Composition Commons^™

Symmetry And Interval Cycles In The Quartettos Of Mario Davidovsky, Ines Thiebaut Lovelace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of Mario Davidovsky has seldom been analyzed past the timbral implications of his electroacoustic pieces and gestural aspects of his phrasing, and there has been virtually no attention paid to its pitch organization, despite the composer’s longstanding interest in writing for acoustic instruments. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how two main consistent resources for the organization of pitch govern the musical continuity and formal structure of his music, what I’ve called symmetry potentiality—actuality, and interval cycle potentiality-actuality processes. The interval cycle potentiality-actuality process refers to the various interval cycles that self-perpetuate, completing aggregates. This self-perpetuation means that incomplete …

Snapshots, Cynthia L. Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For all instruments:

Linger slightly on the first note of a glissando in order to make the pitch distinguishable.

For the piano / celesta:

The piano / celesta is set up in an L-shape so that the celesta is in the front and the piano is to the left of the player. The right side of the piano keyboard can touch the left side of the celesta at or around the celesta's Ab below middle C (the lowest celesta note written in this piece). The L.H. invariably plays the piano, though the R.H. switches between the piano and celesta.

Duration: …

The Fourth Movement Of György Ligeti's Piano Concerto: Investigating The Musical-Mathematical Connection, Cynthia L. Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This interdisciplinary study explores musical-mathematical analogies in the fourth movement of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. Its aim is to connect musical analysis with the piece’s mathematical inspiration. For this purpose, the dissertation is divided into two sections. Part I (Chapters 1-2) provides musical and mathematical context, including an explanation of ideas related to Ligeti’s mathematical inspiration. Part II (Chapters 3-5) delves into an analysis of the rhythm, form, melody / motive, and harmony. Appendix A is a reduced score of the entire movement, labeled according to my analysis.

Searching For Sounds: Instrumental Agency And Modularity In Electroacoustic Improvisation, Stephen (Red) Wierenga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In their radical departure from conventional instrumental technique and standardized instruments themselves, the practices of electroacoustic improvisation present a particular challenge to prevalent Western concepts of musical instruments. These concepts—which generally treat instruments as fixed objects—are ill-equipped to account for the ways in which electroacoustic improvisers foreground the agency of their instruments and abandon the quest for “mastery” typical especially of classical attitudes. Additionally, electroacoustic improvisers often approach instruments not as singular, self-contained, and static in their materiality, but rather as modular instrumentaria capable of myriad states and ever in flux, similarly problematizing conventional conceptions that view the physical constitutions …

Issues Of Rhythm, Symmetry, And Style In Alfred Schnittke's Concerto For Piano And Strings, Ilya Mayzus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes as its subject of study Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and Strings and seeks to examine several interconnected issues in Schnittke’s music: the problem of unification of disparate and conflicting forces that generally describe his style; the wave-like shape of intensification followed by a pullback that can be seen as acting on different temporal levels; and one of narrative meaning. Particular attention is given to symmetry in various manifestations, which the composer considered a necessary ingredient, comparing rhythmic regularity to periodicity found in nature, while at the same time undermining it through the use of asymmetries in order …

The Motivic Economy In Nikolai Medtner's Sonata Romantica, Nellie S. Seng-Quinn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the motivic aspect of Medtner’s Sonata Romantica Op. 53, No. 1. Medtner, in his book, The Muse and the Fashion, has stressed through numerous statements why the initial theme is of utmost importance to him and how the entire work should be derived from the theme. The goal is to trace the journey of Medtner’s themes through the course of the sonata. Using various methods of musical analysis, I will determine whether the theme is indeed the source of latter material found within the sonata.

Speaking Of Consequences: Contemporary Music For Political Discourse, Elizabeth Adams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation reads politically works by Georges Aperghis, Rick Burkhardt, Mark Enslin, and Elizabeth Hoffman. Chapter 1 argues that suspending intelligibility stimulates the audience to imagine alternative meanings and ways the music might go, in an orientation that is politically desirable. Synthesizing theorizations by Herbert Brün, Joseph Dubiel, Shoshana Felman, and Enslin, it catalogues four techniques for suspending intelligibility, and analyses Enslin’s Sonata Quijada. Chapter 2 suggests that we read politically metaphors of agency and power sharing in chamber textures, and translate those metaphors into our social and political lives. It draws on Elisabeth Le Guin’s reading of Boccherini, …

Twisted Blue, Jessica Rudman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Twisted Blue was written for clarinetist Dan Liptak to perform with the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra conducted by Erberk Eryilmaz. The title comes from the bluesy progression that forms the basis of the second movement, which was in fact composed first in a few frantic fall afternoons. The opening movement followed, and then the finale.

La Vie Dans Les Plis, Andre Rene Bregegere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

La vie dans les plis was premiered at The Firehouse Space (Brooklyn, NY) on June 9, 2014, by violinist Karen Rostron and pianist Mirna Lekić. The piece's title is a reference to an eponimous collection of texts by Belgian author Henri Michaux. There is no direct connection between Michaux's text and the structure of the piece. This choice of title, in addition to its great poetic beauty, is meant as an acknowledgement of my indebtedness to Henri Michaux's writings, and, more generally, to Surrealist - and Surrealist-influenced - poetry, for revealing to me the artistic value of a bold exploration …

Todesfuge, Casey Hale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Todesfuge (2008-2010) is a setting, for tenor and chamber orchestra, of Paul Celan's poem of the same name. Celan wrote his landmark work on the Holocaust in the years after he himself was freed from internment in a Romanian forced labor camp in 1944, though its imagery is drawn from accounts of the death camps in Poland. From the outset, I was ambivalent about setting this text to music, but felt compelled, and my response was to frame it with idiomatic references to German music from Wagner to Weill, exploring the discomfort of using aesthetic artifice to represent unspeakable atrocities. …

October In Galicia, Karen J. Siegel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

October in Galicia is a setting of selections from the Czech poet Ewald Murrer’s fantastical book, The Diary of Mr. Pinke, translated into English by Alicie Pi!t’ková. The surreal day-to-day happenings of Mr. Pinke occur in a timeless group of villages revealed by a translator’s note to be modeled on the historical region of Galicia (now part of Poland, Ukraine, and Russia). The tape part (or more accurately the digital audio files), which appears in “October 23rd,” consists of an organ recording that has been manipulated electronically. The electronic manipulations are subtle enough that the original pitches are always …

Sinfonia Brevis (Original Composition), Jeffrey Lynn Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sinfonia Brevis. A work for orchestra (2d1 2 2 2 - 4 2 2 0, timpani, 2 percussionists, strings) in one movement divided into four sections (Andante Moderato, Allegro, Adagio, Allegro), with a duration of approximately 17 minutes.

String Quartet, No. 2, Edward M. Smaldone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Three movements (Vibrant, Exalted, Recitative: Scherzo) for two violins, viola, and 'cello. Part I of this dissertation is an essay entitled "Linear Analysis of Selected Posttonal Works of Arnold Schoenberg: Toward an Application of Schenkerian Concepts to Music of the Posttonal Era."