Composition Commons^™

Survey Of Models For "Computer Music", Gabriel Pell

Honors Theses

The introduction of digital computers to the world of music composition provided a medium from which to write far more efficiently than the traditional means of transcription. Of course, this applies to modern notation software, but it is the way in which computers have granted the composer the ability to utilize stochastic generation, algorithmic reasoning, and later, artificial intelligence that was especially groundbreaking. To be sure, there are countless models created by composers and computer scientists that utilized every aspect of the abilities granted by the technology at the time of their creation. However, there are those few models that …

The Issue Of Communicability In Guerra-Peixe’S 1947 Solo Violin Works, Lucas Henrique Teixeira Martins

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Throughout an important period of his career as a composer, César Guerra-Peixe demonstrated a preoccupation with both the issue of communicability between listeners and the musical composition, as well as avenues for expressing national identity in music. The works composed between 1944 and 1948 present several possible paths for answering these questions with the musical language of the twelve-tone style. Música no. 1 and Música no. 2 for solo violin demonstrate a search for familiarity through the use of chords created by grouping sets of pitches from the originating tone row. The simple linear motif of the movements within these …

Give The Drummer Some: A Dive Into Drum Breaks And Drum Break Production, Kyle Kaldhusdal

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper traces the history of hip-hop culture through the evolution of the drum break, the original context of drum breaks in funk and soul music, their influence on DJ culture, and the subsequent impact of drum breaks on music and music production. It follows the development of breakbeat compilations in the 1970s and 1980s, parallel to the development of turntablism and sampling techniques. It also examines in detail how copyright litigation in the 1990s shaped the development of sample-based music genres and created a niche market for originally-recorded drum breaks over the subsequent decades.

The History And Development Of Solo Tuba Repertoire, Vasilios Tidwell

Honors Theses

The tuba's solo repertoire increased in quantity and quality as a result of developments in the instrument’s design and usage. Following the invention of the tuba in 1835, instrument makers experimented with design concepts to maximize the versatility and potential of the bass brass voice. Composers explored the various uses of the instrument, eventually making the tuba part of the standard orchestral instrumentation by the mid-nineteenth century. Following the instrument's acceptance into bands and orchestras, the first solo works for tuba emerged in the late nineteenth century.

Evolving from novelty pieces accompanied by wind or brass bands, tuba solo music …

A Score Of Voices: Creating And Scoring An Original Film With A Cappella Choir, Zachary James Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Film scores typically feature large instrumental ensembles, sometimes with choir added at pivotal moments. Rarely, however, is the choir entrusted with a greater percentage of the score, and far too scores explore the sonic potential that vocal music has to offer. In fact, in a recent study of 800 films, none contained a score that was completely c. Thus, the body of unaccompanied choral film scores is practically non-existent. This curious gap in repertoire inspired me to create the documentary Downstream (2023) and score it entirely with an unaccompanied choir. The full score to this new work is contained within …

Early Instruments In 21st Century Composition And An Original Composition For Saxophones And Viols, Jacob Bitinas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Composers continually seek new timbres and sonorities to bend to their will. The early music revival of the twentieth century has resurrected dozens of instruments that have gone unutilized in contemporary composition for centuries. The historically-informed-performance movement has now evolved to a point where early instruments and period performance techniques can add extraordinary new characters to twenty-first century compositions. This thesis explores how composers effectively utilize early instruments like the viola da gamba, harpsichord, lute, and recorder in their compositions.

The document also contains interview transcripts from eight composers and performers, including Nico Muhly, Liam Byrne, Martha Bishop, David Loeb, …

Creating A Seven-Track Project In Diverse Commercial Styles, Steven Schumann

Composition/Recording Projects

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the production process for a commercial instrumental album featuring the cello as the prominent instrument. The project includes over 25 minutes of recorded material, with approximately half recorded in a home studio setting and the other half recorded in a professional studio environment. The paper covers various aspects of music production and audio technology, geared towards musicians who have received formal performance training but may lack similar education in music production.

A History Of Bass Guitar Effects Pedals: Liner Notes, David Lloyd

Composition/Recording Projects

This project examines bass effect-pedal technology and the lineage of recordings that have made use of such equipment. The timeline of bass pedal recordings and artists that used them range from modern day session players to The Beatles. A well rounded list of effects most frequently used on bass guitar include octave, fuzz/distortion, chorus, phaser, and envelope filter based processors, and this paper examines multiple songs from commercial music history that utilize one or more of these effects on bass guitar. These songs include ‘Think For Yourself’ by The Beatles, ‘For the Love of Money’ by The O’Jays, ‘Something About …

Windows Into Jazz, Nicholas T. Bilski

Composition/Recording Projects

This project is a culmination of multiple different genres of jazz music in multiple different stylistic arrangements. Each chapter tells the story of its respective piece and how that piece came into existence.

