Music Theory Commons^™

The Varieties Of Tone Presence: On The Meanings Of Musical Tone In Twentieth-Century Music, Aaron Harcus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about tone presence, or how musical tone shows up for experience in twentieth-century music. In exploring the subject of tone presence, I rethink notions of “pitch structure” in post-tonal theory and offer an alternative that focuses on the question of what it is to be a musical interval for experience, drawing on a wide range of research from social theory, semiotics, theories of emotion, African American studies, literary theory, usage-based linguistics, post-colonial theory, and phenomenology. I begin by offering a critique of three basic assumptions that constrain understandings of what we mean by pitch structure in post-tonal …

Scholasticism And Formal Structure In Camille Saint-Saëns's Fugues For Keyboard, Pedro Segarra-Sisamone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing on the treatises of Cherubini (1835), Dubois (1901), and Gedalge (1901), this dissertation examines the relation between the fugue d’école and Saint-Saëns’s compositional practices with reference to his fugal works for piano and organ and sets out to answer the question: To what extent are the formal and tonal structures of Saint-Saëns’s fugues determined by the organizational conventions associated with the fugue d’école? While the scholastic fugue has been described as an artificial construct, this study argues that this tripartite model, with its variants and subtypes, can be considered as the parent model for most fugues composed during the …

Between Speech & Song: Clarifying The Sprechstimme Of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Sara M. Paar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since its creation, the technique of Sprechstimme has fascinated the audiences, performers, and composers of twentieth century music. What is it? How is it done? How should it be notated? At the fore of investigations into these questions has been Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, the work in which Schoenberg debuted this new technique. Much has been written in regard to Schoenberg’s creation and use of Sprechstimme, as well as his own exploration of the speech/song continuum. Composers, conductors, and performers have all tried to make sense of the notation, instructions, and performances Schoenberg left behind. Despite this, confusion, …

"Toccatas And Arias": Analysis And Historical Context Of Vivian Fine’S Last Work For Solo Piano, Manon Hutton-Dewys

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vivian Fine’s Toccatas and Arias (1987) is an important work both in Fine’s compositional output and in the history of ultramodern music. Through her close associations with Ruth Crawford, Henry Cowell, and others, Vivian Fine was very much a product of the musical scene that developed in New York in the 1920s and early 30s. Toccatas and Arias, Fine’s last piece for solo piano shows that Fine continued to write in the ultramodern/dissonant counterpoint style throughout her life. Its characteristics also demonstrate that, contrary to music-historical writings that suggest such music essentially died out in the mid-twentieth century, Fine …

Webern’S Labyrinth: Contour And Canonic Interaction– An Analysis Of Webern’S Op. 16, No. 2, Scott Saewitz

Theses and Dissertations

Contour can be recognized as an influential device that influences other musical features other than melody, such as canons and form. I introduce the concept of Subcontouric Cells, with the intent to highlight contouric influential potentiality, by thoroughly examining and providing an analysis of Webern’s Op. 16, No. 2.

A Study Of Nikolai Medtner's Compositional Technique: Form And Narrative In Tales, Oliver H. Markson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation delves into the compositional approach of Russian-born composer Nikolai Medtner. A discussion of Medtner’s own words on composition from his book The Muse and Fashion: Being a Defence of the Foundations of the Art of Music is followed by original analyses of four Tales. Focus is placed on the composer’s philosophy regarding the relationship between form and narrative, in association with his expressed warnings of the dangers behind shifting compositional dominance from pure music to extra-musical narrative. The analyses are followed by a discussion of the vital importance of Medtner’s music and writings for future generations of composers. …

The Protagonist's Experience: Temporality, Narrative, And Harmonic Process In Brahms's Solo Lieder, Loretta Terrigno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores musical and poetic temporality—expressions of the past, present, and future—in eighteen of Johannes Brahms’s solo Lieder. The selected songs illustrate that common tonal patterns in Brahms’s instrumental music, including tonal and modal ambiguities and associative harmonies, also suggest recurring narrative archetypes in his songs. Separate poetic and musical analyses use literary theory (narratology), as well as Schenkerian analysis and Schoenbergian conceptions of motivic development.

