Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Analysis And Utilization Of Hip-Hop Techniques In Classical Music, William Francis Montgomery

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

As of January 4^th, 2018, R&B/Hip-Hop (including rap) had overtaken rock and roll as the most popular genre among music fans. Nielsen Music reported that rap had surpassed rock in terms of total consumption with rappers such as Drake and Kendrick Lamar leading the charge. This would lead to the second-highest growth of any genre of music, spiking at 25% over the previous year.[1] This came as a very big surprise to many, especially when we take into consideration the rocky at best relationship that rap has had with public perception.

There are many misconceptions and …

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 …

Developing A Mathematically Informed Approach To Musical Narrative Through The Analysis Of Three Twentieth-Century Monophonic Woodwind Works, Wesley James Bradford

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project applies mathematically informed narrative to monophonic music in the twentieth century, with a focus on three works for solo woodwinds: Debussy’s Syrinx (flute), Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet, and Britten’s “Bacchus” from Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, Op. 49 (oboe). This music poses difficulties for traditional analytical methods due to a lack of explicit harmonies and unusual pitch language that is neither functionally tonal nor serially atonal. Additionally, these pieces present a variety of challenges due to differences in length, number of movements, and presence or absence of programmatic elements. Therefore, nontraditional methods could be beneficial for understanding these …

On The Use And Development Of The Pentatonic Scale Through The Works Of Antonín Dvořák, Andrew W. Brinkman

LSU Master's Theses

Concepts related to style change have been discussed thoroughly by theorists such as Leonard Meyer and others. In the case of Czech scholar, Antonín Dvořák, this change relates directly to his pentatonic style. While many musicologists suggest that the composer's travels to the United States in the early 1890's had a profound effect on the birth of his pentatonic style, this thesis posits that Dvořák's pentatonicism is apparent from even his earliest works. In examining evidence of this pentatonicism it becomes clear that, for Dvořák, there are two types: thematic and cadential. Thematic pentatonicism arises from themes of works or …

Symphony No. 1: On The Creation And Chromaticism And Harmony In Henry Purcell's Sacred Music, Joshua Adam Carver

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The first part of this dissertation is a musical composition for orchestra entitled Symphony No. 1: On the Creation. Each movement depicts one of the first four days of Creation as it is recorded in Genesis 1 of the Bible. The music is programmatic throughout; melodies, textures, colorations, and even forms serve this purpose. The entities and creations involved in the story each appear with a specific motive, mode, and tonal area, similar to Wagner’s leitmotifs. The movements have various forms, which often derive from the literary form of the particular day’s creation account in Genesis. The second part of …

Dialogues, Dysfunctional Transitions, And Embodied Plot Schemas: (Re) Considering Form In Chopin's Sonatas And Ballades, Jonathan Edward Mitchell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Chopin’s four Ballades — perennial favorites of audiences and performers— have proven to be problematic for analysts. At the forefront of the numerous discussions regarding their organization is an ongoing debate about their relationship to the eighteenth-century sonata, particularly if they can be understood as variants of that form or as something altogether new. It is my view that these works have tended toward the enigmatic because no one has discovered an appropriate theoretical apparatus through which to process them. In this dissertation, I view Chopin’s Ballades through a multi-tiered analytical system that draws upon three sources: the Sonata Theory …

Les Mains Désenlaceuses: Unlocking The Relationship Of Text And Music In The Proses Lyriques, Sacha Alexandra Grace Peiser

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines Claude Debussy’s Proses Lyriques, a set of four chansons published in 1895. These songs were composed during a pivotal time in the composer’s life—concurrent with Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, the String Quartet, and the commencement of work on Pelléas et Mélisande. Also noteworthy is that out of a complete output of over 90 songs, these are the only published works with both text and music by the composer. Because of this unique property, the Proses Lyriques allows researchers, analysts, and performers to gain valuable insight into Debussy’s intertwining of music and text. This thesis utilizes various …

