Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Aesthetic Implications Of Using The Computer Medium In Music, Rodrigo Valente Pascale

Masters Theses

In this thesis, I reflect on the relationship between the materiality of computers and computer music. Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler had a fundamental role in unraveling how media shape discourse and influence their conveyed message and history. These were important discoveries that built the foundation for the field of Media Studies. Throughout this thesis, I will revisit reflections of researchers who contributed to this field and point out how the medium molds computer music’s history and aesthetics. After reviewing the role of the materiality of computers, I will indicate some aesthetically compelling directions of computer music, which consider features …

"The Sound Of The Underground": Distinguishing Alternative Identity In Rap's Contemporary Moment, Jacob P. Cupps

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on transcribing and analyzing a repertory of underground rap songs, examining how the quality of undergroundness manifests within beats and flows. I define underground as a subgenre of hip-hop that is unified by a culture of meditative listening, and I opt for it over related terms because it is style agnostic. Therefore, I am able to investigate how a small set of techniques manifest across a variety of approaches to making underground hip-hop. I argue that these are a way of sounding the underground, communicating meaning to the listener at the level of the song.

After an …

Mozart And Genius: Music And Philosophy, Aidan Witvoet

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This output poster serves as an overview to my efforts and responsibilities throughout the duration of the internship. Here I also showcase a brief sample of the concepts and areas of exploration within which I have been immersed, both in regards to the the content of the book I am helping to prepare for publishing as well as accompanying readings and discussions.

Peculiar Attunements: How Affect Theory Turned Musical [Table Of Contents], Roger Mathew Grant

Philosophy & Theory

Peculiar Attunements places the recent turn to affect into conversation with a parallel movement that took place in European music theory of the eighteenth century. During that time the affects—or the passions, as they were also called—formed a vital component of a mimetic model of the arts. Eighteenth-century critics held that artworks imitated or copied the natural world in order to produce copies of the affects in their beholders. But music caused a problem for these thinkers, since it wasn’t apparent that musical tones could imitate anything with any dependability (except, perhaps, for the rare thunderclap or birdcall). Struggling to …

Ch. 17 - Traditions And The End Of Music Education, William Perrine

The Road Goes Ever On: Estelle Jorgensen's Legacy in Music Education

This chapter considers the question of how music educators determine the musical ends towards which their teaching is directed. Musical traditions, both “great” and “little,” as Estelle Jorgensen describes them, are inseparable from the philosophical traditions through which music educators determine consider their pedagogical ends. This chapter presents a three-part framework to describe how music educators might approach understanding their work as a socially embodied enactment of contrasting traditions. The term tradition is first defined as a means of categorizing philosophical schools of thought from which various musical practices can be understood. The liberal philosophical tradition that grew out of …

The Philosophy Of Dance, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This encyclopedia entry surveys the field of philosophy of dance both within and beyond Western philosophical aesthetics.

Conceptual Metaphor And Its Role In The Composition, Performance, And Consumption Of Music, Loren Natario

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An analysis of conceptual metaphor (as described by George Lakoff) within the field of music discourse. I examined specific instances of conceptual metaphor and extrapolated to draw conclusions regarding patterns of reasoning and conceptualizations of music as a whole. Despite my observations of conceptual metaphor being limited to the English language, I argue that there is a degree of universality of these conceptualizations (at least within the domain of Western music) and provided evidence of similar conceptualizations outside of the English language. I also argue that significant changes in musical aesthetics in the 19^th and 20^th century can …

1981: One Or Several Aesthetics?, Jacob Norris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Gilles Deleuze’s monograph on Francis Bacon, The Logic of Sensation (1981), proposes a theory of aesthetic experience that prioritizes the material depths of sensation over stable, identifiable forms. Deleuze’s key references in The Logic of Sensation to playwright Antonin Artaud arouse the suspicion that Artaud’s schizophrenic experience of language, wherein words are reduced to phonetic ramblings, illuminates how Deleuze interprets this chaos of sensation in Bacon’s art. My work therefore calls back to The Logic of Sense (1969) and the first section of his book on Masochism (1967) to explore the waves of consistency between Deleuze’s understanding of language and …

Why You Can Actually Sing: A Study Of Human Evolution And Culture As Influenced By Music, Cassandra E. Haley

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

Cassandra's Community Engaged learning course took her outside of her home faculties of Science and Arts & Humanities to study with Professor S. Wei in the Faculty of Music. For her course, Cassandra became a member of the Viola Studio, and conducted extensive research on music history, aesthetics of music, and human evolution of music to combine her studies in music, SASAH, and genetics.

