Music Theory Commons^™

Symphonies That "Sing": Reevaluating Voices And Vocality In Mahler's Early Symphonies, Erin M. Johnston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers the role of vocal music in Gustav Mahler’s early symphonies through the lens of the composer’s practice of self-borrowing. Mahler was known to use his own pre-existing songs as the basis for large-scale movements in his early symphonies. While scholars have long recognized the close relationship between Mahler’s songs and symphonies, existing studies have emphasized questions of biography, intertextuality, musical meaning, and quotation rather than sustained analytical investigations of vocal influence in Mahler’s large-scale symphonic forms. The present study places this vocality at the forefront of its analyses, arguing that Mahler’s reworking of his own Lieder is …

Reimagining Folk Songs: A Bridge Between Tradition And Innovation In Georgy Sviridov’S Music, Polina Nazaykinskaya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Georgy Sviridov (1915–1998), one of the most prominent Soviet composers of his generation, remains largely underrepresented in Western performance and scholarship. This dissertation examines the compositional language of Sviridov’s Kursk Songs (1964) through direct comparison with the seven folk songs published in Anna Rudneva’s 1957 collection Kurskie pesni that served as the work’s source material. The study addresses a central paradox of Sviridov’s musical language: how remarkably economical, predominantly diatonic materials can produce powerful and highly individual expressive results.

The analysis considers how Sviridov preserves essential characteristics of the folk sources while transforming their harmony, rhythm, form, texture, orchestration, and …

Analyzing Harmony In Bulgarian And Bulgarian-Influenced Choral Arrangements From The Radio To The Screen, Annie Beliveau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates developments in arrangements and compositions made for Bulgarian choirs between 1950 and 2025. Arrangements from Bulgaria’s communist period (1944-1989), when musical radio broadcasts were tailored to promote nationalist sentiment, eventually reached the ears of foreigners on the other side of the Iron Curtain via recordings and ensemble tours. These obrabotki (arrangements of folk tunes) became popular in the “world music” boom of the 1980s, and foreign composers soon began to create new compositions for Bulgarian choirs to sing on albums and in scores for film, television, and video games. Over time, the uses of Bulgarian choir in …

Urban Counterpoint (1992–2003): The Piano Music Of Ed Bland, Joseph Vaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the piano music of Ed Bland, a politically and philosophically vocal composer active in the second half of the twentieth century, whose music draws on both the European and American twentieth-century avant-garde, and on African American vernacular music genres from ragtime to hip-hop. A review of the historical and personal context for these pieces, and a detailed examination of the compositional processes used in this music, work together to demonstrate how Bland thought about the relationship between different musical genres and languages.

Through this combination of theory of musical genre, historical and biographical study, and detailed analysis …

Conga Santiaguera: A Century Of Innovation And Competition, Nick Herman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Santiago de Cuba is home to the island’s biggest, oldest, and most famous carnival.  Any local resident will confirm that “sin conga no hay carnaval (without conga there is no carnival).” In Santiago, conga refers to a vibrant street procession, the music that drives it, and the ensemble that makes the music.  Conga Santiaguera: A Century of Innovation and Competition presents a musical history of the conga from roughly 1910 to 2010.  This project, https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/conga employs an eBook, musical analysis, oral histories, and audiovisual media to show how the conga has been constantly reinvigorated by innovation, competition, and Afro-Diasporic …

Reimagining Puerto Rican Sonic Identity: Musical Style And Creation After Hurricane María., Gabriel E. Bouche Caro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the manifestation of Puertorriqueñidad (Puerto Rican identity) in concert music composed after Hurricane María (2017), a catastrophe that catalyzed a profound shift in Puerto Rico's cultural consciousness. Focusing on four composers whose early careers were shaped by this period—Johanny Navarro, John Rivera Pico, Iván E. Rodríguez, and Christian Quiñones—the study combines close readings of scores and recordings with extensive original interviews to understand how musical identity is constructed in the wake of collective trauma. The analysis reveals that while the composers share a generational bond, their aesthetic practices are strikingly diverse: Navarro preserves Afro-Caribbean rhythmic structures, Rivera …

