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Continuous Harmonic Structure in J.S. Bach's Triple Fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier and Art of Fugue

Description: This thesis explores how the harmonic structures of J.S. Bach's triple fugues interact with their formal, contrapuntal designs. It attempts to explain how each of these elaborate fugues is supported by a single, uninterrupted structure that holds the entire work together. In Bach's fugues one generally encounters large-scale goal-directed motion towards the concluding tonic; this continuous harmonic motion towards the final tonic is consistent with the aesthetics of the Baroque style, which val… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Hahn, Stephen (Stephen Ernst)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Igor Stravinsky: An Analytical Study of Programmatic Design of His Symphony in Three Movements

Description: Stravinsky seldom explained the intended theme of his works; however, he chose to do so with his Symphony in Three Movements. Stravinsky describes the first movement as a reflection on war films documenting scorched-earth tactics in China. He also states that the third movement is a reflection on the newsreels of goose-stepping soldiers, depicting the plot of the war in its entirety. In his descriptions, Stravinsky left out the second movement of the work. However, the movement already had a li… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Anderson, Rachel (Rachel Anne)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Two-Dimensional Sonata Form as Methodology: Understanding Sonata-Variation Hybrids through a Two-Dimensional Lens

Description: One of the difficulties of nineteenth-century form studies is ambiguity in ascertaining which formal types are at work and in what ways. This can be an especially difficult problem when multiple formal types seem to influence the construction of a single composition. Drawing on some recent innovations in form studies proposed by Steven Vande Moortele, Janet Schmalfeldt, and Caitlin Martinkus, I first develop a set of analytical tools specifically made for the analysis of sonata/variation formal… more
Date: May 2019
Creator: Falterman, David
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Multidimensional Musical Objects in Mahler's Seventh Symphony

Description: Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony seems to belie traditional notions of symphonic unity in that it progresses from E minor in the first movement to C major in the Finale. The repertoire of eighteenth and nineteenth century composers such as Haydn, Beethoven, and Brahms indicates that tonal holism is a significant factor for the symphonic genre. In order to reconcile Mahler's adventurous key scheme, this dissertation explores a multidimensional harmonic model that expands upon other concepts like… more
Date: May 2019
Creator: Patterson, Jason, 1982-
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Composing-Out Notre-Dame: How Louise Bertin Expresses the Hugolian Themes of Fate and Decay in La Esmeralda

Description: From 1831 to 1836, Victor Hugo and Louise Bertin collaborated on an opera titled La Esmeralda. For Hugo, it would be the only opera libretto he would ever write, a mere footnote to his collection of widely admired novels, plays, and poetry; for Bertin, however, it would become her most important work, yet seemingly destined to fade into obscurity like so many great pieces of art. Using Schenkerian analysis, this thesis uncovers the tonal and voice-leading structure of the first act of La Esmera… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Walls, Levi
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Metric Dissonance in Non-Isochronous Meters

Description: Although music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries makes frequent use of non-isochronous meter (meters involving beats of different length, such as 5/4 and 7/8), most studies on meter and metric dissonance focus on isochronous meters (meters involving beats of the same length, such as 4/4 and 9/8). This dissertation bridges this gap by developing two methodologies to account for metric dissonance involving non-isochronous pulses: modified ski-hill graphs and the composite beat attack po… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Smith, Jayson
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Crisis and Catharsis: Linear Analysis and the Interpretation of Herbert Howells' "Requiem" and "Hymnus Paradisi"

Description: Hymnus Paradisi (1938), a large-scale choral and orchestral work, is well-known as an elegiac masterpiece written by Herbert Howells in response to the sudden loss of his young son in 1935. The composition of this work, as noted by the composer himself and those close to him, successfully served as a means of working through his grief during the difficult years that followed Michael's death. In this dissertation, I provide linear analyses for Howells' Hymnus Paradisi as well as its predecessor,… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Davenport, Jennifer Tish
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Developing Variation and Melodic Contour Analysis: A New Look at the Music of Max Reger

