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Imagined Sounds: Their Role in the Strict and Free Compositional Practice of Anton Bruckner

Description: The present study develops a dynamic model of strict and free composition that views them as relative to a specific historical context. The dynamic view espoused here regards free embellishments of an earlier compositional generation as becoming the models for a strict compositional theory in a later one. From the newly established strict compositional models, succeeding generations of composers produce new free embellishments. The first part of the study develops the dynamic conception of a c… more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Brooks, Jonathan
open access

The Influence of Fredrik Melius Christiansen on Six Minnesota Conductor-Composers

Description: F. Melius Christiansen was very influential in the a cappella choral tradition. He started his career in Norway and brought his expertise to the American Midwest. Christiansen established a name for himself while working at St. Olaf Lutheran College as the head of the music department. It was the blended choral sound and precision he was able to achieve and display with his new choir in 1912 that caught everyone's ear. He continued to succeed with national and international tours, allowing him… more
Date: May 2006
Creator: Armendarez, Christina Marie
open access

J. F. Daube's "General-Bass in drey Accorden" (1756): A Translation and Commentary

Description: General-Bass in drey Accorden (1756), the first of Johann Friedrich Daube's theoretical works, is a practical instruction manual in thorough-bass accompaniment. It consists of a sixteen page preface followed by 215 pages of text and musical examples. The twelve chapters begin with a presentation of interval classification and a discussion of consonance and dissonance. Daube then explains a theory of harmony in which all "chords" are derived from three primary chords. These are illustrated with … more
Date: May 1983
Creator: Wallace, Barbara Kees
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Jacques Ibert: an Analytical Study of Three Movements From Histoires

Description: Although many biographical studies are available on Jacques Ibert, few contain significant analytical commentary. In this study I examine three movements from Ibert’s Histoires for piano which was composed between 1920 and 1921 and was premiered in 1923. The three movements are “La menuese de tortues d’or,” “Le petit âne blanc,” and “La marchande d’eau fraîche.” I primarily use Schenkerian analysis to identify characteristics of Ibert’s compositional language. Significant aspects of impressio… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Waldroup, William Allan
open access

The Key to Unlocking the Secret Window

Description: David Koepp's Secret Window was released by Columbia Pictures in 2004. The film's score was written by Philip Glass and Geoff Zanelli. This thesis analyzes transcriptions from six scenes within the film in conjunction with movie stills from those scenes in an attempt to explain how the film score functions.
Date: December 2010
Creator: McConnell, Sarah E.
open access

Klangfarben, Rhythmic Displacement, and Economy of Means: A Theoretical Study of the Works of Thelonious Monk

Description: The purpose of this study is to investigate the theoretical causes of the stylistic results of both compositions and spontaneous improvisations of jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. The specific topics chosen for analysis include Klangfarben (sound colors), rhythmic displacement (the relocation or complete removal of expected rhythmic events), and economy of means (the judicious use of silence, simplicity, and economy). All of the above topics are addressed with regard to the composer's… more
Date: December 1990
Creator: Kteily-O'Sullivan, Laila Rose
open access

The Lessons of Arnold Schoenberg in Teaching the Musikalische Gedanke

Description: Arnold Schoenberg's teaching career spanned over fifty years and included experiences in Austria, Germany, and the United States. Schoenberg's teaching assistant, Leonard Stein, transcribed Schoenberg's class lectures at UCLA from 1936 to 1944. Most of these notes resulted in publications that provide pedagogical examples of combined elements from Schoenberg's European years of teaching with his years of teaching in America. There are also class notes from Schoenberg's later lectures that ha… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Conlon, Colleen Marie
open access

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
open access

Martin Agricola's 'Musica Instrumentalis Deudsch': A Translation

Description: The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of presenting a concise English translation of the book which Martin Agricola wrote in 1528 in German on the musical instruments and practices of his time. In addition to the translation itself, there is a major section devoted to a comparison of the material of Musica instrumentalis deudsch with other books and treatises on the same and related subjects which were written at approximately the same time or within the next hundred ye… more
Date: May 1972
Creator: Hollaway, William W.
open access

“A Metaphor for the Impossibility of Togetherness”: Expansion Processes in Gubaidulina’s First String Quartet

Description: This thesis illustrates how I hear processes of expansion organizing musical materials in the First String Quartet. By employing a flexible approach to expansion and developing models of wedge and additive expansions beyond the bounds of specific voice-leading or rhythmic augmentation procedures, expansion processes can be understood in each of the varied episodes of the quartet. Gubaidulina’s use of expansion processes, embodied organically in pitch, rhythm, form, and physical space, unifies t… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Stroud, Cara
open access

