Composition Commons^™

Wilde Bühne: An Exploration Into The Revolutionary Potential Of Art, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

You will often hear it said that art does not belong in the space of the political.

Politics is practical, and yet we cry over legislative losses and march in the streets when we are seared by flames of indignation. We paint murals over boarded-up windows, film history as it happens, and go to the club after a long day at work. We sketch lovingly the faces of those lost senselessly, we sing to the rooftops when all hope seems lost, and we speak poems like pounding hammers when no one is willing to listen. We scratch verses into foam …

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 …

From Ictus To Raptus, Andrea Abel

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College

FROM ICTUS TO RAPTUS

From Ictus to Raptus is a story about the emergence of sound. This performance is only a human attempt to capture the Event from which all existence emerges (Ictus), and an attempt to interpret and rejoice in the resulting complexity of the world, by tracing multiplicity back to singularity and reuniting it with its origin (Raptus).

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.

Songs For Strings, Jayla Kai Smith

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Songs for Strings is a series of songs by Jayla Kai arranged for string quartet and performed with quartet and vocals.

North Of The Red Sea, Christopher T. Gallagher-Bartlett

Senior Projects Fall 2023

With immense pride, I present a collection of ten songs woven from the threads of my musical influences, personal wisdom, and artistic explorations, guided by the invaluable mentorship of Franz Nicolay.

This journey began long before the formal recording during my senior year at Bard. A visceral vision resonated within me, the melodies echoing in the depths of my mind. However, the path wasn't devoid of hurdles. Intense imposter syndrome, and self-doubt in its various forms, forced me to re-evaluate my direction. In many ways, separating myself from the work became the key to uncovering the most authentic approaches.

Through …

Give To You/Fill My Cup, Madeline Damon Roisin Moneypenny

Senior Projects Spring 2022

At the core of my project is the assertion that the human voice functions as an instrument. During my time at Bard, my musical practice revolved around an exploration and desire to use singing as texture, as a solo instrument, and as storytelling. I wanted to challenge what it means to be a singer in a band setting, a setting that often illuminates gender in startling ways that limit the creativity and confidence of non-male players. Through this concert series, I wanted to show the singer as a player, an artist, and as integral to the work.

I composed 14 …

Do Androids Dream Of Improvisation?, Aidan J. Samp

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

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 …

Evolving, Yuhao Zhang

Senior Projects Fall 2022

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

The Meaning Of Music, Caleb Loius Orenstein Carman

Senior Projects Fall 2021

This project combines solo performances of music on piano, collaborative playing/rehearsing, improvisation, and composition. In both parts of the project, I share my performances of François Couperin, J. S. Bach, Schubert, and Ravel, and include my own compositions alongside. I tackle certain pieces that lie within the ‘long eighteenth century’ and demonstrate how improvisation is an integral part of music-making for composers. I believe in order to fulfill my own desires as a musician, I need to develop my aptitude in multiple areas — performance, composition, improvisation, chamber music, etc. — in such a way that the practice of one …

“​Saitama​” & “​Conversations With Cage & Frisell​”, Jacob Mcconnaughy

Senior Projects Spring 2020

“Saitama”

For the first part of Senior Project, I embarked on a goal to gather as much material as I could to form a coherent album that could be released to the public on streaming platforms that focused on electronic music. With a Roland Juno-60, a vintage analog synthesizer from the early eighties, I sat down everyday and hit record and let myself be taken away by the sounds and textures that I was able to conjure. The finished project combines previous ideas and culminated in the release of a full length album entitled Saitama.

“Conversations with Cage & Frisell” …

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.

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 …

Place Accumulation: Kingston/Ulster, Callan F. Fish

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Since February 2018, I’ve been listening and recording around Kingston and the town of Ulster; synthesizing interviews, bird song, passing cars, protests, conflict, unique perspectives and oral histories, meetings, optimisms, water, as part of a project called, Place Accumulation: Kingston/Ulster. Using the Dynamic Listening Instrument, an interactive sound sculpture which uses a venn-diagram of electromagnetic fields to allow sounds to be handled as a tactile entity and bended dynamically, sounds are arranged and dispersed back into different locations and events in Kingston. Using a sounding bucket, people in Kingston can listen in, re-arrange, explore, and play with sounds from their …

Imaginary Keyboards, Ethan Charles Isaac

Senior Projects Spring 2018

An Imperceptible Future

Originally, the intention was to create a programmatic album of some nature. At first I had come up with the concept of cataloging sounds and experiences from restaurants across the area, an idea which I may come back to at another time. But as it usually happens things do not go as planned. At the start of my senior year, I was enrolled in an electro-acoustic composition workshop run by my senior project advisor, Matt Sargent. In which I began exploring microtonal composition, something I had been building knowledge of as I spent my years here at …

Pop, Lock, And Bach It/ The Places I'Ve Been, Hannah Madelene Richter Livant

Senior Projects Spring 2017

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

The Polyrhythms Of The Ear Canal: Investigating The Human Body As An Instrument And Listening Machine Inspired By Hearing, Attention, And Alvin Lucier, Philippa Ruthe Kelmenson

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Halfway into my college career, I was asked if my attention and hearing impairments had ever benefitted me in any way. Although I refused to see it at the time, it is this exact dichotomy between hearing as passive reception and listening as active concentration that informs my musical work. From otoacoustic emissions to tinnitus frequencies, the ear is an active amplifier of its own sounds, acting as an instrument responding to sound information. To distinguish acoustic elements generated outside of the ear from those taking shape within it, we are required to internally perceive all acoustic information. But is …

Network: Audio Sculpted Through Alliance, Damien Shane Moffitt

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Network is a compilation of my work, collected from some of my collaborations where I represent the diversity and chaos of my musical career.

In the first half of this double album I explore drumming along to a dear friend’s (Leach) music, trying to add a little bit more of a live flavor. What made this more of a challenge was that I would not be able to record with an actual drum set that semester. I had to improvise and set up an electronic drum kit inside of a friend’s house. Jack Moulton was that friend. He also acted …

Saw You In A Dream, Erin Stuckenbruck

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Around the 1930’s my grandfather learned how to play the musical saw by Vaudeville in Tennessee. He then taught his children how to play, and my father did the same. Many people are unfamiliar with the fact that a handsaw can also be used as a musical instrument. For my senior concert, I wanted to show that the saw’s unique sound can in fact be incorporated in many different genres of music.

The program starts in Turkey, ~1 C.E., where the oldest complete musical composition we have record of, Epitaph Siekilos, was found on a tombstone. From there we travel …

Requiem: All That's Left Is Noise, Danielle R. Dobkin

Senior Projects Spring 2014

Danielle R. Dobkin

Artist Statement

May 2014

Requiem: All That’s Left if Noise

Requiem: All That’s Left is Noise is a personal interpretation of the traditional Latin liturgy of the Western Church’s Requiem Mass- a composition meant to be the carrier for the soul, on it’s journey to paradise. The requiem is comprised of 7 movements: Introit, Kyrie (Lord have Mercy), Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), Lycrimosa (Day of Weeping), Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy), Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light), and the Libera Me (Deliver Me). These seven movements sonically replicate the range of human emotion, ending on the soul’s delivery in …

The Trickster Cycle, Rron Karahoda

Senior Projects Spring 2013

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

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 …