Music Commons^™

Echoes Of Chinese Tradition: A Guide To Mandarin Diction Through Fixed-Ipa And Traditional Phonology, With Insights Into Intertwined Intonation Contours Of Chinese-American Art Songs, Xiaoming Tian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a comprehensive guide to Mandarin Chinese diction and articulation, rooted in traditional Chinese phonology and articulated through Fixed-International Phonetic Alphabet (Fixed-IPA). It unfolds in two primary segments, with the initial section delving into the historical underpinnings and phonetic nuances of traditional Chinese opera singing. This inquiry not only systematically introduces Chinese pronunciation rules but also illuminates the influence of traditional Chinese opera elements on contemporary Chinese art songs and operas. This part also reflects upon the significant strides made in Chinese language Romanization since the Wade-Giles system's introduction in the 19th century, discussing how it facilitated literacy …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 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 …

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.

Galina Ustvolskaya's Writing For Violin And Piano, 1952–1964, Patrick Doane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Galina Ustvolskaya, Russian composer born in 1919 in Petrograd, navigated a life amidst the tumultuous changes in Soviet-era music and the upheavals of her home city. This dissertation explores Ustvolskaya’s compositions for violin and piano, to deepen the understanding of her musical language and style.

Despite the constraints and challenges imposed by the era’s political landscape, Ustvolskaya boldly crafted a distinct musical identity, writing social-realist compositions while privately cultivating a highly complex, individual style.

Few scholars have undertaken a comprehensive look at her music. This dissertation contributes to a growing body of recent scholarship by employing Russian music theorist Valentina …

“After Being Equals, Is This The Sequel?”: Vivian Fine’S Memoirs Of Uliana Rooney As Artistic Commentary On Shifting Reactions To American Women’S Music, Tonia L. Passwater

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although it has been acknowledged that American female modernist composers encountered obstacles to success, the nuanced and multi-faceted nature of these obstacles has yet to be fully examined. In this dissertation, I explore the worlds of Marion Bauer, Johanna Beyer, Vivian Fine, Miriam Gideon, and Ruth Crawford Seeger through the lenses of music history, reception history, and socio-linguistics in order to contribute a more thorough understanding of the obstacles women encountered.

Before a note composed by a woman was ever heard, a battle was being waged with gendered identities. These identities are the starting point for my analysis of obstacles …

André Mocquereau's Theory Of Rhythm, Charles Weaver

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the theory of rhythm developed by Dom André Mocquereau (1849–1930), a French Benedictine monk. Mocquereau’s theory was originally conceived as a method for performing Gregorian chant and has been the source for numerous publications and recordings since the beginning of the twentieth century. This dissertation places Mocquereau’s theory in the context of both the evolving performance practice of medieval monophony and the history of music theory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapter 1 surveys the history of the notation of Gregorian chant, introducing the problem of constructing a rhythmic practice from historical sources. Chapter 2 examines …

Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities In Works By Helmut Lachenmann, Simon Steen-Andersen, And Johan Svensson, John Popham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities in Works by Lachenmann, Steen-Andersen, and Svensson, I analyze three compositions that foreground the cellist-body, its physical gestures, and instrumental interactions: Helmut Lachemann’s Pression für einen Cellisten (1969/2010), Simon Steen-Andersen’s Study for String Instrument #3 (2011), and Johan Svensson’s marionette for string instrument, electro-mechanical devices and lights (2018). These works center sound production and the performing body as sites of ontological and creative exploration. Their physical gestures serve multiple sensorial functions, heightening the visual and kinesthetic dimensions of a traditionally aurally oriented practice. For each work, I develop a corresponding analytical method based on …

Konohana, Jean-Patrick Besingrand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Konohana is a concerto for clarinet and ensemble written for the ensemble Court-Circuit in the context of the Composition Academy Philippe Manoury and the Musica Festival in Strasbourg. Konohana (Konohanasakuya-hime) is the goddess of Mount Fuji and the princess of cherry blossoms. She is associated with the sakura and the ephemeral beauty of its blooming. This piece is inspired by the symbolism of the cherry blossom as well as the socio-cultural aspect of the blooming flowers. From the clarinet, contrapuntal lines emerge and progressively densify the instrumental texture like rhizomes. This densification is interrupted by the presence of « inserts …

Ways Of Silence And Other Absences In The Music Of George Crumb, Jean-Patrick Besingrand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of American composer George Crumb (1929-2022) is undeniably singular in the musical landscape. His aesthetic is often characterized by his exploration of timbre, his graphic scores, his use of quotation, his theatricality, and his interest in unusual instruments. This study proposes to take a different approach to Crumb’s aesthetic through the spectrum of silences and other absences. The concept of silence will be broken down and reconstructed through the Japanese concept of ma (間) and of empty spaces. Multiple types of silences and absences will be considered throughout this dissertation, expanding thus the concept of silence not only …

