Utilizing multiple methodologies for analyzing music contributes to an informed performance. I have termed this approach collaborative music theory and believe it can be used for analysis in a wide ...variety of music. To illustrate the effectiveness of collaborative music theory, I have chosen a work composed by Tōru Takemitsu, one of his later pieces for solo piano titled Rain Tree Sketch II, which was informed by multiple theories of composition. Takemitsu claimed that two books about music theory influenced his life and were among the best books of the twentieth century: The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization by jazz artist George Russell, and The Technique of My Musical Language by composer Olivier Messiaen. Additionally, Takemitsu wrote many essays on music, the majority of which are in the book Confronting Silence and focus on philosophical aspects of art, music, and theatre. In this thesis, I take these works by Russell, Messiaen, and Takemitsu, as well as other scholarship into consideration while analyzing Rain Tree Sketch II. By drawing on Russell’s, Messiaen’s, and Takemitsu’s perspectives, I provide a nuanced analysis of the piece and demonstrate how it can influence performance.
This dissertation explores and improves probabilistic modeling of melody. The project is framed with an introduction (Chapter 1) and future directions (Chapter 5) and is otherwise divided into two ...sections: 1) a skip-gram model for evaluating non-adjacent dependencies (Chapter 2) and 2) a Gestalt-based model for melodic prediction (Chapters 3–4). Chapter 2 shows that non-adjacent pitch predictions at metrically strong beats are less reliable for prediction in the Essen folksong collection, suggesting that schematic patterns are less useful for describing the structure of this repertoire. Chapters 3–4 improves Temperley’s (2008) model by adding step inertia and motive factors. The impact of inertia is primarily style dependent: inertia is more useful for predicting pitches in the folksong dataset than the popular dataset—instead, popular songs tend to oscillate between two pitches. The motive factor greatly improves prediction in the popular music corpus, implying that exact repetition is perhaps one of the most useful factors for predicting pitches in popular music.
Guitar distortion has been a foundational sound of rock & roll since its beginnings in the 1950s United States. That sound has carried multiple meanings for different groups of people within American ...society, simultaneously representing freedom, rebellion, progress, anger, degeneracy, and even violence. In this dissertation, I trace the semiotic history of guitar distortion through a series of case studies in which the meaning of the music was contested and brought groups of people into conflict. Studies of semiotics in music have primarily concentrated on firmly knowable and clear examples. Guitar distortion and studies in popular music, however, give insight into the workings of symbols in the often-messy real world.In five chapters I cover the key moments of change in the meaning of distortion. I start by outlining the importance and relevance of semiotics and topic theory, also giving background on the history of popular music analysis and exploring the philosophical definitions of violence, power, and noise. Chapter two begins with the invention and popularization of distortion in early rock and roll, demonstrating how violence was encoded in its meaning both by the technological nature of its creation, but also by social forces of youthful rebellion and racism. The third chapter uses the Parents’ Music Resource Center’s movement to regulate the music industry in the 1980s to examine the link between sound and lyrics and how sonic morality is contested in the political sphere. Through investigating the history of distortion in a variety of punk and metal subgenres in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the fourth chapter explores the dissolution of a symbol, as distortion becomes so widespread in popular music that it begins to lose its historical meaning. The final case study re-examines the creation of a new meaning for distortion by analyzing contemporary rock’s tendency to refer to its own nostalgic past in the music of Greta Van Fleet.
This dissertation examines dualist engagements with the phenomenon of resonance in French music and music theory from 1900 to 1960. A long-standing interest for French composers and music theorists, ...resonance—whether defined as sympathetic resonance or as the simultaneous production of a fundamental and its upper or lower partials—represents a particularly important touchstone during this period. I focus on the latter definition, exploring how resonance-based thinking conditions both French music-theoretical thought and compositional practice.Chapter 1 investigates Vincent d’Indy’s harmonic dualism, which synthesizes and transforms the dualisms of Hugo Riemann and Arthur von Oettingen to produce a complex system rooted in resonance. Beyond its merit as music theory, d’Indy’s approach has historical significance, initiating a French interest in dualism reaching into the mid-twentieth century. Chapter 2 focuses on two of d’Indy’s most important frameworks, both derived from resonance: his theories of directed fifths and order relationships. I develop and use related analytical technologies—double-ring circles of fifths and d’Indy order spaces—to analyze small-scale harmonic progressions, large-scale key areas, and symmetrical structures in his music.Chapters 3 and 4 explore dualist music theories after d’Indy, each viewed through the lens of resonance. Chapter 3 discusses dualist approaches that engage directly with d’Indy’s work; Chapter 4 examines dualist methods that either engage with German sources or declare no sources at all. Beyond demonstrating the prevalence and significance of French harmonic dualism, these diverse approaches raise important questions about the very nature of dualism itself.Chapter 5 shows how a tendency for dualist thinking surfaces in contemporaneous compositional practice. I explore André Jolivet’s resonance-based “double bass” and “lower resonance” concepts, which combine with his pivot-note technique; I apply them to his piano suite Mana (1935). I also investigate Dane Rudhyar’s notions of “tone,” “consonant order,” and “dissonant order,” which link to the overtone and undertone series, as well as cycles of perfect fourths or fifths. I apply them to “Reaching Out” from his Second Pentagram (1924–26) for piano. The chapter provides insight into Jolivet’s and Rudhyar’s compositional practices and links their methods—normally considered in isolation—to coeval dualist trends.
