UNT Libraries - 185 Matching Results

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Ritual, Sermon, and Prophecy for Bass and Orchestra

Description: This composition is a symphonic setting of three original poems within the confines of an expanded sonata-allegro form and is an approximately twenty-two minutes in duration. The three poems are designed with certain cyclic implications which are related formally to the recurrence of musical ideas. The main application of this plan is found in the duality of formal roles assigned to each of the three major sectional divisions of the work. This is an expanded sonata-allegro, but each section (ex… more
Date: May 1971
Creator: Underwood, William L. (William Lee), 1940-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Grimaldi

Description: Grimaldi is a synesthetic work composed of aural and visual media including noise, tone, electronic devices, lighting and theatrical events. It is designed for solo saxophone with an accompanying ensemble of eight wind instruments and four percussion. The most important aspect of the piece is its texture, which consists of constantly changing and interacting aural and visual events. The compositional process of Grimaldi began with the selection of a form constructed of two equal arches of unequ… more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Gibson, John (John Wesley), 1946-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Cosmophonia: Musical Expressions of Astronomy and Cosmology

Description: Astronomy and music are both fundamental to cultural identity in the form of various musical styles and calendrical systems. However, since both are governed by incontrovertible laws of physics and therefore precede cultural interpretation, they are potentially useful for insight into the common ground of a shared humanity. This paper discusses three compositions inspired by different aspects of astronomy: Solstitium e Equinoctium, a site-specific composition for four voices and metal pipes inv… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: DiFalco, Elaine
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Sonic "Alchemy": An Original Composition for Piano and Electronics with Critical Essay

Description: This paper presents the history and the theoretical study of mixed music and focuses on two piano solo works and two mixed electroacoustic compositions for piano and electronics. By discussing the working process and giving the analysis of the original composition Alchemy for piano and electronics, this paper investigates the relationship between cause, source and spectromorphology, reflecting how the concept of energy-motion trajectory are embodied in this mixed electroacoustic work. Alchemy i… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Wen, Bihe
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Music on the Edge of Silence

Description: This paper presents a discussion of functional silence in contemporary classical music with a particular focus on the music of Salvatore Sciarrino and Jürg Frey, two composers whose drastically-contrasting bodies of work both occupy the interstitial space between the audible and inaudible. To begin, I address three main questions: what are the functions of silence in a musical context, how do the characteristics of a work affect our perception of these silences, and how do these functions relat… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Snow, Kyle, 1992-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Music as a Woven Narrative to an Absurd Tale in Act One of The Metamorphosis

Description: Act one of The Metamorphosis is based on the novella by Franza Kafka of the same title. In the writing of the act, George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill and Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are provide a model of using musical material as a storytelling device. Benjamin emphasizes the parallel nature of Crimp's text through the manipulation of similar music between the acts. Knussen uses form and color to emphasize Max's childlike energy and his desire to return home. In act one of The M… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Poovey, Christopher, 1993-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Replenishment: A Musical Narrative Inspired by Sleep

Description: The Replenishment cycle contains five works that allude to the experience of sleep, beginning with awake drowsiness and ending with the piece inspired by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, titled Conceiving Realities. This last piece is an intermedia work composed for chamber ensemble, live painting with biofeedback, computer, and audiovisual processing. This critical essay describes the composition of Conceiving Realities within the context of the Replenishment cycle, followed by a thorough analy… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Espinel, Miguel Angel
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Postmodern Multiplicities in Three Original Works

Description: My recent compositions are situated within a postmodern theoretical framework. The heterogeneity of materials and hybridity of musical formation in these works are interpreted and contextualized within a personal reading of postmodern theories. The critical essay traces my aesthetics through a historical investigation into the definition of musical postmodernism. Through extensive citation and analysis of the writings of Julius T. Fraser, Italo Calvino, and Richard Rorty, the essay aims to prov… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Bejo, Ermir
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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War Is Kind

Description: This composition is a single-movement work for three choirs and full orchestra, including celesta, piano, and four percussionists. Total duration is fifteen minutes. The music is divided into six sections, with the overall form being substantially influenced by the structure of the poem, War Is Kind, by Stephen Crane (1871-1900). Many devices are utilized to contrast tension and relaxation, as associated with ironic elements of the text, with repetition and development of musical elements and m… more
Date: August 1983
Creator: Hinderlie, Sanford E. (Sanford Edward)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Concertino for Orchestra

Description: Concertino consists of two movements, Paean and Dithyramb, either of which may be performed independently. Paean, a work of calm and majestic intensity, is characterized by a rhythmic pulse which is more consistently regular than that of the Dithyramb. Its three major sections form an arch, the final measures (mm. 87-95) returning to the material of the opening (mm. 1-14). The first section begins quietly, Maestoso ma sostenuto, in a very slow tempo. The activity and intensity increase until a … more
Date: August 1984
Creator: Schimmel, David M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The English Walnut Joke: A Composition for Dramatic Soprano and Band

Description: The English Walnut Joke is a composition for concert band and dramatic soprano. The English Walnut Joke was based on a text of the same title by Alec Rowell and is divided into two movements with a total duration of approximately twenty-two minutes. The joke concerns itself with the dealings between a wood-chopper and a jongleur in medieval England and is related to the audience by a destitute factory worker (the dramatic soprano) in the early Industrial Age of that country.
Date: December 1980
Creator: Futterer, Kenneth Thomas
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Among the Voices Voiceless: Setting the Words of Samuel Beckett

