Music Theory Commons^™

Eclectic: A Recording Project Of Original Crossover Compositions, Chance Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Music makers have always borrowed one another’s influences, across philosophies, across culture, and thus, across genres. Since the 1950’s, a time when classical music was at its farthest reach from popular music, the rift between these two “worlds” has shrunk, and music crafters from each category are free to take from the other as they please. As a figure who stands between the cultivated and vernacular traditions, my aim for this thesis is to give an introduction to some of the ways genre hybridization has been achieved since 1950, present a collection of my own compositions (along with recordings) that …

Iverson, Jennifer. 2018. Electronic Inspirations: Technologies Of The Cold-War Musical Avant Garde. New York: Oxford University Press., Theodore B. Gordon

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Harold Jones; Interpretation Of Big Band Swing Drumming, Danny Gottlieb

Showcase of Faculty Scholarly & Creative Activity

Multiple Grammy Award winning drummer Harold Jones is one of the greatest drummers in Jazz History. He has performed and recorded with Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Natalie Cole and many more. This volume work is akin depth study of Harold's drumming with the Count Basie Orchestra, of which he was a member from 1968 through 1972.

Epic Beginnings: A Symphonic Work And Aaron Copland (The American Stravinsky) Versus Igor Stravinsky, Terrell O. Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The first part of my dissertation is the original music written for this dissertation, which consists of tonal music that describes my life’s journey. I wanted to write something dark, melodic, and very energetic that described my struggles and shows the road I have taken. It exhibits everything that I have learned from my time here at the university. One of the many things that makes my passion so strong is the desire to express myself through music written for ensembles and used in films. The piece is entitled “Epic Beginnings.” Originally, it was named “The Last Dance,” a …

Motivic Voice-Leading In Selected Piano Cycles Of Johannes Brahms, Jacob Joel Gran

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation identifies a technique used by Brahms to organize the compositional designs of his piano cycles. The technique is motivic voice-leading. By that I mean that certain patterns of triadic voice-leading gain significance through their unconventional use or varied repetition that have implications throughout the cycle. And, in the same way that traditional melodic or rhythmic motives can be developed and reworked, the composer may break these voice-leading patterns into their component stepwise connections. These stepwise dyads may be developed independently of their original triadic context, in the manner of a pitch-class motive.[1] We can understand many …

Dense Geometry Of Music And Visual Arts: Vanishing Points, Continuous Tonnetz, And Theremin Performance, Maria Mannone, Irene Iaccarino, Rosanna Iembo

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The dualism between continuous and discrete is relevant in music theory as well as in performance practice of musical instruments. Geometry has been used since longtime to represent relationships between notes and chords in tonal system. Moreover, in the field of mathematics itself, it has been shown that the continuity of real numbers can arise from geometrical observations and reasoning. Here, we consider a geometrical approach to generalize representations used in music theory introducing continuous pitch. Such a theoretical framework can be applied to instrument playing where continuous pitch can be naturally performed. Geometry and visual representations of concepts of …

Editor’S Essay, Michael E. Ruhling

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

No abstract provided.

Meaning Beyond Words: A Musical Analysis Of Afro-Cuban Batá Drumming, Javier Diaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of a musical analysis of Afro-Cuban batá drumming. Current scholarship focuses on ethnographic research, descriptive analysis, transcriptions, and studies on the language encoding capabilities of batá. However, this artistically sophisticated tradition demands a more in-depth study of its musical manufacture. Drawing from experience as a ritual batá player and as an oricha priest, I have completed the current study by following three primary analytical modalities: (1) sonic landscape, which encompasses: sound vocabulary, form, individual drum parts, and balance of musical elements; (2) timbral design, how the different batá sounds articulate meaningful and functionally distinguishable structures; (3) the …

Analyzing Hermeto Pascoal's Calendário Do Som, Adam Rosado

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hermeto Pascoal is one of the most prolific composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, having composed thousands of pieces across his career. Despite his immense and eclectic catalogue, the current analytical literature on him is comparatively scant, particularly outside of the composer’s native Brazil. In order to represent the diversity of his music, this dissertation studies a collection of his works entitled the Calendário do Som. This collection was an exercise in daily composition and comprises 366 short pieces written from July 23, 1996 to July 23, 1997. Through the analysis of the pieces in this collection, this dissertation …

A Compendium Of Voice-Leading Patterns From The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries To Play, Sing, And Transpose At The Keyboard, Derek Remeš

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

An original Compendium of baroque and classical voice-leading patterns offers a wealth of historically informed teaching materials for today's pedagogues. Drawing from recent scholarly trends in the German-language music-theoretical community, the historical approach offered here is at odds with many aspects of current Anglo-American music theory pedagogy. Chief among these is the absence of any reference to Roman numerals, chordal roots, or chordal inversion in the Compendium. Instead, a thoroughbass-centered approach is favored, in which the scale degree of the bassline is the primary analytical annotation. This encourages contrapuntal, rather than harmonic, considerations to come to the fore. The voice-leading …

