Music Theory Commons^™

The Elements, Soren Andrew Allen

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

The Elements is a five-movement composition for wind ensemble inspired by the five classical elements: earth, water, fire, air, and aether. These elements were once thought by Plato to be made of small, indivisible solids which were later named the Platonic Solids: the cube, the icosahedron, the tetrahedron, the octahedron, and the dodecahedron, respectively. I utilized compositional techniques developed in the twentieth century to explore these elements and their connections to their solids.

What Is "Around Me" In 2020?, Hannah Heaton

Undergraduate Research Conference

The title of my composition that I am using for this performance presentation is "Around Me." It is a solo violin work performed by Dr. Serena Scibelli, a music professor from the University of North Georgia, and composed by me, Hannah Heaton. Serena Scibelli requested if I could write a solo violin work for her upcoming album that would be a reminder of reflection through music during the 2020 Pandemic. I intend to take this work and show any listener how they can relate with my piece, “Around Me.”

"Around Me" is a relatively short work, but through use of …

The Making Of An Avant-Gardist: A Study Of Rafael Aponte-Ledée’S Early Life And Works (1957–1966), Noel Torres-Rivera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the interconnectedness of political and musical discourses in Latin America by examining the formative years of Puerto Rican composer Rafael Aponte-Ledée (b. 1938), a leading figure in the Puerto Rican avant-garde movement in the late 1960s. Through extensive archival research, oral history, and qualitative field work, I analyze his time as a student at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid (1957-1964) and at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires (1965-1966). With this, I address the intricate network of musical works, events, mentors, institutional discourses, textbooks, technologies, …

Volume 35, Various Authors

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Exploring Maximalism In Music, Comparing The Selected Works Of Richard Strauss And Kanye West: Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

In the realm of music theory, many terms are used to simplify characteristics of musical compositions. Many of these terms become “ism’s” as a way to easily group many characteristics or techniques that composers implement. A well known ‘ism’ that is taught often in American music theory/history courses is minimalism, where composers made music with techniques like repetition, simplification, etc. This paper seeks to define another emerging ‘ism’ in music theory, Maximalism. This term broadly refers to the over exaggeration of compositional techniques in music, and their effects. I propose that in many ways the composers Richard Strauss and Kanye …

Real Rap, Does Authenticity Even Matter In Hip Hop?, Amin Allam

Capstone Showcase

Rap and Hip hop has evolved tremendously since its inception. The collective genre has been catapulted to global influence, where in the United States it represents the largest genre based on market share. After reviewing the history of rap music there is a perceived relationship between hip hop and authenticity. To which the question arose of whether hip hop could maintain authenticity in a commercial sphere. To explore this relationship, after reviewing the literature on authenticity, a model of analysis created by Newman and Smith was used to explore 5years worth of data dealing with the Billboard top 100 list. …

Jay Chou’S Kuso Music: Cultural Fusion In The Age Of The Internet, Stz-Tsung (Stone) Han

Scripps Senior Theses

Jay Chou is one of the most significant singers in Chinese popular music history. One of Chou’s greatest achievements is his implementation of the Chinese “Egao” culture in his music, which originated from Japanese Kuso culture. Such an approach not only created his unique style but also allowed him to adopt various musical techniques together seamlessly. By doing so, Chou created a style that references multiple traditional musical conventions without being bound by any of them. This study aims to examine the evolution of the Kuso culture as well as Chou’s implementation of it. The development of Kuso is fostered …

Theoretical And Compositional Analysis Of Select Metal Works, Jacob Bird

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper is a comprehensive essay on the history, form, and compositional techniques of Extreme Metal music. Within Extreme Metal this paper will cover three sub-genres using compositions by Burzum, Death, and Gojira. This paper is meant to show a link between the compositional techniques used in Western Classical music and Extreme Metal through analysis of form, harmony, and tonality/modality. The scope of this paper primarily focuses on the popular music form verse/chorus which is compared to a variety of Western Classical music forms. The goal is to promote future research into the Extreme Metal style and other popular music …

The G7 Suite: Score And Analysis, Joseph C. Dunn

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The G7 Suite is a multi-movement chamber work that combines elements of European Art Music, Indigenous Music from Latin America, and various representations of American music. The melodic material is derived from the national anthems of the Great Seven nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each melody is re-set to new music genres and aligns itself to the rules and expectations within each idiom. This compilation is more than a series of arrangements or reharmonizations of the anthems; these are new compositions based on melodic elements from previous works.

