Composition Commons^™

Keys From The Past: Unlocking The Power Of Eighteenth-Century Contrapuntal Pedagogies, Jonathan R. Paget, Stewart J. Smith

Research outputs 2013

How did eighteenth-century musicians learn to compose, and how were they able to produce musical works with such comparative ease and fluency? What were the strategies at play that enabled even the most workman-like of composers to produce vast amounts of competent music, and how was it possible for almost any professional keyboard player to improvise a passable fugue? It is only recently that scholars have sought the answers to such questions. Groundbreaking work by Gjerdigen (1988; 2007a), Porter (2000; 2002), Renwick (1995), and others, provides a fascinating glimpse of the working methods of eighteenth-century musicians, and also offers implications …

Joe Henderson's Harmonic Approach To Improvisation Within The Duo Setting In His 1992 Quintet Album, Lush Life: The Music Of Billy Strayhorn, Patrick Van Der Moezel

Theses : Honours

Jazz improvisation can be greatly influenced by the combination of instrumentation, influencing the role of the instruments and the way they relate to each other. Notably, the stripped-back nature of the duo emphasises these differences. Musicians such as Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and Joe Henderson are three of many saxophonists who have employed this particular combination to explore different ways of improvisation.

This paper will draw on Joe Henderson’s 1992 album Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn, which uses the duo setting on three tracks. Each of these three tracks has a slightly different combination (saxophone with bass, with …

A Survey Of Christian Cross-Over Songwriting: Core Principles And Potential For Impact, Paul Malhotra

Senior Honors Theses

A cross-over song has been defined as a song written by a Christian artist aimed at a mainstream audience. An understanding of the core principles of cross-over songs and their relevance in contemporary culture is essential for Christian songwriters. Six albums marked by spiritual overtones or undertones, representing a broad spectrum of contemporary cross-over music, were examined. Selected songs were critiqued by analyzing the album of origin, lyrical content, author’s expressed worldview, and level of commercial success. Renaissance art also provided a historical parallel to modern day songwriting. Recommendations were developed for Christian songwriters to craft songs with greater effectiveness …

Ronald Stevenson, Composer-Pianist : An Exegetical Critique From A Pianistic Perspective, Mark Gasser

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This exegetical critique makes a conceptual summation of Ronald Stevenson’s life’s work for the piano and his contributions as a composer‐pianist. Chapters one and two provide a profile of Stevenson as a pianist, examining the aesthetic and musical concerns that defined his long career, as well as precedents and antecedents of his pianism. Of particular interest are the ways that Stevenson coalesces aspects of the ‘grand manner’ and his obsession with a pianistic bel canto style. Chapter three examines Stevenson’s remarkable output in terms of piano transcriptions. His conceptualization of this as ‘capturing the essence’ of the original composer is …

Creating And Performing New Australian Works On The Hungarian Concert Cimbalom, Joshua Webster

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis explores the creation and performance of five new Western Australian works for the Hungarian concert cimbalom. These include four solo works, and one duet, which were scored, analysed, performed, and recorded. This thesis is in two parts: this exegetical component, which details the background, development, and findings of the research, including the scores created, and the manual that was developed for composers’ use; and a practical component, which is an active representation of the research, included as video recordings. To assist the composition of the new works, a manual was developed for the composers’ use. This manual began …