Composition Commons^™

Ways Of Silence And Other Absences In The Music Of George Crumb, Jean-Patrick Besingrand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of American composer George Crumb (1929-2022) is undeniably singular in the musical landscape. His aesthetic is often characterized by his exploration of timbre, his graphic scores, his use of quotation, his theatricality, and his interest in unusual instruments. This study proposes to take a different approach to Crumb’s aesthetic through the spectrum of silences and other absences. The concept of silence will be broken down and reconstructed through the Japanese concept of ma (間) and of empty spaces. Multiple types of silences and absences will be considered throughout this dissertation, expanding thus the concept of silence not only …

Play Makes Perfect: An Exploration Of Game And Play Elements In Composition And Performance, Gabrielle Chou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore the intersection of play and games in Western classical music and define a new category of pieces, “ludic pieces,” which contain play structures and game mechanics within their composition. Starting with surveying perspectives in ludology and ludomusicology, including those by Roger Caillois, Johan Huizinga, Jesper Juul, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman, I will examine various definitions of a “game” and what its qualifying aspects are. I will then turn to music and consider pieces that interact with play and games without containing game structures, including examples of musical humor and pieces which evoke the imagery …

Identity And Complexity In Chaya Czernowin’S Ina, Eliav Kohl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chaya Czernowin’s Ina (1988) for solo bass flute and six pre-recorded flute parts, unfolds the drama of a protagonist battling her conflicting inner voices. Czernowin interrogates the concept of identity and asks the questions—what is an identity? To what extent can a particular identity endure its own complexities? My analysis demonstrates how the growing levels of musical complexity represent the growing independence of Ina’s multiple inner voices, and how musical simplicity enables their unification. I present two oppositional forces: an intertwining force, and a splitting force. The intertwining force acts very much like a gravitational force in the musical domain—it …

Monarch Butterflies, Ralph Mendoza

Theses and Dissertations

This piece is a continuation of capturing my experience from my trip to Paraguay. This first part, of a three part movement, attempts to describe the beginning relationship between Human and Nature. This piece focuses on the feeling of tranquility, anxiousness and destruction.

"Overture" (For Emmanuel), Katherine Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

“Overture” (For Emmanuel) is a piece derived from twelve melodies from the composer’s original musical, Emmanuel. The piece is for full orchestra, and is five minutes and forty-seven seconds long.

Unsuk Chin’S Hyper-Sheng: Sonic And Structural Development In Šu For Sheng And Orchestra, Hyun-Kyung Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Korean composer Unsuk Chin (b. 1961) is constantly exploring new sonic experiences in her works; her concerto Šu for Sheng and Orchestra (2009) is drawing considerable attention, as it is Chin’s first piece written for an Asian instrument. This study begins with a simple inquiry How does Chin combine an Asian instrument (sheng) with the Western orchestra? To answer this question, this research examines Chin’s treatment of the sheng and the development of the orchestra in partnership with the solo instrument, focusing on the creation of what she terms a “hyper-sheng:” the solo sheng and the orchestra collaboratively producing …

7 Preludes For "Music Can Sleep" For Pierrot Ensemble, Matthew Sandahl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The material was culled from sketches for four distinct abandoned projects, one of which was titled ‘Music can sleep.’ Eventually I became less interested in seeing a particular idea to fruition and more concerned with selecting and arranging from an archive of unfinished fragments. The principle criteria for selection included psychological potency and the music’s capacity to convey the mood of the moment in which they were written.

i. fragment for maria 9/7/20
ii. curtain 5/31/20
iii. premonition / toy no. 1 11/1/19
iv. dream 11/6/19
v. punchline 8/11/21
vi. song / toy no. 2 5/21/20
vii. sprite 5/12/20

Clarinet And Shadow, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Clarinet and Shadow is a musical composition for clarinet and electronics. In the piece, live electronics pitch shift the sound of the clarinet to create harmonies and add the sound of an artificial instrument. The electronics are the clarinet's shadow: unreal, always there, and tied to its movement.