Description: Max Reger was a prolific composer on the threshold of modernism. The style of his extensive musical output was polarizing among his contemporaries. A criticism of Reger's music is its complex and dense musical structure. Despite writing tonal music, Reger often pushes the boundaries of tonality so far that all sense of formal organization is seemingly imperceptible. In this dissertation, I offer what I observed to be a new way of discerning Reger's motivic relationships and formal structures wi… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: McConnell, Sarah E.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Tonal Enigmas: A Study of Problematic Openings and Endings

Description: When talking about tonal music, we sometimes tend to take for granted the idea that the tonic should always be clearly established either at the beginning or the end. However, there are composers who sometimes deviate from the normal path by creating different types of riddles or tonal enigmas in their works. Some of these riddles can be solved later on as the piece progresses; yet others may need to bexplained with the help of some external references. This thesis examines three such examples,… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Yun, Xiao
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna of Vincenzo Galilei: Translation and Commentary. [Part 2]

Description: The purpose of this study is to provide a practical English translation of Vincenzo Galilei's significant treatise on ancient and modern music (1581). In spite of the important place this work holds in the history of music, it has never before been made available in its entirety in any language other than the original Italian. This volume includes chapters 4-6, with an index and bibliography for the entire dissertation.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Herman, Robert H.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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An Analytical Study of Paradox and Structural Dualism in the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

Description: Beethoven's rich compositional language evokes unique problems that have fueled scholarly dialogue for many years. My analyses focus on two types of paradoxes as central compositional problems in some of Beethoven's symphonic pieces and piano sonatas. My readings of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 27 (Op. 90), Symphony No. 4 (Op. 60), and Symphony No. 8 (Op. 93) explore the nature and significance of paradoxical unresolved six-four chords and their impact on tonal structure. I consider formal-tona… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Graf, Benjamin
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Musical and Dramatic Functions of Loops and Loop Breakers in Philip Glass's Opera The Voyage

Description: Philip Glass's minimalist opera The Voyage commemorates the 500th Anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America. In the opera, Philip Glass, like other composers, expresses singers' and non-singers' words and activities by means of melodies, rhythms, chords, textures, timbres, and dynamics. In addition to these traditional musical expressions, successions of reiterating materials (RMs, two or more iterations of materials) and non reiterating materials (NRMs) become new musical expr… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Wu, Chia-Ying (Charles)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Form in Popular Song, 1990-2009

Description: Through an examination of 402 songs that charted in the top 20 of the Billboard year-end charts between the years 1990 and 2009, this dissertation builds upon previous research in form of popular song by addressing the following questions: 1) How might formal sections be identified through melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, and text? 2) How do these sections function and relate to one another and to the song as a whole? 3) How do these sections, and the resulting formal structures, relat… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Ensign, Jeffrey S.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Musical Language of Alberto Ginastera’s Panambí and the Influence of Claude Debussy’s La Mer and Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre Du Printemps

Description: Alberto Ginastera completed his ballet Panambí in 1937. The ballet was arranged as a symphonic suite, and was performed the same year at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, conducted by Juan José Castro. Panambí marked the beginning of Alberto Ginastera’s long and successful career as an Argentine composer. Chapter I of this document provides a brief introduction into the history behind Alberto Ginastera’s Panambí suite, and includes a review of the research that is exclusively devoted to the sui… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Lovern, Kenneth R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Václav Philomathes’ Musicorum Libri Quattuor (1512): Translation, Commentary, and Contextualization

Description: The Czech-born music theorist, Václav Philomathes, wrote the Musicorum libri quattuor in 1512 while attending the University of Vienna. This didactic treatise became one of the most widely published theory treatise of its time with 26 copies of five editions remaining today and covers the topics of Gregorian chant practice, Solmization, Mensural Notation, Choir Practice and Conducting, and Four-voice Counterpoint. Of particular note, is the section on choir practice and conducting, of which the… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Iler, Devin
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Formal Organization in Ground-bass Compositions

Description: This thesis examines formal organization in ground-bass works. While it is true that many or even most works of the ground-bass repertoire are variation sets over a ground, there also exist many ground-bass works that are not in variation form. The primary goal of this thesis is to elucidate the various ways in which such non-variation formal organizations may be achieved. The first chapter of this work discusses the general properties of ground basses and various ways that individual phrases m… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Stevens, Bryan
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Seventeenth-century Musiklehrbuch in Context: Heinrich Baryphonus and Heinrich Grimm’s Pleiades Musicae

