Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Natural Sympathies: An Examination Of Music Interpreting Literature In Jane Eyre, William Currer Suggs

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of the Arts of Bard College.

Goodbye? Reflections And Stream Of Consciousness On, Underneath And Around The Creation Of “Hello?”, Leonard Shevel Gurevich

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

A Walk In The Woods, Matthew Paul Macari

Senior Projects Spring 2023

A Walk in the Woods is a piece of experimental multimedia consisting visually of images of the Hudson Valley processed through mid-90s computer graphics and aurally of field recordings, monologues, musical motifs, and songs. All of these elements are combined with the use of a game engine to create an interactive experience reminiscent of the MS-DOS video games of the mid to late-90s. Working on this project allowed me to both turn away from the discouragement caused by my unrealized musical plans and return to a place where I had once felt comfortable exploring my curiosity in the topics of …

Mathematical Structure Of Musical Tuning Systems, Shay Joel Francis Spitzer

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Over the course of history, western music has created a unique mathematical problem for itself. From acoustics, we know that two notes sound good together when they are related by simple ratios consisting of low primes. The problem arises when we try to build a finite set of pitches, like the 12 notes on a piano, that are all related by such ratios. We approach the problem by laying out definitions and axioms that seek to identify and generalize desirable properties. We can then apply these ideas to a broadened algebraic framework. Rings in which low prime integers can be …

Off Beat / I'Ll Wait., Signe Annabel Peterson

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Music!

Direct Sensory Input, No Complications & A Token Of His Grace, Vigilance Jw Brandon

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

The Short Song Project, Jayla Kai Smith

Senior Projects Spring 2023

The Short Song Project is a collection of short songs about play and reveling in the freedom afforded by curiosity.

“Mit Josefine Muss Es Abwärts Gehen”: Making Audible The Conflicted Narrator Of Kafka’S “Josefine”, Kamil Alexander Karpiak

Senior Projects Fall 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Things I Never Told You, Ayanna Battle

Senior Projects Fall 2022

I had a very interesting experience studying composition at Bard. The year that I was supposed to moderate into composition was the year that COVID hit; and because of COVID, I spent the next two of my four years at Bard studying remotely, 15 hours away in Atlanta, Ga. Though I was still able to study composition with Joan Tower through weekly virtual meetings, I never experienced the “rites of passage” that a typical young composer experiences. I never had to search for musicians to play my pieces for a moderation concert; I never had to analyze the different schedules …

A Night On Broadway: A Senior Project Piano Recital, Jonja Leon Danh Merck

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Getting Under Your Skin Until You Jump Out Of It: The Psychological Effects Of Music On The Experience Of Film, Clare Ellen Herzog

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Music is like magic. It can sweep you off your feet and spirit you away to places you never thought possible: it can serve as a teleportation device, achieve time travel, and let us read minds. Some pieces of music exist for their own sake, like Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, while others accompany different forms of media: ballets such as The Nutcracker and operas like La Bohème are instantly recognizable for their grandiose and immersive scores. For a moment in time, audiences can really believe that they are traveling to a magical world with Clara, and even without the …

Momentary Musics: How Spotify And The Attention Economy Transformed Music From Art Form To Affect, Tobias Hess

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The rise of music streaming platforms such as Spotify, and the concurrent emergence of what is broadly known as "the attention economy" have radically shifted the aesthetics of the music industry, as well as the artistic subjectivities of artists that operate within this paradigm. Through a formal analysis of Spotify's recommendation algorithm, I argue that algorithmic curation systems such as Spotify's create a new cultural paradigm that has replaced Adorno's conception "culture industry." What has replaced it is a dispersed meritocracy where success is determined by how well individual cultural actors conform to the preferred aesthetics of algorithmic platforms. Using …

A New Way To Make Music: Processing Digital Audio In Virtual Reality, Gavin E. Payne

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The work of this project attempts to provide new methods of creating music with technology. The product, Fields, is a functional piece of virtual reality software, providing users an immersive and interactive set of tools used to build and design instruments in a modular manner. Each virtual tool is analogous to musical hardware such as guitar pedals, synthesizers, or samplers, and can be thought of as an effect or instrument on its own. Specific configurations of these virtual audio effects can then be played to produce music, and then even saved by the user to load up and play with …

From Our Past Into Our Present Future, Michael Fitzgerald Barriteau

Senior Projects Spring 2022

I play the Tenor Saxophone and my experience as a black man is personified through my art. The Art is inspired by my friends, family, life, and the experiences within them. These ideas are then connected through the use of different rhythms, harmonies, and melodies. Thus creating the music that the band and myself activity engage with, in order to use emotions to inform our ideas and decisions to create sonic imagery. As if you were walking or listening to a painting itself.

How Lyrics Influence The Effect Of Music On Emotions Regarding Differences In Musical Training, Keyan Ivy Wu

Senior Projects Fall 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Science, Mathematics and Computing of Bard College.

How Lyrics Influence The Effect Of Music On Emotions Regarding Differences In Musical Training, Keyan Wu

Senior Projects Fall 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Science, Mathematics and Computing of Bard College.