“The Theory Is Not Yet Music”: An Analysis Of Pierre Schaeffer’S Etude Aux Allures, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout his career, Pierre Schaeffer composed several sound works to test and inspire his evolving musical theories. By composing with edited sound recordings, rather than traditional musical instruments, he hoped to discover new ways of creating musical structures based on sound parameters other than pitch. This study is an analysis of Schaeffer’s sound work Etude aux allures. This Etude examines the musical potential of the sound parameter allure, which is Schaeffer’s term for the pulsed modulation of pitch, volume, or other sound parameters. Without the existence of a standardized analytical methodology, the Etude is viewed from several perspectives. First, a …

Rima, Gregory J. Menillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instrumental work for violin and piano based on a sestina by Dante Alighieri; written to commemorate the poet on the 700th anniversary of his death. Commissioned by Elena Augilar Kosta for Eriko Sato and David Oei. This piece received its premier by Curtis Macomber and Steven Beck on May 20, 2022 in Elebash Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Non-Tonal Pitch Hierarchies And Dramatic Narratives In Oliver Knussen’S Variations, Op. 24, Joseph Prestamo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Musical analysts have often commented on the lingering echoes of tonality present within the otherwise non-centered (and remarkably complex) harmonic world of Oliver Knussen’s music. Using his piece Variations, Op. 24 as a model, this project hypothesizes that the compositional techniques Knussen employs serve to create non-tonal pitch hierarchies. Although Knussen does not use functional tonal harmony in this piece, he finds a variety of ways to elevate the pitch A to a place of prominence, both on the musical surface and in the background structural operations. These techniques naturally result in pitch spaces that are rich with tonal and …

The Significance Of Sonic Branding To Strategically Stimulate Consumer Behavior: Content Analysis Of Four Interviews From Jeanna Isham’S “Sound In Marketing” Podcast, Ina Beilina

Student Theses and Dissertations

Purpose:
Sonic branding is not just about composing jingles like McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It.” Sonic branding is an industry that strategically designs a cohesive auditory component of a brand’s corporate identity. This paper examines the psychological impact of music and sound on consumer behavior reviewing studies from the past 40 years and investigates the significance of stimulating auditory perception by infusing sound in consumer experience in the modern 2020s.

Design/methodology/approach:
Qualitative content analysis of audio media was used to test two hypotheses. Four archival oral interview recordings from Jeanna Isham’s podcast “Sound in Marketing” featuring the sonic branding experts …

Life, Man, Diane Wong

Theses and Dissertations

This piece paints the picture of what life felt like from the composer’s vantage point, specifically at the time when the composition was conceived. The first section employs the first sixteen pitches present in the harmonic series as an embodiment of the pure nature of sound – vibration, physics, and acoustics. The middle section shows a dynamic that pulls in two directions, one going sharper and sharper ascending through the circle of fifths and the other going flatter and flatter descending, all the while a steady pedal point in the center of the axis nonchalantly ticks like clockwork. As this …

Chiral Reflection, Alyssa Regent

Theses and Dissertations

Chiral Reflection was written for flutist Emi Fergusson and is inspired both by nature and chemistry. The melodic core of the work is derived from the wailing of loons. Loons are birds inhabiting Northern American forests. They are often found on large lakes, usually in pairs. Their wail is believed to be a contact call. In this piece, the loon asks: “where are you”, without an answer back from its partner.

