Music Commons^™

A Cajun Tale, Daniel D. Schultz

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Not required for Music Composition

The Third Truth, John Paul Chapman

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This composition, scored for a full symphonic orchestra, is based on the theory of truth discussed by Bertrand Russell. Objective truth, he states, must satisfy three criteria. The first element of truth is to acknowledge that it has an opposite. The second element of truth is a property of belief, statement, and perception. The third requisite is to acknowledge that truth consists in coherence. The introduction to this composition invokes the confluence of the three elements by utilizing discordant harmonies. In the next two movements, a theme is developed for each element. The First Truth, representing conflict, possesses a dark …

Murder Music: Horror Film Soundtracks Throughout History, Vincent G. Aragon

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Horror films often rely heavily on their music to create a tense and frightening experience for their audience, and it is the composer's job to write a score that satisfies that requirement. Throughout film history, the methods composers utilize to achieve that goal differ across time due to various factors including available technology, allotted budget, and the norms and expectations of films at the time. This capstone paper explores the different approaches composers employed in writing horror soundtracks from the early 20th century to the modern-day, noting any significant shifts and common themes found in the music of popular horror …

Our Perception Of Scary Sounds: A Comparison Of Films And Popular Music, David Puhl

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

My Capstone Research Paper will be an analysis on the usage of “scary” sounds performed in popular music as well as a comparison to the practice of using similar sounds in film, making a note of any similarities or differences (ex. audience perception, use of visuals). I will also touch on the integration of scary sound effects alongside music scoring for film, specifically in the Horror and Suspense genres. With popular music being my primary focus, I want to elaborate on the cognitive psychology of audiences (in film and music) and their reactions to "scary" or "horrific" sounds to better …

Memory Management For Game Audio Development, Rahmin Tehrani

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Research in managing memory for video game audio development. Interactive music and audio implementation are explored with a strong focus on how to manage data while developing game sound. Some concepts that are important include the multi-use of one sound, file conversion, and randomization in music and audio using technology. Additionally, audio middleware such as Wwise is referenced and strongly used to showcase the previously described concepts. The end of this research project explores the future in video game audio with information relative to the next generation of consoles, video game streaming, physical memory limitations and expansions, and the future …

The Dinner: An Opera In One Act., Rachael Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After getting engaged Kate decides to invite her estranged mother over to come out as queer. As Kate attempts to appease her mother, who fervently disagrees with her lifestyle, choices, and sexuality, the dinner starts over, progressively becoming stranger until Kate must finally confront their relationship.

Teaching Elementary School Music: A Composition Approach, Lauren Amanda Hammer

Masters Theses

The 2014 National Music Standards emphasizes the importance of the three artistic processes of creating, performing, and responding. The Massachusetts Music Standards follow both the 2014 and the 1999 standards. The 1999 music standards are as follows: singing, reading and notation, playing instruments, improvisation and composition, critical response, purposes and meanings in the arts, roles of artists in the communities, concepts of style, stylistic influence, and stylistic change, inventions, technologies, and the arts, and interdisciplinary connections. Both standards mention either creating, improvisation, or composition, but are music educators emphasizing the importance of these standards? In Massachusetts, following both sets of …

Scott Boerma: A Study Of His Musical Compositions And Conducting Career, Qiuxian Lu

Honors Theses

Scott Boerma is a well-known wind music composer and conductor. In this paper, I will examine his career development as a composer and conductor. I will include brief analyses of some of his musical compositions based on form, orchestration, usage of harmonic and melodic devices, etc. I will also talk about his conducting methods when he conducts different pieces and conveys various musical ideas. There are three sections in this thesis: 1) Scott Boerma’s musical journey (how he became a successful composer and conductor); 2) Analyses of his compositions: Fanfare for a Golden Sky, Bora Bora, Shadows, Poem, and Cityscape …

Red Note New Music Festival Composition Competition Announcement, 2020, School Of Music, Carl Schimmel, Roy Magnuson

Red Note New Music Festival

The RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University is a week-long event which features outstanding performances of contemporary concert music.

Red Note New Music Festival Poster, 2020, Carl Schimmel, Roy Magnuson

Red Note New Music Festival

The RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University is a week-long event which features outstanding performances of contemporary concert music.

Red Note New Music Festival Program, 2020, Carl Schimmel, Roy Magnuson

Red Note New Music Festival

The RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University is a week-long event which features outstanding performances of contemporary concert music.

