Composition Commons^™

Oneira: New Music & Animation, Jennifer Bellor, Christine A. Banna

Creative Collaborations

UNLV Composer Dr. Jennifer Bellor collaborated with Christine Banna, animator from the Rochester Institute of Animation to create ONEIRA, a sci-fi animation music video Christine Banna created to pair with Jennifer Bellor’s composition, Oneira. Written for the electronic MalletKAT, vibraphone, and two marimbas, and recorded by the percussion quartet, Clocks in Motion, this 11-minute work is inspired by virtual worlds and dreaming. This track is also featured on Bellor’s most recent album, also titled ONEIRA, which was released by Aerocade Music August 19, 2022.

Bellor first created the music, imagining that this composition will be paired with …

A Comparison Of Uniaxial Compressive Response And Inelastic Deformation Mechanisms In Freeze Cast Alumina-Epoxy Composites Without And With Rigid Confinement, Tareq Aljuhari

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Cellular ceramics have an array of improved mechanical properties that make them incredibly desired for different applications such as armor systems, aircraft structures, automobiles bumpers, and biomedical implants. It is also desirable that porous architecture could be shaped into bulk complicated shapes and easy to scale-up with low manufacturing cost. Despite several efficient techniques to fabricate cellular ceramics, some limitations are preventing us from meeting the high demand of the after mentioned applications. For that, freeze casting, also called ice-templating, is technique of solidifying an aqueous ceramic suspension under the effect of unidirectional temperature gradient. In this study, Ice-templated porous …

Listen To The River: Dolores, Ophelia, And Female Resistance In Opera, Daniel Aaron Barnidge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The music of female characters in the great masterpieces of opera often demonstrates resistance to and undermines the abuse they have historically received in opera plots. The Mexican folktale that my opera, The Tragedy of La Llorona, draws inspiration from plays on many of the same tropes historically found in female characters in opera including madness, sexuality, and lack of agency. This led to research into the portrayal of women in opera as part of my pre-compositional process and my desire to access this tale free from the traditional 'marianismo' and 'machismo' narratives it is associated with and which …

Saxophone Odyssey

DePaul Magazine

DePaul alumnus Jon Irabagon charts his own course in the jazz world between hard-bop tradition and improvisational exploration as a performer, composer and producer.

Straubgetzeichnet: Organ Fantasy, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

Organ fantasy written for Christopher Anderson in honor of the publication of his biography of Karl Straube. The title is a portmanteau of the words "Straube" and "Ausgezeichnet" ("excellent") in German, referring to Dr. Anderson's achievement in completing such an extensive work after nearly 15 years of labors.

A Theory Of Text Setting Contour: A Proposed Theory That Places Text At The Structural Foreground Of The Analysis Of Vocal Music, Grace K. Weaver

Music ETDs

How can contour theory be used to analyze a composer’s setting of a poem? Can this approach provide insights that lead to an interpretation of the composer’s setting of the text? This study presents a new contour theory on text setting by examining two different settings of the same text. This theory examines one aspect of the music, the vocal line, and plots syllable’s locations in two dimensions of music: pitch space and duration. Using these data points, one can suggest an interpretation of the poem. Through the application of this theory to Fanny Hensel and Franz Schubert’s setting of …

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.

Archetype, Story, And Myth Within Bulgarian Folklore And Black American Music, Wes C. Georgiev

University Honors Theses

The confluence of several disciplines is explored through the investigation of archetypes, stories, folklore, and myths within the realm of music composition. This research aims to draw fresh conclusions which contend with some of the meanings of being a human. All research is done in conjunction with the creation of a new body of compositions written and arranged for piano, upright bass, and drum set. The academic objective of these pieces is to combine many of the salient characteristics of Bulgarian Folk music with those of Black American music. The supporting research in this essay examines centuries of migration, conflict, …

Homage To Eleanora: A Musical Journey Through The Billie Holiday Songbook, Keith A. Dames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Billie Holiday was a singer, songwriter, vocalist, bandleader and composer in the fields of music, black culture and more specifically the genre of jazz. The primary focus of this study is Billie Holiday’s discography, music, and compositions as treated in relation to the black culture of production. This study will explore a secondary content analysis of Billie Holiday’s music, musicianship, musicality and compositional skills within the American jazz mainstream, broader jazz audience and world at large. This project will take an analytical look at the structure and form of the compositions of Billie Holiday. Billie Holiday is credited with composing …

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 …

Project Metamorphosis: Designing A Dynamic Framework For Converting Musical Compositions Into Paintings, Rao Hamza Ali, Grace Fong, Erik Linstead

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

The authors present an automated, rule-based system for converting piano compositions into paintings. Using a color-note association scale presented by Edward Maryon in 1919, which correlates 12-tone scale with 12 hues of the color circle, the authors present a simple approach for extracting colors associated with each note played in a piano composition. The authors also describe the color extraction and art generation process in detail, as well as the process for creating “moving art,” which imitates the progression of a musical piece in real time. They share and discuss artworks generated for four well-known piano compositions.