Narratological interpretations of poetry by Daumer, Platen, Köstlin, Goethe, Groth, Schenkendorf, Hebbel, and others first demonstrate that a series of psychological transformations form a lyric poem’s “plot” or “temporal progression.” This subjective level …

Heinrich Schenker’S Early Approach To Form, 1895–1921: Implications For His Late Work And Its Reception, Jason A. Hooper

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs Heinrich Schenker’s early approach to form and traces its development as his organic theory of transformational voice leading emerged in the early 1920s. Schenker’s late approach to form is then briefly reconsidered from this newfound perspective.

Chapter 1 defines the nineteenth-century Formenlehre tradition established by A. B. Marx and passed down to Anton Bruckner through his studies in model composition, leading to Schenker himself. Chapter 2 presents Schenker’s early approach to form in a generative fashion, demonstrating how a single motive can grow into a large thematic group unified by a single key area or an economy …

Mahlerian Tonality: Challenges To Classical Foreground Structures In The Music Of Gustav Mahler, Ryan Kosseff-Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a detailed study of harmony and voice leading at local levels of structure in the music of Gustav Mahler. The results are grouped into three domains: cadences, common-tone techniques, and the Mahlerian imaginary continuo. An investigation of Mahler’s cadences reveals an underlying simplicity in the diverse tonal progressions that Mahler uses to execute the tonal close of a phrase. Cadences are shown to derive from two basic types (authentic and plagal) and three basic transformations (tonic intrusion, Phrygian 2, and contrapuntal bass). In a study of common-tone techniques, this dissertation proposes a new system for identifying common-tone …

The Analysis Of Musical Dramaturgy In Mozart's Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail, Danielle J. Bastone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It has long been recognized that the music of Mozart’s Singspiels bears more dramatic weight than that of most eighteenth-century German comic operas. Yet this view arises from a body of scholarship that heavily privileges Die Zauberflöte at the expense of Mozart’s other German-language operatic works, including Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), which constituted Mozart’s first big statement in Vienna and became easily the most popular of his operas during his lifetime. This is an analytical study of Mozart’s Entführung that examines form, phrase rhythm, and text-setting as agents of musical dramaturgy throughout the score. More specifically, it demonstrates …

William Bolcom’S "Twelve New Etudes" (1988): Theoretical And Interpretative Analysis, Ran Dank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ever since its naissance, composer William Bolcom’s set of Twelve New Etudes has garnered great critical praise, culminating with the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Although much has been written about the background surrounding the creation of these pieces and their technical novelty, no formal analysis of this set of etudes has been published.

This dissertation thoroughly examines the various aspects which hold these pieces together. Each etude is analyzed according to a clearly defined set of criteria: dynamics, compositional language, range, texture, articulation and contour, meter and rhythm, and form. In addition, a more detailed analysis is offered, providing …

Music And Words: Connecting The Love Of Music With Language, Eileen P. Kennedy, Raymond Torres- Santos

Publications and Research

Children from different cultures have a natural affinity for rhymes, rhythm and music. Imagine if students were able, from the beginning of their education and experiences with academic writing and literacy, to access their unconscious and original selves from which to create their writing. The study of music can help to access this aware, inventive side that can enhance anyone’s writing. As an early childhood writing teacher and a composition teacher, we draw on our experiences with young children with words and music. We examine the relationship between music and words in an effort to bring the primitive drive of …

Musical And Dramatic Roles Of The Chorus In Hugo Weisgall’S "Esther", Michael A. Capobianco Iv

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hugo Weisgall is considered one of America’s most important opera composers. He invariably chose subject matter of high artistic or philosophical importance, composing operas that dealt with significant 20th-century moral, social, and philosophical issues. In writing his final opera, Esther, which the New York City Opera premiered in October, 1993, Weisgall was able to make a larger statement about his Jewish heritage, the history of Jewish persecution and ultimate survival. The dissertation suggests that we enter the music and meaning of the opera most deeply through a consideration and study of the Chorus. The Chorus’s roles are as essential …

