Music Commons^™

A Glimpse Into Chinese Piano Education And Performance Through An Influential Professor, Xin Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Although China traditionally did not have keyboard instruments of its own origin, the country has taken to the modern piano exceedingly well. In the past decades, piano performance and education have progressed at an impressive rate, its popularity reaching unprecedented heights. The virtuosity of Chinese pianists has earned them prizes at renowned international competitions. These developments have sparked the interest of scholars as well as the general public.

First introduced to China around 1840, the piano was slow to be accepted, but interest grew steadily in the twentieth century. Missionaries and foreigners were the first piano teachers, with figures like …

Orchestral Excerpts For Trombone From Villa-Lobos’S “Chôros”– Performance Considerations And Collected Edition, Hugo Eustáquio De Faria Pinheiro Sr.

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The daily routine of playing in a professional orchestra can be very challenging. An important and useful tool for students, professors and professional players in the preparation process of playing is the focused study of orchestral excerpts, where one can consciously practice ahead of time the most technically demanding passages, in order to be ready for rehearsals and performances.

The orchestral output of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos is vast, with many technical and musical challenges for low brass musicians. This research will cover Villa-Lobos’s Chôros series, with a special focus on the works that present at least one trombone …

Beyond The Notation: Developing Tools To Guide Artistic Decisions Of Performers In The Wind Ensemble, Brent Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Music is a subjective art form that is enhanced by emotional connection and understanding of the relationship of line and phrasing to both the performer and the audience. Performers and conductors are charged with making artistic decisions about the expressive qualities of a phrase within moments of seeing the notation for the first time. In the development of wind ensembles, there is often a disconnect between the technique and accuracy of a musician’s performance and the emotional connection and understanding required to perform a lyrical melody or phrase within a piece of music. As musicians progress, often the attention is …

Developing A Music Composition Practice: Exploring The Choreography Of Cymatics, Joshua Jervis

Theses : Honours

Cymatics is an area of physics popularised by Hans Jenny that observes the influence of sound but more simply vibration on physical matter. When sound is directly applied to a substance, for example, water, the vibrations create kaleidoscopic movement within the medium. Specific variables primarily of pitch, container size, and water volume contribute to creating a variety of geometric shapes. Without sound cymatics does not exist and is, therefore, a visual characteristic of sound itself.

With an investigation into the behaviour and application of cymatics, this research uses the findings of an investigation to develop a ‘choreographical’ language that can …

Exploring And Reapplying Wayne Krantz’S Method Of Constructing The Album Greenwich Mean, Christian A. Meares

Theses : Honours

Praised for his non-traditional approach to improvised music, his idiosyncratic chordal voicings and strong sense of time, Wayne Krantz has become a touchstone in modern jazz and a unique voice on the guitar. In 1999, Krantz self-released Greenwich Mean, an album comprising of small vignettes spliced together from a year’s worth of recorded live improvisation from his weekly residency gig at the esteemed 55 Bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. This album marks a fundamental shift in Krantz’s approach to composition from through-composed works to smaller, novel arrangements with a strong emphasis on group improvisation.

Using a practice-led research …

Adapting Barbershop Harmony For The Saxophone Quartet, Jonathon Astbury

Theses : Honours

Barbershop harmony refers to a unique style of arrangement and performance for voice that is strictly in four parts and acapella. There is much untapped potential in this close harmonic genre that could be explored in instruments other than the human voice. This paper set out to explore and establish a method of arranging and performing music of the barbershop style for the saxophone quartet. To achieve this transference of the style from voices to saxophones, the harmonic conventions and arranging rules of barbershop from the existing literature were established, along with a review of the literature pertaining to effective …

The Matusiflute: A Bi-Timbral Flute Modification And The Cultural Influences That Inform Its Performance Practice And Repertoire, Joshua Gabriel Mcmahon

Theses : Honours

A product of flute modification and experimentation, the Matusiflute is a headjoint that allows the performer to alter the timbre of the western concert flute. This thesis examines this bi-timbral instrument, invented by Swiss flautist Professor Matthias Ziegler, and explores its capabilities to shift to a buzzing timbral colour which is similar to that of the dizi (Chinese end-blown flute). Composers may use the instrument for its unique textural timbral colour or to imitate the culturally-informed performance style of the dízi. Though reflective performance practice, music analysis and an interview with the inventor, the thesis examines the Matusiflute to …

