Robert Hatten’s theory of virtual agency acknowledges the presence of characters in a musical texture portraying human actions and emotions. Through identifying an agent, we are able to understand ...its role and trajectory in the portrayal of musical narrative or drama. This theory implies human qualities present in the music and the texture having its own form of thought and development. The application of this theory has potential in being used to understand an individual composer’s style, in this case, the music of Claude Debussy. In this thesis, I will be exploring some of Debussy’s keyboard works in addition to one of his late instrumental works, Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, identifying the agential properties and narratives present in the music. Debussy stages varying actor roles for interpretation when addressing an agent and its trajectory in its virtual environment. This study will depict a variety of gestures and energies inferring agential presence and whether or not to interpret these gestures as part of a single agent, or additional agents pursuing a single narrative. This interpretive analysis has potential in awakening new findings and understandings in the music in which a conventional analysis would not accomplish in showing us.
This project critically examines the Western music theory pedagogical canon through a feminist lens in order to highlight the effects of underrepresentation in music theory textbooks and anthologies. ...I build on Philip Ewell’s research of the seven most frequently sourced U.S. music theory textbooks to show how the most common musical examples used in theory texts primarily consist of works by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. By interrogating the hidden curriculum of music theory pedagogy from a critical and feminist lens, I reveal the ways in which women are consistently undervalued in the current pedagogical canon. Because the erasure of women from textbooks is detrimental to the professional development of women in the field, this thesis emphasizes the necessity for gender diversity in pedagogical material. This project presents and analyzes excerpts composed by women with an eye toward increasing diversity in music pedagogy: these excerpts should be used as supplemental musical examples that can be integrated into pedagogical instruction at the university level. Ultimately, I aim to offer a new approach to theory pedagogy that incorporates diversity and inclusivity in the music that we study and teach.
This thesis seeks to analyze the methodologies that composers use to sonify nonmusical data. The research focuses on comparing and contrasting the different conceptual approaches that five composers ...have taken in their sonification process. The five composers that are analyzed are Mickey Hart, John Cage, David Sulzer, Robert Ashley, and Charles Dodge. Each composer sonifies different nonmusical data with a variety of creative methodologies and ideologies. Additionally, each step in sonification is examined in detail and the effect that the artistic process has on the initial data is explored. The role of the collection of data and the collaborative relationship between composers and scientists is also examined critically with the goal of determining what amount of artistic freedom is possible while remaining faithful to the original data.
In this dissertation, I examine the interaction of concurrent musical parts in chamber music, specifically string quartets. To do this, I look at features of the individual parts, then consider how ...the parts are combined and how that combination affects perception of the overall ensemble. The study of part interactions is related to counterpoint, texture, and auditory streaming, all of which tend to prioritize the features of rhythm and contour. The existing terminology is not sufficient, however, and looking at the string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich exposes some gaps especially in the definition of textural categories, while illustrating how rich a study of parts in chamber music can be. In Part I, I consider smaller-scale features that have frequently been used in studies of texture and auditory streaming. The agreed-upon extremes are clear: parts that share the same rhythm and contour together form one textural stream, and parts with different rhythms and contrasting contours are considered independently. Within that dichotomy, however, much diversity can be found. In some contexts, looking at intervals and sonorities to describe part alignment or misalignment can also be appropriate. In Part II, the focus shifts to what I call organizing factors—larger-scale features that provide a scaffolding for the listener. These include key, meter, and hypermeter. At this point, the perspective can shift from an external one (How do these parts fit together?) to a more internal one (What can a part do to establish a key or rhythm?). Here, I look at the possibilities for the specific roles of drone and accompanying patterns. I also examine how parts can work together to establish an organizing factor, as well as possible perceptual outcomes when parts suggesting different keys or meters are combined.
This dissertation uses Mozart’s concerto first movements as a lens through which to study formal organization, punctuation, large-scale voice-leading, and solo-ensemble relationships. It proposes a ...concerto-centric set of form labels, reframes preparation and closure in terms of “punctuation mark” analogies, explores the possibility of “diffractive” voice-leading hierarchy (i.e., hierarchy that does not require one-to-one correspondence between structural levels), and applies these analytical technologies in three full-movement analyses of Mozart’s Horn Concerto no. 2 in E-flat major, K. 417/I, Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major, K. 365/I, and Piano Concerto no. 20 in D minor, K. 466/I.Chapters 1–3 make up the first part of the dissertation, exploring the relationships of solo and ensemble, thematic/display/cadential sections, and preparation and arrival. Chapter 1 outlines a new suite of concerto form labels that embrace display as a distinct formal entity and specifically indicate the instrumentation of reprised sections. Chapter 2 introduces the extended analogy of punctuation marks (dot, exclamation, ellipsis, comma, question mark, etc.) to differentiate between “syntactically” equivocal cadences and section boundaries that correlate with formal roles in Mozart’s writing. Chapter 3 demonstrates the applicability of these concepts through three full-movement analyses.Chapters 4–6 comprise the second part of the dissertation, dedicated to voice-leading questions related to Mozart’s style. After an account of the relative rarity of the concerto within the Schenkerian primary and secondary literature, Chapter 4 problematizes the assumption of one-to-one correspondence between background, middleground, and foreground levels of voice-leading analyses, introducing the concept of “diffractive” voice-leading hierarchy. This chapter’s focus is multiple hierarchically equal linear progressions at the same structural level, defended from both a theoretical and musical perspective. Chapter 5 delves into how a diffractive understanding of tonal hierarchy also allows for different types of coexisting primary tones within the same analysis, reaffirming the “background” as an abstraction rather than a necessarily concrete presence on the surface of a piece of tonal music. Chapter 6 then retraces the same analyses from Chapter 3, this time from a voice-leading perspective.This dissertation addresses a variety of different intersecting relationships present in the concerto and in canonic music theory, setting the stage for new avenues in the theory classroom, the conference room, and beyond.