A Composer's Perspective On The Clarinet Concerto, Sarah Marze

Honors Scholar Theses

While seminal literature on concerto form analysis and compositions for clarinet and orchestra has been conducted, this undergraduate thesis is an exploration from a young composer’s perspective. My priority was discovering the breadth of what the clarinet concerto has to offer in order to learn how to place my own work as a composer into historical, cultural and aesthetic contexts.
First, I present an abridged history of the clarinet concerto. Despite this musical form being hundreds of years old, concerto composition is still relevant today because it is a display of balance; the best concerti are delicate balancing acts of …

From Story To Song: Exploring The Storytelling Potential Of Instrumental Music, Celine Darr

Honors Projects

For this project, I have composed a piece of program music with the aim of capturing scenes from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" through music. The project seeks to answer questions regarding the elements that make instrumental music "programmatic", or able to portray a story.

2022-2023 New Music Festival, Lisa Leonard, Marti Epstein

New Music Festival

The 17th Annual New Music Festival

• Marti Epstein, Composer-in-Residence
• Lisa Leonard, Director

Friday, April 21, 2023

• Spotlight 1: Emerging Composers

Saturday, April 22, 2023 at 2:00 PM

• Master Class and Workshop with Marti Epstein: Bach's Relevance and Far Reach

Saturday, April 22, 2023 at 4:00 PM

• Read and Record Project

Sunday, April 23, 2023

• Spotlight 2: The Art of Marti Epstein

Interactive Sculpture/Audio Installation - World Tree Melody - World Science Festival (Queensland Museum), Guy A. Cooper

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

World Tree Melody is an interactive sculptural and sonic installation by Guy Cooper, exhibited at the World Science Festival Brisbane (Queensland Museum) in 2023. This work explores the fusion of creative technologies and public art through motion-activated sound, custom Arduino programming, multi-channel audio sampling, and evolving music composition. Visitors become active participants in the work, triggering a generative soundscape through physical interaction with the sculpture.

Constructed from copper pipe, hand-crafted leaves, and an organic tree core, the piece is powered by two Arduino microcontrollers, four motion sensors, and seven-channel 24-bit/48kHz audio samplers. Over 400 lines of custom code manage a …

Emily Somebody: A Chamber Opera In Three Acts, Rodrigo Afonso Salles Camargo

LSU Master's Theses

Emily Somebody is a chamber opera in three acts that tells the story of the friendship between the American poet Emily Dickinson and the man that would become her first editor, Mr. Thomas Higginson. This story, for me, is ultimately about a poet (or an artist) in the process of finding not only her own voice but also discovering what poetry and art mean to her, in the most genuine way, and standing up for these beliefs and values. All the lyrics used in this work are from Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters exchanged between her and Mr. Thomas Higginson.

Music Production And The Creative Process Through The Lens Of Neurodivergence, Blake Fry

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores the creative process behind the composing and production of three pieces of music through the lens of neurodivergence. It covers and synthesizes the material of three relevant books and applies their concepts toward retrospectively analyzing the experiences behind each piece of music. The goal is to make meaningful progress toward better understanding my personal creative process, the challenges that arise, and how best to resolve them. For these reasons this project should prove enlightening to any neurodivergent creatives or anyone struggling with creativity.

Bloom: A 21st Century Mandolin Concerto, Ashley Hoyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I have created a career performing various types of music on the mandolin. Very little of the concert repertoire, however, includes music originally written for the mandolin with most of it consisting of rearrangements of violin, cello, or piano music. This observation has led me down a path to learn why there is a lack of mandolin concert repertoire as well as to create new music specifically written for the instrument. In this thesis, an original mandolin concerto, Bloom, aims not only to add to the instrument’s repertoire, but bring it into the twenty-first century using contemporary compositional techniques. I …

Unheard Melodies: The Songs And Sorrows Of German Female Composers, 1700-1900, Brittany Weinstock

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

German classical music is known for its prolific composers who changed Western music as we know it, such as J.S. Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann. However, music history does not place as great an emphasis on their sisters and wives who were also incredibly gifted musicians. The goal of this study is to create a paper that elaborates on their lives and music while emphasizing their struggles when it comes to gender limitations.

For my research, I chose to focus on Anna Magdalena Bach, Fanny Mendelssohn, and Clara Schumann. I compiled a biography of each woman, with particular emphasis …

Andrews University Composers, Andrews University

Concerts and Event Programs 2022-2023

A group of Music Department Composers, showcasing their compositions at the Sunday Music Series hosted by Max Keller.

