Music Practice Commons^™

Tradition, Individuality, And Innovation In Western Classical Music Performance: A Quantitative Analysis Of Bach’S Fourth Cello Suite Prelude, Clare Monfredo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Why do we seek out new performances of a commonly performed piece of music? An essential tradition of Western classical music (WCM) is the performance of canonical works by composers, an activity that requires the interpretation and execution of written scores by individual performers. In this practice, performers are not only expected to determine the composer’s “intentions,” but also somehow (paradoxically) share these in a “unique” performance interpretation. In musical education, performers are trained by teachers to create these “unique” interpretations by learning how to intuit composers’ intentions in a system that passes down interpretative traditions through master-apprentice one-on-one lessons. …

Asian American Artists, Improvisation, And Collaboration, Johnna Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of my dissertation is to explore how contemporary Asian Americans artist-performers have formulated their identities through collaborations with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The project addresses issues in the existing literature on this topic and provides an alternative framework of cosmopolitanism to understanding the multidimensional aspects of artistic collaborations. The dissertation examines the history of the AACM and the Asian American improvisers and reveals ideological differences among its members on how music should reflect their identities. These histories paved the way for the artist subjects of my three case studies: Miya Masaoka, Vijay Iyer, …

Echoes Of Chinese Tradition: A Guide To Mandarin Diction Through Fixed-Ipa And Traditional Phonology, With Insights Into Intertwined Intonation Contours Of Chinese-American Art Songs, Xiaoming Tian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a comprehensive guide to Mandarin Chinese diction and articulation, rooted in traditional Chinese phonology and articulated through Fixed-International Phonetic Alphabet (Fixed-IPA). It unfolds in two primary segments, with the initial section delving into the historical underpinnings and phonetic nuances of traditional Chinese opera singing. This inquiry not only systematically introduces Chinese pronunciation rules but also illuminates the influence of traditional Chinese opera elements on contemporary Chinese art songs and operas. This part also reflects upon the significant strides made in Chinese language Romanization since the Wade-Giles system's introduction in the 19th century, discussing how it facilitated literacy …

Cueing Motions In A String Quartet, An Exploratory Study Of Motion Trajectories, Maren Rothfritz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A string quartet performance involves an array of different body movements which serve many functions, including sound production, expression, and communication. This dissertation examines the ways string quartet players execute specific communicative body motions called cues, which are anticipatory gestures meant to communicate tempo and timing as well as the musical intentions such as dynamics, articulation, and character to the co-performers. Some scholarly research exists on cueing, but a formalized description of the cueing motions involved has not yet been developed. This dissertation serves as an exploratory study examining the motion trajectories of cueing motions employed by the Argus Quartet, …

Articulatory Activity Of The Tongue, Jaw, And Lips During The Second Passaggio Transition Of The Soprano Voice, Richard C. Lissemore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes three experiments designed to explore the acoustic and articulatory activity of a perceptible change in the soprano voice known as the secondo passaggio, or second transition, which typically occurs for the [ɑ] vowel between D♮5 (587 Hz) and F♮5 (698 Hz). Acoustically, the transition involves a shift in resonance strategy from second resonance tracking of the second harmonic (f_R2/2f_o) to first resonance tracking of the fundamental frequency (f_R1/f_o). To quantify the acoustics of the transition, we employed the measure L₁-L₂, the …

Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities In Works By Helmut Lachenmann, Simon Steen-Andersen, And Johan Svensson, John Popham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities in Works by Lachenmann, Steen-Andersen, and Svensson, I analyze three compositions that foreground the cellist-body, its physical gestures, and instrumental interactions: Helmut Lachemann’s Pression für einen Cellisten (1969/2010), Simon Steen-Andersen’s Study for String Instrument #3 (2011), and Johan Svensson’s marionette for string instrument, electro-mechanical devices and lights (2018). These works center sound production and the performing body as sites of ontological and creative exploration. Their physical gestures serve multiple sensorial functions, heightening the visual and kinesthetic dimensions of a traditionally aurally oriented practice. For each work, I develop a corresponding analytical method based on …

