Thesis--Columbia University. / Includes bibliographical references.

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Inaug.-Diss.--Berlin. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 112-115.

This thesis introduces a web of concepts to analyse Brahmsian metre and move toward a more nuanced understanding of metrical expression and narrative in his music. Recent analytical studies of metre in common-practice Western classical music have utilised a powerful analogy of consonance and dissonance between tonal and metrical dimensions. More theoretical studies, particularly of Brahms's music, have investigated how metrical states can be systematised, both abstractly and by Brahms, to create a sense of tonicity. This thesis synthesises and extends these approaches. Metrical dissonance is suggested to offer only an insufficient purchase on Brahms's metrical style, and the concept of accentual counterpoint is suggested as an alternative that gives fuller power to the explication of Brahms's metrical complexity, but without reducing that complexity. The complexity of metrical states that Brahms employs, in turn, is explored. Brahms's path to the composition of extraordinary metrical complexity in his Op. 78 violin sonata shows both his increasing systematisation of metrical states and his increasing ability to separate and manipulate metrical accent-types, the latter supporting the concept of accentual counterpoint. That metre has expressive power invites the concept of metrical narrative. An attempt is made to unite a recent theory of musical narrative with metrical analysis, inviting readings of different narrative archetypes within Brahms's metrical trajectories, with a focus on non-romantic narratives as a complement to traditional readings of unity. The pitch-metre analogy, and particularly the typicality of tonicity in metrical organisation, is problematised by those works by Brahms that begin and end in different notated metres. These instances, apparent manifestations of directional metre, are analysed, principally using the theories of hypermetre, metrical dissonance, metrical states and accentual counterpoint, with the hypothetical concepts of organisation (directional metre, metrical narrative and metrical tonicity) as interactive heuristics. Moving from organisation back to expression, the thesis closes by exploring a problem within current theories of form and phrase structure: the difference between musical expansion and extension. It highlights a metrical manifestation of this created as an effect of accentual counterpoint, dubbed metrical expansiveness, and examines the interaction of this effect with form and narrative.

In the field of musicology, most commentators agree that the late style of Gabriel Faure is highly contrapuntal. At the same time, no systematic or generally accepted methodology exists for the discussion of the way in which Faure combines individual lines, except for Robert Orledge's brief enumeration of Faure's preferred procedures with respect to such things as time and interval of entry. In this thesis, I develop a method for examining counterpoint in selected songs from the late-style song cycle, La Chanson d'Eve. This is based on historical information concerning Faure's education, his pedagogical habits, and his comments concerning the composition of Penelope which was written during the same time period as the songs. This methodology is then applied to an examination of the interaction between the voice and piano, something Orledge has referred to as the "Themeless Contrapuntal Duet." Since Faure himself claimed that he combined motives according to the poetic context, I have also tried to show instances in which their content may be influenced by the text. Finally, I show how these cells of simultaneously sounding motives may be used to create a larger sense of form.

Inaug.-Diss.--Leipzig. / Vita. "Quellennachweis für die Notenbeispiele": p. 126-129. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 124-125.

Sunken Monadnock is a scripted combination of three modular musical surfaces. The word “surface” is borrowed from Morton Feldman, who compared the aural surface of music to the canvases of the action painters of the American Abstract Expressionists, and contrasted it with the work’s subject, or organizational structure. Composers’ transition toward a focus on surface through indeterminate compositional techniques, according to Feldman, parallels the development of modernist abstract art. “Sunken Monadnock: Composing with Visual Metaphors” is a companion critical essay that takes the surface/subject metaphor as a starting point for analyzing Sunken Monadnock.Other visual metaphors that inspired Sunken Monadnock, and are discussed in the essay, include Shakir Hassan Al Said’s mystical semiotics, Jasper Johns’s crosshatch prints, and Wassily Kandinsky’s theory of abstraction. The circle and spiral, especially, play influential roles in Sunken Monadnock as reflected by musical applications of repetition, rotation, compression/rarefaction, and endlessness. The void in the circle’s center also comes into play. The nature of the work’s formal counterpoint requires an innovative approach to the score, which consists of five sections, each of which reflects a different approach to the aural surface (i.e., to the traversal of time). The two outer sections are traditionally scored, but the three sections in the middle—labeled “Surfaces” are played simultaneously by three subsets of the ensemble. The piece is approximately 22 minutes long.

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A new analytical tool called “voice-leading class” is introduced that can quantify on an angular scale any transformation mapping one pitch dyad onto another. This method (based on a concept put forth by Dmitri Tymoczko) can be applied to two-voice, first-species counterpoint or to single-voice motivic transformations. The music of Béla Bartók is used to demonstrate the metric because of his frequent use of inversional symmetry, which is important if the full range of the metric’s values is to be tested. Voice-leading class (VLC) analysis applied to first-species counterpoint reveals highly structured VLC frequency histograms in certain works. It also reveals pairs of VLC values corresponding to motion in opposite directions along lines passing through the origin in pitch space. VLC analysis of motivic transformations, on the other hand, provides an efficient way of characterizing the phenomenon of chromatic compression and diatonic expansion. A hybrid methodology is demonstrated using Segall’s gravitational balance method that provides one way of analyzing textures with more than two voices. A second way is demonstrated using a passage from Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Finally, the third movement of the String Quartet #5 is analyzed. Families of geometrically related VLC values are identified, and two are found to be particularly salient because of their relationship to major and minor thirds, intervals which play an important role in the movement. VLC values in this movement are linked to contour, form, motivic structure, pitch-class sets and pitch centricity, and are thus demonstrated to be useful for understanding Bartók’s music and the music of other composers as well.