Composition Commons^™

Orthography, Jeremy Gill

Music & Musical Performance

The myth of Pope Gregory I taking melodic dictation from a magical singing bird is the imaginative starting point of Western musicʼs love-hate relationship with the music notation systems it later developed. This essay traces that development through Thomas Tallis and J. S. Bach to the dichotomous modern examples of Brian Ferneyhough and Arvo Pärt. In it, I suggest that Western musicʼs eventual development hinged upon that earliest desire to document and codify melodies, answering Gregoryʼs contemporary Isidore of Seville, who lamented that “unless sounds are held by the memory of man, they perish, because they cannot be written down.”

William Albright's Whistler (1834-1903): Three Nocturnes: "Why The Hell . . . Should Anyone Listen To This?!", R. Douglas Reed

Music & Musical Performance

William Albright's Whistler (1834-1903): Three Nocturnes: "Why the hell...should anyone listen to this?!"

By Douglas Reed--2022

The article explores William Albright's Whistler (1834-1903): Three Nocturnes (1989) through historical context, musical analysis, performance practice, and the composer's essay on the relationship between his composition and Whistler's paintings. Commentary by composer Sydney Hodkinson gives information about the 1960s new music scene in Ann Arbor (the ONCE Group, The Grate Society) composition study with Ross Lee Finney.

Brown Eyes, Black Magic, Marcus Duane Norris Jr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of a large composition for chamber orchestra titled Brown Eyes, Black Magic and an accompanying analytical paper. The piece, approximately twelve minutes long, is a tribute to women of color in America. The title pays homage to the “Black Girl Magic” campaign that CaShawn Thompson founded in 2013 to empower women of color by highlighting their achievements in different fields (Wilson 2016). Although the piece is not programmatic, I tried to create a mysterious sound world, in which the listener focuses on the beauty of ever-shifting sonic colors. The composition explores musical texture and timbre, and is …

Sonic Peace: An Antithesis To Sonic Warfare, Tatiana Maria Schnitman Espindola

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sonic Peace: An Antithesis to Sonic Warfare explores certain frequencies that have been associated with various healing qualities, and seeks to bridge the sounds of antiquity and modernity. The piece draws on numerology and symbolism and adopts a cross-cultural approach in an effort to advance a cohesive universal healing message. The text featured in the composition is original, except for the use of an ancient Japanese Shinto chant.