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	Images of Remembered Earth Date: 2000-05 Creator: Floyd, James Michael Description: Images of Remembered Earth is a musical composition scored for full orchestra. The composition was inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's painting, Light Coming on the Plains I (1917), which depicts a sunrise over a flat and empty landscape. In the painting, the expanse of the sun's rays is expressed through an even-blended transformation of color from goldish-blue at the light's source to progressively darker shades of blue near the edges of the canvas. The progression of color is interrupted by thin gold bands which sectionalize the sunrise into seven concentric arches. The construction of the musical composition derives musical materials directly from elements found within O'Keeffe's painting, specifically the shaping of structure, expansion, and color in arch patterns. Arch patterns, an integral element in O'Keeffe's painting, govern elements in the musical composition, including pitch selection, the overall tempo scheme, rhythmic activity, and formal shape. Pitch materials are expansive by design; this expansive quality is exhibited through the employment of wedge-shaped musical ideas and through the utilization of higher and lower registers. O'Keeffe's use of color in the painting influenced the orchestration of the music and is manifested in two ways: 1) gradual transformation of timbral colors and 2) the juxtaposition of contrasting instrumental groupings. > more info

	The Musical Language of Joan Tower: An Energy Line Analysis of Island Prelude for Oboe and Wind Quartet Date: 2001-12 Creator: Shouha, Laura Description: This dissertation provides an analysis of Island Prelude based on a method of analysis prescribed by the composer. The method, Energy Line Analysis, is essential to an enlightened performance. The content of this dissertation includes: biographical information, compositional influences, Joan Tower style periods, her works involving the oboe in a major role, and an Energy Line Analysis chart of Island Prelude. Island Prelude represents Joan Tower's musical language, the understanding of which is essential in an interpretation of her music. > more info

	The influence of klezmer on twentieth-century solo and chamber concert music for clarinet: with three recitals of selected works of Manevich, Debussy, Horovitz, Milhaud, Martino, Mozart and others. Date: 2002-12 Creator: Card, Patricia Pierce Description: The secular music of the Eastern European Jews is known today as klezmer. Klezmer was the traditional instrumental celebratory music of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews who eventually populated the Pale of Settlement, which encompassed modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus and Romania. Due to the rise of oppression and expulsion, many klezmer musicians or klezmorim immigrated to the United States between 1880 and the early 1920s. These musicians found work in klezmer bands and orchestras as well as Yiddish radio and theater. Some of the most influential klezmorim were clarinetists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras who helped develop an American klezmer style. While the American style flourished, the popularity of pure klezmer began to diminish. As American-born Jews began to prefer the new sounds of big band and jazz, klezmer was considered old-fashioned and was in danger of becoming a lost art form. During the early 1970s, a reawakening study of klezmer developed. Henry Sapoznik, Lev Liberman and Andy Statman were instrumental in creating a klezmer revival in the United States. At the same time, Argentinean-born Israeli clarinetist Giora Feidman was popularizing klezmer in Europe. Klezmer had again become popular and the revival's impact on the concert hall was inevitable. Even though klezmer has existed for centuries, composers have only recently included klezmer elements in their concert works. Characteristic modes (Freygish and Misheberakh), forms (freylekhs and doinas), instrumentation, and rhythms all contribute to create a unique style. Three musical works for clarinet are examined in the dissertation: Simeon Bellison's Four Hebrew Melodies in form of a suite, Simon Sargon's KlezMuzik and David Schiff's Divertimento from Gimpel the Fool. Although the compositions reveal different approaches to the elements, the klezmer influence is evident in each of them. An appendix of clarinet klezmer influenced concert works is included. > more info

	The Sarabandes from J. S. Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello: An Analysis and Interpretive Guide for the Modern Guitarist Date: 2007-05 Creator: Todd, Richard Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to present a comparative analysis of the sarabandes from the six cello suites. Six individual analyses each address the following elements: harmonic reduction, the relationship between the large-scale harmonic and metrical structures, the melodic elaboration of the harmonic-metrical structure, and the type and prevalence of sarabande rhythm. A summary at the end of each analysis provides a cumulative comparison of the results. Knowledge gained from this exercise will provide insight into Bach's conception of the genre by identifying both those features that stylistically unify the sarabandes as well as those that make each unique. In addition, the author will demonstrate the relationship between analysis and interpretation, using the sixth sarabande as an example. This interpretive process will also take into account the idiomatic nature of the guitar. > more info

	Lawrence Weiner's Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra: Analysis and Performance Considerations Date: 2005-08 Creator: Tan, Wann-Dar Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to provide an introduction to the composer, Lawrence Weiner, and to his Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, one of the many neglected guitar concerti that merits closer study and more frequent performances. Weiner, a prolific and prominent composer in the South Texas region, composed the concerto in 1986. The concerto was never published. This dissertation is the first attempt to study Weiner's Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra to date. This study provides insight into the compositional style of Weiner, and the understanding and performing of this work. The compositional language of this concerto is examined through an analysis of the aspects of form, harmonic/tonal scheme and thematic development. A performance edition and suggestions that are approved by the composer are also presented. > more info