Interactive Sonification Strategies For The Motion And Emotion Of Dance Performances, Steven Landry

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Immersive Interactive SOnification Platform, or iISoP for short, is a research platform for the creation of novel multimedia art, as well as exploratory research in the fields of sonification, affective computing, and gesture-based user interfaces. The goal of the iISoP’s dancer sonification system is to “sonify the motion and emotion” of a dance performance via musical auditory display. An additional goal of this dissertation is to develop and evaluate musical strategies for adding layer of emotional mappings to data sonification. The result of the series of dancer sonification design exercises led to the development of a novel musical sonification …

Volume 33, Various Authors

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Scale-Degrees Six And Seven In Minor, Stephen Gosden

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Teaching With Chopsticks And A Rhythm Clock, Paula Telesco

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

When teaching rhythm, it can be difficult to convey the concept that beats are not just attack points but have a full duration, which can be divided into many parts; it can also be difficult for students to understand how those divisions and subdivisions do or do not coincide. I have created a number of rhythm clocks (attached) that include color-coded Ta ka di mi syllables (red) and 1 ee and uh counting syllables (blue) to show the division and subdivision of the beat into 2, 3, 4, and 6 parts, and to show simple and compound divisions and subdivisions …

Fanny Hensel's Das Jahr: Emergent Meaning At The Intersection Of Textual, Visual, And Aural Modalities, Lindsay Gray Clavere

Theses and Dissertations--Music

On Christmas Day in 1841, Fanny Hensel presented her husband with a Christmas gift—Das Jahr—a piano cycle comprised of twelve pieces, each one depicting a month of The Year. Not long thereafter, Fanny and husband Wilhelm would collaborate to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, reworking Das Jahr and expanding it by two additional expressions: vignettes drawn into the score by Wilhelm, and epigrams, snippets of poetry by master German poets.

This dissertation seeks to answer the question: “What meaning is achieved by the intersection of the three modalities present in Das Jahr: textual (epigram), visual (vignette), and …

Theoretical Study And Performing Edition Of Sonata Iii By Javier G. Compeán, José Mario Ortiz Sánchez

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Mexican composer Javier G. Compeán finished Sonata III, his most recent composition for solo guitar, in December 2015. Since the composition of his first such work in 2003, the composer has been experimenting with texture, register, dynamic range, extended techniques, harmonic possibilities, timbre, and form in his solo guitar music. In Sonata III, Compeán applied the experience he gained in previous compositions for guitar.

This work represents the composer’s current style, in which he returns to a more traditional language but continues to experiment with the technical capabilities of the instrument. Sonata III is Compeán’s most ambitious guitar composition and …

Exposing Corruption In Progressive Rock: A Semiotic Analysis Of Gentle Giant’S The Power And The Glory, Robert Jacob Sivy

Theses and Dissertations--Music

English progressive rock band Gentle Giant is catalogued under the progressive (or “prog”) rock genre for a variety reasons, including unique instrumentation, virtuosity, and interesting/unconventional musical attributes. The complexity of their music is often warranted by the sophisticated concepts behind their albums and the deep messages of their songs. The Power and the Glory (TPatG), Gentle Giant’s sixth studio album, is a concept album that emphasizes the rise and corruption of power. What makes their music, especially TPatG, worthy of scholarly attention beyond the simple examination of the compositional techniques employed is the way in which the …

Soundboard Scholar No. 5 (Complete)

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

Discovering The "Finnish Chopin"—Selim Palmgren's 24 Preludes, Op. 17, And Tres Piezas Para Piano, Op. 54, Sijia Wang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Selim Palmgren (1878-1951) is one of the most significant musical figures in Finland. Unlike Jean Sibelius, who is undoubtedly the greatest Finnish symphonic composer of his time, Palmgren’s concentration is more on smaller-scale character pieces. His contribution to the piano and vocal repertoires earned him the reputation of being the “Chopin of the North” and also the “Schumann of the North.” Palmgren was not only prolific, having written over 300 piano works and 200 vocal pieces, but also versatile, frequently blending within his works various nationalistic, impressionistic, and other musical styles and elements within his works.

This paper is focused …

Cover

Soundboard Scholar

The scene of angel musicians on our cover is a detail shot of the topmost portion of the famous “Paradiso” fresco in the Cathedral of Orvieto, Italy. It was painted by Luca Signorelli in 1499, at the very time of Columbus’s third voyage, when (as Richard Pinnell explains in this issue) Spanish guitarras and vihuelas were first being introduced to the New World. The Signorelli fresco’s music-historical interest for us lies in the guitar-like instrument depicted in the hands of the highest angel in the heavenly ensemble—a position of no small honor for her or her instrument. It is approximately …