French Composers As Intellectuals: Music And Politics In Early 20th Century France, Alberto Arias Flores

Senior Projects Fall 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Midnight In July, Allegra Ondine Berger

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project Statement Allegra Berger

The collection of songs that I created for my senior project were all written some time in the past year. It was only in the past two weeks that I came to realize that a unifying theme had emerged. It is not something obvious- nor did I intend for it to be- but there were enough hints throughout to lead me this realization. Originally, my plan for the project was to compose choral pieces meant for a children’s choir to sing, which I would then teach to a group of children in the Bard area, …

Sonified Hudson Valley Landscapes And The Influence Of Industry, Jess Belardi

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

I’Ve Always Been A Rambler: An Exploration Of Authenticity In Contemporary Folk Music, Bernard Elliot Cohen

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Anticipated Futures: An Oral Archive On Bard Students’ Pandemic Experiences In The Fall Of 2020, Arlo Tomecek

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Anticipated Futures is a podcast that examines Bard College students’ pandemic hardships.

Some students who were included in this series are recent graduates of Spring 2020. The podcast can be found on Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Bandcamp, and more. It is also made available on Tomecek’s personal website:" arlotomecek.com" In this intimate podcasting series, Tomecek provides a space for healing for individuals’ to speak on their difficulties over the initial peak of the pandemic. Students discussed a wide array of topics, including but not limited to: mental health, the Black Lives Matter Movement and rise of protests in Summer 2020, …

The Ethos Of The Blues: An Ethnography Of Blues Singers And Writers, Zoë Emilie Peterschild Ford

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Dawn Tyler Watson, a blues singer based in Montreal, QC, performs a variety of genres. No matter what she performs, however, she continually expresses a blues ethos. Through improvisation and her resolute individuality Dawn writes and sings narratives always with a nod to the blues. What I call the “ethos of the blues” refers to a blues spirit that exists not only in music, but in literature, and in everyday life. Dawn’s practice reveals that blues is a music that values protective, generous, and exploratory narrative. As important as its storytelling quality is the genre’s Americanness. Blues, derived from a …

Despite The Blues: Richard Wright And Ralph Ellison’S Blues Based Works, Miranda Virginia Reale

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Ain't got no mother, ain't got no culture

Ain't got no friends, ain't got no schoolin'

Ain't got no love, ain't got no name

Ain't got no ticket, ain't got no token

Ain't got no god

–Nina Simone, “Ain’t Got No-I Got Life,” from the album Nuff Said (1968).

In between human intention and reality lies a disproportionate space that Albert Camus labels “the absurd.” Modern man’s affliction is thus absurd, as orthodox systems turn obsolete, the traditional virtues of the past cease to be familiar. The epistemology of the absurd may not have developed from American soil; but I …

Pull2 And Wish2, Nicolas Roman Fopeano

Senior Projects Spring 2020

My senior project consists of two individual parts, completed at the ends of both semesters.

The first project, titled “Pull2”, is a fully composed piece written for piano, violin, cello, and live processed 4 channel electronics. It was performed on December 13, 2019 in Bard Hall. The players were Maeve Schallert on violin, Kate Gonzales on cello, Clay Hillenburg controlling the electronics, and I played piano. The playing was sparse and spacious, and the electronics held certain tones for long periods of time. This was achieved with a MAX patch which loops short moments of the audio from the instruments …

The Feminine Voice / Self Titled, Teddy Mckrell

Senior Projects Spring 2020

My senior project consisted of two concerts, one in classical voice and one in electronic composition.

Tell Me A Story; Hell Hath No Fury: A Set Of Voice Recitals On The Overlap Of Music, Literature, And Classics, And Their Treatment And Depiction Of Women, Alexandra Hobart Gilman

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Over the past four years, I have had the privilege of answering the question, “what is your major?” My reply exists in various degrees of specificity. I am a Music major. I am a Classical Voice major. I am a voice major who is concentrating in Medieval Studies. Layer upon layer is added. The more specific I am, the more niche it all seems to become. Yet, that which I love exists in these niches, the in-between spaces where different areas of academia come together to create something new. Something that I have always appreciated about art, in general, is …

8/28 - 12/8, Cluno (Madison) Marie Clark-Bruno

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Let It Fall // The Bath, Emma Nicole Houton

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Let it Fall

“Let it Fall” was a senior concert in jazz voice and electronics comprised of original work and arrangements of jazz standards and pop songs. Inspired by the films of David Lynch, it was a work embracing disintegration and the unsettling. This concert was intended to combine my two academic focuses, jazz voice and electronic music, and evolved from a project in which I attempted to produce dream-pop covers of jazz standards.

The concert took place in the Old Gym, which I designed to look like an amalgamation of venues featured in Lynch’s films, with eerie red and …

The Impact Of Live Coding Within An Educational And Performance Setting, Alexus Renee Foster

Senior Projects Spring 2020

For the past three semesters at Bard, live coding has become my newest form of creative expression and performance. This method of coding involves either creating on the spot from scratch or editing pre-existing code in a real time manner. There is no real set structure or steps that must be followed, however, one rule must always be followed: show your code. In the classroom, live coding occurs when the professor demonstrates some algorithm by displaying the program on a projector for the entire class to observe. During musical performances, the same improvisational nature of live coding is also present, …

Bottled Letter, Edgar Guzman

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This project was originally intended to be a concert that explored the harmonic and performing skills I learned in college. Naturally, like any project, all my expectations had to be thrown out the window. The ensuing chaos after the pandemic tested a lot of things; creativity, discipline, friendships, and our ability to maintain sanity without structure. Bard has a funny way of challenging your preconceived notions, and I found that the chaos of being a student here for four years left me surprisingly prepared for this pandemic.

The album you will listen to is the culmination of the things I’ve …