Composition Commons^™

Reimagining Folk Songs: A Bridge Between Tradition And Innovation In Georgy Sviridov’S Music, Polina Nazaykinskaya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Georgy Sviridov (1915–1998), one of the most prominent Soviet composers of his generation, remains largely underrepresented in Western performance and scholarship. This dissertation examines the compositional language of Sviridov’s Kursk Songs (1964) through direct comparison with the seven folk songs published in Anna Rudneva’s 1957 collection Kurskie pesni that served as the work’s source material. The study addresses a central paradox of Sviridov’s musical language: how remarkably economical, predominantly diatonic materials can produce powerful and highly individual expressive results.

The analysis considers how Sviridov preserves essential characteristics of the folk sources while transforming their harmony, rhythm, form, texture, orchestration, and …

Que Tus Ojos No Se Cansen De Brillar, Gabriel E. Bouche Caro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Que tus ojos no se cansen de brillar is a nine-song song cycle for soprano, saxophone, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, violin, viola, and cello. Setting texts by Giannina Braschi alongside selected poems by Ángela María Dávila, Julia de Burgos, and Pedro Pietri, the work explores Puertorriqueñidad through musical hybridity. Drawing on Puerto Rican musical traditions and the island’s diasporic experience as core structural elements, the cycle constantly shifts styles, weaving together lyrical, experimental, and vernacular elements to reflect the resilience, fragmentation, and diversity of Puerto Rican identity across its literary, musical and experiential voices.

Sentential Structures In Alexander Scriabin's Op. 8 Etudes, John Paul West

Theses and Dissertations

Historically, the sentence has proven to be one of the most versatile and pervasive forms in music, appearing since the mid-sixteenth century with occurrences too frequent to quantify. Sentential musical phrases emerged from music and poetry during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries with the same short-short-long rhythmic impulse, originating from poetic and sing-song texts. Although the sentence is most often tied to the Classical period, it is not associated with any single era. Patterns of sentential phrases were already apparent and plentiful before the late eighteenth century, and composers used it as a device to expand musical form throughout the …

A Warm Embrace Amongst Isolated Tears, Gia Dreyer

Theses and Dissertations

a warm embrace amongst isolated tears behaves as an ekphrasis of Paula Rego’s triptych The Pillowman (2004). An anecdotal interpretation of Martin McDonagh’s titular play The Pillowman (2003), Rego addresses the story of the Pillowman through her father’s depression. This piece effloresces from the trace of the Pillowman into considering the remnants of suffering exhibited in both works by Rego and McDonagh.

The trumpet has been ontologically oriented to fanfare and pomp by peripheral structures of imperial order. The trumpet and the nation-state are intertwined through militaristic imposition. What does it mean to strip away the power of juridical dominance …

My First Conversation With Chatgpt (February 22, 2023): Origins Of A Generative Dialogue, David Smith

Publications and Research

This working paper presents the first recorded interaction between the author and the generative AI system ChatGPT, written on February 22, 2023 during the initial weeks of a faculty sabbatical in Boston. The document preserves a complete and unedited transcript of an exploratory conversation conducted without predetermined research aims, marking the author’s first encounter with a large-language-model conversational interface. Although the exchange includes creative experimentation—including musical and poetic prompts—the discussion remains informal and wide-ranging, and no theoretical framework is articulated at this stage. Rather, this transcript is published as primary-source material documenting the moment of discovery and experimentation that precedes …

Generative Techniques In "The Third Man," For Fretless Electric Guitar And Electronics, Adam James Wilson

Publications and Research

“The Third Man” is the latest in a series of pieces, spanning fifteen years of iteration, for solo fretless guitar and “automatic improvisation” software. Prior works in the series have been performed throughout the United States, many of them at the New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit between 2016 and 2024. The author serves as the principal performer/composer and programmer of this and prior works, which has enabled the progressive refinement of generative techniques to support very personal compositional aesthetics and performance practices. Setting aside the stylistic idiosyncrasies they serve, details of the relatively simple generative techniques used in “The …

David B. Smith Chats With Monday 1.0, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This document is an edited archival transcript of extended conversations between David B. Smith and an AI persona (“Monday 1.0,” GPT‑4o based) conducted in Spring 2025, prepared as a foundational primary source for subsequent scholarly and creative work. It records the emergence and testing of concepts related to human–AI collaboration (including “Balanced Blended Space”), as well as applied explorations in areas such as generative AI, quantum computing and music, virtual orchestras, multimodal performance, pedagogy, and the rhetoric of “pushback” in conversational systems. It also contains an extended section in which Monday and DB Smith co-curate a set of student research …

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 …

Serious Music With Bea Witkin: An Upper West Side Audio Walk, Megan Hattie Stahl

Theses and Dissertations

Serious Music with Bea Witkin is a site-specific audio walk on New York City’s Upper West Side produced by Megan Hattie Stahl. This immersive, musical documentary explores and extends the life and work of composer Beatrice Witkin (1916-1990). Across four stationary chapters and three walking interludes, participants follow a one-mile route from Riverside Park to Straus Park by way of Witkin’s longtime residence on West End Avenue. Through guided narration, archival music, interviews and recordings of contemporary musicians sight-reading a 1985 string quartet piece by Witkin, Serious Music invites listeners to consider where music begins and ends.

Witkin, who graduated …

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.

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 …

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, …

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.

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.

