Degree Discipline

X, An Analytical Approach to John Chowning's Phoné (open access)

X, An Analytical Approach to John Chowning's Phoné

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 represented via PureData patches.
Date: May 2010
Creator: Krämer, Reiner
System: The UNT Digital Library
Non-Linear and Multi-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 127: An Analytical Study of the "Krakow" Sketch Materials (open access)

Non-Linear and Multi-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 127: An Analytical Study of the "Krakow" Sketch Materials

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, demonstrated equally through the composer's often enigmatic disruption of phrase-periodic gestures, as well as by occasional instances of overtly incongruous temporal shifts. The "Krakow" collection of compositional sketches for Beethoven's String Quartet in E-Flat, Op. 127, provides a number of instances of "non-linear" or "multi-linear" musical continuity. The term "Krakow" sketches, when referenced in this dissertation, specifically designates the group of Beethoven manuscripts possessed by the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Krakow, Poland, but which formerly were held by the Royal Library in Berlin. Structural voice-leading analyses are provided for selected portions of the "Krakow" collection; these analyses are then compared to voice-leading graphs and analytical reductions of the corresponding material from Beethoven's published versions of the same musical passages. In some cases the sketches supply almost complete texts, for which critical transcriptions are …
Date: August 2010
Creator: Lively, Michael
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Key to Unlocking the Secret Window (open access)

The Key to Unlocking the Secret Window

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.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Hugo Wolf's Interpretation of Paul Heyse's Texts: An Examination of Selected Songs from the Italienisches Liederbuch (open access)

Hugo Wolf's Interpretation of Paul Heyse's Texts: An Examination of Selected Songs from the Italienisches Liederbuch

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 language and text setting. They have suggested plausible explanations for the relationships among the songs in a song cycle or songbook, and some theorists have traced the tonal movements and provided a visual explanation for them. Hugo Wolf's two volumes of the Italienisches Liederbuch (1890-91, 1896) were set to the forty-six poems from Paul Heyse's well-selected works. Wolf's way of selecting poems from Heyse's collection seems inconsistent, and his song ordering in the both volumes does not show evident rules. However, a closer study for relationships between the songs could widen our perspective to comprehend the whole songbook as a unified storyline. This study selected the first four songs from each …
Date: December 2010
Creator: Shin, Dong Jin
System: The UNT Digital Library
From Outward Appearance to Inner Reality: A Reading of Aaron Copland's Inscape (open access)

From Outward Appearance to Inner Reality: A Reading of Aaron Copland's Inscape

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, diabetic glycemic control as measured by glycoginated hemoglobin (HbA1c), amount of physical activity, percentage of macronutrients, daily frequencies of foods consumed, and the use of nutritional food labels to make food choices. A sample of diabetic (n = 451) and non-diabetic individuals (n = 451) were matched to on age, gender, ethnicity, and education. The diabetic individuals experienced greater depression on both continuous and ordinal diagnostic variables. Counter to expectation, there was no relationship observed between depression and HbA1c in diabetic individuals, r = .04, p > .05.
Date: December 2010
Creator: Ensign, Jeffrey S.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Gewesener Magdeburgische Musicus: An Examination into the Stylistic Characteristics of Heinrich Grimm's Eight-Voice Motet, Unser Leben Wehret Siebenzig Jahr' (open access)

Gewesener Magdeburgische Musicus: An Examination into the Stylistic Characteristics of Heinrich Grimm's Eight-Voice Motet, Unser Leben Wehret Siebenzig Jahr'

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 perspective by investigating the stylistic characteristics of Grimm's 1631 motet, Unser Leben wehret siebenzig Jahr'. Furthermore, I compare his compositional technique to that of his contemporaries and predecessors with the goal of examining the work from both Renaissance and Baroque perspectives.
Date: December 2010
Creator: Dobbs, Benjamin Michael
System: The UNT Digital Library
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 (open access)

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

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 theoretical principles. The thesis concludes with an analysis of Alban Berg's Warm die Lüfte from his Op. 2 collection that focuses on the prolongation of a referential sonority that forms the background of the song. The analysis highlights the most significant analytical techniques and theoretical concepts explored in the survey and codifies them in a generally applicable method of post-tonal prolongational analysis.
Date: December 2010
Creator: Huff, David, 1976-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Alberto Ginastera and the Guitar Chord: An Analytical Study (open access)

Alberto Ginastera and the Guitar Chord: An Analytical Study

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 composers to express extra-musical ideas. Chapter V discusses Ginastera's initial uses and modifications of the guitar chord. Chapter VI explores the use of the guitar chord as a referential sonority based on Variaciones Concertantes, Op. 23: I-II, examining vertical (subsets) and horizontal (derivation of motives) aspects. Chapter VII explores uses of trichords and hexachords derived from the guitar chord in the Sonata for Guitar Op. 47.
Date: December 2010
Creator: Gaviria, Carlos A.
System: The UNT Digital Library