This analysis of The …

Fluid Dynamics: Representations Of Water In Music, James E. Evans

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Water has remained a subject of all kinds of musical works since at least the middle ages. These musical works lack the concrete representational capacity of paintings, photographs, and films, relying instead on more abstract metaphorical constructs to convey water imagery. Current scholarship on water music typically centers on Romantic and Impressionist works and does not examine the process of signification by which musical signs portray water. The principal goal of this study is to determine how musical devices convey specific aspects of bodies of water and how such devices interact and contribute to musical depictions of streams, rivers, lakes, …

A New Model Of Interpreting Modified Strophic Design: Brahms’S Late Viennese Solo Lieder, Yung-Ching Yu

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The study of the interaction between musical and text-based elements in songs has received a great amount of attention in recent years. Although numerous previous researchers have contributed to the study of Brahms’s Lieder, more work remains to explore Brahms’s various compositional techniques of modification to reveal the music-text relationship and performance implications in his strophic songs. Since the majority of Brahms’s modified strophic songs were composed during his later Viennese period (1875–97), this dissertation offers a thorough analysis of Brahms’s late twenty-eight strophic solo Lieder and develops a new formal model to categorize them as one of four types …

Symphony No. 3 For Chamber Orchestra, Derrik Nelson

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Symphonic works provide the composer an opportunity to create and explore an entire world, establishing the rules and laws by which the music operates, subject only to the whims and wishes of the composer. I view large-scale symphonic works as one of the highest achievements of musical expression and craft a composer can accomplish. I chose to compose for the chamber orchestra due to its intimate arrangement, narrowing down the orchestra to its most essential components: strings, woodwinds, and brass, along with the inclusion of the piano. Though the piano is technically not an “essential” component of the orchestra, I …

An Analysis Of Amy Beach's Variations On Balkan Themes, Op. 60, Yiwen Zhang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research paper provides an analysis of Variations on Balkan Themes, Op. 60, one of Amy Beach’s most significant solo piano works. Variations on Balkan Themes exists in four different versions: the 1906 original solo piano version, a 1936 revised solo piano version, a 1942 two-piano version and fragments of an orchestral version. This paper is focused on Beach’s 1906 original solo piano work. The analysis includes descriptions of the character of each variation, the structure, the pianistic figures and selected harmonic analysis as well as information comparing the four different versions. Beach’s biographical information, historical background of the …

The Three Piano Sonatas By José De Almeida Penalva, Heron Alvim Moreira

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research project discusses the three piano sonatas by José de Almeida Penalva (1924-2002), a priest and composer from the southern region of Brazil, who lived most of his life in the city of Curitiba, in Paraná state.

Along with overall information about the composer’s life and general output, the reader will find brief discussions of Penalva’s keyboard works, along with comprehensive formal analyses of his three piano sonatas.

Sonata no. 1 (1970, chronologically the second to be written) appears in one large movement that reveals two distinct sections. Its language is atonal and its first section displays sonata-allegro form. …

Fostering Music Performers In The 21st Century: A Contemporary Professional Perspective Toward A New Curricular Agenda For Graduate Study In Music, Andre Januario

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

What if the core curriculum for graduate students in music performance were designed to prepare students to succeed in the world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

This dissertation offers a hypothetical answer: a structured and systematic academic curricular framework for music graduate students of performance of concert music (especially those in terminal degrees, such as doctoral students), along with music instructors, professional music performers, school administrators, and college professors, seeking to prepare such students for achieving and maintaining a music career more in keeping with the current work environment, especially those skills demanded by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the …

