Music Theory Commons^™

The Portrayal Of Women In Opera: An Analytical Study Of The Music In Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Sophie Hage

Music Department Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Rhythmic Theory Pedagogy, Ways Of Knowing, And Experiential Learning, Ben Duinker

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

This article proposes an approach to rhythmic theory pedagogy that foregrounds the intersection of performance, creation, and analysis. Daphne Leong’s recent work on this intersection uses the German verbs wissen (knowing that), können (knowing how), and kennen (knowing of) to describe the different kinds of knowledge generated and utilized by theorists and performers. I use Leong’s theory to identify a mismatch, or gap, between what undergraduate students learn about rhythm in the theory classroom and what their practical needs are as music majors—a plurality of whom specialize in performance. As a means of remedying this mismatch, I use David Kolb’s …

Volume 37, Various Authors

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Volume 37 of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy.

Reining In Pitch And Pitch-Class Motives: Rules For Improving Analytic Outcomes In The Tonal Theory Classroom, Brent Auerbach

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Pitch-based motives proliferate in many styles of music and are routinely covered in undergraduate instruction. The treatment motives receive, however, is usually cursory. Tonal theory instructors have many reasons for skimming the motivic analysis unit, among them time pressures, underestimating the topic’s complexity, and the influence of textbook design. This standard rushed approach yields poor outcomes in which students are unable to reliably identify recurrences of a small set of motives over any musical span. They are as likely to apply brackets and labels indiscriminately to too many (trivial) events as they are to under-analyze large stretches of motivically-significant events. …

Basic Pitch-Class Set Theory And Twelve-Tone Glossary, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

An explanation of terms and symbols used throughout the monograph, together with an introduction to basic pitch-class set theory.

Tonal-Atonal Equilibrium: Reginald Smith Brindle’S Harmony Of Peace (1979) And El Polifemo De Oro (1956), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Reginald Smith Brindle once claimed that “a whole generation [of composers] dedicated their efforts in one way or another to the exploration of the field between tonality and atonality, and to the integration of serialism into a more accessible language.” But how was such integration actually to be achieved? Chapter 1 addresses this question from a music-theoretical perspective. In an attempt to explain how post-tonal harmonic progressions might “make sense,” Smith Brindle himself formulated theories of tension flow and tonal-atonal equilibrium in his 1966 textbook, Serial Composition. The former theory compares the number of consonant and/or dissonant intervals between …

Toward A Pandiatonic Serialism: Richard Rodney Bennett’S Impromptus (1968) And Sonata (1983), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

One of the characteristic aspects of Bennett’s guitar works is his use of exclusively pandiatonic pc sets, and of his treatment of tone rows as generating complexes rather than as themes. Richard Cohn defines pandiatonicism (after Slonimsky) as “using diatonic scales without triads.” I use the term principally to refer to diatonic, non-triadic sets that are combined in (often freely) chromatic combinations. In the first of the Impromptus, the pandiatonic quality of the row’s constituent sets represents an almost incidental facet of the overall musical argument, which privileges more standard means of post-tonal motivic development. Pandiatonic sets account mostly for …

Bibliography, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

No abstract provided.

Cover, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

The cover features an untitled painting in cubist style by one of the composers discussed in this monograph, Reginald Smith Brindle (1917–2003). This and other paintings by Smith Brindle can be seen on the website dedicated to the composer. We are grateful to the composer's family for permission to use this image.

Symmetry, Schoenberg, And The Musical Idea: Denis Apivor’S Variations, Op. 29 (1958), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Perhaps guitar composers innovated in the field of twelve-tone composition because they were not really aware of what their colleagues, continental or domestic, were doing? They had latched onto an abstract, theoretical principle, detached from the rich Second-Viennese repertory that had given it life, and then developed it in their own way and for their own ends. Chapter 2 suggests that this narrative would be too reductive. It argues that the opening Poco lento from ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29, demonstrates the composer’s sensitivity to, and detailed understanding of, the ways in which Schoenberg used intervallic symmetry as an ideal that …

Introduction, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

While the history of the formation of a modern British guitar repertoire around the central figure of Julian Bream is known in broad brushstrokes, we lack a thoroughgoing, technical understanding of the particular idiom that Bream’s composers developed. Important in the nascent stages of the guitar’s modernist evolution, for example, was its relationship to twelve-tone serialism. Through close readings of individual works by Reginald Smith Brindle (El polifemo de oro, 1956), Denis ApIvor (Variations, 1958), Thomas Wilson (Three Pieces, 1961; Soliloquy, 1969), and Richard Rodney Bennett (Impromptus, 1968; Sonata, 1983), I map the …

Idiosyncratic Critiques Of Dodecaphony: Thomas Wilson’S Three Pieces (1961) And Soliloquy (1969), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Is the history of British twelve-tone guitar music a binary one, characterized by devotee practitioners and their vituperative detractors, or did some British guitar composers experiment with, but ultimately remain ambivalent about, dodecaphony? Chapter 3 argues that the solo guitar pieces of the Glaswegian composer Thomas Wilson might be thought to provide a provisional set of answers to these questions. In a nutshell: they manifest critiques of dodecaphony in the form of musical notation.

