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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

The oratorio August 4, 1964 is a twelve-movement work for orchestra, chorus, and four soloists written by Steven Stucky. The premise for the libretto, adapted by Gene Scheer, is the confluence of two events during one day (August 4, 1964) in the life of Lyndon B. Johnson. Although the main idea of the libretto focuses on these two events of this one day, many cultural references of the 1960's in general can be found as well, such as quotations from the well-known song "We Shall Overcome." Stucky borrows from a motet he wrote in 2005 for another quotation source utilized in this oratorio, "O Vos Omnes." My goal in this thesis is to reveal and analyze the many different levels of quotations that exist within August 4, 1964, to explore each quotation's individual function within the oratorio (as a cultural gesture, commentary or remembrance), and to examine the structural coherence that emerges as a result of their use within the oratorio.

Trance and house music are sub-genres within the genre of electronic dance music. The form of breakdown, buildup and anthem is the main driving force behind trance and house music. This thesis analyzes transcriptions from 22 trance and house songs in order to establish and define new terminology for formal devices used within the breakdown, buildup and anthem sections of the music.

Although many biographical studies are available on Jacques Ibert, few contain significant analytical commentary. In this study I examine three movements from Ibert’s Histoires for piano which was composed between 1920 and 1921 and was premiered in 1923. The three movements are “La menuese de tortues d’or,” “Le petit âne blanc,” and “La marchande d’eau fraîche.” I primarily use Schenkerian analysis to identify characteristics of Ibert’s compositional language. Significant aspects of impressionism and Debussian influence are also identified as related elements to my analysis. Many expected elements of Schenkerian theory are absent in Histoires. The conclusions of this study are consistent with those of other analysts who apply Schenkerian methodology to impressionist music such as Richard Parks, Adele Katz, Felix Salzer, and Edward Laufer.

This thesis illustrates how I hear processes of expansion organizing musical materials in the First String Quartet. By employing a flexible approach to expansion and developing models of wedge and additive expansions beyond the bounds of specific voice-leading or rhythmic augmentation procedures, expansion processes can be understood in each of the varied episodes of the quartet. Gubaidulina’s use of expansion processes, embodied organically in pitch, rhythm, form, and physical space, unifies the episodic materials of the First String Quartet and provides an inevitable conclusion to the work’s loose narrative.

David Lewin, in his 1986 article “Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception,” offers a promising methodological approach for the analysis of tonal music from a phenomenological perspective. Lewin’s phenomenological method has a propensity to render seemingly contradictory readings in such a way that their respective validities can be preserved by articulating them within differentiated contexts. Expanding upon Lewin’s phenomenological work with analyzing tonal music, I propose that a phenomenological investigation of an atonal song, Webern op. 3, no. 1, from within a variety of differentiated contexts can shed light upon what it means to perceive a piece of music as being “not in a key.” This thesis will open with an introduction to Lewin’s phenomenological work and the writings of Edmund Husserl and Izchak Miller that Lewin used as a point of departure. The analysis of Webern op. 3, no. 1, that follows will regard the voice and piano parts as differentiated musical contexts in order to investigate the interaction between these contexts as they generally undermine the perception of tonality in the song. Finally, the notion of a “musical context” as an organizing factor of musical perception will be expanded to include the different analytical approaches of Olli …

Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer, was born in 1935. Most of the works at the beginning of his career were for piano in the neo-classical style. After that, he turned his interest to serial music and continued creating works with serial techniques throughout the 1960s. After his "self-imposed silence" period (during the years 1968-1976), Pärt emerged with a new musical style, which he called tintinnabuli. Although, this technique was influenced by music from the medieval period, the texture and function of its musical style cannot be described easily in terms of any single musical technique of the past. This study explores the evolution of Arvo Pärt's tintinnabuli technique in its first decade 1976-1985, which is divided into three different types. It provides musical examples from the scores of selected works, Für Alina, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, Cantate Domino canticum novum, Missa Sillabica, Stabat Mater and Es sang vor langen Jahren, and their analyses with supporting interpretative sketches. The goal of this thesis is to provide the reader a basis for understanding and recognizing the different types of Pärt's tintinnabuli technique.

