Composition Commons^™

Ave, Regina Caelorum, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

Ave, Regina Caelorum is one choral piece of the planned 12-part "Marian Cycle" based on some twelve Latin (and other) texts about the Virgin Mary. The composer began the piece "Ave, Regina Caelorum" in 2013 but only finished it in 2020. The Stabat Mater was completed in 2013 and published at Columbia University Academic Commons. The planned works include the following, but may have others added later: 1) Stabat Mater, 2) Ave Regina Caelorum, 3) Alma Redemptoris Mater, 4) Ave Maris Stella, 5) Angelus, 6) Flos Carmeli, 7) Ave Maria, 8) Magnificat, 9) Memorare, 10) Regina Caeli/Coeli, 11) Salve Regina, …

The Seven Valleys For Orchestra And A Study Of Music Composition Pedagogy, Niloufar Iravani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part consists of an original orchestral work, The Seven Valleys, featuring seven movements, each of which presents various musical elements. The piece is a symphonic poem inspired by a chapter with the same name in the celebrated masterpiece of Persian literature, The Conference of the Birds, by the 12^th-century poet Farid ud-Din Attar. The second part presents a study of music composition pedagogy, investigating past and present pedagogical practices in music composition. Chapter 3 provides a conceptual and historical examination of music composition pedagogy. Chapter 4 surveys the …

Analyzing Perceptions Of Music From A Songwriting Perspective, Jackson Stephen Reynosa

Communication Studies

This study seeks to understand listeners’ perceptions of music from a generational and songwriting approach. A total of 123 participants aged 18 and older took part in an open-ended survey design that measured their subjective music preferences. Four different sections tested participants’ music taste, music tied to generations, an original song made by the researcher, and songwriting in a holistic sense. It was found that participants exercised individualism and authenticity in their responses throughout. By using the Uses and Gratifications Theory, it is explainable that people listened and sought out music for their own unique reasons. By applying Mood Management …

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 …

A Cajun Tale, Daniel D. Schultz

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Not required for Music Composition

“A Lot Of Stories In My Mind”: Perspectives Of Children And Elders Living With Dementia On Intergenerational Collaboration In A Participatory Music Project, Cameron Dusman

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Trends of music engagement include a shift towards presentational music culture, as well as inequitable access to participatory music-making for some populations. Meanwhile, trends of societal engagement include ageism and age-segregation. Especially for people living with dementia, stigma often prevents equitable access to creative participatory arts. This convergent, mixed-methods case study design explored participation in an intergenerational, participatory creative arts project. Participants included children from an elementary school and senior adults with dementia in a memory care neighborhood. The purpose was to explore the meaning of participation and interaction in the project from participants’ perspectives. Participants collaborated in eight sessions …

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.

Nausea, Jacob Dickerson

Music Theses and Dissertations

The popular novel Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre, tells the story of a fictional adventurer, Antoine Roquentin, and his struggle to understand the surrounding world. This novel illustrates the basics of Sartre’s existentialism. Sartre introduced the concept of “bad faith,” by which he meant the delusion that things in our lives must always be as they are. “Bad faith” and freedom are the core of Sartre’s message. Sartre shares the deep irony that we are “condemned to freedom” and implores us to understand responsibility in a more meaningful way. His philosophy forces us to own up to what we have …

The Making Of When We Say Goodnight, Andrew Newman

Honors Theses

The following thesis documents the writing and recording of When We Say Goodnight, an album by Lo Noom. The author discusses the various influences that led to the development of the album’s concept. The album is meant to explore the feelings the author associates with summer nights in Mississippi. He attempts to create a world in which the songs and feelings live. He discusses the album’s song development and various recording processes. As he brings the album to completion, a struggle emerges between the author’s desire to please his audience and his desire to create for his own personal enjoyment. …

Creativity And The Evolution Of Musical Ideas: Putting The Creative Principles Of Austin Kleon To Work, Dustin Schulze

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

All composers internalize the musical ideas of other composers and infuse them into their own original work. But the fear of being labeled “derivative” causes most composers to shy away from talking about these influences openly and directly. In Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like an Artist, he faces the issues of influence and imitation in a deliberately self-aware fashion. The principal objective of this thesis will be to internalize the musical ideas of other composers and infuse them into an original musical work of my own, entitled Kyros. By articulating the exact way in which I am using the work …

Folk Music Of Atlantis: An Exploration Of Water As A Sound Source In Music, Lucy Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Folk Music of Atlantis is a programmatic composition for water instruments and orchestra depicting the mythical city of Atlantis. I have researched water’s musical properties: its pitch bending, its ability to create sound through motion, and its percussive effects on various materials. Drawing upon my research, I have invented a collection of water-based instruments that take advantage of these properties. Folk Music of Atlantis demonstrates their potential, combining them with both the traditional orchestra and the innovations in water music of past composers.