Play Makes Perfect: An Exploration Of Game And Play Elements In Composition And Performance, Gabrielle Chou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore the intersection of play and games in Western classical music and define a new category of pieces, “ludic pieces,” which contain play structures and game mechanics within their composition. Starting with surveying perspectives in ludology and ludomusicology, including those by Roger Caillois, Johan Huizinga, Jesper Juul, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman, I will examine various definitions of a “game” and what its qualifying aspects are. I will then turn to music and consider pieces that interact with play and games without containing game structures, including examples of musical humor and pieces which evoke the imagery …

Interpreting Jean Coulthard's Concerto For Piano And Orchestra (1963): A Pianist's Perspective, Jocelyn Lai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Jean Coulthard (1908-2000) is recognized as one of Canada’s most prolific and important female classical composers in the twentieth century. She remained creatively active from her hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, for eight decades, resulting in a catalog of over 350 works representing most classical music genres. Her music continues to be performed and recorded by renowned ensembles and soloists such as the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, CBC Vancouver Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic, Purcell String Quartet, pianists John Ogdon and Jane Coop, and contralto Maureen Forrester. Coulthard is known for her distinctive coloristic sonorities reminiscent of those in works by European composers …

Disposizione Scenica Per L’Opera Simon Boccanegra: An Insight Into Verdi’S Sense Of Drama And A Valuable Tool For Contemporary Performance, Giordana Rubria Fiori

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: while it aims to provide a valuable tool for performers and all artists involved in a production of Simon Boccanegra, it also simultaneously explores and outlines several instances in which Verdi’s all-encompassing idea of drama shapes and directs this opera.

Throughout this process, the disposizione scenica to Simon Boccanegra constitutes the central document that connects the practical and the aesthetic perspective of this dissertation. Each chapter is dedicated to a different character of Simon Boccanegra, allowing the reader to follow each character on a journey through the opera as it is presented in …

“Leisure With Decorum”: Gentlemen Making Music In The Georgian Era, Lidia A. Chang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines the musical activities of Georgian gentlemen with the goal of illustrating the ways that recreational music-making tested the boundaries of gender, class, and nationality. While the English nobility could respectably engage in music-making, socialize with professional musicians (subverting, or temporarily suspending otherwise rigid class boundaries), and openly extol the virtues of Continental culture without compromising their gentlemanliness, English gentlemen walked a much thinner line. In pursuit of these claims I will expand the scope of primary sources beyond conduct books and novels to include selections of unpublished, peripheral accounts of recreational music-making as found in letters, diaries, …

Astor Piazzolla's Cinco Piezas Para Guitarra: A Performer's Guide To The "Unwritten", Federico J. Díaz Páez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Astor Piazzolla found his voice as a composer in tango music. Starting in the 1950s, he extended the horizons of the popular genre by using the influences of classical music and jazz primarily. The performance practice is one of the strongest aspects that connects his music with traditional tango. The “unwritten” concepts particular to tango are unfamiliar for musicians outside of this tradition. This dissertation explains in detail these concepts and their application to Piazzolla’s only work for solo guitar: Cinco piezas para guitarra. Besides proving the context of Piazzolla’s life and production, Chapter 1 reviews the use of tango …

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 …

Mashing Through The Conventions: Convergence Of Popular And Classical Music In The Works Of The Piano Guys, Alina Kiryayeva

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is dedicated to examining the symbiosis between popular music and Western classical music in classical/popular mashups––a new style within the classical crossover genre. The research features the works of The Piano Guys, a contemporary ensemble that combines classical crossover characteristics and the techniques from modern sample-based styles to reconceptualize and reuse classical and popular works. This fusion demonstrates a new approach to presenting multi-genre works, forming a separate musical and cultural niche for this creative practice.