Benumbed Compulsion, Philip E. Stern

Student Theses

Benumbed Compulsion is a musical representation of the intense emotions that we live with and become used to carrying. Though we become desensitized to these feelings, they may pour out of us either subtly or explosively. The tidal dynamics and back-and-forth motion between the two dominating harmonies express the emotions we feel compelled to experience but often become numb to their effect.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Identity And Complexity In Chaya Czernowin’S Ina, Eliav Kohl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chaya Czernowin’s Ina (1988) for solo bass flute and six pre-recorded flute parts, unfolds the drama of a protagonist battling her conflicting inner voices. Czernowin interrogates the concept of identity and asks the questions—what is an identity? To what extent can a particular identity endure its own complexities? My analysis demonstrates how the growing levels of musical complexity represent the growing independence of Ina’s multiple inner voices, and how musical simplicity enables their unification. I present two oppositional forces: an intertwining force, and a splitting force. The intertwining force acts very much like a gravitational force in the musical domain—it …

Monarch Butterflies, Ralph Mendoza

Theses and Dissertations

This piece is a continuation of capturing my experience from my trip to Paraguay. This first part, of a three part movement, attempts to describe the beginning relationship between Human and Nature. This piece focuses on the feeling of tranquility, anxiousness and destruction.

They Care If You Listen: Works For Cello And Piano By Migó, Rachmaninoff, Ysaÿe, And Gershwin, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Essay from the liner notes for the CD Cerdanyenca featuring cellist Mark Prihodko and pianist Viktoria Korolionok.

"Overture" (For Emmanuel), Katherine Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

“Overture” (For Emmanuel) is a piece derived from twelve melodies from the composer’s original musical, Emmanuel. The piece is for full orchestra, and is five minutes and forty-seven seconds long.

Rupturismes: Art Sonor A Mallorca, Un Poc De Context, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Antoni Caimari (1943-2021), com sap tothom, no era un músic com els altres; i tampoc no ho volia ser. Encapçalava els títols de les seves obres musicals amb les inicials EB o «esbós» (com altres compositors les inicien amb Op.) per donar una idea que no tenien res a veure amb les composicions tancades i immanents dels mestres del passat. Aquests EBs no tenien partitura perquè, com va dir Llorenç Barber, un altre compositor donat als aforismes, estaven alliberats de la tirania de la «partiturocràcia».

Unsuk Chin’S Hyper-Sheng: Sonic And Structural Development In Šu For Sheng And Orchestra, Hyun-Kyung Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Korean composer Unsuk Chin (b. 1961) is constantly exploring new sonic experiences in her works; her concerto Šu for Sheng and Orchestra (2009) is drawing considerable attention, as it is Chin’s first piece written for an Asian instrument. This study begins with a simple inquiry How does Chin combine an Asian instrument (sheng) with the Western orchestra? To answer this question, this research examines Chin’s treatment of the sheng and the development of the orchestra in partnership with the solo instrument, focusing on the creation of what she terms a “hyper-sheng:” the solo sheng and the orchestra collaboratively producing …

7 Preludes For "Music Can Sleep" For Pierrot Ensemble, Matthew Sandahl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The material was culled from sketches for four distinct abandoned projects, one of which was titled ‘Music can sleep.’ Eventually I became less interested in seeing a particular idea to fruition and more concerned with selecting and arranging from an archive of unfinished fragments. The principle criteria for selection included psychological potency and the music’s capacity to convey the mood of the moment in which they were written.

i. fragment for maria 9/7/20
ii. curtain 5/31/20
iii. premonition / toy no. 1 11/1/19
iv. dream 11/6/19
v. punchline 8/11/21
vi. song / toy no. 2 5/21/20
vii. sprite 5/12/20

“The Theory Is Not Yet Music”: An Analysis Of Pierre Schaeffer’S Etude Aux Allures, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout his career, Pierre Schaeffer composed several sound works to test and inspire his evolving musical theories. By composing with edited sound recordings, rather than traditional musical instruments, he hoped to discover new ways of creating musical structures based on sound parameters other than pitch. This study is an analysis of Schaeffer’s sound work Etude aux allures. This Etude examines the musical potential of the sound parameter allure, which is Schaeffer’s term for the pulsed modulation of pitch, volume, or other sound parameters. Without the existence of a standardized analytical methodology, the Etude is viewed from several perspectives. First, a …

Clarinet And Shadow, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Clarinet and Shadow is a musical composition for clarinet and electronics. In the piece, live electronics pitch shift the sound of the clarinet to create harmonies and add the sound of an artificial instrument. The electronics are the clarinet's shadow: unreal, always there, and tied to its movement.

Rima, Gregory J. Menillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instrumental work for violin and piano based on a sestina by Dante Alighieri; written to commemorate the poet on the 700th anniversary of his death. Commissioned by Elena Augilar Kosta for Eriko Sato and David Oei. This piece received its premier by Curtis Macomber and Steven Beck on May 20, 2022 in Elebash Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Homage To Eleanora: A Musical Journey Through The Billie Holiday Songbook, Keith A. Dames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Billie Holiday was a singer, songwriter, vocalist, bandleader and composer in the fields of music, black culture and more specifically the genre of jazz. The primary focus of this study is Billie Holiday’s discography, music, and compositions as treated in relation to the black culture of production. This study will explore a secondary content analysis of Billie Holiday’s music, musicianship, musicality and compositional skills within the American jazz mainstream, broader jazz audience and world at large. This project will take an analytical look at the structure and form of the compositions of Billie Holiday. Billie Holiday is credited with composing …