Musicology Commons^™

Thirty Years On: Reflections On Haydn’S “Farewell” Symphony By James Webster, L. Poundie Burstein, Elaine Sisman, W. Dean Sutcliffe, James Webster

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

It has been just over thirty years since James Webster published his influential monograph Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in His Instrumental Music (Cambridge University Press, 1991). To honor the anniversary of Webster’s groundbreaking book, the Encounters with Eighteenth-Century Music: A Virtual Forum steering committee asked L. Poundie Burstein, Elaine Sisman, and W. Dean Sutcliffe to offer perspectives on the book, and James Webster to respond to their perspectives. The interesting online session occurred on Tuesday, October 18, 2022, and included a lively open discussion following the presentations and Webster’s response. The …

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 …

Review Of Coherence In New Music: Experience, Aesthetics, Analysis, By Mark Hutchinson. (New York, Ny: Routledge, 2016)., Orit Hilewicz

Gamut: Online Journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic

A review of Mark Hutchinson's book from 2016, Coherence in New Music: Experience, Aesthetics, Analysis.

Developing Variation In The Late Work Of Morton Gould And Why It Matters, J. Wesley Flinn

Gamut: Online Journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic

American composer Morton Gould (1913-1996) was remarkably consistent stylistically over the course of his compositional career; this project examines certain motivic transformational techniques used in two of his last works, Stringmusic (1993, winner of the Pulitzer Prize) and Remembrance Day (Soliloquy for a Passing Century) (1995). These techniques, which can generally be filed under the principle of developing variation, are: 1. Mirroring and reversal; 2. Rotation; 3. Motivic expansion and contraction; 4. Additive sets; and 5. Asymmetric injection. After an overview of each technique, I give a full analysis of the fourth movement of Stringmusic using the approaches described …

The Integration Of The Style Hongrois Into Brahms’S Musical Language In His Chamber Works, Raymond D. Truong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The style hongrois is a musical language that Western European composers used to evoke the style of the Hungarian music performed by Romani musicians. This monograph explores the use of the style hongrois in the chamber works of Johannes Brahms. He uses this style often, to the point where it is integrated into his musical language. To understand where this language came from, this monograph provides a historical context of Hungary (the country of origin), the Roma who resided there and migrated westwards, and their musicians.

The second part of this monograph explores the integration of the style hongrois into …

Tunesmith Terror Techniques: Identifying Patterns In The Music Of Horror Video Games: Annotated Bibliography, Sean Kelliher

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

Ludomusicology, the study of music in video games, is a relatively new field in musicology that faces unique obstacles, like the lack of a standardized analytical method. This paper will use the ALI model proposed by Isabella van Elferen along with techniques suggested by Tim Summers to analyze various video games in the horror genre. Along with using analysis of other games as sources, this paper will compare the compositional techniques used to identify patterns that do or do not show up.

Einstein On The Beat: Transcribing Electronic Dance Music Using Methods Of Minimalist Analysis, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

This paper focuses on the transcription and methods of analysis for the modern musical genre of EDM, or electronic dance music. It takes a historical look at the origins of EDM in the early 1970s and explores how the compositional techniques of 21st century EDM producers are in fact similar to those of minimalist composers from the 1960s and 70s. By first establishing a common vocabulary to discuss the two genres, the paper will then examine compositions from both genres and attempt to provide a useful framework that can be used to analyze future catalogues of EDM.

Examining The Neoclassicism In Ravel’S Composition: Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

This article mainly analyzes the neoclassicism in Ravel's works to have a deeper understanding of Ravel. The first part of this article will discuss the definition of neoclassicism and roughly analyze the elements of neoclassicism in other arts, such as architecture and painting. Ravel's works include neoclassical elements. The third part carefully analyzes which parts of the score reflect neoclassicism and explains the reasons in detail.

Schumann’S Frauenliebe Und Leben: An Analysis Of “Nun Hast Du Mir Den Ersten Schmerz Getan”, Emily Schwitzgebel

Black & Gold

"Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan" ("Now you have caused me pain for the first time") is the eighth and final song in Robert Schumann's Frauenliebe Und Leben song cycle, based upon a poem cycle by Adelbert con Chamisso, which follows the stages of love as told by the woman—the narrator. Unique from the previous seven songs in both content and musicality, this song mourns the loss of the woman in the poem’s husband. Schumann uses techniques such as tonal unclarity, dynamics, tempo markings, and a lack of cadences in order to connect the music to Chamisso's words, …

Exploring The Past, Present, And Future Of Romanticism: Analyses With Brief Biographies Of Works Performed In A Senior Recital, Jordan Langberg Hastings

Honors Theses and Capstones

A melodic and harmonic analysis of four instrumental works performed in a senior recital is presented in this thesis with brief biographical outlines of each composer. Three of the works, Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda's Morceau de Salon, Edmund Rubbra's Sonata in C, and Robert Schumann's Three Romances are written for oboe and piano. The remaining piece, Paul Hindemith's English Horn Sonata, is written for English horn and piano. The author provides a detailed and methodical approach for understanding the functionality of each piece.

