Music Theory 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 …

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 …

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 …

The Partimento Tradition In The Shadow Of Enlightenment Thought, Deborah Longenecker

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

This presentation investigates the relationship between partimento pedagogy and Rameau’s music theories as influenced by Enlightenment thought. Current research on partimento has revealed its importance in Neapolitan music schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Along with counterpoint, partimento was a core subject in the study of composition in the Neapolitan schools; however, as pedagogy and theory began to be influenced by Enlightenment ideals such as the scientific method or a preference for clear systemization, the partimento tradition began to wane. In this presentation, I examine Rameau’s music theory as an example of Enlightenment thought in music, juxtaposing the central …

Marsilio Ficino's Music Theory, Eoin A. Trimble

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper explores the musical theory of Marsilio Ficino, a 15th century Italian philosopher. Examining his own work and those works which inspired him this paper attempts to explain his theory and understand its place in the world today. Looking at modern examples of the Renaissance philosopher's ideas shows that he may not have been too far from discovering the truth.

Art As Display, Frank M. Boardman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art is essentially a type of display. As an activity, art is what we do when we display objects with certain intentions. As a set of objects, art is all of those things that are displayed for those purposes. The artworld is the social atmosphere that surrounds this particular activity of display. And a history of art is an evolving narrative of change in the practice of this sort of display.

Specifically, to focus for convenience on art as a set of objects, this is what we can call the “displayed-object thesis”:

x is a work of art iff: (a) …

An Approach To Undergraduate Research - Developing An Understanding Of The Musical Process Through The Editing Of Early Music, Jared Chance Taylor, Gary W. Cobb

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This project is an outgrowth of a larger project that involves the eventual compilation of a series of Italian madrigals into a modern performing edition. The purpose of this project was to transcribe and edit a madrigal from Carlo Grossi’s L’Anfione musiche da camera or per tavola (Venice, 1675) in order to better understand and be able to perform an Italian madrigal as it might have been done in the late seventeenth century. Through a process of research, examination and transcription, I was able to not only to transcribe Grossi’s music into modern notation but was also able to also …

Aribo, De Musica And Sententiae, T. J. H. Mccarthy

TEAMS Varia

Music was central to the medieval church's public worship: it was the essential medium of the Mass and the Divine Office. In this new critical edition, T. J. H. McCarthy presents the Latin text and the first English translation of Aribo's musical treatise, De musica and Sententiae. Written between 1070 and 1078, it is concerned with the workings of the liturgical music that Aribo and his contemporaries called Gregorian chant, and builds off of and responds to several contemporary treatises by Abbot Bern of Reichenau and his pupil Herman, Abbot William of Hirsau, Frutolf of Michelsberg, and Theoger of Metz. …

Romantic Exoticism: The Music Of Elsewhere In The Nineteenth Century, Josiah Raiche

Senior Honors Theses

Western art music has drawn on many sources. One of these is non-western music, which can be integrated into European classical music tradition in the form of exoticism. This paper will highlight musical elements used by composers seeking to create exoticism, examine selected works, and note common elements of western music that have exotic roots. In the nineteenth century, there were three general trends in exoticism. The first, non-musical exoticism, utilizes conventional western music alongside extra-musical exotic elements. Romantic exoticism portrays distant lands using musical elements, drawing these from the audience’s perceptions of the music represented. Realistic exoticism attempts to …