The Improvisational Art Of Shenzo Gregorio: Exploring His Transition From Classical Violinist To Cross-Genre Improviser, Judith A. Iddison

Theses : Honours

This dissertation examines the musical craft and artistry of innovative Australian violinist/violist Shenzo Gregorio (Shenton Gregory) and his transition from classical violinist to cross-genre improvisor. My research explores mental and practice strategies employed by Gregorio in making this transition, and how he has developed his authentic improvising style. This style draws on an eclectic range of musical genres and incorporates a variety of idiosyncratic extended techniques. Semi-structured interviews and demonstrations were conducted to gain insight into unique aspects of Gregorio’s improvisatory practice. In addition, transcription analyses of five of his recorded performances highlight his improvisational diversity and musical idiolect. Furthermore, …

Real Rap, Does Authenticity Even Matter In Hip Hop?, Amin Allam

Capstone Showcase

Rap and Hip hop has evolved tremendously since its inception. The collective genre has been catapulted to global influence, where in the United States it represents the largest genre based on market share. After reviewing the history of rap music there is a perceived relationship between hip hop and authenticity. To which the question arose of whether hip hop could maintain authenticity in a commercial sphere. To explore this relationship, after reviewing the literature on authenticity, a model of analysis created by Newman and Smith was used to explore 5years worth of data dealing with the Billboard top 100 list. …

Johan Sebastian Bach And His Cello Suites Ii And V: An Audio And Visual Analysis Of Cello Suites Ii And V, Samuel Konkol

Honors Program Theses

Johan Sebastian Bach and his Cello Suites II and V: An Audio and Visual Analysis of Cello Suites II and V. Through research and practice, I have taken an in-depth analysis of Bach's cello suites. I have broken down each suite into individual movements and explored their inner workings.

Llegó La Futura: La Cuirificación Del Género Urbano, Isabel Streiffer, Isabel S. Streiffer

Scripps Senior Theses

Hoy en día, artistas cuir de reggaeton y trap están desestabilizando el género urbano, tal como las estructuras y suposiciones sociales que se manifiestan dentro del género. Prestando atención al proceso de desidentificación, a través de mi tesis analizo (1) cómo artistas cuir trabajan dentro del reggaeton para romper el binario entre la respetabilidad y la autonomía erótica; (2) cómo desafían el binario del género, la heteronormatividad, y la manifestación de ambos en el género urbano; y (3) cómo abordan los problemas políticos y sociales mediante su música. Además, al comparar lo que están haciendo les artistas cuir y los …

Jay Chou’S Kuso Music: Cultural Fusion In The Age Of The Internet, Stz-Tsung (Stone) Han

Scripps Senior Theses

Jay Chou is one of the most significant singers in Chinese popular music history. One of Chou’s greatest achievements is his implementation of the Chinese “Egao” culture in his music, which originated from Japanese Kuso culture. Such an approach not only created his unique style but also allowed him to adopt various musical techniques together seamlessly. By doing so, Chou created a style that references multiple traditional musical conventions without being bound by any of them. This study aims to examine the evolution of the Kuso culture as well as Chou’s implementation of it. The development of Kuso is fostered …

Symphony Of Nature: "Fall", Davis Cooper

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This honors project is for an analysis paper based on one movement of an original music composition by the author in the realm of environmental sound art. The movement, entitled “Fall” from the Symphony of Nature, consists of hundreds of individual audio recordings of specific animals (such as an American Crow, Carolina Ground Cricket, and Gray Catbird), groups of animals (such as a choir of Ground Crickets, a murder of crows, and so forth), or geophonic sounds (such as a light rain on dry leaves, a several-miles-distant thunderstorm, or mid-to-high range audio spectrum wind). The analysis paper includes the rationale …