Description: Heinrich Baryphonus (1581-1655) and Heinrich Grimm’s (1592/3-1637) didactic treatise, Pleiades musicae (1615/1630), provides a vivid testimony to the state of music education and music theory pedagogy in Protestant Germany in the early seventeenth century. Published initially by Baryphonus for use at the Gymnasium in Quedlinburg and reissued in an expanded format by Grimm for use at the Gymnasium in Magdeburg, the text examines the fundamentals of pitch, intervals, counterpoint, and, in the sec… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Dobbs, Benjamin M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Tonality and the Extended Common Practice in the Music of Thad Jones

Description: Tonality is a term often used to describe the music of the common practice period (roughly 1600-1900). This study examines the music of mid twentieth-century jazz composer Thad Jones in light of an extended common practice, explicating ways in which this music might be best understood as tonal. Drawing from analyses of three of Jones’s big band compositions: To You, Three and One, and Cherry Juice, this study examines three primary elements in detail. First is Jones’s use of chord-scale applica… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Rogers, Michael A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Algorithmic Music Analysis: a Case Study of a Prelude From David Cope’s “From Darkness, Light”

Description: The use of algorithms in compositional practice has been in use for centuries. With the advent of computers, formalized procedures have become an important part of computer music. David Cope is an American composer that has pioneered systems that make use of artificial intelligence programming techniques. In this dissertation one of David Cope’s compositions that was generated with one of his processes is examined in detail. A general timeline of algorithmic compositional practice is outlined f… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Krämer, Reiner
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Ligeti’s Early Experiments in Compositional Process: Simple Structures in Musica Ricercata

Description: This study examines the formation of a unique chromatic and formal language in Musica Ricercata by György Ligeti. The study begins by examining statements from an interview with Ligeti conducted by Ove Nordwall in 1979. The interview discusses his compositional experiments from the early 1950s, the period in which Musica Ricercata was composed. Working from Ligeti’s words, “simple structures” are defined as repeating formations of rhythms and intervals with easily discernable features. These fe… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Grantham, Daniel
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Theorizing Atonality: Herbert Eimert’s and Jefim Golyscheff’s Contributions to Composing with Twelve Tones

Description: In 1924, Herbert Eimert’s Atonale Musiklehre was the first published text to describe a systematic approach to composing atonal music. It contains significant contributions to the discourse on the early development of twelve-tone composition. While Eimert uses the term “atonal” to describe his compositional approach, his definition of atonality demands that all twelve tones be present with none repeated, and that they present as complexes not ordered rows. Eimert’s discussion of atonality diffe… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Weaver, Jennifer L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Survey of the Influence of Heinrich Schenker on American Music Theory and Its Pedagogy Since 1940

Description: This study investigates the influence of the Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker on American music theory since 1940, including a survey of writings related to Schenker and theory textbooks displaying his influence. The Schenker influence on American music theory includes many journal articles on Schenker and his principal students. His methods are employed often in analytical discussions of various issues. In addition to numerous dissertations and theses written about Schenker, a number … more
Date: December 1974
Creator: Austin, John C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Published Writings of Ernest McClain Through Spring, 1976

Description: This thesis considers all of Ernest McClain's published writings, from March, 1970, to September, 1976, from the standpoint of their present-day acoustical significance. Although much of the material comes from McClain's writings, some is drawn from other related musical, mathematical, and philosophical works. The four chapters begin with a biographical sketch of McClain, presenting his background which aided him in becoming a theoretical musicologist. The second chapter contains a chronologica… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Wingate, F. Leighton
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Dmitri Shostakovich and the Fugues of Op. 87: A Bach Bicentennial Tribute

Description: In 1950-51, for the bicentennial of the death of J. S. Bach, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his collection of Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. This thesis is a study of the fugal technique of Shostakovich as observed in Op. 87, in light of the fugal style of Bach as observed in The Well-Tempered Clavier, Volume One. Individual analyses of each of the twenty-four Shostakovich pieces yield the conclusion that Op. 87 is an emulation of Bachian fugal methods as observed in The Well-Tempered Clav… more
Date: August 1981
Creator: Adams, Robert M. (Robert Michael)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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