Webern scholarship has not comprehensively examined op. 25, drei lieder. If the selection of text for op. 25 is viewed as one work in three movements they create a ternary form (A-B-A1). To show how this form is developed in the music the author creates a new analytical system based on Schoenberg's Grundgestalt which is defined by three basic ideas: symmetry, liquidation, and variation. The relationship between the voice and accompaniment and Webern's deliberate manipulation of the text is used to reveal the use of a program which is then tied to the numerical symbolism of 2 and 3.

Despite its generally agreed importance, very little has been written about The Apostles. Even among the extant publications that address The Apostles, scholars have focused on its history and development, its reception, or analytical descriptions of its surface themes. The aim of this study will therefore be to provide neither a biography of Elgar, nor an account of the genesis of the work, but to analyze The Apostles in a manner that will achieve a deeper understanding of the oratorio. Chapter 1 explores the complexities that surround Judas and the different ways in which he was perceived throughout history. Then, through my analysis of the surface motives in Chapter 2 and their significance in relation to the large-scale harmonic structure in Chapter 3, I will suggest that Elgar does not denigrate Judas as the betrayer of Christ in The Apostles, but rather depicts him as a tragic yet crucial figure in achieving the redemption of mankind, and through this Judas himself is redeemed.

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 Hispano-American songs for voice and piano) display an original sound and style full of rhythms, shapes, colors, and textures found in the music of various Hispanic cultures. Nevertheless, the essence of these songs is deeply rooted in nineteenth-century German musical traditions. This eclecticism results in unique works that developed and evolved as reflections of their creator’s musical psyche. This dissertation presents an analytical study of selected songs from the 34 Canciones. The study focuses on three compositional aspects: unity within song cycles, chromaticism, and the use of pre-existing musical material. Since only one of the 34 Canciones has ever been published, this document also includes a complete edition of the thirty-four songs. Additionally, a significant part of the research incorporates a biographical sketch of the composer.

Respighi’s scarcely-known orchestral work Sinfonia Drammatica lives up to its title by evoking a narrative throughout the course of its three movements. In this dissertation, I argue how the work’s surface, subsurface, and formal elements suggest this narrative which emerges as a cycle of rising and falling dramatic tension. I explain how Respighi constructs the work’s narrative in the musical surface through a diverse body of themes that employ three motives of contour. The disposition and manipulation of these motives within the themes suggest frequent fluctuations of the level of conflict throughout the symphony as a whole. To show the involvement of musical forms in the work’s narrative, I employ an approach which integrates harmony and thematic behavior. I utilize analytical methods from the current Formenlehre, including terms from James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s sonata deformation theory and William Caplin’s theories of formal functions to elucidate ties between the forms of the Sinfonia Drammatica’s movements and those of conventional sonata forms of the late-eighteenth century. This dissertation also employs Heinrich Schenker’s theories of structures, voice leading, and reduction to illustrate large-scale aspects of the Sinfonia Drammatica’s narrative. The resulting analyses show Respighi’s elaborations of common structural paradigms which serve to …

In 1924, Herbert Eimert’s Atonale Musiklehre was the first published text to describe a systematic approach to composing atonal music. It contains significant contributions to the discourse on the early development of twelve-tone composition. While Eimert uses the term “atonal” to describe his compositional approach, his definition of atonality demands that all twelve tones be present with none repeated, and that they present as complexes not ordered rows. Eimert’s discussion of atonality differs from others of the same period because he focuses on vertical sonorities and introduces “interlocking complexes”, wherein two separate statements of the aggregate can overlap by one pitch or by a set of pitches. Interlocking complexes are an important feature of Eimert’s string quartet Fünf Stücke für Streichquartett, which was published in 1925 and composed at the same time as Atonale Musiklehre was written. In the foreword to Atonale Musiklehre, Eimert clarifies that he is not the originator of the concept of atonality, rather that he absorbed the ideas of Josef Matthias Hauer and Jefim Golyscheff. Twelve-tone complexes appear first in Golyscheff’s 1914 String Trio. He refers to them as “twelve-tone duration complexes” and labels them in the score. As the name “duration complexes” implies, there are …