This image of the lonely bird call on a lake at twilight piqued my curiosity regarding the natural phenomena of reflections. I was made aware of the physics of …

A Bird’S Eye View: Large-Scale Tonal Structures In Robert Schumann’S Four Song Cycles (Op. 42, 24, 39, And 48), Peter Kramer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Some of Robert Schumann’s most notable works are his Lieder for solo voice and piano accompaniment. Schumann's Lieder are considered some of the best compositions in this genre, engendering various interpretations by performers and exciting vigorous debate among musicologists and theorists. Robert Schumann’s early music was almost entirely composed for the piano alone; it wasn’t until 1840 that he started to compose almost exclusively Lieder and song cycles inspired by his predecessors Beethoven and Schubert. This was a prolific year for Schumann compositionally, in part due to his marriage to Clara Schumann who was one of Europe’s most preeminent piano …

Strength And Vulnerability In Maurice Ravel’S Sonata For Violin And Cello And Osvaldo Golijov’S Mariel For Cello And Marimba: An Analysis Through Performance And Composition, Andrea Casarrubios

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In order to “stimulate more ambitious performances,” as David Lewin writes in his Studies in Music with Text, this dissertation is meant to provide new perspectives into two preexisting works, Maurice Ravel’s Sonate pour Violon et Violoncelle, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel for cello and marimba, through the active making of two original compositions written for similar instrumentations, La Libertad se levantó llorando for violin and cello, and Speechless for cello and percussion. Taking Lewin’s proposition into consideration, I share performance insights and discuss how the creation of these new compositions have influenced my interpretations of the two respective …

2019 Overture, Philip H. Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Composed for the Hunter Symphony Orchestra Call for Scores.

To Launch A Thousand Ships, Daniel Silva

Theses and Dissertations

Inspired by Madeline Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles (2012), To Launch a Thousand Ships is a four-movement orchestral piece that depicts the story of Achilles and the Trojan War.

The Quartet’S Death: Embodiment, Performativity, And Physicality In Heinz Holliger’S 1973 String Quartet, Vicente Alexim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout the twentieth century and continuing today, many composers have explored and expanded the ways in which performers are asked to interact with their musical instruments. Often referred to as “extended techniques,” these modes of playing frequently produce sounds of indefinite pitch, or which fall outside equal temperament, and the works that employ them rely on the physicality of these techniques in order to create additional layers of meaning. The concrete parameters involved in making use of such resources can sometimes take precedence over or drive other more abstract compositional materials such as precise pitch and rhythm, but their influence …

A Schema-Theoretic Approach To Hierarchy In Eighteenth-Century Tonality, Simon K. S. Prosser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prevalent modern-day theories of tonal hierarchy for eighteenth-century music, especially those influenced by the ideas of Heinrich Schenker, have been called into question by schema theorists such as Robert Gjerdingen and Vasili Byros, who argue from both cognitive and historical evidence that eighteenth-century tonal cognition was sequential or “windowed” rather than hierarchical. This dissertation seeks to recuperate the concept of tonal hierarchy in eighteenth-century music, drawing on research that reconstructs the implicit tonal theories of the partimento and thoroughbass traditions, as well as concepts of hierarchy from schema theory itself, to formulate a historically and cognitively grounded theory of tonal …

Sacred Music In Colonial Era Hispaniola: The Evangelization Of The Taino People, Tito J. Gutierrez

Student Theses

During the 15th-18th centuries, the major European religious orders; the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Jeronymites, journeyed to the newly colonized American territories in an attempt to convert the multitudes of natives peoples living there. Along with prayer books, crucifixes, and religious images, these missionaries brought sacred European music to American shores in an attempt to attract the native people to the Catholic faith.The use of music as a tool for conversion of native people in places such as Mexico, South America, California, and the South West United States, have been well researched and documented. However, the research of the spiritual …

Signal To Noise: Harmonic Temperaments And Patterns Of Interference, Dylan A. Marcheschi

Theses and Dissertations

An audio/visual exploration of historical tuning systems. Most contemporary Western audiences will seldom if ever encounter harmony outside of post-Renaissance tuning conventions. This presentation highlights some of those pre-orthodox harmonic relationships which existed throughout most of history. The corresponding paper documents correlates in recent advances of acoustic ecology.

