Music Theory Commons^™

A Post-Tonal Analytical Approach To Synchronisms No. 10 For Guitar And Tape By Mario Davidovsky, Andrew J. Serce

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Mario Davidovsky is an American composer who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on March 4, 1934. Beginning in 1958, he was a student of Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Music Center (currently the Tanglewood Music Center) in Lenox, Massachusetts. At Berkshire, he also met American composer, Milton Babbitt, who persuaded him to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (currently the Computer Music Center at Columbia University) in New York City. Davidovsky was appointed Associate Director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1960 where he inevitably began experimenting with the relationships between live instruments and electronic sounds.

Synchronisms …

Why We Sing Along: Measurable Traits Of Successful Congregational Songs, Daniel Read

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Songwriters have been creating music for the church for hundreds of years. The songs have gone through many stylistic changes from generation to generation, yet, each song has generated congregational participation. What measurable, traceable qualities of congregational songs exist from one generation to the next?

This document explores the history and development of Congregational Christian Song (CCS), to discover and document the similarities between seemingly contrasting styles of music. The songs analyzed in this study were chosen because of their wide popularity and broad dissemination among non-denominational churches in the United States. While not an exhaustive study, this paper reviews …

Volume 31, Various Authors

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

The First Three Guitar Sonatas Of David Del Puerto, Jeremy Andrew Bass

Theses and Dissertations--Music

David del Puerto’s first three sonatas for solo guitar are large-scale, multi-movement works in a style that is at once strongly guitaristic, and highly refined with regard to harmony, melody, rhythm, and form. Del Puerto completed all three sonatas in 2015, a considerable milestone for a composer who had never before published works in this form for solo guitar. The sonatas represent a consolidation of the composer's recent style: the synthesis of modal, pandiatonic, and twelve-tone harmony; references to folkloric, popular, and classical musics; and a lucid, immediate approach to both surface rhythm and larger formal structures.

Since the development …

A Study Of Acculturation In Chinese-Mongolian Er’Rentai Folk Opera, Luyin Shao

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Er’rentai, or Mongolian dance and song duets, is a genre of folk opera in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. Er’rentai performances can be categorized into two styles—the “western-style” and the “eastern-style.” The aim of this thesis is to explore the acculturation in Chinese-Mongolian er’rentai genre in the following ways. First, I address the historical background of the western-style er’rentai. Then, I draw on fieldwork with Huo Banzhu, a famous er’rentai musician, to introduce contemporary state of er’rentai's development. Finally, I employ musical analysis to demonstrate the borrowings of Mongolian music and culture in the formation and transmission …

Harvest Festival By Yann-Jong Hwang: A Piano Duet Inspired By Taiwanese Folk Tunes, Wei-Sian Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The purpose of this study is to provide an introduction and analysis of Harvest Festival, a work for piano four hands by Taiwanese composer Yann-Jong Hwang. This work incorporates elements of traditional Taiwanese music that is largely unfamiliar to performers and listeners beyond the border of Taiwan.

With the exception of Professor Hwang’s own journal article on this piece, this project is the only study of Harvest Festival available in the United States or Taiwan. This research will be meaningful to both performers and piano teachers as an encouragement to include Yann-Jong Hwang’s work within their concert repertory.

This …

Duende: Four Preludes For Symphonic Wind Ensemble By Luis Serrano Alarcón: Conductor’S Guide, Spanish Historical Background And Influence, Kenneth Javier Iyescas

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Luis Serrano Alarcón is one of the most important and relevant composers of our time. He is sought after as a composer, lecturer, and conductor throughout the world. His works have been performed in over 30 countries worldwide by some of the leading musical ensembles in the United States, Europe, and Asia, as well as being highly decorated by winning many prestigious composition contests including the International Band Competition Contest of Corciano, Italy.

Born in Valencia, Spain, Alarcón is relatively self-taught in composition, which is a testament to his natural-born gift for composition. His compositional output ranges from the traditional …

When Unexpected Beauty Burns Like Sunlight On The Sea: Songs Of Wintter Watts, Composer And Sara Teasdale, Poet, Casey A. Huggins

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This document is an overview of Wintter Watts’ song settings of Sara Teasdale poems. Watts set 15 Teasdale poems as a part of his repertoire of approximately 200 art songs, both published and unpublished. Included are a thorough investigation of the culture of the period of American history of which Watts and Teasdale emerged as artists, biographies of each artist, with particular emphasis placed on Watts’ life and work, and theoretical and poetic analyses of each piece. Additionally, teachers of singing will find the appendix useful to explore options for student repertoire.

Misbehaving Minuets: A Preliminary Theory Of Humor And Dance Form In Haydn's Opp. 76 And 77, Jennifer L. Salamone

Theses and Dissertations--Music

It is nearly impossible to read scholarship on Franz Joseph Haydn and escape the mention of musical humor. Scholars have long recognized the presence of humorous elements within Haydn’s compositions. Current literature delves into various aspects of humor in the composer’s works; in this project I focus specifically on humorous aspects of the minuet and trio movements from the late string quartets, Opp. 76 and 77.

