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This thesis explores musical form and examines the possible relationship between structures of mythology and musical form, especially with modern musical parameters in mind, all based on the ancient structures of myth. One method for working with musical form is also presented, which attempts to show how musical material can be transformed in the confines of this form template. The approach taken to study musical form and to understand and manipulate it in composition work in this thesis attempts to find patterns for musical form outside of established musical concepts. This thesis explores the structure of ancient mythology collected by the American writer Joseph Campbell and draws conclusions between that and musical form, which attempts to showcase the relations between traditional musical forms and ancient structures of myth, and also presents methods of working with these premises in contemporary music.

In the modern euphonium repertoire, a rapidly expanding medium of accompaniment is the use of electronics, and especially live electronics. While the use of electronics can be daunting to new performers, this document aims to build on the established research surrounding electroacoustic solo euphonium works. The first part of the document will familiarize readers with some history and terminology surrounding electroacoustic music and the foundational research for this project. The second part is a performance guide to two commissioned live electroacoustic works: Bitruncation by Lucy Pankhurst, and Shape Shifter by Andrew May. The performance guides include theoretical analyses, an ideal hardware/software set up, and performative suggestions. An updated repertoire list is included in an appendix for performers who wish to discover more electroacoustic music. This list contains publishing or contact information in hopes that performers can more easily access these works.

“I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung” is an aria from the opera “Nixon in China”, written by American composer John Adams in 1987. My interest in contemporary music is driven by the opportunity to engage directly with living composers and the modern relevance of the themes. While searching for a new audition aria, I discovered the role of Chiang Ch’ing, which suits my coloratura soprano voice. This prompted an in-depth study of her historical background, reversing my usual method of learning an aria. This approach allowed for quicker and deeper internalization of the role, demonstrating that understanding a character's context can enhance performance, even without personal empathy. This method improved my connection with the audience and enriched my overall performance. I plan to apply this approach to future roles, whether they are based on historical figures or fictional characters.

This paper presents a discussion of functional silence in contemporary classical music with a particular focus on the music of Salvatore Sciarrino and Jürg Frey, two composers whose drastically-contrasting bodies of work both occupy the interstitial space between the audible and inaudible. To begin, I address three main questions: what are the functions of silence in a musical context, how do the characteristics of a work affect our perception of these silences, and how do these functions relate to our perception of music on the edge of silence. In answering these first two questions, I discuss three categories of silence---temporal, spatial, and gestural---which I use in a silence-centric analyses of Sciarrino's Let me die before I wake, Allegoria della notte, and Infinito Nero, as well as Frey's Streichquarttet III. To further apply these concepts to music on the edge of silence, I provide a fourth category---timbral silence---which describes the perception of absence or silence within the presence of sound and allows for the application of existing functional principles of silence to sounding events. In turn, this allows us to understand the music of Sciarrino and Frey in terms of timbral completion and timbral dissolution, respectively. Having established a theoretical framework for understanding the function of silence, the second half of this paper discusses the composition of A Moment on the In-between, my 2018 work for string quartet, with a focus on the intentional application of these principles of functional silence within the piece.