Shakespeare's Philosophy Of Music, Emily A. Sulka

Musical Offerings

Shakespeare is one of the most widely read figures in literature, but his use of music is not usually touched on in literary discussions of his works. In this paper, I discuss how Shakespeare portrays music within the context of his plays, through both dialogue and songs performed within each work. In Shakespeare’s time, Boethius’s philosophy of the Music of the Spheres was still highly popular. This was the idea that the arrangement of the cosmos mirrored musical proportions. As a result, every aspect of the universe was believed to be highly ordered, and this idea is prominent throughout Shakespeare’s …

Teleology In César Franck's Prélude, Choral Et Fugue, Stephanie Gouin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

César Franck’s Prélude, Choral et Fugue is a fine example of the composer’s mature style and contribution to musical form and language at the end of the nineteenth century. The use of a Baroque structure, such as the fugue, has a significant impact on the overall unfolding of this Romantic work. A teleological perspective will inform the analysis of the Fugue, which will constitute the core of the study. It will use concepts of design and purpose in order to explain the development of the piece as a whole, and the transformation of the musical language within the Fugue in …

"Beyond The Score: Music As Performance" By Nicholas Cook, Aron Edidin

Performance Practice Review

Aron Edidin reviews and discusses Nicholas Cook's 2013 work. Cook, Nicholas. Beyond the Score: Music as Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-19-935740-6.

After The Harmonie Universelle By Marin Mersenne (1636), What Fingering For The Chabrette In 2016?, Philippe Randonneix

Papers

No abstract provided.

A Method For Structural Analysis Of Ottoman-Turkish Makam Music Scores, Sertan Senturk, Xavier Serra

Papers

From a computational perspective, structural analysis of Ottoman- Turkish makam music (OTMM) is a research topic that has not been addressed thoroughly. In this paper we propose a method, which processes machine-readable music scores of OTMM to extract and semiotically describe the melodic and lyrical organization of the music piece automatically using basic string similarity and graph analysis techniques. The proposed method is used to identify around 50000 phrases in 1300 music scores and 21500 sections in 1770 scores, respectively. The obtained information may be useful for relevant research in music education and musicology, and it has already been used …

Constructing Proximity Graphs To Explore Similarities In Large-Scale Melodic Datasets, Chris Walshaw

Papers

This paper investigates the construction of proximity graphs in order to allow users to explore similarities in melodic datasets. A key part of this investigation is the use of a multilevel framework for measuring similarity in symbolic musical representations. The basis of the framework is straightforward: initially each tune is normalised and then recursively coarsened, typically by removing weaker off-beats, until the tune is reduced to a skeleton representation with just one note per bar. Melodic matching can then take place at every level: the multilevel matching implemented here uses recursive variants of local alignment algorithms, but in principle a …

Proceedings Of The 6th International Workshop On Folk Music Analysis, 15-17 June, 2016, Pierre Beauguitte, Bryan Duggan, John D. Kelleher

Papers

The Folk Music Analysis Workshop brings together computational music analysis and ethnomusicology. Both symbolic and audio representations of music are considered, with a broad range of scientific approaches being applied (signal processing, graph theory, deep learning). The workshop features a range of interesting talks from international researchers in areas such as Indian classical music, Iranian singing, Ottoman-Turkish Makam music scores, Flamenco singing, Irish traditional music, Georgian traditional music and Dutch folk songs. Invited guest speakers were Anja Volk, Utrecht University and Peter Browne, Technological University Dublin.

Human Pattern Recognition In Data Sonification, Charlie Cullen, William Coleman

Papers

Computational music analysis investigates the relevant features required for the detection and classification of musical content, features which do not always directly overlap with musical composition concepts. Human perception of music is also an active area of research, with existing work considering the role of perceptual schema in musical pattern recognition. Data sonification investigates the use of non-speech audio to convey information, and it is in this context that some potential guidelines for human pattern recognition are presented for discussion in this paper. Previous research into the role of musical contour (shape) in data sonification shows that it has a …

Musica In Tempore Belli: An Analysis Of “Black Angels”, Calvin D. Hitchcock

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Described as “…extraordinarily haunting” and “[the] intoxicating magic of…sound,”(Steinitz, 1978) the music of George Crumb is some of the most evocative and expressive music of the 20th century. His extensive use of extended techniques (many of which he pioneered) is in part what makes his music so memorable. Also known for its liberal use of theatricality, Crumb’s music has become a standard of the 20th century, as well as in the contemporary music canon overall.

“Black Angels” for Electric String Quartet, subtitled “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land” was written as a response to the Vietnam War and is one …