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Accent and Grouping Structures in the String Quartets of Béla Bartók

Description: The music of Béla Bartók is defined in part by its unique blend of rhythmic vitality and inventiveness, and his string quartets offer a glimpse into a consistency of technique evident throughout his compositional career. Bartók's rhythmic environments are primarily metrical, but many of his rhythmic configurations are placed in such a way as to potentially override established meter. It is necessary, therefore, to institute an analytical means by which the delineation and comparison of rhyt… more
Date: May 2001
Creator: Bocanegra, Cheryl D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Harmonic and Contrapuntal Techniques in the Late Keyboard Works of Cesar Franck

Description: This study examines the five late keyboard works of Cesar Franck: the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue and the Prelude. Aria, and Finale for piano, and the three organ chorales. The study focuses on harmonic and contrapuntal techniques and their interrelationships, placing the discussion in the context of an analysis of the whole piece. The primary goal is to identify the salient characteristics of each piece; a secondary goal is to identify common harmonic and contrapuntal aspects of Franck's style. more
Date: May 1992
Creator: Cranford, Dennis R. (Dennis Ray)
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Arvo Pärt and Three Types of His Tintinnabuli Technique

Description: Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer, was born in 1935. Most of the works at the beginning of his career were for piano in the neo-classical style. After that, he turned his interest to serial music and continued creating works with serial techniques throughout the 1960s. After his "self-imposed silence" period (during the years 1968-1976), Pärt emerged with a new musical style, which he called tintinnabuli. Although, this technique was influenced by music from the medieval period, the texture and f… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Kongwattananon, Oranit
Partner: UNT Libraries
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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
Partner: UNT Libraries
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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.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Study of the Relationship Between Motive and Structure in Brahms's op. 51 String Quartets

Description: In 1873, Brahms completed the two op. 51 quartets. These were not the first string quartets Brahms composed, hut they were the first that Brahms allowed to be published. He found the string quartet difficult; as he confided to his friend Alwin Cranz, he sketched out twenty string quartets before producing a pair he thought worthy of publishing. Questions arise: what aspect of the string quartet gave Brahms so much trouble, and what in the op. 51 quartets gave him the inclination to publish them… more
Date: August 1989
Creator: Yang, Benjamin H. (Benjamin Hoh)
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)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Hugo Wolf's Interpretation of Paul Heyse's Texts: An Examination of Selected Songs from the Italienisches Liederbuch

Description: In a Romantic song cycle or songbook, songs tend to share many common ideas because they are used to set to the poems from one collection written or collected by one author. Many composers designed the same motivic or structural elements to a group of songs for unity, and sometimes they made chronological narratives for the series of poems. Music theorists have tried to find out a way of giving a sense of unity or narrative to the songs in a song cycle or songbook by analyzing its musical langu… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Shin, Dong Jin
Partner: UNT Libraries
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From Outward Appearance to Inner Reality: A Reading of Aaron Copland's Inscape

Description: About 8.3% of individuals diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) are diagnosed with comorbid depression, a higher rate than the general adult population. This project examined the differences of depression symptoms experienced between diabetic and matched non-diabetic individuals and the relationship of daily activity and nutrition behaviors with depression between these groups. The 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) was utilized to assess: depression symptoms, d… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Ensign, Jeffrey S.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Gewesener Magdeburgische Musicus: An Examination into the Stylistic Characteristics of Heinrich Grimm's Eight-Voice Motet, Unser Leben Wehret Siebenzig Jahr'

Description: Although Magdeburg cantor Heinrich Grimm was frequently listed among prominent musical figures of the early seventeenth century such as Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein, and Michael Praetorius in music lexica through the nineteenth century, he has almost disappeared from modern scholarship. However, a resurgence in Grimm studies has begun in recent years, especially in the areas of biographical study and compositional output. In this study, I examine the yet unexplored music-analytic pers… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Dobbs, Benjamin Michael
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-
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Harmony in the Songs of Hugo Wolf

Description: The songs of Hugo Wolf represent the culmination of the Romantic German Lied tradition. Wolf developed a personal chromatic harmonic style that allowed him to respond to every nuance of a poetic text, thereby stretching tonality to its limits. He was convinced, however, that despite its novel nature his music could be explained through the traditional theory of harmony. This study determines the degree to which Wolf's belief is true, and begins with an evaluation of the current state of researc… more
Date: August 1989
Creator: McKinney, Timothy R. (Timothy Richmond)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Alberto Ginastera and the Guitar Chord: An Analytical Study

