Music Theory Commons^™

Soundboard Scholar No. 1 (Complete)

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

Music Theatre Directing For The Vocal Performance Student: A Practical Application Of Knowledge And Skills, Samuel Martin Snyder

Honors College

As an application of skills acquired in the course of a four-year Bachelor of Music program, this thesis constitutes the physical documentation of the creative process for Jeanine Tesori’s Violet, the musical production selected for this project. Encompassing in a linear format license contracts, casting, creative development, rehearsal planning and conducting, administrative duties, musical analysis, and artistic instruction, the contents of this document represent in part the steps and components required to realize a full musical production – each one accomplished by the student director. In addition to the physical elements, a full recording of the final performance is available, …

The Production Of Sticky Notes And Bible Quotes: Godly Answers For Sticky Situations A Children’S Musical As Directed By Julie Brinkman, Julie Elizabeth Brinkman

Honors College

This thesis reflects upon a director’s experience while directing her first production: Sticky Notes and Bible Quotes: Godly Answers for Sticky Situations by Dennis and Nan Allen. This children’s musical was produced in cooperation with Wylie United Methodist Church of Abilene, TX. Over forty children, with the help of ten adult volunteers, shared the importance of memorizing scripture and looking to God’s Word in times of trouble through song, skits, and the recitation of scripture. While reflecting upon the production process after each rehearsal, the director makes connections between her experiences as director, the content of her music education undergraduate …

Dual-Interval Spaces: Interrelations Between Interval Classes 1 And 5, Local Pitch Centers And Form In Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 12, Tae Young Hong

Master's Theses

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Sonata No. 1, written in 1926, is one of his most complex and lengthy works for piano. In contrast to the conservative style used in his critically-acclaimed Symphony No. 1, Op. 10, composed a year earlier, the sonata employs a highly modernistic idiom which predominated the composer’s output in the late 1920’s. The musical surface of the sonata was crafted by an extensive use of interval classes 1 and 5 which serve as the primary means of structuring pitch material.

This paper examines the surface combinations of two interval classes as well as their interaction with …

String Quartet, Brut, Bernie Walasavage

Masters Theses

l’Art Brut , also commonly referred to as “outsider art,” is comprised of a variety of visual media by untrained or mentally ill artists. The string quartet is subtitled this because it takes inspiration from the work of these artists; with its jagged edges, vibrant colors, and horrid scenes, there is an organic beauty inherent in such eclectic and divergent art. Another factor which drew me to the artwork of the mentally ill was the commonality of Kenophobia: an abnormal fear of empty spaces. Schizophrenic, Swiss artists, Adolf Wölfli (18641930) and Aloïse Corbaz (18861964) were noted for suffering this phobia …

Pitch Circles – From Music Theory To Computer-Based Learning Tool, Matt Smith

The ITB Journal

This paper describes how a music theory with explanatory power for expression of relationships between pitch classes, chords and tonal regions can be exploited as the foundations for a computer-based tool, called ‘Pitch Circles’, to support musical novices learn about and manipulate such musical concepts and relationships . The paper introduces this research with a brief review of the ‘direct manipulation’ principles for computer interaction design on which the computer-based learning tool has been based, and of the features of tonal theories which led to our choice of a particular theory, ‘Pitch Spaces’, as the basis for this work.

About This Issue, Michael E. Ruhling

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis On The Skill Acquisition Of Music And Language, Dominique Lopiccolo

The Kabod

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate some of the shared cognitive processes, which seem to underlie both the acquisition of music and language. Since linguists have separated language acquisition studies into one of two major categories, that is, child versus second language acquisition, the following comparative study will predominantly focus on the similarities found between second language acquisition and music acquisition. This is due in large part to the fact that our current understanding of how child language acquisition works is still in its primitive stages, and it most likely follows a more intuitivist paradigm. Second language acquisition, …

Aribo, De Musica And Sententiae, T. J. H. Mccarthy

TEAMS Varia

Music was central to the medieval church's public worship: it was the essential medium of the Mass and the Divine Office. In this new critical edition, T. J. H. McCarthy presents the Latin text and the first English translation of Aribo's musical treatise, De musica and Sententiae. Written between 1070 and 1078, it is concerned with the workings of the liturgical music that Aribo and his contemporaries called Gregorian chant, and builds off of and responds to several contemporary treatises by Abbot Bern of Reichenau and his pupil Herman, Abbot William of Hirsau, Frutolf of Michelsberg, and Theoger of Metz. …

Who Can Afford To Improvise? James Baldwin And Black Music, The Lyric And The Listeners [Table Of Contents], Ed Pavlic

Literature

More than a quarter-century after his death, James Baldwin remains an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics. In Who Can Afford to Improvise? Ed Pavlić offers an unconventional, lyrical, and accessible meditation on the life, writings, and legacy of James Baldwin and their relationship to the lyric tradition in black music, from gospel and blues to jazz and R&B. Based on unprecedented access to private correspondence, unpublished manuscripts and attuned to a musically inclined poet’s skill in close listening, Who Can Afford to Improvise? frames a new narrative of James Baldwin’s work and life.