A Foundation For Collaboration: An Analysis Of Robert Schumann’S Dichterliebe, Op. 48, Kailang Zhan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This paper provides an analysis of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe offering historical information and insights into each of the sixteen songs. The analysis includes the English translation of the texts and discussion of the form of each song as well as highlights of the special moments of harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic structure in relation to Schumann’s setting of each poem. The analysis provides a foundation for collaborative skills for the singer and pianist for the study and performance of Dichterliebe. In addition, the paper includes brief biographies of Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine and background information on the poetry and …

The Future In Their Imaginations: Music And Robotics School Holidays Program For School-Aged Children, Adam Manning, Amelia Bessenyei, Helen English

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This report reflects on an exploratory STEAM workshop at the University of Newcastle, School of Creative Industries, Conservatorium of Music, Australia. Twenty-six middle school-aged students attended the two-day workshop. On the final day, students presented an immersive concert for parents and friends, showcasing creativity, innovation and teamwork. Interestingly, Lego robots were employed as a physical tool through which music-making students interacted with each other and built attributes of creative engagement. These attributes were measured via the Six C’s established by Bers comprising: (1) Collaboration; (2) Community Building; (3) Communication; (4) Content Creation; (5) Creativity; and (6) Choices of Conduct. This …

Monitored Freedom: Swing Rhythm In The Jazz Arrangements Of Roland Dyens, Milton Mermikides

Soundboard Scholar

This paper provides an analysis of jazz swing in the work of classical guitarist and composer Roland Dyens. Drawing on Dyens’s published and recorded arrangements of jazz standards, I study both his notation and his performance of swing, starting with a preliminary study of his collection Night and Day and proceeding to a detailed analysis of Nuages—his notated arrangement and four recorded performances. To provide context for Dyens’s stylistic referents, I analyze Django Reinhardt’s 1940 ensemble performance of Nuages. Throughout the discussion, I utilize digital audio analysis and models of microtiming to reveal Dyens’s sophisticated understanding and execution …

Soundboard Scholar No. 6: Editor's Letter, Jonathan Leathwood

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of this issue.

Breaking The Matrix: Transcribing Bartók And Ligeti For The Guitar Using A New Capo System, Katalin Koltai

Soundboard Scholar

This paper demonstrates new transcriptions for the guitar of four piano pieces from the twentieth century: “The Night’s Music” from Bartók’s suite Out of Doors and Ligeti’s Musica ricercata, nos. 1, 2, and 7. The transcriptions deploy various newly invented single- and double-string magnet capos: I describe their design and, drawing on the work of De Souza, explain how their use transforms the affordances of the fretboard. In combination with scordaturas, the capos can be used to generate a series of radically altered open-string sets. Turning to the transcriptions of Bartók and Ligeti: by observing the pitch centers within …

Timbre-Based Composition For The Guitar: A Non-Guitarist’S Approach To Mapping And Notation, Jason Noble, Steve Cowan

Soundboard Scholar

Composing for the guitar can be intimidating for non-guitarists, but their fresh perspectives can uncover new ways of thinking about music for the instrument. This paper discusses timbre-based composition, an approach to writing for guitar that may be more intuitive for non-guitarist composers than traditional polyphonic composition. The rich palette of timbres available on the guitar, including pitched and nonpitched sounds, is conceived as primary compositional material. Issues of notation and mapping are addressed, focusing on three categories of mappings: (i) physical mapping from notational symbols onto physical objects, such as parts of the guitar; (ii) analogical mapping from …

Soundboard Scholar No. 6 (Complete)

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

New Perspectives On Johannes De Muris And His Notitia Artis Musicae, Jeffrey Allan Arnsdorf

