Music Commons^™

Mediterranis, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

[Review of the book Mediterranean Musicscapes in Contemporary Spain: From Mosaic to Net, edited by Kiko Mora]

¿Existeix la música «mediterrània»? ¿Què tenen en comú Salomé, Lluís Llach, la Ruta del Bacalao i la narco-rumba? El Mediterrani musical, com la cultura mediterrània en general, ha estat sempre definida des de l’exterior. Historiogràficament, ha estat colonitzada. L’arqueòleg Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) va quedar impressionat al s. XVIII amb les escultures blanques, pures, equilibrades de Grècia i va inventar una ideologia basada en aquestes falses premisses) oblidant que les escultures havien estat policromades abans de ser blanques, just per posar un …

Francisco Frontera De Valldemosa, Singer, And Voice Instructor, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

ABSTRACT:

This essay examines the career, as a singer and voice teacher, of Francisco Frontera de Valldemosa (1807-1891). Although his role as a music administrator at the service of the Spanish Royal Court, music theorist, and composer has been documented in previous studies, Frontera’s career as singer and voice instructor is less known. He learned the bel canto style directly from Rossini, whom he met in Paris, and other respected Rossinian specialists including Marco Bordogni, Antonietta, Giuseppe, and Luigi Mosca, Marianna Rossi, Domenico Vaccani, all of them Italian singers working in Barcelona and Palma. In Paris, his voice was praised …

Making Music And Making Rent: The New Wave Of New York City’S Working Class Artists, Hannah J. Fierick

Capstones

Though New York’s local music scene has become a shadow of its former self, the city’s musicians have found creative ways to stay afloat while doing what they love. This piece explores the music scene in New York today through interviews with working class musicians themselves.

Dedicated: “Me. I Am Lambily… And The Elusive Chanteuse” (Podcast; Episode 1), Vincent A. Barbato

Capstones

In this podcast, “DEDICATED,” music writer Vincent Anthony speaks with the most devoted fans of the most divine divas. This inaugural episode, “Me. I Am Lambily… and the Elusive Chanteuse,” is about Mariah Carey, her Lambs, and how they react to a flop album.

Carey's album “Me. I Am Mariah … The Elusive Chanteuse,” turned in May 2024. A decade later, the Lambs, like "Why Mariah Carey Matters" author Andrew Chan, still listen to it. So, what do fans appreciate about these lesser-known albums that the masses couldn’t connect with?

Chan and three other Lambs, whom Vincent met at a …

Has K-Pop Lost Its Koreaness?, Madison J. Gusler

Capstones

Since the 2010s, the global expansion of K-pop has been undeniable, with music from Korean idol groups resonating with fans around the world. We’ve seen the industry adapt to cater to this global audience, placing emphasis on non-verbal aspects of performance such as choreography and set design, and integrating more English lyrics in their songs. K-pop has always had multinational, multicultural influences in its production, yet the music has remained distinctly Korean. But as the industry expands into new markets, faces new challenges, and adapts to convey greater global appeal, the public must contend with the idea of a K-pop …

Timbres Oubliés: The Forgotten Sounds Of Loeffler's Octet, Graeme Steele Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modern musicians play a lot of old music and a lot of new music, but not so much “new old music.” This study—with its accompanying critical edition score, world-premiere recording and first present-day performances—represents, at long last, the deliverance of one such work from the ashes of history to the ears of the present: Charles Martin Loeffler’s forgotten Octet for Two Clarinets, Harp, Two Violins, Viola, Cello and Double Bass, a piece that was left unpublished, unrecorded and unheard since 1897.

