The research features the works of The Piano Guys, a contemporary ensemble that combines classical crossover characteristics and the techniques from modern sample-based styles to reconceptualize and reuse classical and popular works. This fusion demonstrates a new approach to presenting multi-genre works, forming a separate musical and cultural niche for this creative practice.

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter is further divided into two thematic discourses: genre and authorship. The ...

Coltrane Plays The Blues: Multi-Level Coherence And Stylistic Tendencies, Lukas Gabric

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a principal musical figure of the twentieth century, John Coltrane created a legacy that still resonates with listeners. Similarly, the blues may be regarded as one of the most iconic genres of the twentieth century. This dissertation examines Coltrane’s shifting stylistic tendencies to the blues and explores structural relationships with reductive voice leading analysis. As a variation form, the blues poses issues of continuity since every chorus may be regarded as self-sufficient and internally closed. Voice leading analysis provides a powerful explanation for the fact that Coltrane’s blues solos may be perceived as structurally unified. I also ...

The Modes Of Intervention In Alvin Lucier’S I Am Sitting In A Room, Daniel Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1969) is an icon of experimental music and sound art. The sizable literature addressing the aesthetic and philosophical implications of this piece rarely discusses the performance practice beyond what is indicated in the score itself. This is problematic for two reasons: 1) The meaning that is derived from the piece often hinges not just on what sounds are obtained, but on how they are obtained. 2) Over the past 50 years, changes in the performance practice have altered what constitutes the work: magnetic tape was used until 2000 when it was ...

Sounding Unsettlement: Rethinking Settler States Of Mind And Re(-)Cognition Through Scenes Of Cross-Cultural Listening, Ryan Ben Shuvera

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation I consider how listening to music produced by Indigenous peoples might convince settler listeners to surrender settler states of mind. I focus on the elements of settler colonialism that are exemplified in and challenged by the experiences of listening to music produced by Indigenous peoples. I focus on these aesthetic encounters as a way of exposing the everyday presence and power of settler states of mind and, more importantly, exploring how settlers might go about rebuilding states of mind through these moments of aesthetic surrender that are spurred by embodied experiences of sound. My project builds on ...

Viola Fragments: Contextualizing And Interpreting Selections From György Kurtág's Signs, Games And Messages, Mounir Nessim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The viola came to prominence as a solo instrument relatively late compared to the violin and cello. As a result, the standard repertoire is more recent, consisting largely of twentieth century works. The standard repertoire continues to expand as new works are written and embraced by performers. One such work is the Hungarian composer György Kurtág's open ended collection of pieces for solo viola Signs, Games and Messages (1987-). Kurtág, born in 1926, is one of the most important composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His music is characterized by its brevity, fragmentation, ambiguity, and intertextuality. The painstaking ...

Quincy: A Documentary Review, Analy Cruz

Backstage Pass

This is a film review of the 2018 documentary film on the life and music of legendary producer, Quincy Jones.

Amy: A Film Review, Lucas Dehner

Backstage Pass

A review of the 2015 documentary film, Amy.

Tearing Down The Wall: An Analysis Of Pink Floyd’S 1979 Rock Opera, Darla Testino

Backstage Pass

No abstract provided.

Bohemian Rhapsody: A Film Review, Ailey Butler

Backstage Pass

This is a review of the 2018 Queen bio-pic, Bohemian Rhapsody.

Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster Film Review, Ceara J. Costa

Backstage Pass

This is a film review of the 2004 documentary, Some Kind of Monster, which provides an in-depth portrait of the heavy metal band, Metallica, during the making of their St. Anger album. It addresses issues of mental health, depression, group dynamics and the pressures that successful artists face in maintaining their internal and external relationships while still trying to create new music.

A 70'S Dream Queen: Carole King's Tapestry, Kortney Burton

Backstage Pass

The essay critiques the 1971 best-selling album, Tapestry, written and performed by Carole King.