Description: Among the Voices Voiceless is a composition for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), viola, cello, percussion, piano, and electronics, based on the poem "What would I do without this world faceless incurious" by Samuel Beckett. The piece is a setting for disembodied voice: the vocal part exists solely in the electronics. Having no physical body, the voice is obscured as the point of empathy for the audience. In addition, instrumental solos compete for focus during the wo… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Lyszczarz, Joseph E.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Interactive Networks in Forgotten Lyres: Critical Analysis and Original Composition

Description: Forgotten Lyres is a musical response to Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Mutability, which depicts the fragility and unpredictable nature of human life. Four independent chamber ensembles make up the performing forces of Forgotten Lyres; the musicians evoke the topics of Shelley's text as they interact and coordinate with one another according to a variety of paradigms and without the use of a conductor. This essay focuses on the approaches to coordination within and between ensembles, and the ways… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Harenda, Timothy
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Monolith: A Piece for Midi Piano, Mixed Sextet, and Fixed Electronics

Description: Reference to a regular pulse is one of the most common ways of measuring time in music. As the basis for tempo, meter, subdivisions, and even formal symmetry, pulse, or the sonic articulation of regular units of time, is found throughout all levels of music. In this paper, I describe how I used a structure of twelve simultaneous pulses to compose "Monolith," a recent piece for MIDI piano, Pierrot ensemble, and fixed electronics. In the first chapter, I contextualize "Monolith" by briefly examin… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Vaughn, Mark, 1987-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Virtual Stage: Merging Virtual Reality Technologies and Interactive Audio/Video

Description: Virtual Stage is a project to use Virtual Reality (VR) technology as an audiovisual performance interface. The depth of control, modularity of design, and user immersion aim to solve some of the representational problems in interactive audiovisual art and the control problems in digital musical instruments. Creating feedback between interaction and perception, the VR environment references the viewer's behavioral intuition developed in the real world, facilitating clarity in the understanding o… more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Lucas, Stephen, 1985-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Recent Approaches to Real-Time Notation

Description: This paper discusses several compositions that use the computer screen to present music notation to performers. Three of these compositions, Law of Fives (2015), Polytera II (2016), and Terraformation (2016–17), employ strategies that allow the notation to change during the performance of the work as the product of composer-regulated algorithmic generation and performer interaction. New methodologies, implemented using Cycling74's Max software, facilitate performance of these works by allowing … more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Shafer, Seth
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Jasmine's Secret: Narrative Cantata for Five Solo Voices, Narrator, and Orchestra

Description: Since Jasmine's Secret contains elements of cantata and follows a dramatic story or program, the work may be classified as a narrative or dramatic story or program, the work may be classified as a narrative or dramatic cantata employing five solo voices, narrator and orchestra. This work attempts a revival of these two genres as a combined entity due to the decreased popularity of both cantata and programmatic music in the 20th century.
Date: December 1994
Creator: Alley, Candace P.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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In the Midst of Spoils: A Composition for Mixed Chorus (SATB) and Small Instrumental Ensemble

Description: In the Midst of Spoils is a setting, for SATB choir and small instrumental ensemble, of the poem "Blight," by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's poem contrasts modern man's exploitative attitude toward nature with the more reverent attitude assumed by ancient or primitive cultures. This setting is in a single movement, approximately twenty minutes in duration, consisting of fifteen distinct sections.
Date: August 1991
Creator: Norris, Thomas B.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Breakdown

Description: Breakdown is a 17 minute, single movement work for orchestra in five sections. It is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 Bb clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 Bb trumpets, 4 horns in F, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion, piano, and strings. The percussion consists of a tam-tam, 5 break drums, 4 timbales, 2 gourds, chimes, marimba, vibraphone, snare drum, 2 field drums, bass drum and tympani. The inspiration for this work is the poetry of Bruce Weigl which deals with many facets of the Vietnam experience. One par… more
Date: December 1994
Creator: Kappaz, Philip C., 1956-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Five Soundscapes for Acoustic Instruments and Taped Computer Music

Description: Inspired by Chinese poems, the overall characteristics of the work reflect the assimilation of several non-Western musical and philosophical influences such as the use of pentatonic scale patterns, the principle of embellishing a single note, and the application of the I-Ching in dealing with active instrumental passages over a long-sustained computer music drone. Traditional Western compositional techniques such as aleatory counterpoint, serialism, and moment form are also employed in the trea… more
Date: August 1998
Creator: Tseng, Yu-Chung, 1960-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Chronomorphosis

Description: Chronomorphosis is a chamber ensemble piece for flute, clarinet, viola, cello, piano, and percussion. The work, comprising three movements is approximately fourteen minuted in duration. One of the most apparent characteristics of the work is its progression from non-metrical time organization involving aleatoric elements to metrical time organization involving changing meters but no aleatoric elements. The Pitch set is a constant element throughout the piece. The instrumentation selected exhibi… more
Date: August 1983
Creator: Hemphill, David
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A Study of Timbre Modulation Using a Digital Computer, with Applications to Composition

Description: This paper presents a means of modulating timbre in digital sound synthesis using additive processes . A major portion of the paper is a computer program, written in Pl/1, which combines this additive method of timbre modulation with several other sound manipulation ideas to form a compositional program. This program-which is named CART for Computer Aided Rotational Translation-provides input for the Music 360 digital sound synthesis program. The paper contains three major parts: (1) a discussi… more
Date: December 1977
Creator: Hamilton, Richard L.
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Elatio: Praises and Prophecies

Description: ELATIO: Praises and Prophecies is an allegorical composition based upon a collection of carols, poetry and prose in selected verses, phrases and fragments from medieval Christian liturgy, the canonical Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and New Testament, and portions of various non-canonical Dead Sea Scroll texts. The languages used in the selections presented here are English, Medieval Latin, and transliterated Biblical Hebrew.
Date: December 1998
Creator: Job, Lynn R. (Lynn Renee)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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