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Arts and Humanities

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City University of New York (CUNY)

Theses/Dissertations

2015

Analysis; Contextual Inversion; Ellen Taaffe Zwilich; Music; Theory; Transformation

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Twisted Blue, Jessica Rudman May 2015

Twisted Blue, Jessica Rudman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Twisted Blue was written for clarinetist Dan Liptak to perform with the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra conducted by Erberk Eryilmaz. The title comes from the bluesy progression that forms the basis of the second movement, which was in fact composed first in a few frantic fall afternoons. The opening movement followed, and then the finale.


Common-Tone Preserving Contextual Inversions In The Music Of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Jessica Rudman May 2015

Common-Tone Preserving Contextual Inversions In The Music Of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Jessica Rudman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

To truly understand the melodic and harmonic structures of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's music, a transformational perspective is essential. Discussing her works in terms of motivic analysis, set theory, and other similar approaches is often illuminating but fails to account for certain types of subtle musical connections. Specifically, those methods focus on tracing particular musical objects but do not typically follow whatever characteristic processes might be applied to those objects. Transformation theory, on the other hand, focuses on that aspect and can thus reveal connections overlooked in other types of analysis.

Most of the pitch processes Zwilich employs can be described …