I begin by exploring and defining humor itself. Centuries of literature on the topic are generally parsed into three fundamental categories: Superiority Theory, Relief Theory, and Incongruity Theory. More contemporary approaches combine elements of …

On Unaccompanied Horn Music, Jason D. Klinect

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Unaccompanied music provides a host of challenges for solo musicians, and especially for wind players. The performer cannot rely on accompaniment for embouchure rest or for realization of the harmonic content, due to only being able to play one pitch at a time. An unaccompanied musician has to breathe life into the music by themselves, requiring an intimate knowledge of the music, even moreso than is already required. The pacing of the music, the dynamics, phrasing, and articulation need to be clearly conveyed to the audience by the performer alone. Likely due to the horn not having valves until the …

A Newly Discovered Letter Of 1827 By Fernando Sor, Erik Stenstadvold

Soundboard Scholar

This article discusses a hitherto unknown letter, written by Sor in Saint Petersburg in April 1827. It provides new insight into the publishing and personal relationship between Sor and his Paris publisher, Antoine Meissonnier, to whom the letter was addressed. We learn about three airs with variations Sor was busy composing at the time; he was particularly pleased with the variations Meissonnier later published as op. 30. The letter also mentions some unknown Sor works, including a book of drafts at Málaga, and it reveals that Meissonnier had published, without Sor’s knowledge, music that he had received from sources other …

AndréS Segovia’S Unfinished Guitar Method: Placing His “Scales” In Historical Context, Andreas Stevens

Soundboard Scholar

For over sixty years, guitarists of my generation have been familiar with the so-called Segovia Scales—the systematic scale fingerings advocated by the Andalusian maestro. They have been an influential—some might say a definitive—bestseller since their first USA publication in 1953. Countless guitar students have incorporated them into their daily practice routines. For the publisher, Columbia Music, they seem to be the goose that laid the golden egg. Are they everything that Segovia wanted them to be? Two books of recent date on guitar technique attest to their enduring value and relevance. Thomas Offermann wrote in 2015: “The fingerings of the …

NapoléOn Coste: Composer And Guitarist In The Musical Life Of 19th-Century Paris By Ari Van Vliet, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

Napoleon Coste: Composer and Guitarist in the Musical Life of 19th-Century Paris, by Van Vliet, Ari is reviewed.

New Voices In Old Bodies: A Study Of “Recycled” Musical Instruments With A Focus On The Hahn Collection In The Deutsches Museum, By Panagiotis Poulopoulos, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

New Voices in Old Bodies: A Study of "Recycled" Musical Instruments with a Focus on the Hahn Collection in the Deutsches Museum, album by Poulopoulos, Panagiotis is reviewed.

The Russian Guitar 1800-1850 (Timofeyev And Schneiderman), Stanley Yates

Soundboard Scholar

The Russian Guitar 1800-1850, album by Oleg Timofeyev and John Schneiderman is reviewed.

"Everybody's Got To Wonder What's The Matter With This Cruel World Today": Social Consciousness And Political Commentary In "Love And Theft" And Modern Times, Thad Williamson

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Bob Dylan has spent much of the past fifty years trying to escape the label of "protest singer." Over the past decade, there have been plenty of serious topics for the topically minded songwriter to address: the Iraq War, threats to civil liberties, rising economic inequality, the financial collapse of 2008 and "Great Recession" that followed. Unlike his musical peers Neil Young (Living with War [2006]) and Bruce Springsteen (Wrecking Ball [2012]), Dylan to date has not addressed those events in any direct way, through new topical songs, in the last stage of his career.

Guitar Music In Collections: A New Web-Based Index Is Launched, Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

Is there any really good way to locate specific pieces of guitar music within published collections and anthologies? Might there be already a best way? Anyone who has taught or studied classical guitar is familiar with collections like Das Gitarrespiel or the Noad anthologies. But it is hard to remember with accuracy which pieces are in which of these editions or in dozens of others like them. Library and trade catalogs are not of much help. What is needed for this problem is in-depth indexing rather than traditional cataloging. These print indexes of song anthologies and collections have more recently …

Sinfonia Concertante By Luigi Boccherini, Edited By Matanya Ophee, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

Sinfonia concertante (G. 523), by Boccherini, Luigi is reviewed.

La Guitare = The Guitar = La Chitarra, Paris, 1650-1950, Addendum, By Daniel Sinier And FrançOise De Ridder, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

La Guitare = The Guitar = La Chitarra, Paris, 1650-1950, Addendum, by Sinier, Daniel and Francoise de Ridder is reviewed.

Soundboard Scholar No. 2: Editor's Letter, Thomas Heck

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of this issue.