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Recursive Properties Of Srdc Structures In Golden Age Musical Theater Songs, Morgan Markel

Masters Theses

The srdc is a four-part phrase pattern in popular music consisting of four formal functions: statement (s), restatement (r), departure (d), and conclusion (c). In recent scholarship, the applicability and scope of the four-part pattern has been vigorously debated. The question of whether entire song forms, such as the AABA and verse–prechorus–chorus song forms, can be interpreted as large-scale SRDC patterns has become a primary topic of interest among popular music scholars. In this thesis, I seek to further the argument for the large-scale SRDC reading of the AABA song form by demonstrating the recursive potential of srdc structures in …

Meter In French And Italian Opera, 1809–1859, Nicholas Shea

Masters Theses

Current and historical methods of metric analysis often assume that the first beat of a metric group is stronger than the second. This, however, is not the case in all repertoires. For example, a study by William Rothstein (2011) demonstrates that Verdi’s midcentury operas often place emphasis on even-numbered beats. This paper shows this metric trend to be even more prevalent in a corpus of 208 nineteenth-century operatic excerpts, (1809-1859).

I present a formal model that classifies phrases according to anacrusis length and prosodic accent, showing where large-scale metric accents fall within a phrase. This model produces three metric types …

A Transformational Approach To Japanese Traditional Music Of The Edo Period, Kenneth J. Pasciak

Masters Theses

Analysis of sōkyoku jiuta, Japanese traditional music of the Edo period for koto and shamisen, has in the past relied primarily on static tetrachordal or hexachordal models. The present study takes a transformational approach to traditional Japanese music. Specifically, it develops a framework for six-pitch hexachordal space inspired by Steven Rings’s transformational approach to tonal music. This novel voice-leading space yields insights into intervallic structure, trichordal transposition and hexachordal voice leading and transformations of this music at both its surface and large-scale levels. A side-by-side comparison with Rings’s approach highlights differences between the hexachordal and diatonic systems.

Harmony, Voice Leading, And Microtonal Syntax In Ben Johnston’S String Quartet No. 5, Daniel Huey

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on a new method for examining harmony, identifying consonance and dissonance through differential tones, and describing voice leading for pieces using just intonation, in particular for Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 5 (1979). Johnston employs microtonality in nearly all of his works, which contain more than the typical twelve equal-tempered pitches in the octave. This particular quartet features a great number (over 100) of pitches within the octave as is the case with many of his pieces up to his composition of String Quartet No. 5. This complex tuning system for microtonality requires a meaningful method …