In her capstone research, Cassandra explored how music has shaped narratives and likewise been controlled by political narratives, how it is different from other forms of communication, and if it is possible to express emotions musically. …

Film Music And The Cinematic Experience, Brian Campbell

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Ever since the invention of cinema, film producers have always played music with movies. The addition of quality music to a well-crafted film can change the feel of the entire film. Over its one hundred and thirty years of existence, cinema has evolved into an extremely diverse art form that addresses a wide array of subjects. Given all these factors, this paper explores how film music is extremely diverse and can be used in a wide variety of ways to enhance, affect, and contribute to the way we experience a film. It explores storytelling methods as a narrative device, mood …

The Doctrine Of Affections: Emotion And Music, Kristen E. Jarboe

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

The Doctrine of Affections originated in and is interpreted into the musical realm of the Baroque Era in the music of Bach, Handel, and others. The Doctrine of Affections is a theory created in the Baroque era that seeks to explain the effect that music has on the body. It seeks to personify music, and prove that music itself has the ability to produce a particular feeling, independent of the listener. This theory assumes that music has the ability to be an emotion, and that the particular emotion is located in the properties of the music itself. Johann Mattheson, the …

The Unifying Strands: Formalism And Gestalt Theory Span Centuries Of Music Philosophy, Amanda N. Staufer

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

In every age, musicians and philosophers deal with inquiries concerning musical meaning and the effect of music on the listener. Musical formalism and Gestalt theory—two theories in musical aesthetics—demonstrate that aspects of musical perception and experience are enduring and comprehensive. Musical formalism is the theory that music’s nature is innate, self-evident, able to be systematically deduced, and rational. According to formalism, musical meaning is defined by things objectively ‘there’ in the music, musical experience relies on cognition, and music is less a matter of sense than of mind. Gestalt Theory holds that music is a unified totality—the whole gives meaning …

Crossing Paths: Musical And Ritual Interactivity Between The Ḥamadsha And Gnawa In Sidi Ali, Morocco, Christopher J. Witulski

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The processions occurring in Moroccan pilgrimages--such as those in Sidi Ali, a small town situated in the mountains outside of Meknes and Fez--are important sites that instigate an aesthetic negotiation within nearby possession ceremonies. The many musical groups that punctuate the cacophonous atmosphere during the annual pilgrimage are affiliated with a many of the country’s diverse mystical brotherhoods, including the gnawa, ḥamadsha, and ʿīsāwa. Through a detailed ethnographic description of processions and rituals from two of these groups, this article outlines ways in which musical tastes flow between the different events, informing the aesthetics of both outdoor …

Bodies: Punk, Love And Marxism, Kathryn Grant

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis returns love to the purview of Marxism and punk, which had attempted to ban the interpersonal in respective critiques of abstractions. Love-as-sense—as it is figured by Marx— will be distinguished from the love-of-love-songs, and from commodity fetishism and alienation, which relate to this recuperated love qua perception or experience. As its musical output exhibited residue of free love’s failure, and cited sixties pop which characterized love as mutual ownership, American and British punk from 1976-80 will be analyzed for its interrogation of commodified love. An introductory chapter will define love as an aesthetic activity and organize theoretical and …

Art As Display, Frank M. Boardman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art is essentially a type of display. As an activity, art is what we do when we display objects with certain intentions. As a set of objects, art is all of those things that are displayed for those purposes. The artworld is the social atmosphere that surrounds this particular activity of display. And a history of art is an evolving narrative of change in the practice of this sort of display.

