During postgraduate research, my compositions have increasingly come to focus on the following elements: • Use of a background narrative to create a structure of continual transformation rather than recurrent themes and development or exact repetition. • Evocation of time and place. • Writing in an eclectic style and embracing musical elements from different styles, genres, traditions, tonalities, and time periods. • Allowing contradictory views to co-exist and leaving interpretation open–ended and the prerogative of the listener. The compositions in my portfolio use collections of sounds, gestures, phrases and chords to build a different language for each piece and sometimes to become part of the symbolism in a piece. For example, I use bell sounds to represent hope, or forgiveness. I often build a collage-style structure that allows for disparate systems and mixed material to encourage the hearing of music in a new context. My music allows tonal sounds to be re-encountered in a contemporary setting. Recent compositions tend to have a narrative style, are based on melodic fragments rather than existing scales, and often employ continual transformation as a structure. I enjoy working with text and extra-musical sources and have allowed the narrative of the text to influence the music and evoke gestures that help to tell the story. This new 'storytelling' style of composition has encouraged me to write longer pieces and helped with structural clarification. The key results of my research can be identified as the following: I have developed an harmonic language based on stacked units of intervals that can employ chromaticism but are not twelve-tone or tonal and I have been working with a three-part form that allows for repetition or transformation of material.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF REBECCA L. NEWBURN, for the Master of Music degree in Theory/Composition, presented on May 2, 2015, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: DAYDREAM MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Armando Bayolo My final thesis is an approximately eleven minute work for orchestra. It can be viewed either as a single movement with three subsections, or a piece with three movements that are each performed without pause. Daydream should be viewed as programmatic, in that the idea for this piece comes from a dream experiment. Wishing to increase the frequency of my dreams, I chose an object on which to focus as I was attempting to fall asleep, hoping that this concentration would free my mind from other things and produce dreams. While my chosen object, a lava lamp, did not seem to bring about any dreams, I did realize that the slow build-up of heat and the eventual bubbling of wax could easily translate into a musical idea. There are four sections, loosely entitled "Daydream", "Awakening", "Nightmare" and a return to "Daydream".

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF CHRISTOPHER MITCHELL, for the Master of Music degree in COMPOSITION, presented on MAY 7, 2012, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: ATROPHY FOR ORCHESTRA MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Frank Stemper In early 2010, I became inspired to compose a piece of music for orchestra. First, there were several items to consider. I had to decide whether to write for a rather large orchestra, a normal size orchestra or a smaller sized, chamber orchestra. Up until this point I had yet to write an orchestral composition. Indeed, there are multiple aspects to not only composing for a massive group of instruments, but also a way in which to treat methods of orchestration. For the purposes of this composition, I chose to utilize the forces found within a regular sized orchestra. Rather than using standard orchestral writing for the strings, I chose to use a method known as "divisi," an Italian abbreviation for the sub-division of the string section. Each string section (Violins, Violas, Cellos and Double-basses) are divided into multiple sections, thus creating a larger palette of timbres. Conceptually speaking, I was inspired by the idea of theme and timbre. I wanted to make timbres thematic. To begin the composition, the main theme is presented by a flute solo. Gradually, the remaining woodwinds along with the french horn section begin to "morph" the theme. Over the course of the composition, timbres in all three sections (woodwinds, brass, strings) begin to disintegrate the original theme presented by the flute. This is where the title "Atrophy" originated.

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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the cross-cultural fusion of jazz harmony and Afro Caribbean rhythms. These six compositions were chosen for the composers Master's recital to demonstrate how his writing technique was influenced by his cultural and musical experience during his years of study and performance in the United States and abroad. The instrumentation was chosen to exemplify the fusion of the traditional percussive sounds of Latin music with jazz harmony, melody and improvisation. It is important to note that even though one of the compositions, E.T., is not written in a Latin style, it was nonetheless the product of a Puerto Rican composer, and it exemplifies his influences as a cross-cultural composer and soloist. Scores of the six musical works are provided in an Appendix, and a live recording of the recital is included.

This recital was created with the intention of reconnecting fundamental elements of music that have been estranged from jazz in the last 20 years. The uses of themes, experimentation, original composition, spirituality and social criticism or social commitment have all been pushed aside in the present state of jazz. These elements of music which helped jazz and its popularity have fallen under the shadow of improvisational virtuosity in today’s jazz music. Today jazz is saturated with various personalities, opinions, and world cultures. This new spectrum of possibilities has created numerous frontiers for the future of improvisation. At the same time this new world of music without limitations, specifics, and stylistic constraints is leaving a new generation with unanswered questions about the next step in the evolution of jazz. The Seven Deadly Sins was created as a personal attempt to distill the vital essence of jazz today and present it through a thematic device to a diverse listening audience. The Seven Deadly Sins was composed through the use of singular jazz vocabulary. This limited vocabulary is a personal expression of my outlook on the essence of jazz language and the world jazz explains. Since The Seven Deadly Sins is based on a language, the use of an all-encompassing theme seemed an appropriate step in the direction of creating a greater holistic project. For this means I chose to use the seven deadly sins, a theme created from Christianity in the Middle Ages, and used by numerous writers before this piece. Today, musicians are hostile toward conservative/traditional players, experimentalists, and all types of players in between. This skepticism toward differences has grown out of a survivalist mentality in the present music environment. Jazz today is a style in anarchy. The range of expression has been stretched to include Pat Metheny, Wynton Marsalis, Anthony Braxton, and everyone in between. Musicians who survive today are required to master the fundamentals of be-bop, fusion, latin, pop, sight-reading, MIDI technology, and even classical music. As a result these conditions are creating a generation of moderates that is unable to leap in any one direction, and skeptical of attempts that aren’t well rounded. In the same way that politicians fight for the moderate voters to win an election, jazz musicians are campaigning for the moderate listening audience to stay employed. Out of this interpretation of the present music environment I created this concert as an answer to the questions of the present and future state of jazz.