Dissertations and Theses

At the end of the 1310s, Norman mathematician and astronomer Johannes de Muris (c. 1295-after 1344) reconceived the existing musical notation system on a mathematical foundation. His Notitia artis musicae dramatically increased the fidelity with which the system could represent complex rhythmic patterns. In recent years, musicologists, particularly Karen Desmond, have begun to incorporate the scholarship of historians of astronomy in their work on Muris and the Notitia. These studies take as their focus conceptual shifts in music theory and practice. This thesis repositions the perspective to Muris himself, seeking to shed light on his intention in writing the …

Developing A Systematic Approach For Teaching Beginning Improvisation Using The Concert Percussion Ensemble, Ian Mcclaflin

Dissertations

Typically, when studying percussion at a University, a student is required to be proficient at multiple aspects of percussion (snare drum, mallet keyboards, drum set, hand drumming, etc.) and work through multiple method books and solos on the different instruments. This often leaves little to no room for the study of improvisation on their instrument.

Examined in this study are the following points pertaining to the state of teaching improvisation:

• There is an apparent lack of improvisation in the classroom
• Teachers often feel unprepared in teaching improvisation
• Improvisation is most commonly associated with jazz
• Both teachers and students tend to …

Cyberpunk Beginnings: Sos, Mark Zanter

Music Faculty Research

This performance proposal features works for electric guitar, percussion, live processing and visuals performed by Mark Zanter, and Steve Hall of Marshall University, USA. Approximate time 10 minutes. SOS integrates layers of algorithmically generated material, live signal processing, visuals, and live performance in a work exploring boundaries between machine generated sound(s), and human interaction.

“Mortality’S Wilting Flower:” Terror Management Theory And Music In Animated Films, Lauren Bertsch

Senior Honors Projects

There’s something about animated films - so full of light and wonder - that invokes this “warm and fuzzy” feeling when you sit down to watch it. Yet an entire spectrum of human emotion is demanded from us as an audience. Buried in the heart of animated films are these dark themes, problems that lie in the bedrock of humanity. And it leaves us pondering: why? The answer may actually stretch back to when our species developed thought and reason. In 1973, American anthropologist Ernest Becker uncovered the mental foundation that allows us to live, function, and thrive in a …

My Mind And Me, Van Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“My Mind and Me” is a three-movement musical work written by Van Powell that was based off of a poem written by his grandmother Joyce Beshears. The piece contains many aspects of classical music such as instrumentation and form yet has more of a modern feel regarding aspects such as harmony and vocal style. The piece is written for a female alto vocal, guitar, two violins, viola, cello, and double bass. The poem that the piece is interpreting gives incite into the disassociation of a woman’s mind and body. While analyzing herself the author comes to terms with her strengths …

Errata For Folksongs From The Maritimes, Peter G. Fielding

Faculty Articles

Toneset and solfa errata for Kaye Pottie and vernon Ellis' Folksongs of the Maritimes (1992).

An Exploration Of Cultural Transmission Through The Application Of Jazz Theory To The Music Of Frederic Chopin, Aaron Michael King

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Connections between classical music and jazz were observed and detailed, providing an expanded understanding of the cultural underpinnings of Western music. This study featured explanations of concepts found in jazz theory, such as approach tones and ii⁷-V⁷-I⁷ progression, and comparisons of stylistic features of both music. These concepts were then applied to describe features in the music of Frederic Chopin, specifically “Nocturne No. 1,” “Berceuse,” and “Prelude No. 4.” Through cross-cultural analysis, this study aims to provide the reader with information and further appreciation of the elements found in jazz music and to delineate the …

Korngold's Dream States: An Analysis Of Transitional Passages In Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Opera "Die Tote Stadt", Tyler Brandon

Master's Theses

This thesis aims to compare Korngold’s treatment of altered states of reality in his 1920 opera Die tote Stadt to that of other composers and apply a theoretical approach to explain the transitions between the diegetic realms, or multiple narrative levels, that the work is contained within. These are outlined by William Cheng in his article entitled “Opera ‘en abyme’: The prodigious ritual of Korngold’s ‘Die tote Stadt.’” An overview of Cheng’s article is provided, recounting the claims that he posits and the analyses that he uses to explain the transitions between these diegetic realms. Next, other instances of altered …