Composition Commons^™

The Impact And Creation Of Level Music For Video Games, Randolph Kestner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the creation of music for a video game level utilizing industry tools for music compositions as well as level design. Music as an element of game design and its resulting impact is also examined.

Journey, Darren Alan Rainey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Journey is not about a particular journey, it is more about images or moments from within a journey. The interpretation for what this means is left up to the performers and listeners; however, I view this as one person not particularly achieving what they set out to achieve. It all began with a rough start, moments of happiness, playfulness, contempt and contemplation, but in the end it wasn't the expected outcome of the journey. The work plays between moments of vigor, aggitation, playfulness, light-heartedness, comfort and relaxation. Expression markings are described above each area of the work. These descriptions help …

An Annotated Bibliography And Performance Commentary Of The Works For Concert Band And Wind Orchestra By Composers Awarded The Pulitzer Prize In Music 1993-2015, And A List Of Their Works For Chamber Wind Ensemble, Stephen Andrew Hunter

Dissertations

The purpose of this document is to assemble into one resource the concert band, wind orchestra, and chamber wind ensemble compositions of the 23 composers who were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music between 1993 and 2015. The Pulitzer Prize in Music is given annually to an American composer in recognition of distinguished achievement in composition of a work that received its premiere during the previous year. Timothy Mahr completed this study on composers who received the Prize from 1943 to 1992. This is a continuation and replication of that study, following Mahr’s procedures.

A brief biographical sketch will be …

The Wishing Well: A Children's Ballet (A Composer's Perspective), Lydia Dempsey

Honors Projects

As a composer, I am passionate about introducing audiences to contemporary classical music. I chose to compose a twenty-five-minute children's ballet titled The Wishing Well based on the fairytale Diamonds and Toads. It premiered on April 2, 2016 at the Bowling Green Performing Arts Center in collaboration with choreographer Sophia Schmitz and conductor Robert Ragoonanan. Other elements of the project included set design, costuming, lighting, audio and video recording, and marketing. The mission was to provide the local community with a free arts event, introduce young audiences to music and ballet, enrich people’s lives through music and dance, provide …

Musical Contextualization In The Local Church: A Pragmatic Exploration Concerning The Philosophy And Methodology Of Assimilating Sacred Music Into The Worship Vocabulary Of A Congregation, Kaleb Gooden

Senior Honors Theses

God’s mandate for all worship pastors is that they minister to their local body of believers in an effective way. This directive necessitates the use of scripturally and culturally appropriate music that clearly communicates the Gospel to the church congregation. This creative thesis further investigates musical contextualization in the local church.

Five philosophical pillars represent the most basic structure on which the entire process of local church contextualization stands. The minister must be rooted in scripture, led by the Spirit, present-minded, future-driven, and committed to service. After evaluating these philosophical concepts, this thesis will then explore the methodological contextualization process …

Little Birds, Anna Wagner, Daniel Swilley, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

No abstract provided.

A Tank Full Of Wishful Thinking: Crystallizing The Rhythms Of The Road, Leanna K. Smithberger

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This presentation is a personal exploration of American car culture — the roads that enable it, the everyday actions that sustain it, and the values that justify it. I use a constellation of mobilities, autoethnography, and rhythmanalysis in order to tap into the political, personal, and aesthetic ways our road-centered culture shapes and constrains our lives in mundane and extraordinary ways. I argue that our road system of mobility is largely taken for granted, and is stubbornly persistent due to deeply held cultural values. I use a variety of artistic, evocative methods, including narrative, poetry, and music, because I argue …

An Approach To Undergraduate Research - Developing An Understanding Of The Musical Process Through The Editing Of Early Music, Jared Chance Taylor, Gary W. Cobb

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This project is an outgrowth of a larger project that involves the eventual compilation of a series of Italian madrigals into a modern performing edition. The purpose of this project was to transcribe and edit a madrigal from Carlo Grossi’s L’Anfione musiche da camera or per tavola (Venice, 1675) in order to better understand and be able to perform an Italian madrigal as it might have been done in the late seventeenth century. Through a process of research, examination and transcription, I was able to not only to transcribe Grossi’s music into modern notation but was also able to also …

