Composition Commons^™

Red Note New Music Festival Poster, 2020, Carl Schimmel, Roy Magnuson

Red Note New Music Festival

The RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University is a week-long event which features outstanding performances of contemporary concert music.

String Quartet No. 1 "Lanterns", Austin A. Franklin

LSU Master's Theses

String Quartet No. 1 “Lanterns” was inspired by a poem written by the American poet, novelist,

and short story writer Stephen Crane entitled “Each Small Gleam was a Voice”. In my

interpretation, this poem creates a world in which sight and sound are intrinsically linked,

connected by our inability to perceive either independently from the other. Throughout the

poem, Crane continuously creates a world in which sounds are only capable of being described

through the use of color. One line in particular, “Little songs of carmine, violet, green, gold.”, is

repeated several times throughout the poem. In “Lanterns” each of …

A Conductor's Guide To Amass By Jocelyn Hagen, Matthew J. Myers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary American composer Jocelyn Hagen grew up in Valley City, North Dakota, where she found an early love for singing, playing instruments, and composing. After completing degrees at St. Olaf College and the University of Minnesota, Hagen began a career as a full-time composer. Her appointment as Composer-in-Residence for The Singers led to her first major multimovement work, amass (2011).

Though Hagen planned to write a traditional setting of the Catholic Mass, she struggled to accept the text of the “Credo” as the only path to salvation. Thus, she substituted spiritual poems from a variety of faith traditions to create …

Symphony No.2 And The Text Setting Of Henry Purcell's Dido And Aeneas, Sungho Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This work is conceived as a unit that has two parts. Part one is an original composition, Symphony No. 2. This piece is scored for symphony orchestra and it is a sequel of the composer’s master thesis, a symphonic poem titled Moonlight Sprite, which describes the various landscapes of imaginary sprites in nature. The compositional techniques include whole tone scale, octatonic scale, pentatonic scale, atonality, bitonality, polytonality, tone clusters, and minimalism. The piece’s orchestration style and techniques are mainly influenced by Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, Penderecki, Charles Ives, and Dinos Constantinides.

Part two is an analysis of the text …

Finding Music In Chaos: Designing And Composing With Virtual Instruments Inspired By Chaotic Equations, Landon P. Viator

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Using chaos theory to design novel audio synthesis engines has been explored little in computer music. This could be because of the difficulty of obtaining harmonic tones or the likelihood of chaos-based synthesis engines to explode, which then requires re-instantiating of the engine to proceed with sound production. This process is not desirable when composing because of the time wasted fixing the synthesis engine instead of the composer being able to focus completely on the creative aspects of composition. One way to remedy these issues is to connect chaotic equations to individual parts of the synthesis engine instead of relying …

Orpheus In Cyberspace: Sonata For Solo Viola, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

Orpheus in Cyberspace is a seven movement sonata for solo viola based on the Orpheus myth, but with a twist toward the modern, technological, and cyber-frenetic world in which we live.

Dynamic Procedural Music Generation From Npc Attributes, Megan E. Washburn

Master's Theses

Procedural content generation for video games (PCGG) has seen a steep increase in the past decade, aiming to foster emergent gameplay as well as to address the challenge of producing large amounts of engaging content quickly. Most work in PCGG has been focused on generating art and assets such as levels, textures, and models, or on narrative design to generate storylines and progression paths. Given the difficulty of generating harmonically pleasing and interesting music, procedural music generation for games (PMGG) has not seen as much attention during this time.

Music in video games is essential for establishing developers' intended mood …

Zhao Xiaosheng And His Original Piano Solo Works, Ke Xue

Student Works (2020-2029)

As an influential composer in contemporary Chinese piano development, Zhao Xiaosheng has made outstanding contributions through his piano compositions, including original piano solos, transcriptions, etudes, concertos, and impromptus. His six original piano solos illustrate the development of his compositional career, which coincided with the development of Chinese new music from the period of the Cultural Revolution to the Reform and Opening-up. Therefore, in the context of Chinese new music, this research attempts to study Zhao Xiaosheng’s contributions by looking into his six original piano solo works, namely Textile Worker (纺织工人) (1974), Fisherman’s Song (渔歌) (1975), Ballade in D♭ Major (D♭大调叙事曲) …

Concerto For Violin And Orchestra And "Nevertheless, She Composed: A Contemporary Survey Of Women Composers Of The Twenty-First Century", Elizabeth Anne Knox

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two parts: the first part includes an original composition titled, “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.” This twenty-minute work is composed for traditional orchestral instrumentation and solo violin. Motivic variation is the primary focus of this piece with a goal to show evidence of a thorough understanding and use of this technique. In music composition, variation is a technique achieved by restating musical material in an altered form. Schoenberg describes a motive as, “a unit which contains one or more features of interval and rhythm [whose] presence is maintained in constant use throughout a piece.” Therefore, motivic …

Kazan Suite: For Solo 'Cello, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

The Kazan Suite is a ten-movement suite for solo 'cello written by the composer in honor of his hosts during a planned trip to Kazan, Tatarstan, Russian Federation. The trip had been planned for March 2020, but was interrupted due to the global pandemic. Yet, the work was completed ahead of the visit. The work reflects natural and humanistic ideals (Ancestors, Rivers, History, Meditations, the City, Folklore, the Imagination, Community, Mysticism, Nature).