Theoretical And Compositional Analysis Of Select Metal Works, Jacob Bird

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper is a comprehensive essay on the history, form, and compositional techniques of Extreme Metal music. Within Extreme Metal this paper will cover three sub-genres using compositions by Burzum, Death, and Gojira. This paper is meant to show a link between the compositional techniques used in Western Classical music and Extreme Metal through analysis of form, harmony, and tonality/modality. The scope of this paper primarily focuses on the popular music form verse/chorus which is compared to a variety of Western Classical music forms. The goal is to promote future research into the Extreme Metal style and other popular music …

The G7 Suite: Score And Analysis, Joseph C. Dunn

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The G7 Suite is a multi-movement chamber work that combines elements of European Art Music, Indigenous Music from Latin America, and various representations of American music. The melodic material is derived from the national anthems of the Great Seven nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each melody is re-set to new music genres and aligns itself to the rules and expectations within each idiom. This compilation is more than a series of arrangements or reharmonizations of the anthems; these are new compositions based on melodic elements from previous works.

This analysis of The …

An Analysis Of Kingdom Of The Heart's Content, Op. 11 By Joseph Baber, Sanghee Kim

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Kingdom of the Heart’s Content, Op. 11 is a selection of twelve sketches written between 1952 and 1956. In this work, Joseph Baber draws inspiration from his childhood memories and a variety of locations in Richmond, Virginia, using his unique blend of folk idioms, traditional forms and harmonies, and capricious metric changes to bring these vignettes to life. Kingdom of the Heart’s Content is comprised of twelve movements with the programmatic titles: Introduction: Stick Horses, Walk to Monroe Park, Charlie Short, Tag, Monument Avenue, Battle Abbey, Cycling, Sleighbells, Park Avenue Triangle, Goblins, Spring, and Finale: West End Farewell. …

Fluid Dynamics: Representations Of Water In Music, James E. Evans

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Water has remained a subject of all kinds of musical works since at least the middle ages. These musical works lack the concrete representational capacity of paintings, photographs, and films, relying instead on more abstract metaphorical constructs to convey water imagery. Current scholarship on water music typically centers on Romantic and Impressionist works and does not examine the process of signification by which musical signs portray water. The principal goal of this study is to determine how musical devices convey specific aspects of bodies of water and how such devices interact and contribute to musical depictions of streams, rivers, lakes, …

Michael Daugherty’S Bells For Stokowski: Historical Context & Comparative Analysis For Orchestra And Wind Band, Jeremy Harmon

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Michael Daugherty’s Bells for Stokowski (2001/2003) is an original work for orchestra and wind band. This work has continued to be performed by ensembles around the world including live performances, and studio recordings.

The purposes of this dissertation are to 1) provide historical context of the composer and inspiration for the work, through interviews with its composer, Michael Daugherty, and premiere conductor, Michael Haithcock; 2) provide relationships between the Liberty Bell (architecture), several composers Stokowski worked with and conducted (art), modern and historical compositional styles through pieces like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (pop culture), how an audience perceives the sound …

Perspectives On Cultivating A Positive Collegiate Clarinet Studio Environment: A Survey Of Students And Professors, Katherine Nichole Breeden

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Data was analyzed from a survey of collegiate clarinet students and professors concerning student and faculty preferences and perceptions concerning the cultivation of a positive collegiate clarinet studio environment. Over two hundred respondents indicated preferences for the structure of individual lessons and studio class.

The data indicated it is essential that the professor adapt their teaching to individual students during lesson instruction. Goals should be recorded, a verbal agreement alone is insufficient. Contact information for all studio colleagues should be available, and the professor should be accessible should the need arise. Large ensemble concert attendance should be encouraged, and recital …

A Musical Analysis Of William Grant Still's Songs Of Separation: The Chamber Arrangement, Michael Preacely

Theses and Dissertations--Music

William Grant Still was given the title “The Dean of African American Music” because of the many firsts he accomplished as an African American musician in the early twentieth century. He is known for fusing his African American musical tradition of Jazz and blues with the classical European musical tradition. This study explores one of Still’s most famous song cycles, “Songs of Separation,” in the arrangement for string quartet, voice, and piano. This document considers the instrumentation of the string quartet arrangement and how Still uses the instrumentation to enhance the character OF the poetry. This document also provides a …