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Full-Text Articles in Composition
Searching For Sounds: Instrumental Agency And Modularity In Electroacoustic Improvisation, Stephen (Red) Wierenga
Searching For Sounds: Instrumental Agency And Modularity In Electroacoustic Improvisation, Stephen (Red) Wierenga
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In their radical departure from conventional instrumental technique and standardized instruments themselves, the practices of electroacoustic improvisation present a particular challenge to prevalent Western concepts of musical instruments. These concepts—which generally treat instruments as fixed objects—are ill-equipped to account for the ways in which electroacoustic improvisers foreground the agency of their instruments and abandon the quest for “mastery” typical especially of classical attitudes. Additionally, electroacoustic improvisers often approach instruments not as singular, self-contained, and static in their materiality, but rather as modular instrumentaria capable of myriad states and ever in flux, similarly problematizing conventional conceptions that view the physical constitutions …
The Motivic Economy In Nikolai Medtner's Sonata Romantica, Nellie S. Seng-Quinn
The Motivic Economy In Nikolai Medtner's Sonata Romantica, Nellie S. Seng-Quinn
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation focuses on the motivic aspect of Medtner’s Sonata Romantica Op. 53, No. 1. Medtner, in his book, The Muse and the Fashion, has stressed through numerous statements why the initial theme is of utmost importance to him and how the entire work should be derived from the theme. The goal is to trace the journey of Medtner’s themes through the course of the sonata. Using various methods of musical analysis, I will determine whether the theme is indeed the source of latter material found within the sonata.