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter is further divided into two thematic discourses: genre and authorship. The research draws …

Coltrane Plays The Blues: Multi-Level Coherence And Stylistic Tendencies, Lukas Gabric

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a principal musical figure of the twentieth century, John Coltrane created a legacy that still resonates with listeners. Similarly, the blues may be regarded as one of the most iconic genres of the twentieth century. This dissertation examines Coltrane’s shifting stylistic tendencies to the blues and explores structural relationships with reductive voice leading analysis. As a variation form, the blues poses issues of continuity since every chorus may be regarded as self-sufficient and internally closed. Voice leading analysis provides a powerful explanation for the fact that Coltrane’s blues solos may be perceived as structurally unified. I also develop a …

Corporeal Analysis: The Performing Body As Analytic Site, Laura Cocks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A framework of corporeal analysis posits that the physicality of the performer can be construed as a primary analytical parameter in a work. This dissertation seeks to set up such a method of analysis largely through anecdata and autoethnography with the aim of eliciting a deeper space for additional performer-driven analyses that prioritize the bodily knowledge of performers and their physical understandings of a work. Centering around David Bird’s 2013 work for solo piccolo and “no-less-than twenty-nine spatialized piccolos,” Atolls, three main aspects of corporeal analysis will be explored. These are: performance physicality as expressive connective tissue between flutist …

Chinese Aesthetics And Performance Practice In Three Works For Piano By Chen Yi: Tunes From My Home, Northern Scenes, And Four Spirits, Cong Ji

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides both analyses and performance practice suggestions on the three selected works that include piano by Chinese-American composer Chen Yi (b. 1953): Tunes from My Home, Northern Scenes, and Four Spirits. The author takes a step beyond Chen Yi’s widely identified “fusion style” of Chinese and Western music, to explore her cultural roots and how she blends Chinese music, arts, aesthetics, philosophy, and mythology with her musical language and imagination on a deeper level.

As a performer and pedagogue, I believe that it is important not only to analyze Chen Yi’s music from the perspectives of …

Reimagining The Flute Masterclass: Case Studies Exploring Artistry, Authority, And Embodiment, Sarah Carrier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work explores the flute masterclass as an aesthetic, ritualized, and historically reimagined cultural practice. Based on fieldwork that took place between 2017 and 2019 in the United States, in Italy, and on the social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, I argue that the masterclass—an extension of the master/apprentice system that dominates learning in the classical music tradition—is characterized by embodied qualities of artistry and authority. These qualities are not inherent, but are perceived through subjective, social, familied, and affective bodies.

Chapter One outlines the main themes and the research design. Chapter Two is a case study that analyzes …

Performing Rhythmic Dissonance In Ligeti’S Études, Book 1: A Perception-Driven Approach And Re-Notation, Imri Talgam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Interpretive approaches to the Études have been limited by Ligeti’s choice of notation, which creates several layers of difficulty in the presentation of complex rhythms. In order to resolve some of these difficulties, this dissertation includes a complete re-notation of four Etudes, using a methodology based on research in cognition and perception of rhythm.

Based on this new score, the notion of rhythmic dissonance is developed as an analytical tool to investigate in-time perception of rhythmic complexity, drawing on existing work on metric entrainment and metric dissonance. Different compositional strategies for the production of rhythmic dissonance are shown to have …

Early Twentieth Century Vocal Performance Practice And The French School: An Exploration Of The Lectures And Selected Songs By Reynaldo Hahn, Mary P. Hubbell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Composer, conductor, singer, and critic Reynaldo Hahn (1874–1947) was a highly influential figure in Paris’s artistic circles during the first half of the twentieth century. Today he is primarily remembered as a composer of art song. However, during his lifetime he was also admired as a sophisticated composer of operetta and chamber music, and his keen intellect and attention to detail also made him a discerning music critic and arbiter of taste. In 1913, he was invited to present a series of five lectures on the art of singing to the “Université des Annales.” This organization produced presentations by prominent …

Meaning Beyond Words: A Musical Analysis Of Afro-Cuban Batá Drumming, Javier Diaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of a musical analysis of Afro-Cuban batá drumming. Current scholarship focuses on ethnographic research, descriptive analysis, transcriptions, and studies on the language encoding capabilities of batá. However, this artistically sophisticated tradition demands a more in-depth study of its musical manufacture. Drawing from experience as a ritual batá player and as an oricha priest, I have completed the current study by following three primary analytical modalities: (1) sonic landscape, which encompasses: sound vocabulary, form, individual drum parts, and balance of musical elements; (2) timbral design, how the different batá sounds articulate meaningful and functionally distinguishable structures; (3) the …

