Composition Commons^™

Gestalt Principles In Ligeti’S Piano Etude “Desordre”, David William Batchelor

Theses and Dissertations

This document is a study of how Gestalt principles of organization are at work in “Désordre” (1985), the first etude in the first book of piano etudes by György Ligeti (1923–2006). After explaining how Gestalt principles can be applied to the analysis of music, the study presents an analysis of the etude in four main parts. The first part identifies elements of the composition that help the listener define boundaries between phrases, phrase groups, and sections. The second part discusses how foreground and background layers are articulated. The third part discusses the polytempo illusion. The fourth and final part identifies …

Starships, Gallifrey, Krypton, And Earth: Searching For The Hero Archetype In The Melodies Of Science Fiction And Superhero Films, James Wesley Talbot

Wayne State University Theses

The study of science fiction and superhero melodies is relatively new in the academic world of music theory. Analysis of hero archetypes found in Doctor Who, Star Trek (and its major motion pictures), Star Wars, and Superman provide excellent conduits for all students of music to access the hidden and overt musical meaning assigned to heroes. Realization of this study’s findings will feature interval tension and Schenkerian analysis, score reductions, and topic theory to provide perspective on how heroes are identified and perceived by directors, composers and audiences alike. Deryck Cooke, Leonard Ratner, and V. Kofi Agawu’s approach to thematic …

Scenes From Dreams, Michael Krueger

Graduate Thesis Collection

Composition for symphonic wind ensemble.

Concerto For Viola: A New Work For Solo Viola And Orchestra With Analysis And Commentary, David E. O'Fallon

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This project consists of a new work for solo viola with orchestra and includes an analysis of that work with commentary on the composer's stylistic traits and influences. The analysis comprises not only an examination of the formal and thematic elements of the work, but also an investigation into the problems of projection and balance that are inherent in a work of this type and how various composers have attempted to solve, or at least minimize, these problems.

Cruel And Usual, Cat Hope

Research Datasets

Cruel and Usual is a music composition for string quartet electronics. It is inspired by an article by the Al Jazeera news service that discusses the use of solitary confinement in US prisons as incarceration rates explode in the USA. In some cases, prisoners have remained in solitary for over 38 years., or may even be children, and the reasons for going in there are not always clear or legitimate. This kind of confinement is known as ‘no touch torture’.

Drone, glissandi and the trembling bass are features of this work, where the string players are sampled at certain small …

And We Drown, Cara Haxo

Graduate Thesis Collection

Composition for wind ensemble.

Wandering Philosopher, Augustus Chigozie Onwubiko

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

"Lithuanian Suite Op. 1", John Paul Bimbiras

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Decibel Scoreplayer - A Digital Tool For Reading Graphic Notation, Cat Hope, Lindsay R. Vickery Dr

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In 2009, the Decibel new music ensemble based in Perth, Western Australia was formed with an associated manifesto that stated “Decibel seek to dissolve any division between sound art, installation and music by focusing on the combination of acoustic and electronic instruments” [1]. The journey provided by this focus led to a range of investigations into different score types, resulting in a re-writing of the groups statement to “pioneering electronic score formats, incorporating mobile score formats and networked coordination performance environments” [2]. This paper outlines the development of Decibel’s work with the ‘screen score’, including the different stages of the …

Self-Accompaniment And Improvisation In Solo Jazz Piano: Practice-Led Investigations Of Assimilation, Ostinatos And ‘Hand Splitting’, David Dower

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This practice-led project investigates the crafting of approaches to solo jazz piano performance. Through a study and application of assimilation techniques derived from a range of different music styles, a series of self-accompaniments were devised. In addition, the process of developing improvisational facility over these accompaniment patterns was documented.

Although performing solo requires a different approach to ensemble work, jazz pianists are commonly only trained in ensemble practices, rendering the solo setting a potentially overwhelming challenge. In order to move away from ensemble-based methods, the project sought to develop pianistic techniques and exercises that provide an independent approach in solo …

Music In Site: Integrating Elements Of Site-Specificity Into Composition, Mace Francis

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Architectural spaces and their acoustic characteristics offer unique musical material for the compositional process. Acoustic and physical design features of unorthodox performance spaces can become part of works and their performances. This thesis examines ways to integrate acoustic characteristics of an architectural space into the compositional process, and discusses how different levels of site-specificity may be engaged in this process.