Despite decades of growing interest into Schumann’s large-scale works, literature on his four symphonies, six overtures, and Overture, Scherzo, and Finale remains sparse. Existent studies typically ...focus on the works’ motivic transformations, cyclic recalls, tonal strategies, or rhetorical devices, with comparatively less attention being paid towards their formal designs. My dissertation addresses this gap by analyzing these works using William Caplin’s theory of formal functions. My approach serves two purposes: first, it contributes to the growing subject of Schumann analysis; second, it informs ongoing extensions to form-functional theory by re-examining some of its tenets and exploring new categories. Chapter 1 reviews the analytical literature on Schumann since the mid-1980s and introduces some of the issues surrounding my methodology. Chapter 2 investigates formal syntax at the lowest levels in a re-consideration of two of Caplin’s core principles. First, I promote a more nuanced view of Caplin’s distinction between tight-knit and loose organization by tracing a single form-functional deviation, which I call a truncated presentation. Second, I propose additional categories of “teleological” and “suspended” to explain the absence of tonic prolongation in some of Schumann’s initiating functions, a situation about which form-functional theory remains largely silent. In chapters 3 and 4, I apply Julian Horton’s concept of “proliferation,” which he coins to describe the increased complexity of nineteenth-century music. Expanding on Horton’s concept, I suggest ways in which themes not only comprise additional functions, they feature unexpected categories and new hierarchical levels. Chapter 3 analyzes the larger themes that occur through proliferation, while chapter 4 explores its ability to blur boundaries between thematic units. These discussions problematize a persistent view that Schumann’s themes are regular and predictable, as it is sometimes this very facet that facilitates the complexities proliferation demonstrates. In chapter 5, I analyze three overtures and one symphonic movement that have received less analytical attention. In addition to shedding light on these neglected compositions, these case studies allow me to apply the theories and categories developed in the preceding chapters. I then conclude with thoughts on Schumann’s compositional style, and suggest how we might rethink our analytical approaches to his music.
Ornaments are embellishments and decorations of pre-established music; therefore, their existence relies on comparison to that original basis . Because pop music’s text is the recorded track rather ...than a written score, the determination of what is the main melody is strongly influenced by its first iteration, and ornaments can be found by comparisons of further iterations to the primary source. The goal of this thesis is to categorize the types of ornaments that exist in this repertory as well as define their overall functions. In this sense, ornamentation is being redefined; ornaments are not just decorations to a melody, but a process used to enhance formal functions. In the top 20 songs from Billboard’s Top Pop Chart from 2011–2020, which consists of 197 songs, there are two generally categories of ornamentations: harmonization and insertion. Harmonization is the homorhythmic addition of a countermelody to a melody, resulting in a layered vocals in harmony. Insertion is either the addition of lyrics or the addition of new pitches to a melody. Examples could be single words added between lines, or potential small changes to the melody or added melismas. There are two general functions: accumulation, and accentuation. Accumulation is the continued adding of ornaments to magnify the function of a formal structure. Accentuation is when ornaments are used to highlight certain lyrics, which is used to help convey the narrative the lyrics are portraying.
Recent years have seen several excellent books in feminist, queer and trans music studies.1 Among these, Danielle Sofer's recent publication is an essential contribution delving into neglected ...‘electrosexual’ music in the field of electronic music, the latter of which is conventionally narrowly circumscribed so as to exclude both its sexual aspects and its popular-genre variants such as disco and hip hop (in which electronic elements are abundant). Sofer defines electrosexual music as intended by its creators to be ‘representations of sex’ (p. xv), and the book focuses on the central themes of the ‘feminised’ voice (constructed as feminine) and sexual climax. The author is a well-recognised voice in the field who has spoken forcefully and vulnerably on racial inclusion – in particular of women and queers of colour – and sexual assault. I am familiar with this project from its earlier ideation stage and am glad to see that its promise has been realised in the monograph form which gives Sofer sufficient space to unfold their arguments about race, gender, sexuality and prestige in relation to a rich variety of electronic music. In the following, I will examine the book's overall argument, as well as selected case studies, before expanding on the potentialities of feminist, queer and trans music theory, thinking experimentally about what music ‘theory’ in general – and today's feminist music theory in particular – could be beyond its conventional interpretation. I ask: can music theory be about more than just pitches and other sound objects; could it also be about, for example, gender or sexual climax? What are possible forms of music-theoretical representation beyond the familiar form of annotated scores, graphs and tables? What shape can music-theoretical writing take beyond its familiar modes of focussing on relations between definable objects such as pitches and harmonies? What if a music theorist wishes to focus on the vagaries of listening experience, which are harder to articulate except through phenomenology, temporality, narratology or even poetry? Can poetry be music theory?
El presente artículo plantea una metodología analítica para el estudio de la música vocal religiosa en el ámbito hispano de finales del siglo XVIII y comienzos del siglo XIX, utilizando la ...terminología y procedimientos compositivos explicados por la teoría musical española de la época así como elementos de la teoría actual de tópicos musicales con el fin de identificar mecanismos estructurales y expresivos por los cuales la música transmite el significado y los afectos del texto litúrgico. El método se aplica al Te Deum compuesto en 1814 por el compositor español José Lidón (1748-1827), maestro de la Real Capilla de Madrid, para el retorno del rey Fernando VII. Los resultados del estudio indican no solo la manera de expresar el contenido del texto, sino la posible presencia de la manifestación de la incertidumbre política del momento.
This book is addressed to the listener whose enjoyment of music is filled with questions and whose curiosity makes him eager to grasp the sense of music, despite a lack of theoretical training. ...Unlike the usual listener's guide, which begins with a discussion of the elementary materials of music, this book starts with the elementary experiences of listening.
PDF
