Composition Commons^™

Inclusion Initiative Project (Final Collaborative Composition Project), Brian Ciach

Assignment Prompts

Write a piece for 4-part chorale using text related to Social Justice and Racial Equity. For example, set the words of a speech by John Lewis to music or depict the noble character of MLK Jr. in music. You may alternatively write a solo piano piece, a work for piano and solo instrument, and/or other chamber ensemble (no more than 4 instruments please—which instruments are in your group?). The hard rule is that the work must be collaborative and inspired by our times from some other art form, and it must explicitly depict its source.

Rachmaninoff’S Second Piano Sonata, Op. 36: Large Scale Narrative Consequences Of Revision, Robert Brooks Carlson

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

A staple of the solo piano recital, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Sonata, op. 36, stands as one of the final romantic submissions to the art of the piano sonata. Rachmaninoff first published the sonata in 1913, and he returned to the piece in 1931 to revise it substantially, removing about five minutes from its performance time. Despite its compositional, emotional, and physical virtuosity, the work has received little analytic attention regarding the relationship between the two versions. This paper investigates the consequences of Rachmaninoff’s revisions by constructing a musical narrative for the sonata. The process illuminates structures within the piece …

Bulkomito Fantasy, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

Work for piano four-hands, or two pianos (two pianists). Written for friends of the composer, Anna Bulkina and Francesco Comito, thus the combined title name: "Bulkomito."

Expansion Of The Cello Repertoire In The 21st Century: A Collaboration With Composers Paul Eddison Lewis, Thomas L. Wilson, Austin Franklin, And Alex Shanafelt And The Resulting New Compositions For Cello And Electronics - Examined And Recorded By The Performer, Eduard Teregulov

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Electroacoustic music has been one of the fastest growing genres in classical art music since the middle the twentieth century. Thanks to the pioneers of the genre such as American composer John Cage, Halim El-Dabh, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Subotnick, Iannis Xenakis, as well many others composers and enthusiasts of the twentieth and the twenty-first century the repertoire of electronic and electroacoustic music has grown tremendously withing the last hundred years. Even today it is still a growing art form as contemporary composers are working with yet to be developed and explored electroacoustic programming and equipment.

The purpose of this project …

A Schema-Theoretic Approach To Hierarchy In Eighteenth-Century Tonality, Simon K. S. Prosser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prevalent modern-day theories of tonal hierarchy for eighteenth-century music, especially those influenced by the ideas of Heinrich Schenker, have been called into question by schema theorists such as Robert Gjerdingen and Vasili Byros, who argue from both cognitive and historical evidence that eighteenth-century tonal cognition was sequential or “windowed” rather than hierarchical. This dissertation seeks to recuperate the concept of tonal hierarchy in eighteenth-century music, drawing on research that reconstructs the implicit tonal theories of the partimento and thoroughbass traditions, as well as concepts of hierarchy from schema theory itself, to formulate a historically and cognitively grounded theory of tonal …

The Quartet’S Death: Embodiment, Performativity, And Physicality In Heinz Holliger’S 1973 String Quartet, Vicente Alexim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout the twentieth century and continuing today, many composers have explored and expanded the ways in which performers are asked to interact with their musical instruments. Often referred to as “extended techniques,” these modes of playing frequently produce sounds of indefinite pitch, or which fall outside equal temperament, and the works that employ them rely on the physicality of these techniques in order to create additional layers of meaning. The concrete parameters involved in making use of such resources can sometimes take precedence over or drive other more abstract compositional materials such as precise pitch and rhythm, but their influence …

The Musical Application Of Historical Literature, Yazmeen Mayes

Symposium of Student Scholars

This project combines history, literature, and newly composed music. The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, documents the age of “female hysteria,'' a catch-all “disease” for upper-class women acting outside of the social standard. The cure: solitary confinement. Any woman that showed signs of anxiety, creative passion, lack or abundance of sexual desire, or depression was sent to a remote, empty house for months at a time. Gilman describes these houses as exuberantly plain; thus, in confinement, the main character becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. At the time, these women were considered insane, but the “treatment” …