This dissertation analyzes sound qualities in popular music vocals and examines the relationship between sound qualities and other musical structures, including beat, meter, and form. I use the term ...sound qualities to refer to those aspects of a sound that help us distinguish one sound from another. In this dissertation, I focus specifically on loudness, noisiness, brightness, and vowel quality. Listeners often attend to the vocals while singing along to their favorite popular song. Additionally, the voice is extremely malleable, which means that sound qualities regularly fluctuate in the vocals. This makes popular music vocals a good case study for considering the connections between changes in sound qualities and other musical structures. Through case studies of Tanya Tagaq’s music and recent mainstream country music from the last ten years, I illustrate ways in which sound qualities influence our experience of beat, meter, and form in these two repertoires. The analyses in this dissertation progress from small-scale to gradually larger-scale structures. Each chapter features slightly different approaches to analysis based on the differences between the music studied and the musical structures considered; however, the general analytical approach developed throughout the dissertation emphasizes acoustic measurements and data visualization techniques. The acoustic measurements used to analyze sound qualities include RMS energy (related to loudness), periodicity (related to noisiness), spectral centroid (related to brightness), and formants (related to vowel quality). The acoustic measurements and data visualization techniques allow me to visualize and interpret changes in continuous data relating to loudness, noisiness, and brightness over time through a section of a song and over an entire piece. The analytical approaches I develop are informed by ethical approaches to analysis. I continuously critique my analytical approach and analytical assumptions in relation to the question of what an ethical analysis might look like, and I consider ways in which my approach to analysis can be more culturally appropriate and inclusive when analyzing not only Tagaq’s music but also country music.
It is a well-known saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Since the beginning of time, humans have used imitation in every aspect of life including in music, art, and literature. In ...music, one prominent type of imitation is often referred to as homage. Musical homage is typically seen as a form of paying tribute to another composer or style of music. In this thesis, musical homages are classified and explored as one of three—potentially overlapping—types: homage as influence, homage as assimilation, and homage as theft. This paper will define each of the three types of musical homage as well as provide examples of each. Each composer mentioned in this paper will have a brief explanation of their own personal compositional style as well as the musical era they are known from. Understanding context and background information is pertinent to recognizing and classifying musical homages. Readers will be provided with the tools to examine, analyze, and determine types of musical homages. Influence in musical homage can be understood as when a composer writes a composition with the intention of resembling or portraying the style of another composer. Assimilation in musical homage can be understood as when a composer integrates stylistic compositional qualities of another composer while still maintaining their own compositional style. Lastly, theft in musical homage can be understood as when one composer steals or exactly replicates a section of music from another composer and incorporates in into their own composition.
Explanations of gospel music rely on lyrics or its experiential effects, and when descriptions of the purely musical elements of the style are described, they essentially end up resembling other ...genres. In essence, the questions at the heart of this dissertation are ones that address the very nature of gospel music as a genre: Does gospel music have its own sound, and can we describe it outside of church gatherings or absent textual references? Most musical genres are not typically defined by a specific guiding principle or message, but gospel music diverges from convention as it perpetuates a general theme that espouses religious ideals borne of, and divinely inspired by, textual connotations derived from Biblical text. In this way, we can say that gospel music is a genre of purpose. But if we take the claim that gospel music may be considered without the words or congregational experiences, is it possible to describe the music as gospel? Though I acknowledge that religion and its attendant philosophies are essential for a comprehensive understanding of gospel music and its effects, I provide ways to hear features of gospel music outside of a religious context.This dissertation argues that some gospel music structures do indeed exist in ways that do not depend on a devotional context: there are explicit musical practices that not only define gospel within the style, but also become markers of it in other styles. In particular, I focus on plagal cadences and progressions as indicators of genre. The opening chapter reviews the relevant literature on gospel music and examines the difficulties associated with the notion of genre when discussing the tradition. The first half of the second chapter is concerned with the use of the plagal cadence in Western music, notably in hymns, in order to lay the foundation of what I call the “inner-plagal”, a harmonic turn that emphasizes the IV-I progression and challenges the traditional concept of closure in the phrase model. I then explore how this evolved into a gestural convention in contemporary gospel in order to argue that it ultimately became a replacement for the word “Amen”. The third chapter builds on the discussions presented in Chapter 2 as I review the harmonic foundation of the gospel shout to reveal how some progressions found within vamps expand the plagal motion beyond its cadential use, eventually becoming the harmonic foundation of shout schemata. In the final chapter, I synthesize the ideas presented in the preceding chapters to demonstrate how they maintain their function when used outside of gospel music.
The purpose of this study is to discuss Schumann’s fictional characters from Carnaval, op. 9 and how Schumann expressed the unique aspects of each character in his music. I will apply Schenkerian ...analysis to explore the various structural layers of the music of these fictional characters and Schumann’s friends: Pierrot, Arlequin, Eusebius, Florestan, Coquette, Pantalon et Colombine, Chiarina, Estrella, Chopin and Paganini. Through my Schenkerian graphs, I hope to show that each piece coheres within itself, that pieces share middle-ground structures, that motifs come back at different levels, and that the musical structure contributes to the characterization, as well as the surface textures.
This thesis consists of three analyses of works by twentieth century composers of various compositional techniques. The first chapter compares Edino Krieger’s Sonatina (1957) with previous works of ...his neoclassical period and its deviations in tonality and hybridization of form. The second chapter demonstrates the connection between the passacaglia theme and the free variations in Stravinsky’s Septet and examines some of the unique properties of theme. The third chapter examines the Superset/Subset networks of various set collections in Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch and reassesses the relationship of the octatonic collection on the work.
