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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.
open access

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
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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
open access

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
open access

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
open access

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
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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)
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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
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Crisis and Catharsis: Linear Analysis and the Interpretation of Herbert Howells' "Requiem" and "Hymnus Paradisi"

Description: Hymnus Paradisi (1938), a large-scale choral and orchestral work, is well-known as an elegiac masterpiece written by Herbert Howells in response to the sudden loss of his young son in 1935. The composition of this work, as noted by the composer himself and those close to him, successfully served as a means of working through his grief during the difficult years that followed Michael's death. In this dissertation, I provide linear analyses for Howells' Hymnus Paradisi as well as its predecessor,… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Davenport, Jennifer Tish
open access

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.
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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-
open access

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.
open access

Drafts, Page Proofs, and Revisions of Schenker's Der freie Satz: The Collection at the Austrian National Library and Schenker's Generative Process

Description: When Schenkerian theory began to influence scholarly circles in the United States, the primary - although not the only - work to which scholars had access was Schenker's last monograph, Der freie Satz. Reading textual passages and examining the many musical graphs in the companion volume of examples influenced their concept of the fundamental structure as Schenker understood it, as well as the relationship of the other levels (Schichten) to the larger structure. The problem is that most of th… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Auerbach, Jennifer Sadoff
open access

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.
open access

Gualterio Armando's 34 Canciones Hispanoamericanas Para Canto Y Piano: a Comprehensive Edition and an Analytical Study of the Work’s Thematic Unity, Chromaticism, and Use of Musical Quotations

Description: During the 1930s, German-born music critic and composer Gualterio Armando (1887-1973), formerly known as Walter Dahms, set to music thirty-four poems by some of the most important Hispano-American poets from the latter part of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. In these songs, Armando tries to capture the spirit and idiosyncrasy of Hispano-American cultures while incorporating his own musical aesthetics. Armando’s 34 Canciones Hispanoamericanas para Canto y Piano (34 Hispan… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Pérez Torres, René
open access

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)
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The Harmonic Interval of the Seventh in the Works of Representative Composers of Italian Madrigals, 1542-1614

Description: This study is an attempt to shed some light on the treatment of one dissonance—the seventh—in the works of the following composers: Cipriano de Rore (1516-1565); Philippe de Monte (1521-1603); Giaches de Wert (1535-1596); Luca Marenzio (1553-1599); Carlo Gesualdo (ca. 1560-1613); and Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). The purpose of this thesis is to discover (1) the frequency of occurrence of primary (relatively accented) sevenths and their inversions (^ chords, etc.) in a selection of each compo… more
Date: December 1976
Creator: Dowden, Ralph D.
open access

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)
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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

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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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

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

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
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