Cecil Taylor, 1950–1976: Theory & Practice In His Own Words, Michelle A. Yom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cecil Taylor (1929–2018) was a poet, composer, pianist, and dancer who is widely regarded as one of the founding figures of Free Jazz. Despite this historical significance, Taylor has not been a subject of substantial archival research. Some scholars have written his name into music scholarship through explicitly or implicitly reiterating the notion of “freedom” that circulated among contemporary jazz critics of the late 1950s and the 1960s. Others have focused on analyzing Taylor’s solo piano music, often reducing Taylor’s musical theories and practices into the formal structures of the music itself. To date, the scholarship has simplified Taylor’s work …

Form And Structure In African Music: Four Case Studies In San, Por Por, Ewe, And Aka Music, Bai Xue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the organizational principles in African music through the analysis of four distinct musical traditions: the San music of Southern Africa, Por Por honk-horn music of urban Accra (Ghana), the Northern and Southern Ewe music of Ghana, and the Aka music of the Central African Republic. While the study of African music has often emphasized its sociocultural and rhythmic aspects, structural principles have remained a relatively underexplored subject. This study argues that African music is highly structural yet should not be analyzed as fixed blueprints. Instead, it introduces a “block-based method” for analyzing oral music, the first step …

Britten’S Violin Concerto And His Early Period—Score Analysis And Pacifist Narrative, Magdalena Filipczak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto, Op. 15, using the work as a lens through which to examine the composer’s early period. Rather than treating the concerto as a purely technical or stylistic artifact, the study situates it within the broader context of Britten’s formative years, his early artistic circles, the political tensions of the 1930s, and his evolving pacifist stance.

The final third of the dissertation offers a detailed formal and interpretative analysis of the full orchestral score, tracing an expressive arc across the entire work by identifying an idée fixe motif and following …

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 …

Musical Semiotics In Kate Soper’S Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016), Scott A. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the six parts of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016). While individual parts have received some music theoretical attention, this is the first analysis of the entire Pulitzer Prize-nominated work. Ambiguity and contingency are major themes of Ipsa Dixit, and by treating each part independently and in combination, I hope to honor Ipsa’s contingent status as a unified work comprised of six complete works. Soper’s libretto unifies an assemblage of texts with adaptations of Aristotle to investigate the intersections of language and music with authority, veracity, and (un)intelligibility.

I theorize that Soper’s “philosophy-opera” dramatizes the formation of …

Singing Petrarch In The Cinquecento: Embodied Reading And The Italian Madrigal, Thomas A. Hedrick Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how composers of sixteenth-century Italian madrigals highlighted poetic line rhythm, repeated vowel sounds (or assonance), and word repetition in figures of speech—all elements of the verse that have been previously overlooked by scholars, who have traditionally focused on musical depictions of the text’s semantics. The analysis in chapters 2, 3, and 4 shows that composers used a consistent set of techniques from the madrigals of Arcadelt to those of Monteverdi, and musical examples draw from large collection of madrigals on Petrarch sonnets. The analytical methodology is built on the premise that Cinquecento encounters with poetry can be …

Timbres Oubliés: The Forgotten Sounds Of Loeffler's Octet, Graeme Steele Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modern musicians play a lot of old music and a lot of new music, but not so much “new old music.” This study—with its accompanying critical edition score, world-premiere recording and first present-day performances—represents, at long last, the deliverance of one such work from the ashes of history to the ears of the present: Charles Martin Loeffler’s forgotten Octet for Two Clarinets, Harp, Two Violins, Viola, Cello and Double Bass, a piece that was left unpublished, unrecorded and unheard since 1897.