Writing at a distance from the modernist centers of British musical fashion, Wilson started to experiment with both guitar composition and twelve-tone serialism in the early …

Conclusion, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

In this book’s conclusion, I argue that the guitar is an eminently portable object, a musical amphibian at home in all manner of styles. Smith Brindle, ApIvor, Wilson, and Bennett wrote music for the instrument that reflected this hybrid spirit: they strove for their music to “make sense,” at the same time as expanding what it meant for music to “make sense” at all. In this way, my narrow selection of repertoire might be seen to open out onto something broader: namely, a much-overlooked, pragmatic, and modest path that one might follow within the rhizomatic network that was twentieth-century modernism. …

Author Biography, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

No abstract provided.

Applications Of Video Game Music Theory For The Highschool/College Theory Curriculum, Daniel L. Thompson

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper covers the origins of video game audio and the technical limitations that effected what composers could write. Several audio excerpts have been transcribed with roman numeral analysis. The goal of this project was to determine if musical excerpts from video games could supplement an existing highschool/college theory curriculum. Theory techniques ranging from simple cadences to secondary function chords are present throughout the pieces. The pieces are from a variety of games and composers from 1983 - 2014. Overall, many of the compositions contain excellent examples of theory techniques. These excerpts would best be utilized alongside existing theory material. …

’90s “It Girls”: Britpop At The Postfeminist Intermezzo, Benjamin Halligan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In considering the Britpop genre of music and its moment of popularity in the mid/late-1990s, the few female-fronted Britpop groups created space for more compelling articulations of existential matters than were to be found in standard Britpop fare. This article argues these articulations are most appropriately read as arising from a moment of feminist thought in transition: a premature “victory,” under the sign of postfeminism, in which the struggles of Second Wave feminists could be seen to have delivered equality. This moment results in an encroaching and contested sense of entry into maturity, and a loss of youth. The groups …

A Novel Generative Paradigm For Carnatic Rhythmic Composition, Jagdish A. Krishnaswamy, Robert L. Wells

Music

Mathematical structures are deeply embedded in the aesthetics of South Indian Carnatic music. Kōrvais, which are rhythmic compositions performed in triplets in various parts of a concert, are the culmination of this mathematical aesthetic. Each kōrvai has two parts, the first called the pūrvārdha and the second called the uttarārdha, both based on mathematical structures that are aesthetically acceptable according to certain constraints. These structures have evolved traditionally and can accommodate most rhythmic requirements. However, the traditional methods are inadequate in addressing certain specialized constraints. Therefore, this article revisits rhythmic composition through conceptualization of newer rhythmic patterns and …

Finding Aid For The Guy Sterling Collection

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

The Guy Sterling Collection contains blues photographs, posters, newsletters, and festival programs, including a number of autographed items.

Rachmaninoff The Harmonist: The "Rachmaninoff Sixth" And Its Analysis In His Music, Jay Forsythe

Honors Program Theses

The music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Russia’s great pianist, conductor, and composer, has often been maligned by critics and musicologists alike for its reluctance to follow the avant-garde of the music world into that great adventure of experiments in atonality and non-common-practice technique of the early twentieth century. Although the composer’s works are beloved by audiences worldwide, they have often faced complex critical reception for the composer’s supposed conservatism and relative lack of expressive palette. Francis Maes, author of A History of Russian Music, lamented that “he lacked the exuberant imagination and subtle aestheticism of [Tchaikovsky],” and wrote that Rachmaninoff’s …

From A Humble Cry To A Holy Chaconne: The Background, Analysis, And Performance Guide To Chaconne For Tokkae, Op. 96 By M. W. Johann Kim, Jurang Kim

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The cries of animals have been used as motivic material in classical music literature throughout history. This project considers the Cambodian tocay gecko’s cry as the motif which embodies the harmonic structure in Chaconne for Tokkae for Violin and Piano, Op. 96 by Dr. Myung Whan Johann Kim. It reveals how Dr. Kim adapts unique compositional style and technique such as the bell harmony of Dr. Kurt Anton Hueber, to develop the theme into 39 colorful variations. The essential elements of the chaconne and the composer’s intentions are examined through personal interviews and correspondence with the composer. These elements are …