Examining Relationships Between Basic Emotion Perception And Musical Training In The Prosodic, Facial, And Lexical Channels Of Communication And In Music, Jamie Twaite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research has suggested that intensive musical training may result in transfer effects from musical to non-musical domains. There is considerable research on perceptual and cognitive transfer effects associated with music, but, comparatively, fewer studies examined relationships between musical training and emotion processing. Preliminary findings, though equivocal, suggested that musical training is associated with enhanced perception of emotional prosody, consistent with a growing body of research demonstrating relationships between music and speech. In addition, few studies directly examined the relationship between musical training and the perception of emotions expressed in music, and no studies directly evaluated this relationship in the facial …

Dual-Aspect Meter: A Theory Of Metrical Consonance, Dissonance, Weight, And Variety, Andrew Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The core argument of the dissertation emerges as a synthesis of ideas introduced in the first four chapters. Resonances with recent metrical theories are explored in chapter 1. Chapter 2 problematizes modern and historical theories through a phenomenological examination of meter and phenomenal accent in a few baroque sarabandes. Meter in these pieces is shown to involve entrainment to both a beat hierarchy and a recurrent weight profile, clarifying that metrical dissonance is fundamentally an expressive category, not a phenomenal category. Chapters 3 and 4 articulate a theory of weight, reviewing and refining phenomenal-accent theory, developing a notion of …

Ten Etudes For Solo Cello By Sofia Gubaidulina, Julia A. Biber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sofia Gubaidulina is regarded as one of the most original and highly respected voices in contemporary music today. Her use of the Fibonacci and its related series to structure her compositions has become a defining feature of her music and, therefore, most analysis has focused on pieces that incorporate this method, which she calls “rhythm of form.” Consequently, works written prior to her adoption of this method have garnered much less analytical attention. However, in her earlier works­––from the late 1960s through the early 80s––Gubaidulina not only explores new sounds and colors, but also found creative ways to structure these …

Symmetry And Interval Cycles In The Quartettos Of Mario Davidovsky, Ines Thiebaut Lovelace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of Mario Davidovsky has seldom been analyzed past the timbral implications of his electroacoustic pieces and gestural aspects of his phrasing, and there has been virtually no attention paid to its pitch organization, despite the composer’s longstanding interest in writing for acoustic instruments. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how two main consistent resources for the organization of pitch govern the musical continuity and formal structure of his music, what I’ve called symmetry potentiality—actuality, and interval cycle potentiality-actuality processes. The interval cycle potentiality-actuality process refers to the various interval cycles that self-perpetuate, completing aggregates. This self-perpetuation means that incomplete …

The Relation Of Analysis To Performance Of Post-Tonal Violin Music: Three Case Studies, Karen E. Rostron

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates analytical and performance relationships through studies of three post-tonal pieces for solo violin: Élégie by Igor Stravinsky (1944), Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi by Elliott Carter (1984), and Melismata by Milton Babbitt (1982). The challenge of interpretation is especially evident in non-tonal music, as performers are unlikely to have any knowledge of the relevant relationships between pitches, functions of harmonies, or formal features in the pieces they play. In this respect analysis can contribute to an understanding needed to form a meaningful interpretation. I will attempt to show that even the most seemingly abstract theoretical concepts can have …

The Fourth Movement Of György Ligeti's Piano Concerto: Investigating The Musical-Mathematical Connection, Cynthia L. Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This interdisciplinary study explores musical-mathematical analogies in the fourth movement of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. Its aim is to connect musical analysis with the piece’s mathematical inspiration. For this purpose, the dissertation is divided into two sections. Part I (Chapters 1-2) provides musical and mathematical context, including an explanation of ideas related to Ligeti’s mathematical inspiration. Part II (Chapters 3-5) delves into an analysis of the rhythm, form, melody / motive, and harmony. Appendix A is a reduced score of the entire movement, labeled according to my analysis.

Art As Display, Frank M. Boardman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art is essentially a type of display. As an activity, art is what we do when we display objects with certain intentions. As a set of objects, art is all of those things that are displayed for those purposes. The artworld is the social atmosphere that surrounds this particular activity of display. And a history of art is an evolving narrative of change in the practice of this sort of display.