A Pedagogical Study Of The "Four Lauds For Solo Violin" By Elliott Carter, Heesun Shin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Elliott Carter was one of the most influential composers of the past century, leaving a diverse and prolific body of over 150 works to posterity. Along with the Violin Concerto and “Mnemosyné,” the Four Lauds are the only works written for solo violin. Literature on these pieces is not extensive thus far, and this dissertation will provide an introduction to any student who is interested in learning about Carter’s violin music. In the first chapter, I will discuss relevant aspects of Carter’s musical language such as his use of all-trichord hexachord, all-interval trichord, complement union property, and his ideas on …

A Performer’S Guide To Astor Piazzolla's Tango-Études Pour Flûte Seule: An Analytical Approach, Asis Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to give performers deeper insight into the style of the Tango-Études pour flûte seule and tango music in general as they seek to learn and apply tango performance conventions to the Tango-Études and other tango works. Significant research elements of this dissertation include a complete analysis of phrasing, tonality, and formal structure and how these relate to performance in each of the six Tango-Études and an examination of Piazzolla’s compositional use of descending chromatic chords and implied descending lines; my reductions of this voice leading as it appears in the Tango-Études are exclusive to this dissertation. This …

Worlds Of If: Analyses Of The Composed And Improvised Works Of Robert Dick, Melissa Keeling

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Considered one of the most important publications in twentieth-century flute pedagogy, Robert Dick’s seminal method book, The Other Flute (1975),[1] is an extensive catalogue of multiphonic fingerings, microtonal fingerings, glissandi, circular breathing, and other extended techniques. The Other Flute and a handful of his published solos are widely studied, but these works only represent a fraction of Dick’s creative energies.

Equally comfortable in classical, jazz, rock, electronic, and world music, Dick’s oeuvre demonstrates a sophisticated, musical use of contemporary techniques and his pieces have become standard repertoire. Though Dick was not the first flutist to use or notate these …

Anton Arensky’S String Quartet In A Minor, Op. 35, For Violin, Viola, And Two Celli, Miho Zaitsu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation consists of an in-depth analysis and study of Anton Arensky’s Quartet in A minor, op. 35, for violin, viola, and two celli. It also includes a short biography, a historical background of the work, and an exploration of thematic material. Perhaps the only piece written for this unique combination of instruments, the Quartet in A minor, published in 1894, was written in the months following Tchaikovsky’s death. It was first premiered on January 20, 1894, at the Imperial Music Society, Moscow, in remembrance of Arensky’s great friend and mentor. The unusual instrumentation was a curious attempt to …

The Versatile Singer: A Guide To Vibrato & Straight Tone, Danya Katok

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Straight tone is a valuable tool that can be used by singers of any style to both improve technical ideals, such as resonance and focus, and provide a starting point for transforming the voice to meet the stylistic demands of any genre. By employing a resonant, minimally vibrated, balanced sound as the core of the voice, the versatile singer can stylistically unbalance the voice by layering colors and effects in ways appropriate for many types of singing. In order to fully understand the inner workings of vibrato and how it can be healthily minimized, my discussion of vibrato and straight …

Searching For Sounds: Instrumental Agency And Modularity In Electroacoustic Improvisation, Stephen (Red) Wierenga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In their radical departure from conventional instrumental technique and standardized instruments themselves, the practices of electroacoustic improvisation present a particular challenge to prevalent Western concepts of musical instruments. These concepts—which generally treat instruments as fixed objects—are ill-equipped to account for the ways in which electroacoustic improvisers foreground the agency of their instruments and abandon the quest for “mastery” typical especially of classical attitudes. Additionally, electroacoustic improvisers often approach instruments not as singular, self-contained, and static in their materiality, but rather as modular instrumentaria capable of myriad states and ever in flux, similarly problematizing conventional conceptions that view the physical constitutions …