What Do You Mean, "Practice"? Theorizing The Writing-Music Connection, Callie Elise Compton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Researchers in the field of composition studies have frequently made allusions to musicians when they’ve discussed the role of practice in gaining skill. In doing so, however, they’ve risked making speculative rather than testable claims and separating composition studies from recent insights on practice from other disciplines such as education and music psychology. These fields, I argue, offer testable frameworks with which composition instructors and scholars can teach and study writing practice. Such frameworks are necessary because composition researchers need to supplement qualitative studies of writers and writing with quantitative data to generate replicable tests of teaching methods that may …

Breakdown: Vol 1: Text And Music, A Survey Of Methodology And Process, Vol 2: In Full Score., Andrew Synnott

Doctoral

The work presented here is in two parts. The first part is an opera composed to a libretto by the Irish playwright, John Breen. This opera is in three acts and concerns the performance of four famous performance art pieces; Rhythm 0 by Marina Abramović, Breakdown by Michael Landy, Velocity Piece by Barry La Va and How To Explain Pictures To a Dead Hare by Joseph Beuys. These art works are presented as the action of the opera and happen concurrently on the stage during the first two acts. The third act reflects on the action of acts one and …

Aesthetic Meaning In The Congregational Masses Of James Macmillan, Stephen Kingsbury

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Examines the interconnetions between MacMillan’s congregational masses and other works by the composer. The compositional and philosophical commonalities between paired compositions deepens the philosophical and aesthetic meaning of both works. An understanding of these parallels and the manner in which they are worked out in practice provides an important insight into the composer’s intentions, making the performance of the masses within the context of the worship service more relevant to the spiritual experience of the congregant and provides insight into the interconnectivity of MacMillan’s compositional output.

Counteredpoint, Gary Barwin

The Goose

Poetry by Gary Barwin

Society Of Composers Region Iii Conference February 25-27, 2016, Mark Zanter

All Performances

No abstract provided.

2015-2016 New Music Festival, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Lisa Leonard

New Music Festival

Tenth Annual Music Festival

• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Composer-in-Residence
• Lisa Leonard, Director

Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 7:30 pm

• Spotlight I: Young Composers

Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 7:30 pm

• Master Class with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Thursday, February 25, 2016 at: 7:30 pm

• Spotlight II: Music of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Friday, February 26, 2016 at 7:30 pm

• Spotlight III: An Informance with Penderecki String Quartet

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, …

We Need A Church That's Inside-Out, Heather Josselyn-Cranson

Northwestern Review

This hymn gives voice to one frustration that many Christians feel: a despair over watching Christian factions argue about doctrine while the poor suffer outside of church walls. This hymn calls us to see the self-obsession which prevents us from attending to those in need (first stanza), confess our neglect of Jesus' mandate to care for others (second stanza), and turn away from the distractions of petty bickering toward the expression of Christ's peace, grace, and love to all those outside the church (third stanza).

Days Will Come That Sap Our Vigor, Heather Josselyn-Cranson

Northwestern Review

"Days Will Come that Sap our Vigor" speaks encouragement to individuals and congregations in the face of exhaustion (the first stanza), depression (the second stanza), and even death (the last stanza). In each case, God restores to us strength, hope, and life. The tune for this text, FALLS PARK, alludes to the fact that the author wrote the hymn text after visiting Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Jonathan Green, Charlie Schlenker

Interviews for WGLT

Charlie Schlenker from WGLT interviews IWU Provost Jonathan Green. A January 2016 recital at Illinois Wesleyan featured several original pieces composed by Provost Green.

See WGLT for more information about the interview. A transcript of this interview can be found by clicking the download link above and to the right of this page.

Te Deum, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

Te Deum--87pp.