University Of Pennsylvania Ms Codex 436: A Description And Analysis Of Contents, Jeannette Di Bernardo Jones

LSU Master's Theses

The University of Pennsylvania Ms. Codex 436, an Italian manuscript dated 1682, is a handbook containing alphabets, linguistic treatises, a computus for calculating the date of Easter, mathematical tables, and rules for music theory and singing the liturgy. The manuscript's contents make it possible to identify the compiler as a student; the contents, along with their mode of presentation and the manuscript's general appearance, make it possible to situate him within the culture of humanism and more specifically within book culture in the transition from manuscript to print. The contents indicate who the compiler is in terms of his social …

The Apologia Of Franchino Gafurio: A Critical Edition And Translation, Patrick Joseph Kaufman

LSU Master's Theses

Franchino Gafurio’s Apologia (Turin, 1520) is one musical treatise in a series of works that constituted the famous “pamphlet war” between he and Giovanni Spataro. The dispute originated with the publication of Bartholomeo Ramis de Pareia’s Musica practica (Bologna, 1482). Unconventional and unapologetically critical, Ramis rejected venerated musical traditions in an attempt to align music theory with contemporary music practice. He opposed the Pythagorean division of the monochord and Guidonian solmization syllables, and instead proposed a division which produced pure thirds, and a solmization system based on the octave. His iconoclastic proposals and his highly sarcastic tone called forth a …

Musical Time And Revealed Timelessness, Michael Vincent Blandino

LSU Master's Theses

Scholarship on musical time recognizes the depiction of timelessness in music as a possibility. However, many theories of musical timelessness center around total stasis as the ideal method for creation of the effect, tolerating relative motion only out of necessity and viewing such motion as a weakening force in this regard. There is little investigation of the interaction between other modes of musical time and the mode of timelessness. Hence, no theory offers a comprehensive expansion of scope to include more complex depictions of timelessness in relation to time. This paper addresses these points, offering a framework for understanding musical …

Rhetoric, Form, And Sovereignty In Schubert's "Prometheus," D. 674, Erica Brady Angert

LSU Master's Theses

Franz Schubert's "Prometheus," D. 674 (1819), sets a free-verse dramatic monologue by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in which Prometheus, the Titan who presented fire and hope to mankind, declares himself independent from Zeus. This song belongs to a small group of Schubert's Lieder that resemble scenes from operas more than tonally-closed art songs. The paper discusses some of Schubert's compositional influences in the vocal genre, including Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who composed an earlier setting of the same "Prometheus" text. This paper explores the rhetorical structure of Goethe's text, which follows Quintilian's model for an effective argument, and which Schubert punctuates …

An Original Composition, Symphony No. 1, Pollock And An Analysis Of The Evolution Of Frank Zappa's "Be-Bop Tango", William Morris Price

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Part one of this dissertation is an original composition, Symphony No. 1, Pollock. It uses as a conceptual impetus the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock’s paintings from the 1950’s. It employs the following instrumentation: (2-2-2-2, 4-3-3-1, 3 percussion, piano, harp, and strings). The work is composed in one movement, which is divided into four major sections (A-B-A/C-B) that are distinct from each other with respect to style and tempo. The first major section of the composition serves as a slow introduction. The second major section serves as a contrast and is based conceptually on Pollock’s abstract works and formally on …

Text And Structure In Schoenberg's Op. 50, And An Original Composition, Symphony #1, Thomas, Jr. Michael Couvillon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Part One of this document provides an analytical study of Schoenberg's final opus, Op. 50, three religious choral works written in the serial style: Driemal Tausend Jahre, Op. 50a (1949), De Profundis, Op. 50b (1950), and Modern Psalm, Op. 50c (1951). This study is divided into five chapters: an introduction, a conclusion, and a chapter of analysis for each of the three pieces. Analysis of these pieces reveals three significant conclusions: 1) Schoenberg consistently incorporates areas of relative consonance and pitch emphasis into his serial structures; 2) these areas of pitch emphasis, together with other musical devices are used to …