Specifically, to focus for convenience on art as a set of objects, this is what we can call the “displayed-object thesis”:

x is a work of art iff: (a) …

Kind Of Borrowed, Kind Of Blue, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

In late 2014, the jazz combo Mostly Other People Do the Killing released "Blue", an album which is a note-for-note remake of Miles Davis' 1959 landmark album "Kind of Blue". MOPDtK (to abbreviate the band's cumbersome name) transcribed all of the solos and performed them with meticulous care so as to produce a recorded album that replicates, as much as they could, the sound of the original. This is a thought experiment made actual, the kind of doppelgänger which philosophers routinely just imagine. I explore some of the ontological and aesthetic puzzles which the album poses. I argue that what …

Le Pianiste: Parisian Music Journalism And The Politics Of The Piano, 1833–35, Shaena B. Weitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the French music journal entitled Le Pianiste, published in Paris from 1833 to 1835. Through an analysis of the journal’s contents, it reconsiders the nature of music journalism and musical life in Paris at the time it was in print, focusing in particular on canon formation and the power of the press. Le Pianiste’s remarkably detailed descriptions and analysis of the French music world challenge long-held perceptions of the era about taste and reception history, yet it remains an unstudied document. While past work on the music press has focused on criticism and reception, this …

The Historical Impact Of Philosophical Naturalism On American Aesthetic Education: Bennett Reimer’S Philosophy Of Music Education As Aesthetic Education, Jeremy Edwin Scarbrough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Philosophical naturalism is the view that all of reality reduces to natural explanation. The resulting so-called fact-value split biases language against universal, objective values—where empirical observation is said to determine truth, while values are reduced to private emoting or socio-cultural human construction. This research questioned the definition of aesthetic value as determined by the music education as aesthetic education (MEAE) movement in the United States, and the justification of aesthetic education as a universally applicable and comprehensive approach to a course in general music/music appreciation. As the MEAE movement seems to have been largely defined by Bennett Reimer, his philosophy …

Aesthetics In Culture, Dan Rager

Dan Rager

This article examines the role of aesthetics in art, music, non-art objects, and activities in daily life. It shows that recognition is vital to our understanding of art and art-objects and sometimes creates conflicts which ask, what does one do with art? The question becomes more confusing when we think about non-art objects and activities which concern our everyday experiences from eating, clothing, cleaning and dealing with life's natural elements. The author points out that Western cultures have a distinct artworld that is usually limited for special occasions set aside for that purpose. He suggests that aesthetics in culture is …

Music Education, Aesthetics, And The Measure Of Academic Achievement, Karl Madden, David Orenstein, Alexei Oulanov, Yelena Novitskaya, Ida Bazan, Thomas Ostrowski, Min Hyung Ahn

Publications and Research

Grades and test scores are the traditional measurement of academic achievement. Quantitative improvements on standardized scores in Math/Science/Language are highly-coveted outcomes for meeting accreditation standards required for institutional program funding. Music and the Fine Arts, difficult to assess by traditional academic achievement measurement, and often devalued as so-called “luxury” subjects, struggle for necessary funding. Showing measureable collateral value to other academic subjects—such as math—in order to justify music program funding is dubious. To objectify the purpose of music education in terms of its influence on other subjects is to overlook aesthetic value. The scholarly literature recognizes an historical tendency to …

Toward A Postmodern Avant-Garde: Labour, Virtuosity, And Aesthetics In An American New Music Ensemble, John R. Pippen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the aesthetic beliefs and labour practices of the American new music ensemble eighth blackbird (lower-case intentional). Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with the ensemble for the past six years, I show how the ensemble responds to specific cultural pressures endemic to the classical music scene, its new music vanguard, and to the contemporary United States. eighth blackbird, I argue, has created an ensemble identity and performance style designed to satisfy numerous audience positions, from experts well-versed in the intricacies of musical techniques to lay-persons unacquainted with the values and practices of new or classical music. This attempt …

Formal Properties As The Basis For Value In Music, Thomas B. Yee

Global Tides

This paper defends the thesis that value in a piece of music is based in its formal properties rather than its non-formal properties. Two arguments are presented to support this conclusion. The first argument shows that if value in music is to be objective, then it must be grounded in a piece's formal properties rather than its non-formal properties. In the second argument, a number of alternate possibilities for grounding value in music are considered and shown to miss the mark or be inadequate. Finally, a number of possible objections against the arguments and conclusion are considered and possible responses …