Engl 1302 Composition Ii Research And Analysis - Language And Communication, Ymitri Mathison, Christanna Eshleman, Joy Patterson, Ayodeji Daramola

Open Education Resources

This OER packet contains the course materials for ENGL 1302 Composition II Research and Analysis that introduce you to the ways in which the act of writing has the power to help you make connections between yourself and the world. Writing can help you establish your own experiences or ideas in relation to the experiences or ideas of others. In short, it can help you figure out what you think about things and help you to situate those thoughts in relation to the world and among the multitude of opinions and ideas that exist within it. That’s a powerful tool.

Teaching Songwriting And Incorporating Popular Music In Beginning Group Piano, Sarah Andrews

Student Theses

This thesis examines how incorporating popular songwriting is an effective way to teach keyboard skills to music majors in a traditional undergraduate music school. Basic keyboard skills taught in group piano are similar to the skills used in writing and performing a popular song. Connecting students to popular music inspires students and keeps them motivated to practice keyboard skills that are more tedious but considered necessary for learning the instrument. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part I offers the history of pedagogical trends in group piano from the eighteenth century until present day, focusing specifically on practicality, improvisation, …

Pioneers Of The Extended-Range Electric Bass, Owen Ananich

Composition/Recording Projects

This body of work reviews the history of the electric bass, the variations of early extended-range electric bass guitars and their variations during the 1970s, and analyzes the works of three bass players which helped bring the instrument to prominence. Recordings of these pieces also accompanies the work.

Vestiges And Dry-Erase Ghosts., Isaac Barzso

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Work for 2 mezzo-sopranos and instrumental ensemble (flute, oboe, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), alto saxophone, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion (2 players), electric guitar, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello and double bass).

Winter Suite., Timothy Amalavage-Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Winter Suite is a continuation of a larger piece entitled Four Seasons Suite. Four Seasons Suite consists of four movements representing each season: “Winter Suite,” “Spring Suite,” “Summer Suite,” and “Fall Suite.” Four sub-movements constitute each seasonal movement. So, Four Seasons Suite has four movements and sixteen sub-movements. Each movement is designed to be performable as a standalone piece but it is also acceptable to perform all of them during the same concert. Winter Suite takes its inspiration from images of the titular season and seeks to emulate various aspects of winter such as snowfall, blizzards, and ice along …

Collaborative Development Of Spatial Audio Virtual Environments, George V. Landon, Austin K. Jaquith

Frameless

Access to the newest features of Virtual Reality headsets has become increasingly more accessible to student developers in recent years. Manufacturers are competing to support all available device features not just through their Software Development Kits (SDKs), but also integrated into industry-standard game engines. One particular feature, spatial sound, can now be deployed without directly accessing the SDK but instead modifying deployment settings and selecting checkboxes. This accessibility to new VR developers has opened up new opportunities for inter-disciplinary collaborations within constrained development cycles like an academic semester.

Full Bloom: Diegetic Ui For Musical Phrases In Virtual Reality, Peter Armstrong, Elliot Cole, Peter Ferry, Joe Geigel, Susan Lakin, Richard Swientonioski, Zachary Talis, Jennie Thomas

Frameless

We propose a novel system for communicating musical note pitch and sequence information to users within a virtual reality environment. Our approach utilizes ‘Blooms,’ objects that resemble flowers with various petal arrangements. These formations, when constructed in view of users, act as diegetic, user-parsable encodings of their inputs. Blooms exist within the virtual space as simulated physics objects that collectively serve the role of a user interface.

The Rougarou Concerto And Initial Observations Of The Flex Ensemble, Thomas Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the immediate impact of the coronavirus pandemic through a composer’s lens. It will examine the impact through a variety of means, considerably: interviews of those with first-hand experiences, analyses of prominent adaptable works, and self-analysis of how my own process adapted to meet the moment.