This research grew from an interest in composing music for the acoustic problems of performance spaces rather than trying to resist them, after a jazz ensemble performance in a large reverberant space. This led to exploring built environments that offered …

Golliwog's Cakewalk From Children's Corner Arranged For Clarinet Quartet, Elizabeth Johnson

Honors Projects

By demonstrating integrated learning through interdisciplinary connections between music performance and arranging techniques, this honors project was the culmination of a process of using my knowledge of piano and clarinet performance techniques to arrange the piece “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” by Claude Debussy from piano to clarinet quartet. To arrange the piece for clarinet quartet, I utilized my experience in playing piano and clarinet to critically analyze the piano score and decide how it would best aurally transfer to an ensemble of four clarinets. The project also demonstrates critical thinking as I arranged the piece to be at a playing level appropriate …

Suite For Kabbalat Shabbat: Five Hebrew Prayers, Steven J. Kaup

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

Suite for Kabbalat Shabbat: Five Hebrew Prayers is a setting of five Hebrew prayers that are presented during Kabbalat Shabbat, the welcoming portion of a customary Shabbat service. The musical setting for each prayer strives to embody characteristic feelings conveyed by the text in order to capture the essence and power of the Shabbat tradition. One of the primary goals of this composition was to explore new harmonic possibilities using tonalities derived from traditional Jewish musical structures and motivic ideas as a point of departure, and then find ways to fluidly blend them within the more common compositional practices of …

Singing With A Sanxian: A Study Of The Principal Instrument In Bai Musical Tradition , Christian Stanbrook

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Bai people, a minority group in the People’s Republic of China numbering at least 1.8 million, are heavily concentrated in Yunnan Province’s Dali Autonomous Prefecture. Music has historically been a significant part of Bai culture, as Bai musicians across the region enjoy performing Baizu diao, or popular Bai folk tunes, in the form of singing or on various instruments. These diao, or melodies, often describe the lifestyle of Bai people and the region in which they live in and are commonly performed on a threestringed member of the lute family called a sanxian. This study uncovers both the history …

Blue Mountain: A Chamber Opera For Winds And Voices By Justin Dello Joio: A Unique Contribution For Wind Band Literature, Armando Saldarini

Dissertations

Blue Mountain is an opera in one act scored for four voices, and thirty-three instruments, commissioned by Det Norske Blaseensemble. Under the direction of Kenneth Jean, the premiere took place on October 8, 2007, at Kanonhalen in Oslo, Norway, as part of the Edvard Grieg Centennial celebrations and the 2007 Ultima contemporary Music Festival. The opera takes place in Troldhaugen, Norway, during the last days of Edvard Grieg’s life. Suffering from emphysema, Grieg was being treated by his doctor with morphine that created great anxiety, fear, and mental torment. A visit from his friend, Percy Grainger, gave Grieg great …

Mcdaniel, William Joseph, 1918-2009 (Mss 526), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 526. Unpublished manuscript music written by William J. McDaniel, native of Jellico, Tennessee, and Western Kentucky University alumni. Includes symphonic works, a ballet, songs, two chamber operas, small ensemble works, and choral works. Most have a religious theme. Also contains news clippings about McDaniel’s music and correspondence.

Piano Sonata #4, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

Sonata for the Midwest was written to express the expansive diversity, energy, and continual renewal of America's heartland.

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 …

Syntagma Musicum Ii: De Organographia, Parts Iii – V With Index, Michael Praetorius, Quentin Faulkner Trans. & Ed.