For The Love Of Inner Voices: Miriam Gideon, Orchestration, And Fortunato, Whitney E. George

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Post-tonal American opera composer Miriam Gideon (1906-1996) completed a chamber opera, perhaps intended for television, titled Fortunato, based on a dark comic tragedy set in turn-of-the-20th-century, economically-ravaged Madrid. The expressive staged work follows the life of the unfortunate title character Fortunato in three operatic vignettes, each one becoming more desperate and moribund by the scene. A curious piece in Gideon’s oeuvre, the work remained unfinished, with a piano score for the complete work, but only a sample of her orchestration for Scene 1. This study examines the orchestration of Scene 1 as a template for creating an orchestration similar in …

Princess Maleine, Whitney E. George

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Act I Full Score. Chamber opera in two acts, based on a story by the Brothers Grimm and the play by Maurice Maeterlinck. Commissioned and first produced by dell’Arte Opera Ensemble. Premiered at LaMaMa Experimental Theater, New York August 2019 with The Curiosity Cabinet, conducted by Whitney George.

Martial Caillebotte’S Mélodies And Scènes Lyriques: Analytical Essays And Performance Guide, Dominique Mccormick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Composer, pianist and photographer, Martial Caillebotte (1853–1910) was the unknown younger brother of famous Impressionist painter, Gustave Caillebotte. Martial studied piano and harmony at the Paris Conservatory from 1870–1874. Martial created a substantial number of musical compositions including mélodies, scènes lyriques, operas, symphonic poems, as well as sacred choral and symphonic works. Born into a wealthy Parisian family, he did not need to work for a living and did not self-promote, therefore his pieces were rarely performed and after his death, most of his compositions were left in family archives. In the late 1990’s a rebirth of interest in the …

The Modes Of Intervention In Alvin Lucier’S I Am Sitting In A Room, Daniel Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1969) is an icon of experimental music and sound art. The sizable literature addressing the aesthetic and philosophical implications of this piece rarely discusses the performance practice beyond what is indicated in the score itself. This is problematic for two reasons: 1) The meaning that is derived from the piece often hinges not just on what sounds are obtained, but on how they are obtained. 2) Over the past 50 years, changes in the performance practice have altered what constitutes the work: magnetic tape was used until 2000 when it was replaced …

Encounters: System For Creative Improvisation, Drake R. Andersen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Encounters is an indeterminate musical composition or, more precisely, a flexible system for creative improvisation. Performers improvise and interact with one another through four possible games whose instructions are laid out in the performance materials. This version of Encounters includes parts for flute, clarinet in B-flat, violin, viola, cello, double bass, percussion and piano, reflecting the performing forces of the premiere. However, the instrumentation is open, and any of the parts can be adapted to other instruments contingent upon the range and transposition of the particular instrument. The duration is indeterminate.

The Scream Of Nature, Noah Wood

Theses and Dissertations

The Scream of Nature is a musical composition by American composer Noah Wood (b. August 28,1997) for Pierrot ensemble consisting of: Flute, Violin, Clarinet, Cello and Piano. The composition was written in the span of approximately 5 months with preliminary sketches beginning in December of 2019. It's final details were completed on May 6, 2020.

This composition seeks to dissolve metric hierarchy prescribed by time signatures to help the performers find an intuitive pulse within the musical content on a case-by-case basis. Free time (ad lib.) sections are implemented as well, fully up to the performers interpretation as reaction to …

Air, The Contents, Ian C. Mcnally

Theses and Dissertations

Air, The Contents is an encapsulation of the environments of four different places in New York State. It is written for Pierrot Ensemble with a run time of around 8 minutes.

Two Cello Works Of Pēteris Vasks: Structure, Symbolism, And Identity, Caroline Bean Stute

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents analyses of two compositions for cello by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks: Grāmata Čellam (1978), for solo cello, and Concerto No. 2, “Klātbūtne” (“Presence,” 2011–2012), for cello and string orchestra. It acquaints readers with defining elements of Vasks’s musical language and relates his music to the concurrent stylistic classifications of Baltic Minimalism and Neoromanticism. The paper also discusses the significance of Vasks’s national identity in his creative process and provides historical context on Latvia.