The route …

Understanding Music: Past And Present, N. Alan Clark, Thomas Heflin, Jeffrey Kluball, Elizabeth Kramer

Fine Arts Open Textbooks

Understanding Music: Past and Present is an open Music Appreciation textbook co-authored by music faculty across Georgia. The text covers the fundamentals of music and the physics of sound, an exploration of music from the Middle Ages to the present day, and a final chapter on popular music in the United States.

Accessible files with optical character recognition (OCR) and auto-tagging provided by the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation.

Jazz And Puerto Rican Traditional Music: A New Generation Of Musical Exploration, Pedro Lavezzari

Masters Theses

Many musical styles around the world have been born from struggle and search for cultural identity. The same idea applies to Jazz and the Afro-Caribbean music created within the African diaspora and influenced by Latin and European styles in the United States. More recently, the meaning of diaspora has been used to refer to a group of people and some aspects of their culture (Rivera 2010, 104). For older and newer generations of Puerto Rican musicians two traditions have intersected to create a modern form of expression that reaffirms Puerto Rico’s musical creativity and contemporary tendency. In 1989 Warren Pinckney …

A Musical Homiletic: Drawing On The Sonic Dimensions Of The Word And Spirit, Thomas H. Troeger

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The article begins by addressing two primary areas of concern: 1. Can music communicate meaning, and if so, how? 2. Can theological realities be expressed through music and other artistic forms whose primary medium is not language? The author then lays out a schema featuring four different aspects of developing a musical homiletic, starting with the simplest and moving to the most complex. (1) Preachers can speak in a way that captures the musicality of human conversation: its sonically engaging use of inflection, volume, pace, and timbre. (2) Preachers can interpret the theological and poetic meaning of the texts that …

A Jamaican Voice: The Choral Music Of Noel Dexter, Desmond A. Moulton

Dissertations

As we approach the twenty-first century, the world generally is moving away from the dominance of the European aesthetic towards a world music that owes much to the musical resources of the African-American tradition. Jamaica’s social and philosophical music belong mainly to that tradition, which includes the use of rhythms, and timbral and melodic resources that exist independently of harmony. Already in this century, Jamaicans have created two totally new music - Nyabinghi, which performs a philosophical function and Reggae, which performs a social function. The choral music of Noel Dexter is important because it is uniquely Jamaican/Caribbean in its …

Twelve-Tone Serialism: Exploring The Works Of Anton Webern, James P. Kinney

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Mathematics and Music are related and intertwined, and the invention of serialism in the 20th century highlights this fact. Serialism is a technique of music composition that uses mathematics to structure different elements of music, such as pitch and rhythm. For hundreds of years, music all over the Western world was tonal, which means there is a hierarchy of some pitches being more important than others. Serialism is a form of atonality, which is the composition of music that attempts to use all twelve pitch-classes equally. I examine twelve-tone serialism, which was created by Arnold Schoenberg and developed by his …

Scalar And Collectional Relationships In Shostakovich's Fugues, Op. 87, Sarah Mahnken

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

The Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 of Shostakovich come out of common practice tonality; however, Shostakovich’s music departs from the tonal tradition in his lack of functional harmonic progressions and his unexpected chromatic twists. Chromatic is a problematic term in Shostakovich’s music because it can be difficult to know if a chromatic note is acting inside or outside of the system. Much of the music of Op. 87 is based on diatonic scales or scales that derive from the diatonic set. Because Shostakovich’s music does not follow the patterns of common practice tonality and sometimes uses non-diatonic scales, it is …

A Multimedia Resource Of Orchestral Excerpts For Tuba, Regen Le Roy

Masters Theses

Effective preparation for orchestral auditions is essential for classical musicians intent on applying for professional positions in the field of performing arts. A standard symphony orchestra may include one or two tubas in the entire ensemble; as a result of the scarcity of available chairs and the level of competition for tubists is more intense than most other instrument sections. Musicians who demonstrate the greatest artistic detail during auditions advance through successive rounds untilthe winner is determined by judges serving on the audition committee. To help tubists prepare for auditions, a website has been created to provide immediate access to …