This paper documents my efforts to finally reintroduce the Octet to the repertoire. By cross-referencing the autograph manuscript score …

Multilayered Harmonic Structure In Elliott Carter’S Clarinet Quintet, Xiangyu Zhou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides a comprehensive account of Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Quintet through analyzing his usage of core harmonies, derived core harmonies and aggregate completion. In this dissertation, Carter’s core harmonies are expanded from the original three, the two all-interval tetrachords, 4-Z15 (0146) and 4-Z29 (0137), and the all-trichord hexachord 6-Z17 (012478) through the addition of 6-Z43 (012568), the complementary hexachord to the all-trichord hexachord. A derived core harmony is generated by combining any of the two core harmonies into a larger set. This dissertation also suggests the expansion of derived core harmonies to include nonachords due to their important harmonic …

Dante’S Volgare And The Pastoral Presence: An Analysis Of The Concept Of Language In The Divina Commedia, Paola M. Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dante’s conception of the Italian vernacular, the “volgare illustre”, is a central concern of his work and one which catalyses and nurtures, both overtly and covertly, his creation of the Commedia. Although Dante positions himself in his writings as the continual defender and most prolific poet of the vernacular, isolating a specific linguistic use and structure, a coherent definition of what vernacular Dante privileges or what appropriate usage he adheres to, is a difficult and often confusing task. The existence of two eclogues, the only works by Dante to have been written after the majority of the Commedia had been …

Singing Petrarch In The Cinquecento: Embodied Reading And The Italian Madrigal, Thomas A. Hedrick Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how composers of sixteenth-century Italian madrigals highlighted poetic line rhythm, repeated vowel sounds (or assonance), and word repetition in figures of speech—all elements of the verse that have been previously overlooked by scholars, who have traditionally focused on musical depictions of the text’s semantics. The analysis in chapters 2, 3, and 4 shows that composers used a consistent set of techniques from the madrigals of Arcadelt to those of Monteverdi, and musical examples draw from large collection of madrigals on Petrarch sonnets. The analytical methodology is built on the premise that Cinquecento encounters with poetry can be …

String Quartet, Scott A. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This quartet begins by providing glimpses of three distinct musical ideas. Although they seem totally unrelated, the music seeks to confound this initial expectation. Related textural contrasts are developed between dialogical textures and the quartet speaking as one voice. The pitch material combines just intonation with twelve tone equal temperament.

A Multilevel Approach To The Analysis And Visualization Of Timbral Brightness In Post-Tonal Music, Stephen Spencer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation develops a method for the analysis and visualization of timbral brightness in post-tonal music. Brightness, a salient timbral attribute correlated with the prominence of high frequencies in the sound spectrum, is crucial for distinguishing sounds and discerning how they fit together in music. The dissertation employs a multilevel analytical approach, measuring differences in brightness at multiple “textural levels” and temporal scales. The analytical utility of the approach is demonstrated through four case studies, each one closely examining the score and audio of a piece of instrumental music written in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Chapter …

Musical Semiotics In Kate Soper’S Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016), Scott A. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the six parts of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016). While individual parts have received some music theoretical attention, this is the first analysis of the entire Pulitzer Prize-nominated work. Ambiguity and contingency are major themes of Ipsa Dixit, and by treating each part independently and in combination, I hope to honor Ipsa’s contingent status as a unified work comprised of six complete works. Soper’s libretto unifies an assemblage of texts with adaptations of Aristotle to investigate the intersections of language and music with authority, veracity, and (un)intelligibility.

I theorize that Soper’s “philosophy-opera” dramatizes the formation of …

Frontera De Valldemosa’S Equinotación And The Nineteenth-Century Textbook Controversies It Sparked, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Abstract:

Francisco Frontera de Valldemosa (1807-1891) published the first edition of his treatise, generally known as Equinotación, in 1837. The book purported to simplify musical notation by reducing the complex system of clefs to only three. From the moment it became public his clef method became controversial. First, it sparked a long controversy in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris regarding the system’s originality, usefulness, and possible plagiarism. Subsequent editions decades later also sparked debates and even a couple of lawsuits, as reflected in several articles in the Gaceta musical barcelonesa. At the bottom of these polemics …

The Migration Of South Asians From India To Guyana: The Journey, Struggles In A New Land, Reasons For Changes Over Time And Their Cultivation Of A New Culture., Cynthia C. Harry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indians from different regions of India arrived in Guyana through indentureship in 1838. They were under a five-year contract and had to work on the sugar plantations for the duration of their indentureship. While they tried to persist their Indian culture, assimilation in their new environments and interaction with people of different cultures, allowed them to develop a culture unique to Indo Guyanese heritage.