Symphony No.2 And The Text Setting Of Henry Purcell's Dido And Aeneas, Sungho Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This work is conceived as a unit that has two parts. Part one is an original composition, Symphony No. 2. This piece is scored for symphony orchestra and it is a sequel of the composer’s master thesis, a symphonic poem titled Moonlight Sprite, which describes the various landscapes of imaginary sprites in nature. The compositional techniques include whole tone scale, octatonic scale, pentatonic scale, atonality, bitonality, polytonality, tone clusters, and minimalism. The piece’s orchestration style and techniques are mainly influenced by Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, Penderecki, Charles Ives, and Dinos Constantinides.

Part two is an analysis of the text …

Concerto For Violin And Orchestra And "Nevertheless, She Composed: A Contemporary Survey Of Women Composers Of The Twenty-First Century", Elizabeth Anne Knox

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two parts: the first part includes an original composition titled, “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.” This twenty-minute work is composed for traditional orchestral instrumentation and solo violin. Motivic variation is the primary focus of this piece with a goal to show evidence of a thorough understanding and use of this technique. In music composition, variation is a technique achieved by restating musical material in an altered form. Schoenberg describes a motive as, “a unit which contains one or more features of interval and rhythm [whose] presence is maintained in constant use throughout a piece.” Therefore, motivic …

Sovereign, Christian Johnson

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Sovereign is a musical retelling of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the last book of the Bible. This Scripture describes the end times, the temptations of Satan and his followers, the destruction of the world, the pouring out of God’s wrath on unbelievers and the presence of God’s grace within this wrath, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the battle of Armageddon, and the eternal kingdom to come. The musical work is directly inspired by the text and attempts to represent the events that are foretold.

The first movement, “Whoever Has Ears,” depicts chapters 1-4 of the book of Revelation, …

Score Following With Hidden Tempo Using A Switching State-Space Model, Yucong Jiang, Chris Raphael

Department of Math & Statistics Faculty Publications

A score-following program traces the notes in a musical score during a performance. This capability is essential to many meaningful applications that synchronize audio with a score in an on-line fashion. Existing algorithms often stumble on certain difficult cases, one of which is piano music. This paper presents a new method to tackle such cases. The method treats tempo as a variable rather than a constant (with constraints), allowing the program to adapt to live performance variations. This is first expressed by a Kalman filter model at the note level, and then by an almost equivalent switching state-space model at …

Compositional Modeling: A Classical Imitative Pedagogy For The Modern Era, Robert Harris Jeter

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Students of composition develop two skills simultaneously: craft and creativity. Since students are more naturally inclined to focus on one of these skills over the other, finding the proper balance is an educational challenge. An effective pedagogical system for composition cultivates both of these necessary skills.

Imitation was a preferred pedagogical approach during the Classical period. In his 1848 book School of Practical Composition, Carl Czerny instructs his readers to apply the extensive rules of composition by strictly following a compositional model. Although this methodology lost favor during the nineteenth century, the imitative techniques presented by Czerny are flexible enough …

A Combined Language: The Application Of Poly-Stylistic Techniques To Concerto Sonata For Alto Saxophone And Piano, James Calderon

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Composition Portfolio, Alexander J. Juhan

Theses and Dissertations

A selection of works. Includes contemporary pieces, as well as music scored to picture.

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

“Native American Folk Song Suite”: A Study Of Traditional Native American Melodies, The Role Of Music In Native American Society, And Its Translation To The Modern Wind Ensemble, Preston Parker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Music holds a sacred place for the many Native American tribes of the United States. Over the past 150 years, ethnomusicologists Dr. Theodore Baker (1851-1934), Dr. Frances Densmore (1867-1957), and John Donald Robb (1892-1989) have preserved these songs by sitting down with indigenous Native Americans and recording their music straight from the source. Through these recordings, these ethnomusicologists created a springboard for composers, including myself, to study the past and create new music that honors the traditions and culture of Native Americans. I have applied my new knowledge of these musical techniques and traditions to create a work for wind …

Finding A Voice – Exploration Of Modes And Timbres : A Portfolio Of Ten Original Compositions With Accompanying Commentaries, Ekapon Muenyam

Doctoral

This thesis marks the culmination of four years’ work, as part of my PhD study in composition. The portfolio consists of ten pieces, lasting in total approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes, and a commentary comprising an analysis of each of the works. The main emphasis has been on the development of an individual style, informed by the exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century compositional techniques, instrumental timbres, stylistic genres, forms, scale derivations and the wider aesthetic of contemporary music. The portfolio includes works for solo instruments, ensemble and orchestra. One of the main areas of research has been to …