This paper documents my efforts to finally reintroduce the Octet to the repertoire. By cross-referencing the autograph manuscript score …

A Multilevel Approach To The Analysis And Visualization Of Timbral Brightness In Post-Tonal Music, Stephen Spencer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation develops a method for the analysis and visualization of timbral brightness in post-tonal music. Brightness, a salient timbral attribute correlated with the prominence of high frequencies in the sound spectrum, is crucial for distinguishing sounds and discerning how they fit together in music. The dissertation employs a multilevel analytical approach, measuring differences in brightness at multiple “textural levels” and temporal scales. The analytical utility of the approach is demonstrated through four case studies, each one closely examining the score and audio of a piece of instrumental music written in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Chapter …

Metric Schemas And Projections In Three Colombian Folk Genres, Lina S. Tabak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how stylistic expertise can affect metric perception, through the analysis of three Colombian folk genres—cantos de boga and currulaos from the Pacific region and joropos from the Eastern plains bordering Venezuela. Specifically, it considers the tension between metric perceptions which arise from bottom-up mechanisms for entrainment (such as projections), and those which are based on top-down mechanisms (such as schemata). This tension is at play when more and less musically enculturated listeners perceive entirely different metric structures when listening to identical music.

Taking bottom-up and top-down metric perception as a thread, this dissertation isolates three additional metric …

The Reciprocal Interaction Of Musical Performance And Analysis, Gregory Hartmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Musicians can generally be divided into one of two kinds: practitioners who compose or perform music, and thinkers who analyze or write about music (theorists, musicologists, and critics). These roles might seem to be of approximately equal importance, so the perspectives of each should be given proportionate consideration. Yet the existing music-theoretical literature consistently relegates the performer to an inferior position. When performance is discussed, it is usually done in objective terms; an analysis is presented as a rationale to judge a performance as right or wrong. My dissertation challenges this perspective and provides an alternative. By marrying rigorous, theory-based …

Reconciling Macro- And Micro-Levels In The First Movement Of Brahms’S Piano Concerto In D Minor, Op. 15: A Schenkerian Reading, Alexandra Joan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the first movement of Johannes Brahms’s Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 15, through a Schenkerian lens. Concertos are relatively unexplored in Heinrich Schenker’s theoretical work. Surprisingly, although Schenker put Brahms on a pedestal throughout his life, he left only a few published analyses of the composer’s music.

Chapter 1 explores the kinship between Schenker and Brahms. Both conceived of the musical work as an organic entity. They also shared an approach to the tonal language based on an eighteenth-century tradition of figured bass and counterpoint. Op. 15 also exhibits an approach to musical form grounded in the …

Galina Ustvolskaya's Writing For Violin And Piano, 1952–1964, Patrick Doane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Galina Ustvolskaya, Russian composer born in 1919 in Petrograd, navigated a life amidst the tumultuous changes in Soviet-era music and the upheavals of her home city. This dissertation explores Ustvolskaya’s compositions for violin and piano, to deepen the understanding of her musical language and style.

Despite the constraints and challenges imposed by the era’s political landscape, Ustvolskaya boldly crafted a distinct musical identity, writing social-realist compositions while privately cultivating a highly complex, individual style.

Few scholars have undertaken a comprehensive look at her music. This dissertation contributes to a growing body of recent scholarship by employing Russian music theorist Valentina …

André Mocquereau's Theory Of Rhythm, Charles Weaver

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the theory of rhythm developed by Dom André Mocquereau (1849–1930), a French Benedictine monk. Mocquereau’s theory was originally conceived as a method for performing Gregorian chant and has been the source for numerous publications and recordings since the beginning of the twentieth century. This dissertation places Mocquereau’s theory in the context of both the evolving performance practice of medieval monophony and the history of music theory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapter 1 surveys the history of the notation of Gregorian chant, introducing the problem of constructing a rhythmic practice from historical sources. Chapter 2 examines …

Form In Hip-Hop Music: Sections, Songs, And History, Stephen M. Gomez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores musical form in recorded hip-hop music from 1979–present. Form, defined as the large-scale organization of songs, is a parameter that artists consider in the creative process and fans experience while listening. Hip-hop’s historical foundation as a live, improvised, party-oriented genre influenced formal functions and patterning from the earliest days of its popular recorded life, beginning with the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979. While many of the section and song form labels used by scholars of pop-rock music are transferable to the analysis of hip-hop, the latter genre conveys a unique sense of time rooted in …