This thesis focuses on the history of Indian diaspora in Guyana. It evokes the struggles they faced on the ships, and during and after indentureship. It also touches on the political and racial issues they had …

Me And Mathematics: “Doing What You’Re Talking About”: In Dialogue With My Family, Eden Morris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper is a philosophically oriented accompaniment to my audio project (accessible through the following link: https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/me-and-mathematics). Working together, the paper and audio collages form a call to action and a resource. My primary finding is the importance of doing what you’re talking about or exploring and implementing your ideas experientially. Doing what you’re talking about is important for effective teaching/learning and feeling in line with oneself. This working concept came to my attention during my research conversation with my oldest living relative, and then, again, with my youngest (non-baby) relative. This doing what you’re talking about is a way …

The Reciprocal Interaction Of Musical Performance And Analysis, Gregory Hartmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Musicians can generally be divided into one of two kinds: practitioners who compose or perform music, and thinkers who analyze or write about music (theorists, musicologists, and critics). These roles might seem to be of approximately equal importance, so the perspectives of each should be given proportionate consideration. Yet the existing music-theoretical literature consistently relegates the performer to an inferior position. When performance is discussed, it is usually done in objective terms; an analysis is presented as a rationale to judge a performance as right or wrong. My dissertation challenges this perspective and provides an alternative. By marrying rigorous, theory-based …

Metric Schemas And Projections In Three Colombian Folk Genres, Lina S. Tabak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how stylistic expertise can affect metric perception, through the analysis of three Colombian folk genres—cantos de boga and currulaos from the Pacific region and joropos from the Eastern plains bordering Venezuela. Specifically, it considers the tension between metric perceptions which arise from bottom-up mechanisms for entrainment (such as projections), and those which are based on top-down mechanisms (such as schemata). This tension is at play when more and less musically enculturated listeners perceive entirely different metric structures when listening to identical music.

Taking bottom-up and top-down metric perception as a thread, this dissertation isolates three additional metric …

Reconciling Macro- And Micro-Levels In The First Movement Of Brahms’S Piano Concerto In D Minor, Op. 15: A Schenkerian Reading, Alexandra Joan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the first movement of Johannes Brahms’s Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 15, through a Schenkerian lens. Concertos are relatively unexplored in Heinrich Schenker’s theoretical work. Surprisingly, although Schenker put Brahms on a pedestal throughout his life, he left only a few published analyses of the composer’s music.

Chapter 1 explores the kinship between Schenker and Brahms. Both conceived of the musical work as an organic entity. They also shared an approach to the tonal language based on an eighteenth-century tradition of figured bass and counterpoint. Op. 15 also exhibits an approach to musical form grounded in the …

Articulatory Activity Of The Tongue, Jaw, And Lips During The Second Passaggio Transition Of The Soprano Voice, Richard C. Lissemore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes three experiments designed to explore the acoustic and articulatory activity of a perceptible change in the soprano voice known as the secondo passaggio, or second transition, which typically occurs for the [ɑ] vowel between D♮5 (587 Hz) and F♮5 (698 Hz). Acoustically, the transition involves a shift in resonance strategy from second resonance tracking of the second harmonic (f_R2/2f_o) to first resonance tracking of the fundamental frequency (f_R1/f_o). To quantify the acoustics of the transition, we employed the measure L₁-L₂, the …

Unveiling Iolanta: Blindness In Nineteenth-Century Opera, Nafset Chenib

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the main tropes of representing and narrating blindness in nineteenth-century opera and fictional literature with a particular emphasis on Tchaikovsky’s 1892 one-act opera Iolanta, with its blind protagonist. Examination of the production history of Iolanta reveals that misrepresentations and misconceptions ingrained within Tchaikovsky's libretto and music have governed directorial choices, consequently giving rise to a homogeneous, predominantly unfavorable portrayal of blindness on the stage. I suggest an approach to the opera that is more consonant with the lived experience of blindness.

