Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, 2007. / System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-86).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 293-296) and discography (leaves 297-298).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1981. / Typescript. Vita. Vol. 2 contains musical transcriptions. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-210).

The fact that Davis changed his mind radically several times throughout his life appeals to the curiosity. This thesis considers what could be one of the most important and definitive changes: the change from hard bop to modal jazz. This shift, although gradual, is best represented by and culminates in Kind of Blue, the first Davis album based on modal style, marking a clear break from hard bop. This thesis explores the motivations and reasons behind the change, and attempt to explain why it came about. The purpose of the study is to discover the reasons for the change itself as well as the reasons for the direction of the change: Why change and why modal music?

It is not uncommon to read claims of music’s ability to affect our sense of time and its rate of passage. Indeed, such effects are often considered among the most distinctive and prized aspects of musical aesthetics. Yet when it comes to the similarly abstract notion of space and its manipulation by musical structures, theorists are generally silent. My dissertation addresses this gap in the literature and shows how music’s spatial effects arise through an affective engagement with musical works. In this study, I examine an eclectic selection of compositions to determine how the spaces we inhabit are transformed by the music we hear within them. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodied perception, as well as research on acoustics, sound studies, and media theory, I deploy an affective model of spatial perception—a model that links the sense of space with the moment-to-moment needs and desires of the perceiver— to explain how these musical modulations of space occur. My claim is that the manner in which the music solicits our engagement affects how we respond, which in turn affects what we perceive. I begin by discussing the development of recording technology and how fixed media works deemed “spatial music” reinforce a particular conception of space as an empty container in which sound sources are arrayed in specific locations relative to a fixed listening position. After showing how innovative studio techniques have been used to unsettle this conventional spatial configuration, I then discuss examples of Renaissance vocal music, instrumental chamber music, and 20th century electronic music in order to develop a richer understanding of the range of spatial interactions that musical textures and timbres can provide. In my final chapter, I draw upon these varieties of affective engagement to construct a hermeneutic analysis of the spatial experience afforded by Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, thereby modeling a phenomenological method for grounding interpretation in embodied, rather than strictly discursive, practices. By soliciting movement through the call for bodily action, music allows us an opportunity to fit together one world of possibilities with another, thereby providing an occasion for grasping new meanings presented through the work. The spatial aspect of music, therefore, does not consist in merely recognizing an environmental setting populated by individual sound sources. Through the embodied practices of music perception and the malleability of space they reveal, we are afforded an opportunity to reshape our understanding of the world around us.

There are certain recordings by important artists such as Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Pedro Iturralde, Chick Corea, and Paco de Lucía, among others, that have been associated with the label flamenco jazz. This label is entering jazz discourse, and it needs to be better understood in order to clarify its history, its identity, and its impact on recent developments in flamenco that are labeled nuevo flamenco. There is a lack of agreement in the existent literature on flamenco jazz on the evaluation of these recordings and these artists' achievements and contributions to this field. These writings encompass authors from different backgrounds: journalists, critics, and musicologists, who have approached their analysis of the recordings from different perspectives. The differences in professional backgrounds, approaches, and purpose of the writings of these authors has resulted in controversy about this label. Therefore, the flamenco jazz scholarly conversation needs more objective writings from an analytical point of view. This historiographical study presents a more comprehensive evaluation of flamenco jazz by discussing selected recordings using analytical tools from jazz studies. These analytical arguments clarify the aesthetics of flamenco jazz and the artistic processes that these artists went through when combining musical elements from flamenco and jazz, which in some cases are described as creative misreading. In this century of cultural globalization, where jazz has become a diverse expression of world music because of its capacity to absorb traits from other musical practices, this study can be a resource for international jazz musicians who are seeking to combine jazz with their musical cultural heritage.