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 …

Ways Of Silence And Other Absences In The Music Of George Crumb, Jean-Patrick Besingrand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of American composer George Crumb (1929-2022) is undeniably singular in the musical landscape. His aesthetic is often characterized by his exploration of timbre, his graphic scores, his use of quotation, his theatricality, and his interest in unusual instruments. This study proposes to take a different approach to Crumb’s aesthetic through the spectrum of silences and other absences. The concept of silence will be broken down and reconstructed through the Japanese concept of ma (間) and of empty spaces. Multiple types of silences and absences will be considered throughout this dissertation, expanding thus the concept of silence not only …

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 …

Music Lessons, Cecilia-Rose Louise Bender

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

music lessons is a digital chapbook that explores the relationships between James Baldwin’s writing and Beauford Delaney’s paintings through music. From Delaney’s “Composition 16” (1954-56) to Baldwin’s “The Uses of the Blues” (1964), their collaboration with the core elements of jazz music gives their work rhythm and melodic contour that any/body can vibe with. Absorbing the influences of artists Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and putting them to paint and text, music lessons demonstrates how music not only transforms the ways we experience and move our bodies but also the ways that we perceive space, relationships, and time. What’s …

Voice Leading In Fugue, Yuval Shapira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines voice leading in the fugues of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier from a Schenkerian perspective. In Bach’s fugues, thematic material usually permeates all the parts, making the surface diminutions unusually complex. Given the predominance of the subject, there is a tendency in the Schenkerian tradition to base the voice-leading analysis of a fugue on an a priori analysis of the subject by itself. Based on the subject’s outline, one might expect to find the fugal thematic layout reflected in the underlying voice leading, conceiving the fugal surface as an elaboration of a simpler quasi-fugal substructure. I argue …

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 …

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 …

"Cerulean Skies" By Maria Schneider: A Formal And Semiotic Analysis, Jonathan Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Expressivity, imagery, and narrativity have long been touted as hallmarks of big band composer Maria Schneider’s style. This perception is widely accepted by critics and casual commentators, but are these attributions merely metaphorical or do they speak to observable dimensions of Schneider’s compositional style? This dissertation aims to address the narrative and expressive dimensions of Schneider’s music by combining aspects of formal analysis with concepts from music semiotics. The centerpiece is an analysis of “Cerulean Skies” (2006), the longest work to date in Schneider’s oeuvre with a duration of approximately twenty-two minutes. “Cerulean Skies” is distinct in its expansiveness and …

Unsuk Chin’S Hyper-Sheng: Sonic And Structural Development In Šu For Sheng And Orchestra, Hyun-Kyung Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Korean composer Unsuk Chin (b. 1961) is constantly exploring new sonic experiences in her works; her concerto Šu for Sheng and Orchestra (2009) is drawing considerable attention, as it is Chin’s first piece written for an Asian instrument. This study begins with a simple inquiry How does Chin combine an Asian instrument (sheng) with the Western orchestra? To answer this question, this research examines Chin’s treatment of the sheng and the development of the orchestra in partnership with the solo instrument, focusing on the creation of what she terms a “hyper-sheng:” the solo sheng and the orchestra collaboratively producing …

“The Theory Is Not Yet Music”: An Analysis Of Pierre Schaeffer’S Etude Aux Allures, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout his career, Pierre Schaeffer composed several sound works to test and inspire his evolving musical theories. By composing with edited sound recordings, rather than traditional musical instruments, he hoped to discover new ways of creating musical structures based on sound parameters other than pitch. This study is an analysis of Schaeffer’s sound work Etude aux allures. This Etude examines the musical potential of the sound parameter allure, which is Schaeffer’s term for the pulsed modulation of pitch, volume, or other sound parameters. Without the existence of a standardized analytical methodology, the Etude is viewed from several perspectives. First, a …