Reimagining Haydn’S Seven Last Words For String Quartet: Recasting, Retelling, And Reorchestrating For A Modern Audience, Jeremy J. Kienbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross stands as an anomaly not just in Haydn’s oeuvre but in the catalogues of all formidable composers over the past three hundred years. It is unique in its construction: seven slow sonata form movements sandwiched by an introduction and a surprising earthquake finale; and even more outstanding that Haydn published three distinct versions of the work over a ten-year period. Further, the transformation of the Seven Last Words from a sacred to secularly performed work in Haydn’s time warrants further discourse, especially considering its present-day performance practice and reception.

This …

Coachella Ya Habibi, Yasmine Daas

Capstones

This piece examines Palestinian singer Elyanna’s historic Coachella performance as a cultural moment shaped by visibility, constraint, and the politics of existence. Through firsthand observation and contextual analysis, it traces how Palestinian art—particularly music, fashion, and embodied performance—functions under conditions where identity itself is politicized. Elyanna’s presence on a global festival stage is framed not as a singular breakthrough, but as part of a broader continuum of Palestinian cultural assertion before and after October 7, when artistic expression increasingly carried material risk. By situating her performance alongside shifting industry responses, audience reception, and the evolving role of Palestinian artists in …

Apple Of My Eye, Lili Tobias

Theses and Dissertations

In a near-future defined by climate change, apples have been driven extinct by a blight. Now, a biologist has engineered them back to life, and the opera centers on a mother and child waiting on line to obtain one of the first new apples.

Ākāśā, Ramya Thiyagarajan

Theses and Dissertations

Program Notes

Ākāśā represents the subtlest form of matter and is often described as the infinite space in which all other elements exist, akin to a canvas upon which the universe is painted. From this primordial element emerges all vibrations that become Sound.

While waiting in line at a Shiva temple in South India, I was struck by the multitude of sounds filling the vast space. Percussion instruments played different rhythms in front of different deities, there was a melodic reed instrument, chants, singing and bells. Voices of people conversing intertwined with this musical tapestry. As the busy soundscape intensified, …

Rebetiko In Nyc: New Ideas Of Greek Diaspora, Mihalis Alisandratos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores ideas of Greekness within the modern rebetiko space of New York City through the use of both ethnographic and reflexive techniques. Combining thick description, interview analysis, and extensive self reflection, this thesis endeavors to better understand how Greek American rebetiko musicians in NY today conceive of their experience in diaspora.

“Here’S My Brown Soul!”: Identity And Transformation In Tejano Music, Joseph Guzman

Theses and Dissertations

The music genre of música tejana, known later as Tejano music, is the musical celebration of Texas-Mexican, or tejano, identity and transformation. This paper explores and reflects on the topics of transformation, identity, and current state of Tejano music, including first-hand experiences and recent conversations with Tejano musicians.

Just Save Me, Terrence Mcmanus

Theses and Dissertations

Just Save Me is a work that deals with tremendous personal struggle. The piece was written primarily in May of 2022, with revisions taking place in the months after. Just Save Me utilizes a complex formal structure, improvisation, and incorporates elements of jazz, rock, and minimalism.

Bringing Recess Music Indoors: How Attention To Musical Play In The Classroom Impacts A School Community, Angelina B. Scolari

Theses and Dissertations

Why should elementary music teachers learn about the games their students play at recess? This paper discusses the process of recovering children’s folklore at a Bronx elementary school, what findings can teach us about the children in our lives, and how music teachers can use “kid culture” in the classroom.

Oblique, Edward Kijowski

Theses and Dissertations

Oblique is a multi-sensory art installation that provides a story of fragmentation in sound and light rendered by an obtuse hexagon arrangement of speakers and associated lighting prompts. The oblique direction of the soundwaves creates sonic sculpturing that propels listeners into an active state.

Distortion And Subversion: Punk Rock Music And The Protests For Free Public Transportation In Brazil [Book Review], Mariel Acosta

Publications and Research

Around the year 2003 some friends and I from “el way,” the self-referential youth slang the alternative music scene and subculture members used in the Dominican Republic, started attending meetings for the youth political group Juventud Rebelde at the borrowed backyard of the left-wing political party Fuerza de la Revolución. The yard had a gazebo-like structure with a cemented floor and a zinc roof under which foldable chairs were arranged in a circle. There we participated in multigenerational study groups to discuss radical communist and anarchist texts in relation to current political issues, we heard talks and report backs …