This dissertation explores the analysis and creation of compositions from the standpoint of texture and momentum. It is comprised of four chapters. The first presents a number of concepts as tools for analysis, including textural typography and transformation, perception of time and psychological engagement of an audience, and respiration as a metaphor for musical momentum. The second and third chapters apply these tools to Gerard Grisey's "Periodes" and "Partiels," and Brian Ferneyhough's "Lemma-Icon-Epigram." The fourth explores specific methodologies used in composing my dissertation piece, "Phase," including the application of number systems ranging from formal to local levels.

This thesis explores collage music's formal elements in an attempt to better understand its various themes and apply them in a workable format. I explore the work of John Zorn; how time is perceived in acoustic collage music and the concept of "super tempo"; musical quotation and appropriation in acoustic collage music; the definition of acoustic collage music in relation to other acoustic collage works; and musical montages addressing the works of Charles Ives, Lucciano Berio, George Rochberg, and DJ Orange. The last part of this paper discusses the compositional process used in the works Tempered Confetti and Venni, Viddi, – and how all issues of composing acoustic collage music are addressed therein.

In this thesis, I demonstrate how I use leitmotif in a programmatic context in my original orchestral suite, The Legend of Two Rings.

Among the Voices Voiceless is a composition for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), viola, cello, percussion, piano, and electronics, based on the poem "What would I do without this world faceless incurious" by Samuel Beckett. The piece is a setting for disembodied voice: the vocal part exists solely in the electronics. Having no physical body, the voice is obscured as the point of empathy for the audience. In addition, instrumental solos compete for focus during the work's twenty minute duration. In passages including a soloist, the soloist functions simultaneously as antagonist and avatar to the disembodied voice. Spoken word recordings and electronic manipulation of instrumental material provides further layers of ambiguity. The companion critical essay "Among the Voices Voiceless": Setting the Words of Samuel Beckett proposes the distillation of Beckett's style into the elements of prosaicness, repetition, fragmentation, ambiguity, and symmetry. Discussions of Beckett's works such as Waiting for Godot and Molloy demonstrate these elements in his practice. This framework informs the examination of two other musical settings of Beckett's poetry: Neither by Morton Feldman and Odyssey by Roger Reynolds. Finally, these elements are used to analyze and elucidate the compositional decisions made in Among the Voices Voiceless.

Forgotten Lyres is a musical response to Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Mutability, which depicts the fragility and unpredictable nature of human life. Four independent chamber ensembles make up the performing forces of Forgotten Lyres; the musicians evoke the topics of Shelley's text as they interact and coordinate with one another according to a variety of paradigms and without the use of a conductor. This essay focuses on the approaches to coordination within and between ensembles, and the ways in which the musicians' interactions can evoke and convey Shelley's texts. The essay also examines works by Mel Powell, Toru Takemitsu, Witold Lutoslawski, and Pierre Boulez as examples and precursors for the coordination strategies employed in Forgotten Lyres.

Loose Id, scored for orchestra (piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B-flat, B-flat contrabass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B-flat, 2 trombones, 1 bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (3 parts), violin I, violin II, viola, violoncello, and contrabass), is an abstract realization in sound of the energy of the Id. Unleashed, without the counterbalance of Ego or Superego, the Id generates unbridled instinctual energy, resulting in an orgiastic frenzy. Distinct from a state of dementia, this piece represents a thoroughly lucid and intentional rampage of self-indulgence. The accompanying essay examines the underlying structural principles of Loose Id, focusing on how they aid the creation of the overall experience of the piece. Particular attention is given to the concepts of linearity and nonlinearity and their roles in different levels of creative and listening processes.

The Full Armor of God is a musical composition based on the apostle Paul's comparison in Ephesians 6:10-20 between armor for physical combat and armor for spiritual warfare. The instrumentation consists of the following: oboe/English horn, bassoon, two violins, viola, cello, and bass. Texts on Roman armor as well as commentaries and sermons on the scriptures were consulted for the basis of the musical materials. The piece combines imagery and historical associations with abstract renderings of both the physical and the spiritual.

This paper presents the history and the theoretical study of mixed music and focuses on two piano solo works and two mixed electroacoustic compositions for piano and electronics. By discussing the working process and giving the analysis of the original composition Alchemy for piano and electronics, this paper investigates the relationship between cause, source and spectromorphology, reflecting how the concept of energy-motion trajectory are embodied in this mixed electroacoustic work. Alchemy is a mixed composition for piano solo and 8-channel fixed electronics focusing on the gestural play and sonic expression. The live piano part explores the gestural sound played with a slide (cup), paper clip, and objects placed inside the piano. The 8-channel electronics part is mainly derived from the recorded acoustic piano. It extends the sonic potential of source materials and presents the diverse vectorial movements of spatialization.