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
open access

The Missae De Beata Virgine C. 1500-1520: A Study of Transformation From Monophonic to Polyphonic Modality

Description: While musical sources and documents from throughout the Middle Ages reveal that mode was an enduring and consciously derived trait of monophonic chant, modality in later polyphony shares neither the historical span nor the theoretical clarity of its monophonic counterpart. Modern theorists are left with little more than circumstantial evidence of the early development of modality in polyphony. This study attempts to shed light on the problem by detailed analysis of a select body of paraphrase m… more
Date: August 1986
Creator: Woodruff, Lawrence Theodore
open access

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-
open access

Music Theory in Mexico from 1776 To 1866: A Study of Four Treatises by Native Authors

Description: This investigation traces the history and development of music theory in Mexico from the date of the first Mexican treatise available (1776) to the early second half of the nineteenth century (1866). This period of ninety years represents an era of special importance in the development of music theory in Mexico. It was during this time that the old modal system was finally abandoned in favor of the new tonal system and that Mexican authors began to pen music treatises which could be favorably c… more
Date: August 1986
Creator: Flores, Carlos A. (Carlos Arturo)
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The Musica Practica of Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia: A Critical Translation and Commentary

Description: This dissertation contains the first complete Latin-English translation of one of the most controversial music theory treatises of the fifteenth-century: the Musica Practica (Bologna, 1942) of Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia. its title as well as its content illustrate the Renaissance transformation from the abstract mathematical approach of "musica speculativa" to that of an emphasis upon the everyday demands of the practicing musician. Although Ramos provides traditional explanations of the modes,… more
Date: May 1992
Creator: Fose, Luanne Eris
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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)
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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.
open access

Non-Linear and Multi-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 127: An Analytical Study of the "Krakow" Sketch Materials

Description: Beethoven's complex manipulation of formal structures, especially his tendency to build important connections and transformative continuities between non-adjacent sections of musical works, may be seen to function as an attempt to control and sometimes to distort the listener's perception of both the narrative process of musical directionality, as well as the subjective interpretation of time itself. Temporal distortion often lies at the heart of Beethoven's complex contrapuntal language, demon… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Lively, Michael
open access

Op. 34: Evidence of Arnold Schoenberg's Musikalische Gedanke

Description: Composition for Arnold Schoenberg is a comprehensible presentation of a musical idea (musikalische Gedanke); the totality of a piece represents the idea. For tonal works, he defines Gedanke as a process of resolving the "tonal relation" or "tonal problem." Contrary to the numerous tonal examples illustrating the notion of Gedanke, Schoenberg hardly expounds on the Gedanke principle for his atonal and twelve-tone repertoires. This study reevaluates Schoenberg's compositional philosophy and aes… more
Date: May 2004
Creator: Fukuchi, Hidetoshi
open access

The Opening Section of Isang Yun's My Land My People: A Cross-Section of Korean and Western Musical Features

Description: Isang Yun's oratorio My Land My People is organized in four movements, and is scored for orchestra, solo voice and choir. Movements are titled as follows: Rjoksa (History), Hyon-Shil I (Presence I), Hyon-shil II (Presence II), and Mi-rae (Future). This document only covers from measures 1-38 of the first section of the first movement of this work. Even though this work is atonal, the composer emphasizes a harmonically moving, tonal sonority: interval class five includes perfect 4th and 5th, q… more
Date: May 2006
Creator: Choi, Woohyuk
open access

A Phenomenology of Music Analysis

Description: Many of the early writings and lectures of the German phenomenological philosopher Martin Heidegger involve investigations into the question of Being. An important part of these investigations is his examination of how we go about the everyday business of existing--doing our jobs, dealing with things in our environment, working through problems, thinking, talking--and what our ways of operating in these everyday activities tell us about our Being in general. Musicians have their own everyday mu… more
Date: December 1995
Creator: Anderson, Andrew E. (Andrew Edwin)
open access

Prolongation in Post-Tonal Music: A Survey of Analytical Techniques and Theoretical Concepts with an Analysis of Alban Berg's Op. 2, No. 4, Warm Die Lüfte

Description: Prolongation in post-tonal music is a topic that music theorists have engaged for several decades now. The problems of applying Schenkerian analytical techniques to post-tonal music are numerous and have invited several adaptations of the method. The bulk of the thesis offers a survey of prolongational analyses of post-tonal music. Analyses of theorists such as Felix Salzer, Allen Forte, Joseph Straus, Edward Laufer, and Olli Väisälä are examined in order to reveal their various underlying theo… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Huff, David, 1976-
open access

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
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