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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)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Formal Devices of Trance and House Music: Breakdowns, Buildups, and Anthems

Description: Trance and house music are sub-genres within the genre of electronic dance music. The form of breakdown, buildup and anthem is the main driving force behind trance and house music. This thesis analyzes transcriptions from 22 trance and house songs in order to establish and define new terminology for formal devices used within the breakdown, buildup and anthem sections of the music.
Date: December 2011
Creator: Iler, Devin
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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An Analysis of Periodic Rhythmic Structures in the Music of Steve Reich and György Ligeti

Description: The compositions of Steve Reich and György Ligeti both contain periodic rhythmic structures. Although periods are not usually easily perceived, the listener may perceive their combinations in a hierarchy of rhythmic structures. This document is an attempt to develop an analytical method that can account for this hierarchy in periodic music. I begin with an overview of the features of Reich's and Ligeti's music that contribute to the property of periodicity. I follow with a discussion of the mu… more
Date: August 2002
Creator: Isgitt, David
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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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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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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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An Application of Grundgestalt Theory in the Late Chromatic Music of Chopin: a Study of his Last Three Polonaises

Description: The late chromatic music of Chopin is often difficult to analyze, particularly with a system of Roman numerals. The study examines Schoenberg's Grundgestalt concept as a strategy for explaining Chopin's chromatic musical style. Two short Chopin works, Nocturne in E-flat major. Op. 9, No. 2, and Etude in E major, Op. 10, No. 3, serve as models in which the analytic method is formulated. Root analysis, in the manner of eighteenth-century theorist Simon Sechter, is utilized to facilitate harmonic … more
Date: December 1994
Creator: Spicer, Mark Joseph
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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D. A. Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning: Implications for the Development of Music Theory Instructional Material

Description: This research project evaluates the effectiveness of specific music theory instructional strategies in terms of D. A. Kolb’s theory of experiential learning and Kolb’s typology of individual learning style. The project provides an original methodology for the adaptation of music theory instructional material to the individual learning style types described in Kolb’s typology. The study compares the relative effectiveness of two music theory instructional sequences, one of which is adapted for a… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Lively, Michael
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Aesthetics of Minimalist Music and a Schenkerian-Oriented Analysis of the First Movement "Opening" of Philip Glass' Glassworks

Description: Philip Glass' Glassworks (1981) is a six-movement composition for two flutes, two soprano saxophones/clarinets, two tenor saxophones/bass clarinets, two French horns, violas, cellos, and the DX7 electric piano. Glassworks consists of six movements titled "Opening," "Floe," "Island," "Rubric," "Facades," and "Closing." This thesis covers the first movement "Opening." Repetition in musical minimalism confronts traditional prescriptive codes of tonal music and post-tonal music. While challenging… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Wu, Chia-Ying (Charles)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Reevaluating twelve-tone music: analytical issues in the second movement of Anton Webern's Quartet for Violin, Clarinet, Tenor-Saxophone and Piano, Op. 22.

Description: Twelve-tone music illustrates many characteristics relative with those of conventional tonal form, though works are based on a different composition method. The fundamental question of twelve-tone music arises in debate on terminology between tonal and atonal as well as methodology of musical analysis. Certain theorists try to approach twelve-tone music by traditional harmonic views rather than by pitch-class set theory. Conventional harmonic aspects arise from the fact that both tonal and twel… more
Date: August 2006
Creator: Lin, Tzu-Hsi
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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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-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Syntactic Structures in Functional Tonality

Description: Chapter I examines linguistic structures fundamental to most tasks of comprehension performed by humans. Chapter II proposes musical elements to be linguistic structures functioning within a musical symbol system (syntax). In this chapter, functional tonality is explored for systemic elements and relationships among these elements that facilitate tonal understanding. It is postulated that the listener's comprehension of these tonal elements is dependent on cognitive tasks performed by virtue of… more
Date: August 1985
Creator: Phelps, James, 1954-
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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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Transposition and the Transposed Modes in Late-Baroque France

Description: The purpose of the study is the investigation of the topics of transposition and the transposed major and minor modes as discussed principally by selected French authors of the final twenty years of the seventeenth century and the first three decades of the eighteenth. The sources are relatively varied and include manuals for singers and instrumentalists, dictionaries, independent essays, and tracts which were published in scholarly journals; special emphasis is placed on the observation and at… more
Date: December 1988
Creator: Parker, Mark M. (Mark Mason)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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X, An Analytical Approach to John Chowning's Phoné

Description: The analysis of computer music presents new challenges to the field of music theory. This study examines the fixed media composition Phoné by John Chowning from its aesthetic perspective, compositional theory and computer sound synthesis techniques. Fast Fourier Transform analyses are used to create spectrograms. The findings from the spectrograms are juxtaposed with compositional philosophies of John Chowning, Jean-Claude Risset, Pierre Schaeffer and Arnold Schoenberg and the techniques are re… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Krämer, Reiner
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Aural Perception of Pitch-Class Set Relations: A Computer-Assisted Investigation

Description: Allen Forte's theory of pitch-class set structure has provided useful tools for discovering structural relationships in atonal music. As valuable as set—theoretic procedures are for composers and analysts, the extent to which set relationships are perceptible by the listener largely remains to be investigated. This study addresses the need for aural-perceptual considerations in analysis, reviews related research in music perception, and poses questions concerning the aural perceptibility of set… more
Date: May 1984
Creator: Millar, Jana Kubitza
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Study of Root Motion in Passages Leading to Final Cadences in Selected Masses of the Late Sixteenth Century

Description: This study is concerned with the vertical combinations resulting from late sixteenth century cadential formulae and in passages immediately preceding these formulae. The investigation is limited to Masses dating from the last half of the sixteenth century and utilizes compositions from the following composers: Handl, Kerle, Lassus, Merulo, Monte, and Palestrina, Victoria. This study concludes that the progressions I-V-I and I-IV-I appear to be the only two root progressions receiving high enoug… more
Date: August 1979
Creator: Lindsey, David R.
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An Analysis of Robert Nathaniel Dett's In the Bottoms

Description: The purpose of the thesis is to analyze formally, harmonically and melodically the five movements of the suite both as separate movements and inclusively as one cohesive unit. The thesis will be written in three parts: Part One will include a biographical sketch of the composer, a general discussion of his music, background information on the suite and Dett's antecedents and contemporaries influencing him. Part Two will discuss the following: A) Form, B) Harmonic Analysis, and C) Melodic Analys… more
Date: December 1983
Creator: Miles, Debra A. (Debra Ann)
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna of Vincenzo Galilei: Translation and Commentary. [Part 1]

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 the front matter and chapters 1-3.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Herman, Robert H., 1934-
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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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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