This study examines the formation of a unique chromatic and formal language in Musica Ricercata by György Ligeti. The study begins by examining statements from an interview with Ligeti conducted by Ove Nordwall in 1979. The interview discusses his compositional experiments from the early 1950s, the period in which Musica Ricercata was composed. Working from Ligeti’s words, “simple structures” are defined as repeating formations of rhythms and intervals with easily discernable features. These features must be salient such that when the structure is altered, it is still clearly and audibly recognizable. The musical and political environment in Hungary at the time is established, providing context for this early experimentation with compositional parameters. The analysis begins with an overview of the entire work, outlining developments of pitch-class density, symmetrical pitch-class structures, and notated accelerandi over the course of the multi-movement work. Analyses of simple structures in each movement elucidate both Ligeti’s experimental approaches to chromaticism, along with more traditional aspects, with special reference to Bartók’s compositional style.

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 from a historical perspective, and realized in the Common Lisp programming language as a musicological tool. David Cope’s compositional output is summarized with an explanation of what types of systems he has utilized in the analyses of other composers’ music, and the composition of his own music. Twentieth century analyses techniques are formalized within Common Lisp as algorithmic analyses tools. The tools are then combined with techniques developed within other computational music analyses tools, and applied toward the analysis of Cope’s prelude. A traditional music theory analysis of the composition is provided, and outcomes of computational analyses augment the traditional analysis. The outcome of the computational analyses, or algorithmic analyses, is represented in statistical data, and corresponding probabilities. From the resulting data sets part of …

Tonality is a term often used to describe the music of the common practice period (roughly 1600-1900). This study examines the music of mid twentieth-century jazz composer Thad Jones in light of an extended common practice, explicating ways in which this music might be best understood as tonal. Drawing from analyses of three of Jones’s big band compositions: To You, Three and One, and Cherry Juice, this study examines three primary elements in detail. First is Jones’s use of chord-scale application techniques in the orchestration over various chordal qualities represented by the symbols, revealing traditional as well as innovative methods by Jones. Second is Jones’s use of harmonic progressions, demonstrating his connection to past practice as well as modern jazz variations. Third is Jones’s use of contrapuntal connections and their traditional relationship to functional tonality, but in a chromatic scale-based environment. Jones’s music is presented in this study to demonstrate a tonal jazz common practice that represents an amalgamation of traditions including twentieth-century scale-based procedures, Renaissance and early twentieth-century modality, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century voice leading schemas, and Baroque and Classical descending-fifth progressions. Also included as an appendix is a list of possible note errors in the published scores of To …

This thesis examines formal organization in ground-bass works. While it is true that many or even most works of the ground-bass repertoire are variation sets over a ground, there also exist many ground-bass works that are not in variation form. The primary goal of this thesis is to elucidate the various ways in which such non-variation formal organizations may be achieved. The first chapter of this work discusses the general properties of ground basses and various ways that individual phrases may be placed in relation to the statements of the ground. The second chapter considers phrases groupings, phrase rhythm, and the larger formal organizations that result. The third chapter concludes this study with complete analyses of Purcell’s “When I am laid in earth” from Dido and Aeneas and Delanade’s “Jerusalem, convertere ad dominum Deum tuum” from his setting of the Leçons de ténèbres.

Heinrich Baryphonus (1581-1655) and Heinrich Grimm’s (1592/3-1637) didactic treatise, Pleiades musicae (1615/1630), provides a vivid testimony to the state of music education and music theory pedagogy in Protestant Germany in the early seventeenth century. Published initially by Baryphonus for use at the Gymnasium in Quedlinburg and reissued in an expanded format by Grimm for use at the Gymnasium in Magdeburg, the text examines the fundamentals of pitch, intervals, counterpoint, and, in the second edition, triadic theory and composition. Throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, music theorists including Johann Andreas Herbst (1588-1666), Otto Gibel (1612-1682), and Andreas Werckmeister (1645-1706), used the document as a source for their own musical writings, solidifying its status as a significant contribution to the field of music theory. Recently, scholars such as Carl Dahlhaus, Benito Rivera, and Joel Lester have found value in Pleiades musicae for its role in the early stages of the development of triadic theory and the emergence of harmonic tonality. However, with the exception of the passages on triadic theory, the treatise continues to be relatively unknown. In order to understand the full extent of Baryphonus and Grimm’s contributions to the history of music theory, and …