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 …

Créativité Assistée Par Ordinateur : Composer La Musique D'Un Film En Utilisant Uniquement Sa Courbe De Luminosité Extraite Automatiquement, Felipe Ariani, Marcelo Caetano, Javier Elipe Gimeno, Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau

Presidential Fellows Articles and Research

Dès sa conception, l'ordinateur a trouvé des applications pour accompagner la créativité des humains. De nos jours, le débat sur les ordinateurs et la créativité implique plusieurs défis, tels que comprendre la créativité humaine, modéliser le processus créatif, et programmer l'ordinateur pour qu'il présente un comportement qui semble être créatif dans une certaine mesure. Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons à la manière dont l'ordinateur peut être utilisé comme un outil favorisant la créativité dans une composition musicale. Nous avons extrait automatiquement la courbe de luminosité d'un film muet et l'avons ensuite utilisée pour composer une pièce musicale pour accompagner …

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.

Ethics In Kakadu (1988): Finding Djilile’S “True Tracks”, Natasia T. Boyko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tasmanian-born Peter Sculthorpe (1929 – 2014) was one of Australia’s most iconic modernist classical composers of the twentieth century. Kakadu (1988) seems to have sparked the most controversy of Sculthorpe’s works and has become one of his most well-known pieces. In the program notes provided in the score’s foreword, Sculthorpe asserts that “the melodic material in Kakadu, as in much of my recent music, was suggested by the contours and rhythms of Aboriginal chant.” Sculthorpe attributed this melodic material to the Arnem Land chant, Djilile. Consequently, Sculthorpe has been criticized for extracting Djilile from its authentic context as …

Bibliography, Jack G. Montgomery Jr.

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Bibliography of publications by Jack Montgomery.

Guide To The Robert Leigh Morris Collection, Columbia College Chicago

CBMR Collection Guides / Finding Aids

Robert Leigh Morris (b. 1941) is an American composer and music instructor. The Robert Leigh Morris Collection contains his personal music scores, from published works to drafts, and programs from his performances, as well as scores by other composers. Professional correspondences, documents, and some of Morris’s writings are also included.

Seamus Jennings Solo Transcription Project, Seamus Jennings

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Applications Of Video Game Music Theory For The Highschool/College Theory Curriculum, Daniel L. Thompson

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper covers the origins of video game audio and the technical limitations that effected what composers could write. Several audio excerpts have been transcribed with roman numeral analysis. The goal of this project was to determine if musical excerpts from video games could supplement an existing highschool/college theory curriculum. Theory techniques ranging from simple cadences to secondary function chords are present throughout the pieces. The pieces are from a variety of games and composers from 1983 - 2014. Overall, many of the compositions contain excellent examples of theory techniques. These excerpts would best be utilized alongside existing theory material. …

Incorporating Activism Into Contemporary Music: An Analysis Of A Composition Portfolio, Mary Walsh

Theses and Dissertations--Music

An original music composition portfolio featuring White Coral, a composition for wind ensemble and tape, Cataclysm, a composition for bass trombone, tuba, and tape, Protest, a composition for chamber ensemble with text by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Mother of Men, a composition for chamber ensemble with text by Ida Couch Hazlett, The Blue Hour a composition for wind quintet, and Jerusalem a composition for a cappella voices.

Butterfly Prayers, David Patterson

Compositions of David Patterson

Butterfly Prayers by David Patterson is a piano solo score that includes three movements:

i: Black Swallowtail

ii: Cabbage White

iii: 88

Butterfly Prayers depend on metaphor, a piano's 88 integrated black and white keys sounding the spectra and fragility of harmony--the pairing of wings.

Cinematic Somnium: Piano Solo, David Patterson

Compositions of David Patterson

Cinematic Somnium: Piano Solo by David Patterson. Dream along with my students of composing for the movies, ominous, melodramatic of the silents.

New Frontiers In Technology: Can Traditional Intellectual Property Rights Laws Be Adapted And Applied To Nfts?, Mariyah S. Wakhariya

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

A decade ago, ‘NFTs’ were rarely heard of or known to anyone, unless they worked in or kept up with the tech world. However, they are not new - they have been around for almost two decades. Their popularity has grown over the past few years. ‘NFT’ stands for ‘non-fungible token’. An NFT is a digital file with a unique identity that is verified on a blockchain and is therefore not interchangeable - i.e., a kind of crypto asset, like an authentication certificate for digital artifacts. In theory, NFTs can represent almost any real or intangible property. These days, it …