Astronomy and music are both fundamental to cultural identity in the form of various musical styles and calendrical systems. However, since both are governed by incontrovertible laws of physics and therefore precede cultural interpretation, they are potentially useful for insight into the common ground of a shared humanity. This paper discusses three compositions inspired by different aspects of astronomy: Solstitium e Equinoctium, a site-specific composition for four voices and metal pipes involving an inclusive communal musical ritual and sonic meditation; Helios, a short symphonic work inspired by helioseismology; and Perspectives, a piece for soprano and percussion based on a logarithmic map of the universe.

The two fields of acousmatic music and site-specific conceptual art take strikingly different approaches to the notions of space and place. In this document, I describe how these two areas of aesthetic research diverge and relate to each other, focusing on how their unique approaches can be implemented in the practice of site-specific music composition. The first part of this document surveys the distinctive features of each of these fields, describing the particular differences between them in their approach to space and place. The contradictions between the two approaches are then briefly analyzed in reference to Georgina Born's understanding of music as fundamentally multitextual. In the second part of the document, I describe in detail how I implemented a site-specific approach when composing "…threaded through," a 16-channel audio, 6 video, site-specific installation for the UNT College of Music Main Building. In this, I describe how both the space and place of the UNT College of Music Main Building influenced my musical choices, visual content, and approach to audio and visual spatialization. The final part of the document contains a detailed score for realizing "…threaded through" in the location of the UNT College of Music Main Building.

Reference to a regular pulse is one of the most common ways of measuring time in music. As the basis for tempo, meter, subdivisions, and even formal symmetry, pulse, or the sonic articulation of regular units of time, is found throughout all levels of music. In this paper, I describe how I used a structure of twelve simultaneous pulses to compose "Monolith," a recent piece for MIDI piano, Pierrot ensemble, and fixed electronics. In the first chapter, I contextualize "Monolith" by briefly examining pulse's relationship to hierarchical structure in music and the possibilities for creativity in pulse-based hierarchical structures. In the second chapter, I analyze the use of pulse in Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians," György Ligeti's "Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (with Chopin in the background), and Conlon Nancarrow's "Study No. 36 for Player Piano." In the third chapter, I describe in detail the relationship between the twelve-pulse structure and the various movements that comprise "Monolith," focusing on the relationship between compositional freedom and prescribed structure throughout the work.

This paper provides an overview of the inspiration, research, and creative process involved in the composition of EverWind for orchestra and electronics. EverWind is based on field recordings from the American Southwest. The composition uses pitch material derived from spectral analysis of the recordings, and it incorporates a fixed media element using the field recordings that are then electronically manipulated to various degrees; this fixed media element is played alongside the orchestra. The paper also analyzes John Luther Adams' Dark Waves for Orchestra and Electronics and R. Murray Schafer's Music for Wilderness Lake in order to place EverWind within the broader musical context.

This document accompanies and explains the concepts used in the development of the composition, East is East, and West is West, (and Never the Twain Shall Meet). The process for generation and development of much of the musical content of the composition East is East, and West is West, (and Never the Twain Shall Meet) is the use of quoted musical materials. The second process, but equally as important, for development of the composition relies heavily on the idea of parallel development of modular ensembles and how the interactions created between them by sharing instrumentation can be a tool for development, as well as a challenge to the development of each module. Each module has an influence on at least one other module and is also influenced by at least one other module, creating a puzzle of interactions that must be navigated carefully when generating each individually. Both quotation and modularity are concepts employed by other composers, so this document also briefly explains how other composers have approached these concepts in their works in order to establish a historical relationship within the canon of western classical music to East is East, and West is West, (and Never the Twain Shall …

In the first half of the twentieth century, sporadic attempts of avant-garde composers to include sounds other than pitch in musical composition paved the way for the composers in the second half to embrace the sound of all types in their creative works. The development of technology since the mid-past century has facilitated composers' inclusive use of sound. The recent achievements in electronics and computers have led to cost-effective tools for today's composers to explore new possibilities in sound design and manipulation. Gradual for tenor saxophone and fixed electronics is primarily concerned with noise. Among the infinite possibilities of noise types, metallic sounds significantly contribute to the composition. The title of the piece refers to the compositional process in which the music progressively unfolds itself from the beginning to the end. The methods and strategies used to present the content give rise to a form I call accretion, described as an organic process by which the musical materials grow. Within the process, while established materials are interacting, combining, and forming layers, new materials may be incorporated and take part in the process. Throughout the composition, the interaction between sounds with common properties guides the music toward interactive unity, while the …

Audiovisual concatenative synthesis is an analysis-driven granular technique using a corpus of multimedia data to sequence audio and video streams on a microtemporal level. This text outlines my development of this technique as a tool for multimedia composition, using my work, Replica, as a case study. The paper illustrates how the concepts of granular structure, gesture capture, and replication are integral not only to the software but to the architecture of the composition. In doing so, machine learning approaches to music and visual art are reviewed and related to my personal compositional practice. Additionally, I attempt to show how audiovisual concatenative synthesis provides a composer with strategies for shaping one's sense of time through disorienting audiovisual cues and tightly organized counterpoint between sound and image, stage and screen, and the real and virtual.