Zea E-Books Collection

Michael Praetorius (1571–1621) achieved distinction as a practicing musician: as organist and Kapellmeister at Wolfenbüttel, Dresden and Magdeburg, and (in his later years) by incessant travel to fulfill commissions at various central German courts. Amid his travels Praetorius found time to publish an impressive series of collections of musical compositions, in all more than a thousand works. Praetorius’s three-volume Syntagma musicum (Musical Encyclopedia) belongs to the last years of his life. Volume I, Musicae artis analecta (1614/15, in Latin), treats principles and practices of religious music, from a decidedly Lutheran perspective. Volume II, De organographia (1619, in German) deals with …

Triads And Text In Ariettes Oubliées, Nathan Fleshner

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Gesture-Sensing Technology For The Bow: A Relevant And Accessible Digital Interface For String Instruments, Zachary Boyt

Masters Theses

Technological advances in powerful, miniaturized electronics have created a growing potential to continue the evolution of string instruments through an accessible digital interface. Although many new types of instruments and controllers have explored this goal, gesture-sensing technology, when paired with the expressive nature of the bow, has provided the most eligible solution towards bridging technology and tradition. Through a selective showcase of technical development, artistic application, and future possibilities, this thesis traces the evolution of gesturesensing bow technology as an accessible digital interface in string instrument performance.

On This Journey: Suite For Big Band And Five Voices, Kara L. Baxter

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

On This Journey: Suite for Big Band and Five Voices is a four-movement, programmatic work that explores traditional big band instrumentation with the addition of five voices used as instruments. Violin and cello are added in the last two movements.

This is the story of a journey, with each movement representing a phase of that journey. The first movement, Charmed with Possibilities, is a musical representation of Chicago. During the improvisation solos, the time moves fluidly between a measure of six and five. The meter and key change often, evoking a sense of the ever-changing city.

The second movement, Stop, …

Crotale Sample Library, Ryan Waczek

Music

This report will discuss the process of creating a digital sample based library for musical applications. Topics such as recording, microphone placement, and mixing will be addressed; as well as elements of design in Adobe Photoshop, and computer scripting in the language of the computer program Komplete 5 by Native Instruments. The instrument sampled is the crotales, an orchestral, melodic percussion instrument.

Procedural Music Generation And Adaptation Based On Game State, Timothey Andrew Adam

Master's Theses

Video game developers attempt to convey moods to emphasize their game's narrative. Events that occur within the game usually convey success or failure in some way meaningful to the story's progress. Ideally, when these events occur, the intended change in mood should be perceivable to the player. One way of doing so is to change the music. This requires musical tracks to represent many possible moods, states and game events. This can be very taxing on composers, and encoding the control flow (when to transition) of the tracks can prove to be tricky as well.

This thesis presents AUD.js, a …

A Composed Space, Adam S. Hogan

Graduate School of Art Theses

My practice is invested in expanding our conscious scope—revealing phenomena and observations, and presenting the information to the viewer through auxiliary channels. Using the language of minimalism, cinema, and abstraction I create technologically sophisticated systems to produce spaces of contemplation (a meditative space challenging the ephemeral relationships between our sensorial perceptions, space, and time).

Material, space, and technology become instruments for composition manifesting as silent experimental cinema (created and controlled sonically). My work seeks to illuminate our conscious scope through the succession of frames.

Creating A Potentially Popular Hit Song, Susan Noh

Senior Theses

From as far back as I can remember I have always loved music. Not just listening to it but also creating it. I had my first piano lesson at the age of 4, my first violin at 6 years old, my dad’s guitar in my hand at 13, and apparently I sang since I was able to form sounds. My dream as a child was to be a famous singer, but I never truly pursued it. As I grew older, I acquired new dreams, but deep down, I have never stopped wanting to be a singer. I have fulfilled part …

Mirrors, Zachary R. Ross

Undergraduate Honors Theses

MIRRORS is a cycle of songs composed for soprano voice and piano using five poems by Sylvia Plath. The work features the creation of a protagonist and tells a chronological story through the arrangement of the five poems colored and unified by the manipulation of a thematic twelve-tone row.

Воспоминания (Acts Of Remembrance): For Violin, Cello And Piano, Marat E. Sanatullov

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The piece has three movements: I. Истоки (Act I. Beginnings); II. Очарование (АCT II. Charm); III. Просветление (ACT III. Lucidity). The title of the piece and the titles of its movements are in Russian.

Adviser: Tyler Goodrich White

Symphony No. 1 Movement 1, Matthew Harms '14

Distinguished Student Work - Visual Arts

Matthew Harms conducting his Symphony No. 1 Movement 1 - performed by the IMSA Orchestra.