Tillit Sydney Teddlie Papers, 1885-1987, Tillit Sydney Teddlie

Center for Restoration Studies Archives, Manuscripts and Personal Papers Finding Aids

Finding aid for the Tillit Sidney Teddlie Papers, 1885-1987.

Buckberry, Ray B., Jr., B. 1934 - Collector (Mss 685), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 685. Research material collected by Ray B. Buckberry, Jr. related to Ernest Hogan, an African American musician from Bowling Green, Kentucky, who is sometimes credited as one of the pioneers of ragtime music. He composed and wrote lyrics for numerous musical pieces for minstrel shows and published sheet music.

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.

2019-2020 New Music Festival, Christopher Theofanids, Lisa Leonard

New Music Festival

Fourteenth Annual New Music Festival

• Christopher Theofanidis, Composer-in-Residence
• Lisa Leonard, Director

Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 4:00 PM

• Faculty Favorites

Monday, January 13, 2020 at 7:30 PM

• Spotlight I: Young Composers

Tuesday, January 14, 2020 at 7:30 PM

• Spotlight II: Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition

Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 7:30 PM

• Spotlight III: The Art of Theofanidis

Grayscale Portfolio, Brandon D. Chambers

2020 Symposium Creative Works

This collection is intended to evoke the sensory details that are intensified by grayscale photography. Although photography is a visual arts medium, it possesses the potential to engage the viewers’ auditory, tactical, and olfactory senses. The color symbolism theory argues that through natural association and psychological symbolism, colors have specific connotations and therefore, elicit certain emotions. If this is, in fact, the case, what then can be gained from an image that is void of color? I feel that color often distracts the viewer from the intimate details of the images and prevents them from fully immersing themselves in the …

Cf Album, Transcriptions, And Analyses, Collin Felter

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

CF is an album of Collin Felter original compositions with a focus on creating a more approachable form of jazz harmony. To further the accessibility of the music, Felter has transcribed and analyzed his compositions for the listeners to theoretically understand what they are aurally experiencing. Included is the transcriptions/analysis document along with a link to the recordings of the album (can be found on all music streaming platforms).

Out Of The Froth Of The Sea, Rebekah Henry

West Chester University Master’s Theses

From our earliest stories and songs, we have acknowledged water as the nourishment of life. It surrounds us in our oceans and atmosphere, and carries us to new adventures. This piece bookends physical descriptions of water and how we use it in our daily lives with the spiritual: water’s role in our myths and religions as a reflection of our humanity, our relationship to the divine, and our salvation. The libretto draws on a wide variety of sources, ranging from the ancient to the modern and crossing boundaries of religion and culture. Similarly, the music is inspired by a diverse …

Bonny And Read: A Musical Of Love And Pirates, Jared Scheetz

West Chester University Master’s Theses

A musical based on the lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two women that grew up in the early 18th century. Anne was born in Ireland to a father that dressed her as a boy in an attempt to provide her with more opportunities in life. Mary was born in England to a mother that passed her off as her dead son to receive inheritance money from her deceased husband’s mother. This musical begins when the two girls come of age and continue to use their ability to pass as men in order to better their position in the …

Sovereign, Christian Johnson

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Sovereign is a musical retelling of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the last book of the Bible. This Scripture describes the end times, the temptations of Satan and his followers, the destruction of the world, the pouring out of God’s wrath on unbelievers and the presence of God’s grace within this wrath, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the battle of Armageddon, and the eternal kingdom to come. The musical work is directly inspired by the text and attempts to represent the events that are foretold.

The first movement, “Whoever Has Ears,” depicts chapters 1-4 of the book of Revelation, …

An Exploration Of Smetana’S Z Domoviny (From My Homeland), Two Pieces For Violin And Piano, Jb 1:118, Yeseul Kim

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Z domoviny (From My Homeland), by Bedřich Smetana (1824-84), is among the most colorful and effective works for violin and piano of the 19^th century, and yet it is not as well-known, nor as often performed, as many other works by Antonín Dvořák, Johannes Brahms, Pablo de Sarasate, Henryk Wieniawski and their contemporaries. This document will attempt to balance the work’s place in the repertoire and provide a performer’s guide. It consists of an historical background of the composition, including a biography of Smetana; a discussion of his compositional technique and style, along with an exploration of his nationalistic …