Introductory note: "The text of Te Deum has been set to music by many composers. The Latin text 'Te Deum laudames: te Dominum confitemur' begins the work, translated as 'We praise you, O God: we acknowledge you to be the Lord.' The writing of this work was inspired initially by the work of Arvo Pärt, whose setting I find to be one of the most beautiful. I share in the admiration of Pärt's music and his contribution to the genre of sacred choral writing with my friend and colleague Dr. Robert Saler, who has promoted Pärt's work with …

Fanfare And Metamorphoses For Double Trombone Quartet Or Ensemble, Wes Flinn

Music Publications

Fanfare and Metamorphoses was commissioned by Andrew Glendening for the California Honors Collegiate Trombone Choir’s performance at the 2017 International Trombone Festival in Redlands, CA.

Frederick May's Symphonic Ballad, Mark Fitzgerald

Compositions/Arrangements

Originally entitled Sinfonietta, the Symphonic Ballad was composed for the Belfast Wireless Symphony Orchestra (later the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra). The premiere was conducted by E Godfrey Brown on 30 August 1937. A second performance with, reduced forces, was given in a Radio Éireann broadcast on 4 September 1941 by the RÉ Orchestra conducted by Michael Bowles. At some point after this, the score of the work was mislaid and its current whereabouts is unknown. The reconstruction was made from the orchestral parts used in the 1941 performance, which are housed in the Trinity College Manuscripts and Archives Research Library. …

Frederick May Songs, Mark Fitzgerald

Compositions/Arrangements

This volume gathers together Frederick May's surviving songs in a new performing edition with a commentary by the editor. Individual string parts for the Four Romantic Songs are available from the editor.

Tu Lo Sai | 10-96190, James Q. Mulholland

Music Faculty Scores

Tu Lo Sai

Part Number: 10-96190

Price: $1.80

Voicing: TTBB

Transcription By: Piero Floridia

Music By: Giuseppe Torelli

Arranged By: James Q. Mulholland

Commissioned by the "Singing Statesmen"University of Wisconsin-Eau ClaireGary Schwartkoff, director

And I Will Sing A Lullaby | 20-95750, Robert I. Hugh, Henry Leck

Music Faculty Scores

And I Will Sing a Lullaby

Part Number:
20-95750

Price:
$1.85

Voicing:
Two-Part Treble

Lyrics By:
William Blake & Thomas Dekker

Music By:
Robert I. Hugh

Edited By:
Henry Leck

Featured at:
2016 TCDA Convention
2016 KCDA Summer Conference

Branch Of May, A - Ttbb | 41-96550, James Q. Mulholland

Music Faculty Scores

A Branch of May (I Brought You Here)

Part Number: 41-96550

Voicing: TTBB

Lyrics By: Tradition May-Day Song

Music By: James Q. Mulholland

Branch Of May, A - Satb | 10-96020, James Q. Mulholland

Music Faculty Scores

A Branch of May (I Brought You Here)

Part Number: 10-96020

Voicing: SATB & Treble

Lyrics By: Tradition May-Day Song

Music By: James Q. Mulholland

Pós-Tudos, Bruno Ruviaro

Music

“Pós-tudo” is the name of a Brazilian concrete poem from 1984 by Augusto de Campos. A more or less literal translation would be: “I wanted to change everything / I changed everything / Now, post-everything / Ex-everything (I study) / I change (mute).” The last two lines have double meaning in Portuguese, shown in parentheses in the translation.

I borrow the word “pós-tudo” from this poem to name my first collection of piano études. An étude (“study” in French, “estudo” in Portuguese) is typically a short composition designed to improve the skills of a performer by isolating and exploring a …

Winter Wood: Melodies For Soprano And Harp, Emmanuel M. Dubois

Emmanuel Dubois Compositions

Op. 49 : 1 score (ix + 26 pages) ; includes three Russian poems by I. Bunin, F. Tyutchev, Y. Petrachuk, poem translations, and composer's introduction.

"Russian writers are known for their beauty and severity, and their celebration in poetry, literature, music and films is legendary. The beautiful legend of the Snow-maiden - Snegurochka - sublimely put in opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, evokes the renewal of life in springtime and the end of life in winter without violence, without sense of loss. It is quite remarkable in comparison with the thirst of violence in so much of the world. It is …