The written portion of the thesis includes a historical overview of water as a musical sound source, …

A Survey Of Modern Companion Pieces Outlining Specific Compositional Similarities Between Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem And Mack Wilberg's Requiem Aeternam And Let Peace Then Still The Strife, Joel Dunlap

Dissertations

Companion compositions can best be described as musical works composed to specifically coordinate in conjunction with a preexisting musical work. For the sole purpose and intention of complementing or coalescing with another work, the two companion compositions could share similar subject matter, choral/vocal or orchestral themes, and motifs, length, text treatment, context. Evidence in this survey will expound upon various examples of companion compositions from prominent modern-day composers.

The primary objective of this research is to study specific compositional characteristics, correlations, and relationships between Mack Wilberg’s two original compositions – Requiem aeternam and Let peace then still the strife with …

Negative Harmony: The Shadow Of Harmonic Polarity On Contemporary Composition Techniques, Debora Haller

Composition/Recording Projects

If we are to blame any composer for the puzzling question ‘What is Negative Harmony?’ that caused a worldwide itch on the creative minds of many young composers in this century, it would be Jacob Collier, who introduced the world with prodigious, colorful harmonies upon releasing his first album “In My Room” in 2016. Provided with brief answers during interviews with June Lee that explained the concept of tones and chords being mirrored on an axis center in the opposite direction, the surface of Negative Harmony was exposed but led to even more confusion. Prompted by even more questions, the …

A Violist In Nashville: The Viola’S Role In The Nashville Recording Industry, Patrick Monnius

Composition/Recording Projects

The viola, the violins larger and often overlooked sibling, is not the instrument people would typically think of when they think of Nashville. That honor would most likely go to either the fiddle or acoustic guitar. But present day Nashville is home to much more than the Country music that originally gave the city its' famous moniker Music City. The recording scene now encompasses almost every genre of popular music imaginable as well as a large amount of video game, television, and movie recording. Through this project, I attempted to explore the multitude of ways in which viola can be …

In Time Gone By: Song Cycle For Baritone And Six Players, Bryan Grosbach

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

In Time Gone By is a song cycle for Baritone vocalist and Pierrot Ensemble + percussion that explores the value of life being a byproduct of its finitude. Only during the most vulnerable and difficult events of that life can self-realization occur. These topics are wrapped into a “love-story” narrative crafted from select poems from Chamber Music by James Joyce and select quotes from the prose Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne. Using intervallic focus as a tool for development, the piece transitions from sparse quintal harmony to lush tertian harmony as a musical metaphor for the self-realization of …

The Dinner: An Opera In One Act., Rachael Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After getting engaged Kate decides to invite her estranged mother over to come out as queer. As Kate attempts to appease her mother, who fervently disagrees with her lifestyle, choices, and sexuality, the dinner starts over, progressively becoming stranger until Kate must finally confront their relationship.

Medusa For Three Sopranos And Chamber Orchestra., Joshua Baerwald

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many people know the story of Medusa as she relates to Hercules' adventures. Most think of her as the monster who turns anyone who looks into her eyes into stone. Few people know, however, why Medusa was that way. One of the first written versions of Medusa's story comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, written in 8 AD. Ovid says that Medusa's beauty invited jealous aspirations from many suitors. One of those suitors was Poseidon, God of the Sea. As was often the case in Greek myth, Poseidon did whatever it would take to have Medusa, and raped her in Athena's Temple. …

The Third Truth, John Paul Chapman

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This composition, scored for a full symphonic orchestra, is based on the theory of truth discussed by Bertrand Russell. Objective truth, he states, must satisfy three criteria. The first element of truth is to acknowledge that it has an opposite. The second element of truth is a property of belief, statement, and perception. The third requisite is to acknowledge that truth consists in coherence. The introduction to this composition invokes the confluence of the three elements by utilizing discordant harmonies. In the next two movements, a theme is developed for each element. The First Truth, representing conflict, possesses a dark …

Murder Music: Horror Film Soundtracks Throughout History, Vincent G. Aragon

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Horror films often rely heavily on their music to create a tense and frightening experience for their audience, and it is the composer's job to write a score that satisfies that requirement. Throughout film history, the methods composers utilize to achieve that goal differ across time due to various factors including available technology, allotted budget, and the norms and expectations of films at the time. This capstone paper explores the different approaches composers employed in writing horror soundtracks from the early 20th century to the modern-day, noting any significant shifts and common themes found in the music of popular horror …