Specifically, to focus for convenience on art as a set of objects, this is what we can call the “displayed-object thesis”:

x is a work of art iff: (a) …

Charles Ives On The Nature Of Experience: The Compositional Designs And Aesthetic Programs Of Three Orchestral Works, Ashleé Michele Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Charles Ives on the Nature of Experience: The Compositional Designs and Aesthetic Programs of Three Orchestral Works explores the hypothesis that Ives set in motion in many of his compositions a juxtaposition of temporal process (such as polyrhythm and polymeter) with the aim of exploiting a person’s innate abilities to entrain. Ives believed participants engaged in a juxtaposition of temporal processes are able to form personalized experiences by choosing which elements to attend to.

I present three analyses to explore the potential for multiple entrainment experiences in three works by Ives: The Unanswered Question, Central Park in the Dark, and …

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.

An Analytical Example For Bob, Joseph N. Straus

Publications and Research

In the fall of 1981, I was the greenest, most naïve young music theorist you can possibly imagine. The ink on my doctoral diploma was still wet, and I had just started my first job, at the University of Wisconsin. It was a simpler, less demanding time for music theorists: I had never attended a conference, much less presented at one. But I found myself at the 1981 meeting of the newly formed Society for Music Theory in Los Angeles, giving my first-ever theory paper. I recognized Milton Babbitt, the keynote speaker for the conference, sitting right in front of …

Metrical Theory And Verdi's Midcentury Operas, William Rothstein

Publications and Research

Both historical and recent theories of meter have tended to assume that meter is a single phenomenon, definable in a single (though perhaps complex) way. Most U.S. theories of meter have been based on a limited repertoire: instrumental music by German composers. Examination of Verdi's mid-century operas, from Macbeth through La traviata (1846–53), suggests that different theoretical approaches may be appropriate for different repertoires. National traditions of composition, depending often on national poetic traditions, may require different ways of hearing and counting, and thus different ways of modeling meter. The metrical theories of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, David Temperley, …

Post-Structuralism And Music Theory (A Response To Adam Krims), Joseph N. Straus

Publications and Research

In a recent article in this journal, Adam Krims has argued that mainstream music theory, with its organicist bias, is fundamentally incompatible with post-structuralist thought. This commentary is a defense of theory-based analysis in a postmodern world.

A Critical Review Of Violin Solos Section Of The Nyssma Manual, Di Su

Publications and Research

The New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) runs an annual evaluation of students' musical performance. The purposes of the evaluation are to promote music programs in the schools and communities of New York State, and to provide a means of objective evaluation of musical performance. The evaluation is influential because the selections of participant for All-State, All-County, and other music festivals are mainly based upon NYSSMA scores. To familiarize the evaluation criteria and to prepare students to meet the requirements, New York State music teachers use the "NYSSMA Manual" as an important teaching guide. Aiming at future revisions, this …

What Adorno Makes Possible For Music Analysis, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Conceived as a commentary on four responses to Adorno’s 1928 essay, “Schubert,” by Esteban Buch, Jonathan Dunsby, Scott Burnham, and Beate Perrey, this article explores some of the implications of Adorno’s essay as they center on notions of hybridity, the interstitial and especially the provisional. It urges a critical strategy that is self-critical, that seeks to name without naming, and that draws on rigorous formal analysis without presenting its outcomes as ends but as means toward various narrative ends.

The Tristan Chord In Historical Context: A Response To John Rothgeb, William Rothstein

Publications and Research

John Rothgeb’s analysis of the “Tristan chord” engages a large intertextual network, stretching back to the Baroque and centering on recitative. Examples of a specific figure of recitative, usually associated with the asking of a question, are presented and analyzed. Examples include passages in Wagner's operas before Tristan.

Does Music Theory Need Musicology?, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Understood as a search for "the abstract principles embodied in music and the sounds of which it consists," music theory casts a wide net: it calls for a comparative sample and insists on a systematic methodology. As " the scholarly study of music, wherever it is found historically or geographically," musicology casts an even wider net. In practice, however, it has not been possible to transcend historical and geographical boundaries. (How often have you read an article on contemporary rock in JAMS or on Asian music in 19th-Century Music?) Obviously, any attempt to explore the juncture between music theory …