Curtis Otto Bismarck Curtis-Smith, Hollis Claire Wittman

Masters Theses

Curtis Otto Bismarck Curtis-Smith, composer and pianist, spent the majority of his career serving the community at Western Michigan University. His development of the bowed piano technique contributed significantly to the course of music in the late twentieth century; his prolific compositions stand on their own artistic merit. This document attempts to provide a summation of the composer’s life, particularly in regard to his compositional activity. The first section, a biography, discusses Curtis-Smith’s life and the changes to his compositional style over his lifetime. Next, a catalog of works details the available information about the many pieces written by the …

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 …

Mobile Music Development Tools For Creative Coders, Daniel Stuart Holmes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project is a body of work that facilitates the creation of musical mobile artworks. The project includes a code toolkit that enhances and simplifies the development of mobile music iOS applications, a flexible notation system designed for mobile musical interactions, and example apps and scored compositions to demonstrate the toolkit and notation system.

The code library is designed to simplify the technical aspect of user-centered design and development with a more direct connection between concept and deliverable. This sim- plification addresses learning problems (such as motivation, self-efficacy, and self-perceived understanding) by bridging the gap between idea and functional prototype …

Intrusive Thoughts - Guitar, Voice, & String Quintet, Joseph M. Young

Theses and Dissertations

This four-movement song addresses mental health, specifically that of Obsession Compulsive Disorder and the symptom of intrusive thoughts that are often associated. From the point of view of an individual suffering from OCD, each movement describes the disorder and portrays different stages of dealing with and managing emotions and relationships.

An Analysis Of Musicals By Lynn Ahrens And Stephen Flaherty, And An Original Musical, Fly Like An Eagle, Donna Howard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty have written musicals together for several decades. This thesis contains an in-depth discussion and stylistic analysis of several songs each from Once on This Island, Ragtime, and Seussical – three Ahrens & Flaherty shows chosen specifically because of their variety in style and subject matter. This analysis includes, among other things, the lyrics and lyric setting, textures, harmonic settings, accompaniment styles, rhythms, and harmonic progressions. The central portion of this document contains the music for nine songs of an original musical titled Fly Like an Eagle. This script is written by Daris Howard and is …

From Choir To Band: Analysis And Application Of Adaptation Techniques As Demonstrated In Works By Whitacre, Ticheli, And Johnson, Deshmond D. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the adaptation techniques of composers Frank Ticheli and Eric Whitacre. As a means for that exploration, it includes an original choral work by the author as well as a band transcription that was done using adaptation techniques found in the Ticheli and Whitacre pieces. The application of those techniques sheds new light on the subject of band transcriptions by showing a variety of possible approaches. Musicians, conductors, and composers will be able to use these materials to enhance the composition and performance of a choral work and its band transcription.

Abandoning Abuse: Acknowledging Adoption In The 21 Century, Deborah Elizabeth Ellis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The inspiration for this set of pieces arose from a friendship with fellow grad student Morgen Cavanah. Morgen and I were both adopted as children, and it this common background that gave rise to these pieces. The poems chosen were written by Morgen about individuals or events in her life. Though I had planned to set 9 of the original 12 poems, this set is comprised of my four favorites. Each piece uses repetitive piano motives that underlie the melodic lines of the voice, flute, and cello. This choice explores harmonic and melodic possibilities that expand minimal accompaniment. Much of …

Mabalêl., Johannes Visser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The symphonic song, Mabalel, as presented here, is an extract from a larger composition that also forms part of a greater trilogy of songs on South African texts. Throughout the three texts in the trilogy, themes of nature, pre-civilization society, and African tragedies create unification between the works. In Mabalel, a young native South African girl is sent to get water for her village from the river, when she is unexpectedly attacked by Lalele, a crocodile. The beauty of this text not only lies in its metaphorical representation of the (most often unjust) difficulties and tragedies faced daily by rural, …

Sound And Emotion: The Use Of Music In The Cinematic Experience, Sarah Schulte

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

To portray the radical importance of music in stimulating emotion within cinema, to appeal to an audience’s selective attention to sounds, and to detail the process of creating an original film score, I have scored WKU student Tori Mills’ short film Come Up for Air. Film music is traditionally defined as any music that accompanies a film, though today it more specifically refers to music intended to advance the film’s narrative. Music has played an increasingly important role in transmitting emotion to film audiences, feeding the psychological connection between spectator and on-screen action. To achieve this emotional connection, a film …