Form In Hip-Hop Music: Sections, Songs, And History, Stephen M. Gomez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores musical form in recorded hip-hop music from 1979–present. Form, defined as the large-scale organization of songs, is a parameter that artists consider in the creative process and fans experience while listening. Hip-hop’s historical foundation as a live, improvised, party-oriented genre influenced formal functions and patterning from the earliest days of its popular recorded life, beginning with the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979. While many of the section and song form labels used by scholars of pop-rock music are transferable to the analysis of hip-hop, the latter genre conveys a unique sense of time rooted in …

Audible Futures: Scenes Of Sonic Encounter In Cold War Kurdistan, 1923–2023, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a century of cultural politics in Kurdistan, from 1923 to 2023, and it does so from a relatively marginal vantage point in most histories of Kurdistan: that of the Soviet Caucasus. It takes as its primary object the cultural and political itineraries of sonic media and listening in Kurdistan, from Soviet Kurdish radio broadcasting and pirated cassettes to postsocialist archives, DJ booths, and streaming music. These itineraries map not only the emergence and circulation of Kurdish notions of tradition, heritage, and cultural memory, but also the methods of counterinsurgency deployed by the states that occupy Kurdistan. In …

Beat Construal, Tempo, Metric Dissonance, And Transgressing The Groove In Heavy Metal, Drew Fleming

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the relationship between the metric practices of heavy metal and the elements and processes of the musical quality known as “groove.” Although heavy metal is not often expressly associated with groove per se, it occupies a historical position within the stylistic milieu for which groove music has established the primary, referential conditions. In order to uncover this connection, then, I begin with an analysis of groove in relation to established groove-music styles, defining it as an embodied and encultured knowledge of a set of cognitive, social, kinetic, aesthetic, and musical behaviors extending in practice from African-American popular-music …

Beyond The Songs On The Vistula: Chopin And Poland, A Mythical Construction, Juan Carlos Fernandez-Nieto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Poland and Chopin are two concepts that cannot be separated, for they form an entity of their own. However, the story of both subjects has often been manufactured to offer a view of the patriotism and the connection of Chopin with his country, which promoted the creation of the nation. At the same time, the circumstances that propitiated the rise of nationalism and the social unrest that ended with World War I were the same that promoted the myth of Chopin. Therefore, this research is focused on the analysis of the facts and the context that created the myth of …

Babel, Daniel Horowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a series of three memoiristic essays around the vortex of identity. The first is an exploration of how childhood overmedication split the continuity of the author’s self-conception. The second traces the slipperiness of Jewish and Queer identifications detailing their synthesis in the klezmer revival in New York City in late 1980s and early 90s. The third is a polyphonic narration of the recovery of a lost klezmer’s life story in the face of the silence of time and slaughter.

Play Makes Perfect: An Exploration Of Game And Play Elements In Composition And Performance, Gabrielle Chou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore the intersection of play and games in Western classical music and define a new category of pieces, “ludic pieces,” which contain play structures and game mechanics within their composition. Starting with surveying perspectives in ludology and ludomusicology, including those by Roger Caillois, Johan Huizinga, Jesper Juul, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman, I will examine various definitions of a “game” and what its qualifying aspects are. I will then turn to music and consider pieces that interact with play and games without containing game structures, including examples of musical humor and pieces which evoke the imagery …

Germanic Latin Lyric Diction: Regional Variations In Germany, Switzerland, And Austria, James A. Worley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I discuss the various regional Latin lyric diction practices in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and the extent to which Germanic Latin diction (also termed German Latin diction), Italianate Latin diction, and Roman Latin diction are performed beginning circa 1950 until 2022. I argue that Germanic Latin lyric diction is not standardized throughout Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. First, I explore Roman and Italianate lyric diction practices compared across various sources in order to distinguish between Latin pronunciation choices, then I discuss trends in Germanic Latin lyric diction “rules.” Extensive tables in appendices A (Roman Latin) and B (Germanic …

Voice Leading In Fugue, Yuval Shapira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines voice leading in the fugues of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier from a Schenkerian perspective. In Bach’s fugues, thematic material usually permeates all the parts, making the surface diminutions unusually complex. Given the predominance of the subject, there is a tendency in the Schenkerian tradition to base the voice-leading analysis of a fugue on an a priori analysis of the subject by itself. Based on the subject’s outline, one might expect to find the fugal thematic layout reflected in the underlying voice leading, conceiving the fugal surface as an elaboration of a simpler quasi-fugal substructure. I argue …