	Form, Style, Function and Rhetoric in Gottlob Harrer's Sinfonias: A Case Study in the Early History of the Symphony Date: 2003-08 Creator: Rober, Russell Todd Description: Gottlob Harrer (1703-1755) composed at least twenty-seven sinfonias for his patron Count Heinrich von Bruhl in Dresden from 1731-1747, placing them among the earliest concert symphonies written. Harrer's mostly autograph sinfonia manuscripts are significant documents that provide us with a more thorough understanding of musical activities in and around Dresden. Several of the works indicate topical references, including dance, march, and hunt allusions, that comment on the Dresden social occasions for which Harrer composed these works. Harrer mixes topical references with other gestures in several of his sinfonias to create what I believe is an unrecognized affective language functioning in instrumental works of the time. An examination of the topical allusions in Harrer's works solidifies their connection to the social milieu for which he wrote them, and therefore better defines the genre of the concert sinfonia of the time. The first part of this study of Harrer's sinfonias addresses evidence about the composer, his patron, Dresden society, and the circumstances surrounding the first performances of several works, musical evidence of the composer's stylistic and formal approach to the genre, and the rhetorical meaning of topical gestures in the scores in ways not yet explored. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that the stylistic and formal characteristics of Harrer's sinfonias were often influenced by the function and context of their premieres. Part Two of the dissertation provides transcriptions of Harrer's sinfonias, making them available for performance and further study in the hope that such a holistic approach will enrich our appreciation of musical life in Dresden in the 1730s. > more info \| UNT EUID Login Required

	Three Voices for voices, woodwind, percussion, and string instruments Date: 2000-12 Creator: Wu, Man-Mei Description: Composed for soprano, tenor, and baritone voices, woodwind, percussion, and string instruments, Three Voices is a polyglotic work that includes German, Chinese, and Spanish texts. The texts are chosen from Brecht Bertolt's Das Schiff, Po Chu I's Lang T'ao Sha, and Frederico Garcia Lorcá's Mar. Significant features of the piece are 1) application of Chinese operatic singing methods to vocal material in the sections that use Chinese text, 2) use of western instruments to emulate the sound of certain Chinese instruments, and 3) employment of Sprechstimme and dramatically inflected speech to create theatrical effects and highlight the sections that use German and Spanish texts. > more info

	Haiku Seasons Date: 2000-12 Creator: Smith, Steven Lyle Description: Haiku Seasons is a choral work that uses several haiku to portray moments in nature. Spread throughout the performance space, four choirs (SATB, 3/part) depict larger parts of the pastoral scene (i.e., mountains, the moon, etc.). Soloists depart from the choirs in order to perform solo, duo, trio, and quartet passages, which take place throughout the work. If enough singers are available, individual soloists may be used. The soloist groups display the more intimate moments of the scenes (i.e., sparrows, a blade of grass, etc.). The intent of Haiku Seasons is to create an image of nature isolated from human interaction. Thus, the image is a pastoral setting with many independent parts all coexisting in a relatively silent world. I combine aspects of tonality, time, space, and silence to create this image. > more info

	Ran, Shulamit: Concerto da Camera II, Analysis of Pitch and Formal Structure Date: 2000-05 Creator: Lin, Sheng Description: The thesis speculates upon the three movements of Concerto da Camera II (1987), scored for Bb clarinet, string quartet and piano) in these four aspects: 1) the formal structure, 2) the manipulation of the notes of whole-tone, octatonic, and chromatic scales in octave displacement, 3) the potential combination of subsets that present different levels of pitch transformation in melodic and harmonic structure, and 4) the usage of intervals of minor seconds, tritones, and perfect fourths or fifths which dominates the linear writing. All of these features demonstrate that the music has strong structural elements in form, motives, and sonorities, which unify the piece in an aurally coherent style as an organic whole. This study should provide more insight into the understanding of Ran's unique compositional technique and style. > more info

	Keyboard Innovation: Harry Partch's Contributions Date: 2000-08 Creator: Koh,Wee Lay Description: "Harry Partch's Keyboard Innovation" is a computer-assisted demonstration that introduces the tuning system used primarily by the twentieth-century American composer, Harry Partch. The multimedia product was developed in Director 6.0, and it includes sound and video clips from CDs and videocassettes of Partch's works produced by Phillip Blackburn and distributed by the American Composers Forum. The content of the demonstration involves a 43-tone microtonal tuning system and its application in the music literature. This demonstration will discuss the chronological order in which these prototypes were developed and also includes samples of the tuning of notes in Partch's scale that the novice can experiment with interactively. These tones were synthesized using the Csound scores shown in Appendix B. Materials for this demonstration are based on Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music. > more info \| Use restricted to UNT community

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