A Contextually Defined Approach To Appalachian Spring, Stanley V. Kleppinger

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This essay provides analysis of the first Allegro (“Eden Valley”) and the coda from Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Following Joseph Straus and Arthur Berger, this investigation traces the correspondences of the work’s pitch centers with other pitch components of the music’s surface. The varied musical approaches of the Allegro—functional progressions, polychords, quartal trichords, chains of triads related by half or whole step, and pandiatonic melodies—coalesce to create a multi-faceted movement from centricity on A to centricity on F, while also presenting unique, individual narratives of that procession to F. In Appalachian Spring’s coda, both A and F reappear in …

The Budding Musician: A Method For Developing Cognitive And Physical Proficiency At The Piano, Lauren M. Hartburg

Senior Honors Theses

A comprehensive piano curriculum involves physical performance development alongside musicianship training. This thesis will discuss the decline in music literacy alongside research supporting the benefits of a creative, holistic, flexible music education program. These items will then be applied to developing an elementary piano curriculum. A four-volume piano method emphasizing theory and musicianship in the context of performance literature is outlined and level one is presented in detail.

Beethoven Ahead Of His Time: Sonata In C Major No. 21 Op. 53, Carolina E. Perez Ms.

Honors College Theses

This research looks at the work of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata in C major No. 21 Op. 53. A historical, theoretical, and technical analysis helps set a foundation for a better comprehension of the work and influence the overall performance.

The Pedagogical Applications Of Associating Color With Music In Entry Level Undergraduate Aural Skills, Chris Keelan

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

This thesis explores the possible effects, pedagogical applications, and benefits of pairing color with certain musical elements in undergraduate aural skills courses. The aural skills exercises primarily used in this paper are melodic and harmonic dictations but the overall theory could be applied to any exercise used in aural skills courses. An extensive review of the history and uses of color in music, as well as the invention of the color organ and the resulting artistic movements that placed color and music into the same medium are presented along with their potential uses in aural skills. Our perceptions of and …

“Ab-Soul’S Outro,” “Hiiipower,” And The Vernacular: Kendrick Lamar’S Rap As Literature, Tyler S. Bunzey

Senior Honors Theses

Kendrick Lamar’s “Ab-Soul’s Outro” and “HiiiPower” employ complex patterns of Signifyin(g), testifyin’, and other classical African-American literary tropes in order to construct a nuanced style. Lamar creates a double-voiced text not only within his narrative, but also within the form itself. Lamar plays on rap's unique status in African-American literature as an oral text; it is an extension of the vernacular. Through this oral text, Lamar decentralizes the Eurocentric focus of classical interpretation and qualification of literature to a new Afrocentric perspective that privileges the oral text. These raps are complex, wrapped up in their current context along with a …

Sonatas, Rondos, And Cupcakes: The Efficacy Of Collaborative Learning In Undergraduate Music Theory Courses, Kyle Gullings

Music Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines the efficacy of collaborative and creative learning models in undergraduate music theory courses, using as comparative case studies group projects I assigned in three consecutive Form and Analysis classes from 2011 through 2014. I make the case that creative group projects, when executed correctly, have a net benefit for students, and that we as educators should make more effective use of them in our courses.

Editorial, Michael E. Ruhling

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

No abstract provided.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Bwv 248, And The Jews, Daniel R. Melamed

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

It has been recognized since the nineteenth century that most of the poetic arias and choruses in J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 are parodies of music composed to other texts. In the early twentieth century it was claimed that at least one gospel narrative chorus was also derived from extant music, a hypothesis subsequently expanded to include several such movements said to be parodies as well. The claims are flimsily argued and are unlikely on source-critical grounds, but they have stuck, persisting in scholarly writings, reference works, and popular literature.

The origin of this idea is a 1916 …

Empyreal Radiance: An Application Of Sonification In The Field Of Astrophysics, Ryan Loth

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

Broadly, this paper discusses the application of sonification and its potential for increasing knowledge. The paper is broken up into three sections: the theory of sonification, sonification for artistic purposes, and lastly an extensive look at one process of sonification dealing with solar winds in space. Concerning the theory of sonification, the paper will divulge into the process of sonification and ask questions about the limitations of it as well. The second section discusses how sonification is a way to build the curiosity of not just scientists, but also the general public. The final section addresses my composition Empyreal Radiance …

Ua37/36 Faculty Personal Papers Claude Rose, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Personal papers of Claude Rose, WKU Music professor from 1945-1977.

Counterpoint Applied In The Invention, Fugue, Canon And Other Polyphonic Forms: An Exhaustive Treatise On The Structural And Formal Details Of The Polyphonic Or Contrapuntal Forms Of Music, For The Use Of General And Special Students Of Music, Percy Goetschius, Jonathan Kulp

School of Music

No abstract provided.

Exercises In Elementary Counterpoint, Percy Goetschius, Jonathan Kulp

School of Music

No abstract provided.

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 …