After discovering the Composers Repertoire Initiative and being commissioned to write a concerto by Eduard Teregulov, I wrote a cello concert. The central chapter features the Rougarou Concerto, a cello concerto with accompanying flex ensemble, written for Eduard Teregulov. The work was written over ten months …

Composition Portfolio, Joshua A. Aguiar

Music ETDs

A collection of music compositions, composed and imagined during study at the University of New Mexico.

Review Of Coherence In New Music: Experience, Aesthetics, Analysis, By Mark Hutchinson. (New York, Ny: Routledge, 2016)., Orit Hilewicz

Gamut: Online Journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic

A review of Mark Hutchinson's book from 2016, Coherence in New Music: Experience, Aesthetics, Analysis.

Developing Variation In The Late Work Of Morton Gould And Why It Matters, J. Wesley Flinn

Gamut: Online Journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic

American composer Morton Gould (1913-1996) was remarkably consistent stylistically over the course of his compositional career; this project examines certain motivic transformational techniques used in two of his last works, Stringmusic (1993, winner of the Pulitzer Prize) and Remembrance Day (Soliloquy for a Passing Century) (1995). These techniques, which can generally be filed under the principle of developing variation, are: 1. Mirroring and reversal; 2. Rotation; 3. Motivic expansion and contraction; 4. Additive sets; and 5. Asymmetric injection. After an overview of each technique, I give a full analysis of the fourth movement of Stringmusic using the approaches described …

Intriguing Interpretation Of Dyads In Common-Practice Tonal Music, Yosef Goldenberg

Gamut: Online Journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic

The study offers a systematic exploration of situations in which dyads in common-practice tonal music change their meaning, when repeated or as pivots. The most common such situation is thirds that serve as either the upper or the lower pair of consonant triad members, most often with the tonic as one of the options. Sometimes, however, an implied harmony turns out to be dissonant. Occasionally, dyads other than thirds are also subject to reinterpretation. In exceptional circumstances, dyads do not imply complete harmonies.

The News, Toby Wren

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

The News is an 'album' of musical works presented in score format. It is part of an ongoing ontological exploration of the nature of the work in jazz. There is some agreement in the literature that the classical work is present in the score, while in popular music the work is taken to be the recording. Jazz is somewhat more elusive due to the presence of improvisation, with each performance contributing to an understanding of the work, but no version being definitive.

The work is also a reaction to the conflation of recordings and live music within the same body …

Using Distributed Techology To Make Music In The Time Of The Attention Economy, Tate Carson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sounds Aware is a mobile web app that allows users to record soundwalks and share them so that other people can experience them. The creator of the soundwalk records their perceptions of the restorativeness of a specific place on the walk, these answers are then sonified for whoever experiences the walk later to hear. Sounds Aware aims to be a social app that is restorative to our attention. It does this by encouraging experience of nature and by using decentralized technology that exists outside of the attention economy.

The attention economy is discussed as a force that exists within much …

Sacred Music In Colonial Era Hispaniola: The Evangelization Of The Taino People, Tito J. Gutierrez

Student Theses

During the 15th-18th centuries, the major European religious orders; the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Jeronymites, journeyed to the newly colonized American territories in an attempt to convert the multitudes of natives peoples living there. Along with prayer books, crucifixes, and religious images, these missionaries brought sacred European music to American shores in an attempt to attract the native people to the Catholic faith.The use of music as a tool for conversion of native people in places such as Mexico, South America, California, and the South West United States, have been well researched and documented. However, the research of the spiritual …

Developing Variation In The Late Work Of Morton Gould And Why It Matters, J. Wesley Flinn

Music Publications

American composer Morton Gould (1913-1996) was remarkably consistent stylistically over the course of his compositional career; this project examines certain motivic transformational techniques used in two of his last works, Stringmusic (1993, winner of the Pulitzer Prize) and Remembrance Day (Soliloquy for a Passing Century) (1995). These techniques, which can generally be filed under the principle of developing variation, are: 1. Mirroring and reversal; 2. Rotation; 3. Motivic expansion and contraction; 4. Additive sets; and 5. Asymmetric injection. After an overview of each technique, I give a full analysis of the fourth movement of Stringmusic using the approaches described …