[No abstract available] / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

The degree of chemical instability of pteridines (related to xanthopterin) and purines (related to uric acid) in seawater was studied with a view (i) to assess its role in the ecological turnover of these compounds in the marine environment, (ii) to define the integrity with which they may serve as nitrogen-source for growth of marine phytoplankters. Solutions of these compounds were incubated aseptically at 20-25°C with illumination from cool-white fluorescent lamps or in complete darkness and the chemical changes were monitored spectrophotometrically. Among the purines tested, uric acid showed slow degradation in darkness which was accelerated by light, while xanthine was degraded only by light. Adenine, guanine and hypoxanthine appeared to be stable. The pteridines tested included pterin (2-amino-4-hydroxy-pteridine), lumazine (2,4-dihydroxypteridine), and their following hydroxylated derivatives: 6-monohydroxyl (xanthopterin, oxylumazine), 7-monohydroxyl (isoxanthopterin), 6,7-dihydroxyl (leucopterin, dioxylumazine). In general, they showed the following order of chemical stability in seawater: 6,7-unsubstituted > 7-monohydroxyl > 6,7-dihydroxyl > 6-monohydroxyl. The studies were extended to investigate whether the instability was due to the pH or the salt composition of seawater and pertinent aspects of the underlying chemistry were explored. In darkness, pterin, lumazine, and isoxanthopterin were completely stable, whilst the other pteridines showed increasing instability in the order shown above. Excepting oxylumazine, all the pteridines showed chemical reactivity in seawater attributed to its pH and not its salt content. On the other hand, oxylumazine showed marked lability in seawater attributable to its salt content and not its pH. This pteridine required minimal concentrations of salt and divalent trace-metal ions (such as Cu²⁺) to show the chemical reactivity observed in sea-water. When the salt present was NaC1 only, oxylumazine showed 1:1 oxidative conversion to dioxylumazine, but with the total salts of seawater the conversion was 2:1 with half of the oxylumazine being degraded, apparently non-oxidatively, to unidentified non-pteridine products; this latter degradation is attributed to the combination of anions present in seawater. Unlike oxylumazine, xanthopterin showed 1:1 oxidative degradation via leucopterin in seawater. In the light, all the pteridines showed greater instability than in darkness but with the same order of influence of substituents on their reactivity. Excepting leucopterin and dioxylumazine, the photolytic reactivity in seawater was attributable to its pH and not its salt content; this was also the case with oxylumazine which had shown anomalous behaviour in darkness. Leucopterin and dioxylumazine (both 6,7-dihydroxylated pteridines) gave evidence of reaction in seawater by formation of chelated complexes between their C₆-, C₇-hydroxyl-groups and the alkaline-earth divalent cations (Ca²⁺ , Mg²⁺ ) of seawater. Such complexation enhanced their photolytic degradation rates to levels achieved by these pteridines at pH 10 in the absence of seawater salts. The photolysis of the 6-hydroxylated pteridines (xanthopterin, oxylumazine) in seawater showed evidence of intermediate formation of the corresponding 6,7-dihydroxylated derivatives. It was concluded that the pteridines and uric acid may undergo considerable chemical turnover, without biological intervention, in the marine environment, whilst the more refractory purines would require biological agencies for significant breakdown and reutilization. / Science, Faculty of / Zoology, Department of / Graduate

Ma Yuan’s ink wash painting series Water Album features seemingly degraded art. Faded ink, yellowed paper, and the residue of time are defining characteristics of her work. However instead of viewing this as damage, I see this loss of information as an integral part of the work. This idea is also the theme of my Water Album works. From the purely physical phenomena to the cultural level, I explore the disappearance of sounds from multiple different prospective and present them in a non-linear way. In 2018-20, I composed four Water Albums, which are ensemble pieces of different instrumentation. Even though they are inspired by Ma Yuan's Twelve Water Albums, they do not point to any specific images. They are more about looking for a tangible connection between the water as a cultural symbol and personal emotions. The theme of the Water Album #4 Realms of Interim is "rippling". On the macroscopic level, there are three layers of time in the piece. These layers correspond to the unknown universe, our time, and the time of the witness (or narrator, who will travel between the time spaces and tell the story). On the microscopic level, the music will expose the fact that all these three layers are indeed interconnected; an event that happens in one layer will affect the others and creating a rippling effect.

Westbrae is a work written for string quartet composed in 2020. The work is approximately eleven minutes long and focuses on the idea of losing one’s perception of time. Throughout the piece, musical gestures quickly crossfade in and out of one another, creating the sense that all materials are coming and going with ease. Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, this piece serves as a reflection of what it is like to be in lockdown and to have days blend together.