Creating Musical Scores Inspired By The Intersection Of Human Speech And Music Through Model-Based Cross Synthesis, William Alexander Thompson Iv

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research addresses the development of machine learning techniques used to create musical scores and performances that are inspired by the intersection of speech and music. Machine learning models are created from MIDI files that are transcribed from datasets of musical audio recordings and human speech audio recordings. Through the creation of succinct models, model based cross synthesis is possible. Models trained on musical MIDI data are asked to replicate MIDI data that approximate human speech. Alternatively, models that have been trained on MIDI data that approximate speech are asked to replicate musical MIDI data. The product of these developed …

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 …

Energy Portraits For Flute, Clarinet In B-Flat, Violin, Cello, Piano, And Percussion, Luis Solis

Music Theses and Dissertations

Energy Portraits is a 25-minute work for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion based on the nine Enneagram personality types. The Enneagram system delves into underlying motivations and thought patterns of different people rather than only external behaviors, so this piece incorporates the typical overall energy of each number as a miniature portrait. The movements are not in the same order as the nine types from the Enneagram but are reordered and renamed for musical reasons. This allows the listeners who are not familiarized with the Enneagram to still understand the theme and energy of each movement.

Flourish is …

Outcast: A Compositional Interpretation Of Lgbtqia+ Members' Self Love Stories In Social Participation, Victor G. Garcia

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

In history, it has been known to the world that the LGBT community has been facing challenges in this society, and where struggles occur, love must prevail. To numerically determine these 4 qualifying people, a behavioral survey was released for them to answer. The interpretation process was done by arranging the ideas from the interview transcription, planning the song themes ahead of time, and using creative figurative languages. After creating the songs, another survey was sent to the four participants for evaluation and subjective criticisms. Results show that all participants have agreed that the songs created can positively influence the …

White Dashes: A Research And Music Compilation On How Songwriters Harness And Understand The Concept Of Writing Based On Foreign Experiences., Stephanie Ann D. Lavoie

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

Music is part of more than we realize, without music in movies, advertisements, video games, films, and many other types of media, it would change how we immerse ourselves in these other worlds. This research focuses on writing music based on foreign experiences, meaning working with others and meeting their needs while maintaining creative liberty. A survey was conducted where songwriters and composers answered questions about differences between writing based on personal and foreign experiences, along with their opinions on how to write music for others. After the survey, interviews were conducted with some of those who answered the google …

Three Etudes For Marimba And Pandeiro: Contemporary Marimba Music As A New Setting For The Brazilian Pandeiro, Eduardo Marques Do Prado

Doctoral Projects

The history of frame drums and idiophones has thousands of years. The modern versions of the pandeiro and the marimba are relatively new to those families of instruments. While the marimba found its niche in contemporary music, the pandeiro has been mostly used in Brazilian traditional music. The current project brings those two instruments together, allowing the pandeiro to express its versatility. Executing the intricate rhythms, uneven patterns, and alternating time signatures from within the Three Etudes for Marimba and Pandeiro is an example of what can be done with this amazing frame drum. These three pieces provide the pandeiro …

A Poet's Voice: Music In Service To Poetry: Elements Of Text Painting In Juliana Hall's Song Cycle "How Do I Love Thee?", Hayley Z. Coughin

Dissertations, 2020-current

American composer Juliana Hall has established a reputation as one of the leading composers of contemporary American art songs, having composed over 60 song cycles, totaling over 300 works for the voice. Hall’s song cycle How Do I Love Thee? expresses a narrative arc told through five selections from Victorian-era poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems selected include Sonnet 3: “Unlike,” Sonnet 43: “How Do I Love Thee?,” Sonnet 37: “Pardon,” Sonnet 21: “Say Over,” and Sonnet 41: “Thank You.” Hall’s cycle describes the relationship between the lover and the object of their love, including …

Using Geologic Principles And Data To Create A Symphony For Wind Ensemble, Thomas J. Davis

2022 Symposium

Geology and geologic processes have featured in many pieces of classical music such as Alan Hovhaness’ symphonic works after Mt. St. Helens and Glacier Peak but these pieces are impressionistic and only take general inspiration from the geology of their subjects. This paper describes the creation of Tectonics (2021) a piece which incorporates and describes many geologic principles and processes, such as mantle convection, through the musical form of cannon, the formation of fold and thrust belts whose cross sections are directly visually recreated in the score, and the physical dynamics of earthquake waves demonstrated through variations of pitch and …

Production As Analysis In Commercial Music Recordings, Simeon P. Church

Composition/Recording Projects

Since the 1960s, scholarship of popular music in the fields of musicology and music theory has blossomed (Kajanová 2013). The inclusion of the social sciences and humanities in music analysis has allowed for new methodologies in commercial music analysis. Although new methodologies have been developed around popular song analysis, they are notably absent in the field of music production (Blake 2012, 1). In this thesis, I will assert that music production is an under-explored facet of commercial music that offers abundant opportunities for analysis.