"Natural Disasters" is a cycle of five extractable movements for septet, conductor and computer. Each movement in the cycle is inspired by the ways that humans are affected by and respond to five different classes or categories of natural disasters: meteorological, such as hurricanes, tornados, and haboobs; geological, like earthquakes and landslides; hydrological, including flooding and sea level rise; wildfires; and extra-planetary disasters such as meteors and solar flares. The disaster types are used as overarching themes and also as sources for the organization of the movements and their surface details. This paper presents an overview of the conception and organization of cycle, the themes addressed in each movement and the compositional techniques used. The history of composers using weather or disaster-related themes in prior music is reviewed, and a survey of contemporary disaster-related compositions is presented.

This paper presents an overview of the concepts and strategies in the original composition, The Harbour of Incense, a cycle of three movements for different groups of instruments. Each movement addresses an aspect of the musical cultures of Hong Kong. The first movement Taan Go for Harp Solo explores the sound world of the folk genre saltwater song; the second movement Jat1 Wun2 Sai3 Ngau4 Naam5 Min6 for Flute and Piano highlights the musicality of Cantonese language; the third movement Daa Zaai for Oboe, Clarinet in B-flat, Bassoon, and Percussion, is inspired by the keyi music used in the Taoist funeral. The paper discusses how to bring together Southeast Asian aesthetics and contemporary Western compositional techniques, as well as how to communicate this unique cultural experience to performers and audiences from other backgrounds. It provides the transcriptions of two saltwater songs and an excerpt of keyi music, and illustrate how they inform the structures, textures, and melodic gestures of the composition. The nine tones of Cantonese language are also explored for generating melodic materials, metric plans, and articulation writing.

Starting in the mid-2010s VR's high cost of entry became low enough for consumers and artists to explore and experiment with the technology. There have been a few VR operas developed by medium to large sized teams such as Michel Van Der Aa's Eight (2018) and Alexander Schubert's ⁂ASTERISM⁂ (2021), but no widespread work has been produced by a small team comprising only a librettist and composer. Vessels engages in this process with a libretto written by Bea Goodwin and music, audio processing, visual design, and programming by Christopher Poovey. The first step in the process of creating Vessels was the creation of the song cycle Songs from Vessels for soprano, extended tenor, flute, bass flute, A clarinet, viola, contrabass, percussion, and live electronics. These songs are the basis of the micro-opera Vessels which presents recordings of the songs with live processing alongside two songs exclusive to the opera in a VR environment with immersive projections and audio. The development of an ensemble and electronic work along with a VR micro-opera necessitates the implementation and creation of software. Both the Grainflow and cpDelayNetworks packages for Cycling ‘74 Max are pivotal to audio processing in both versions of the work. In …

Based on the poetry of Jehanne Dubrow, professor of English at the University of North Texas, Stateside: An opera in one act uses the mythology of Penelope and Odysseus to tell a story of a modern day military wife. David T. Little's opera Soldier Songs, Sarah Kirkland Snider's song-cycle Penelope, and Stateside are dramatic musical works influenced by the genre, instrumentation, and formal structures of popular music that broadly deal with the emotional and internal elements of military life. These three works prioritize narrative structure of the text in relation to character, and employ elements of popular music harmony, melody, and structure. The critical essay analyzes selections from Soldier Songs and Penelope and explains the compositional process of Stateside. The creative document consists of the full score of Stateside: an opera in one act.

Untune the Sky is a collection of ten original preludes, dances, and songs for microtonal viola da gamba in 7-limit just intonation with voice and live electronics that incorporates elements of Baroque music, traditional Irish dance music, extended just intonation tuning theory, and live electronic audio processing techniques. This thesis thoroughly describes the work and contextualizes its relationship to its historical and contemporary influences. The first sections explain why extended just intonation and viola da gamba were chosen as the central elements of the work. This is followed by a description of the structure, instrumentation, notational conventions, and intended performance practice of the work. The final section contains a musical analysis of the form, harmony, and structure of each piece in the collection. For researchers and interested performers, Appendix A contains a brief catalog of existing microtonal viol repertoire listed with a description of the microtonal techniques used.