Tonal And Topical Coherence In Brahms's Op.10 Ballades, Jacob Joel Gran

LSU Master's Theses

Johannes Brahms composed the op. 10 ballades in the summer of 1854 while living at the Schumann household in Düsseldorf. These pieces are unique within the instrumental ballade repertoire in that they form a collection of ballades published as a single opus. How did Brahms intend the four ballades to cohere as a group, as opposed to a collection of independent pieces? The problem in identifying coherence lies as much within the genre of the instrumental ballade as it does within the musical features of op. 10. These pieces demonstrate a wide range of musical topics, some of which appear …

Musical Rhetoric And Sonic Composing Processes, Kyle D. Stedman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is a study of musical rhetoric and music composition processes. It asks the questions, "How does the nature of music as sound-in-time affect its rhetorical functions, production, and delivery?" and "How do composers approach the task of communicating with audiences through instrumental music?" I answer these questions by turning to the history of musical rhetoric as practiced in the field of musicology and by interviewing composers themselves about their composition practices--approaches that are both underused in the rhetoric and composition community.

I frame my research participants' responses with a discussion of the different degrees to which composers try …

Serendipity And Persistence: A Journey Building A Rich Music-Making Culture In Public Schools, Constance Cook

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

I am a music teacher in the public schools. This synthesis project presents a Practitioner’s Portfolio to convey my efforts over the last decade and more in pursuit of a rich culture of music in public schools. Readers should see someone who persists when faced with personal, pedagogical, intellectual, and institutional challenges. Moreover, that persistence is conducive of the serendipity through which opportunities open up to be an agent of change. What is also evident to me as I assembled the Portfolio was that the Kodály model of artist, scholar, and pedagogue seems to have been the underpinning for much …

Symphony #2 And A Critical Appraisal Of Helmut Lachenmann's Writings And Music, Jeffrey Lipscomb

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The first portion of this dissertation is an original composition: Symphony No. 2. This serial work attempts to use both tempo and texture as compositionally viable parameters, along with pitch and rhythm. The piece is divided into four uninterrupted movements. The first movement establishes a pointillist texture as a reference sound for the entire work, which transforms into a rapid toccata section. The two middle movements, an aria and an intermezzo, both use traditional melody-harmony formats. The toccata texture returns at the beginning of the last movement before transforming and ending pointillistically. The second portion of this dissertation is a …

Aesthetics In Culture, Dan Rager

Music Faculty Publications

This article examines the role of aesthetics in art, music, non-art objects, and activities in daily life. It shows that recognition is vital to our understanding of art and art-objects and sometimes creates conflicts which ask, what does one do with art? The question becomes more confusing when we think about non-art objects and activities which concern our everyday experiences from eating, clothing, cleaning and dealing with life's natural elements. The author points out that Western cultures have a distinct artworld that is usually limited for special occasions set aside for that purpose. He suggests that aesthetics in culture is …

Alban Berg's Filmic Music: Intentions And Extensions Of The Film Music Interlude In The Opera Lula, Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The music composed to accompany the film in Berg’s Opera Lulu--the “Film Music Interlude” (FMI)--is the subject of this study. Although this is film music, and Berg wrote his own Film Music Scenario, scholars have ignored writings about film theory and film music in their historical and analytical treatments of the FMI. How do writings about film theory and film music apply to the analysis and exploration of historical and social contexts of the FMI, and what musical and extramusical intentions and extensions can be drawn from the FMI? Some answers come to light while exploring sources containing Berg’s correspondence …

On Musical Excellence, Karen Demol

Pro Rege

This article was originally presented at the Conference of Christian College Coalition Music Faculties in March, 1992, on the campus of Anderson College, Anderson, Indiana.

Possible Factors Influencing Music Preference, Isabella M. Pinto

Psychology ETDs

The purpose of this study is to determine factors influencing musical preference. The most important factor related to preference for classical music is thought by some to be the cultural background of the listener. According to Lazersfeld, "there is probably no question so sensitive to socialize differences as listening to serious music." This is consistent with the opinion of musicians and music critics who state that discriminating musical taste is a result of frequent listening to good music.