Undecided, Quinn Dymalski

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Undecided is a big band ballad that features the baritone saxophone. It was written by Quinn Dymalski for his senior recital at the University of Denver, and was premiered on March 2nd, 2020. While the inspiration for this work comes from the styles of modern big band artists such as Quincy Jones, the harmony displays a romantic twist; seventh chords and suspensions like that of a Chopin Nocturne appear when the saxes enter at measure thirteen. The following choral-like figures written for the brass build a dramatic intensity only for the texture to be stripped down to solo bari sax …

Using Big Data To Facilitate A Lyrical Analysis Of Poetry And Rap, Remington Yve Giller

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

Poetry and rap are dissected using text mining techniques in order to determine overall trends in the words used by both. With this data, the way in which ideas and concepts are expressed can be compared and contrasted as a way of showing the legitimacy of rap as a form of literary expression. Other topics within the paper are: a background of the history of rap and the digital humanities, and an example of a close reading featuring a medieval poem and a rap by Eminem. This demonstrates how even in a traditional way of handling texts, both poetry and …

Fronteras, J. Aaron Stanley

Music Theses and Dissertations

Fronteras means “borders” or “frontiers” in Spanish, and this piece explores that idea in a number of ways. Two big influences in my music is jazz and Mexican popular and folk music. I lived in Mexico for five years, which is where I met my wife, and we continue to make frequent trips there. In a way, you could say I’m married to Mexico! At the same time, I’ve listened to and loved jazz since I was a boy. I have a lot of experience performing in and arranging for jazz bands. This work fuses those two very different influences …

Signal To Noise: Harmonic Temperaments And Patterns Of Interference, Dylan A. Marcheschi

Theses and Dissertations

An audio/visual exploration of historical tuning systems. Most contemporary Western audiences will seldom if ever encounter harmony outside of post-Renaissance tuning conventions. This presentation highlights some of those pre-orthodox harmonic relationships which existed throughout most of history. The corresponding paper documents correlates in recent advances of acoustic ecology.

Common Ground, Cody Christopher-Park Ray

Masters Theses

Common Ground is a work that explores ideals of unity through the shared awareness of human mortality. I wrote the majority of this work during the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall of 2020. Throughout this period, including the summer leading up to it, political and social tension was felt throughout the country. This sentiment stemmed from the unjust killings of unarmed people of color at the hands of law enforcement, to blatant errors in the way political figures handled the spread of this newfound disease, leading to more than 400k civilians prematurely dead. In experiencing these external pressures, I found …

Compositions For 0 Or 1 Performers, Rodrigo Valente Pascale

Masters Theses

This thesis includes a collection of pieces composed for 0 or 1 performers – unaccompanied solo, solo and electronics or fixed media. The compositions for solo instruments include “Unnest” for bassoon solo, premièred by Ariane Petri during the V Congress of Music and Mathematics in 2020, and “Assemblage” for baritone saxophone solo, premièred by Erin Rogers in 2020. “Reizantwort” is a composition for viola and electronics which was first recorded by Laura Parra in summer 2020. Finally, "Discontinuous Mediation I" and "Discontinuous Mediation II" are fixed media compositions that were composed in Summer 2020 and Spring 2021, respectively. This collection …

Grey Areas: Songs Of Memory, Imagination, Intellect, And Death For Baritone Voice And Mixed Instrumental Octet, Scott Stephen Hansen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The central element of this thesis is Grey Areas, a newly-composed dramatic piece in four movements for baritone and chamber ensemble. The work is highly personal in both its subject matter and its musical execution; it also contains a unique movement order that changes depending on the age of the baritone. Along with the written portion of this document and full score, I completed a studio recording of the entire composition as part of the project. Composers (by necessity) are more frequently functioning as their own recording and mixing engineers for their own works. I have been able to …