Description: The guitar chord (a sonority based on the open strings of the guitar) is one of Alberto Ginastera's compositional trademarks. The use of the guitar chord expands throughout forty years, creating a common link between different compositional stages and techniques. Chapters I and II provide the historical and technical background on Ginastera's life, oeuvre and scholar research. Chapter IV explores the origins of the guitar chord and compares it to similar specific sonorities used by different co… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Gaviria, Carlos A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Beethoven's Transcendence of the Additive Tendency in Opus 34, Opus 35, Werk ohne Opuszahl 80, and Opus 120

Description: The internal unity of the themes in a sonata-allegro movement and the external unity of the movements in a sonata cycle are crucial elements of Beethoven's compositional aesthetic. Numerous theorists have explored these aspects in Beethoven's sonatas, symphonies, quartets, and concertos. Similar research into the independent variation sets for piano, excluding Opus 120, has been largely neglected as the result of three misconceptions: that the variation sets, many of which were based on popular… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Kramer, Ernest J. (Ernest Joachim)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Antoine Reicha's Theories of Musical Form

Description: Antoine Reicha stands as an important figure in the growing systematization of musical form. While Traite de melodie (1814) captures the essence of eighteenth-century concern with tonal movement and periodicity, Reicha's later ideas as represented in Traite de haute composition musicale (1824-26) anticipate descriptions of thematic organization characteristic of his nineteenth-century successors. Three important topics emerge as crucial elements: melody, thematic development, and schematic cate… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: McCachren, Jo Renee
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
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Segmentation Process and its Influence on Structure in the Malheur Me Bat Masses of Obrecht and Josquin

Description: This study examines in detail the various aspects of the segmentation process as applied by Obrecht and Josquin to the chanson Malheur me bat, especially the effect of this process on the structure of each composer's respective mass. Although musical aspects such as cadences and mode have varying degrees of influence on the structure of these two masses, the primary influence is the establishment of proportional relationships that occur as a result of the segmentation process. Sources of previo… more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Jarzombek, Ralph
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Consonance, Tertian Structures and Tonal Coherence in Wladimir Vogel's Dodecaphonic World

Description: Wladimir Vogel's (1896-1984) interest in twelve-tone composition began to develop in 1936 after hearing a series of lectures by Willi Reich, a music critic and supporter of the new music of the Second Viennese School. The transition for Vogel from a large-scale orchestral “classical” style, influenced by his study with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin in the early 1920s, to a new technique involving dodecaphony is apparent in his instrumental writing, the third and fourth movements of the Konzert für… more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Hale, Jacquelyn
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Ran, Shulamit: Concerto da Camera II, Analysis of Pitch and Formal Structure

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 … more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Lin, Sheng
Partner: UNT Libraries

An Analysis of the Composition Process of Bartók's Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Op. 20

Description: This is a study of Bartók's compositional process as it relates to the Improvisations, Op. 20. The study, which focuses on the analysis of the draft manuscript 50PS1, compares the draft and other relevant sources with the final composition. Bartók's framework for the entire Improvisations is based on a compositional strategy of pairing individual improvisations combined with systematic revision of the draft copy by the introduction of tritones as tonal equivalents and movement by fifths from se… more
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Date: May 2000
Creator: Kochbeck, Olivia M.
Partner: UNT Libraries

Keyboard Innovation: Harry Partch's Contributions

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 … more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: August 2000
Creator: Koh,Wee Lay
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Redeeming the Betrayer: Elgar’s Portrayal of Judas in the Apostles

Description: Despite its generally agreed importance, very little has been written about The Apostles. Even among the extant publications that address The Apostles, scholars have focused on its history and development, its reception, or analytical descriptions of its surface themes. The aim of this study will therefore be to provide neither a biography of Elgar, nor an account of the genesis of the work, but to analyze The Apostles in a manner that will achieve a deeper understanding of the oratorio. Chapte… more
Date: December 2013
Creator: Taycher, Ryan
Partner: UNT Libraries
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