Minimalist music has now become ubiquitous in film, found in everything from PBS advertisements to big-budget studio movies like A Beautiful Mind. This presents a number of questions: what kind of films use the technique, how does its deployment compare to the classical Hollywood score, and how does it function? This dissertation is intended to address these issues by examining what minimalism has come to mean in films that have become part of popular culture. I detail how the musical technique intersects with the model of the classical Hollywood film score, and, by exploring the film music of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and "nonminimalist" composers, give a history of minimalism's use on the score from its avant-garde origins in the 1960s to its commercial appropriations in the 1990s and 2000s. Utilizing Nicholas Cook's idea of "enabling similarity" from his book Analysing Musical Multimedia and Rebecca Leydon's minimalist tropes from her Music Theory Online article "Toward a Typology of Musical Tropes," I provide detailed analyses of ten films employing minimalist techniques (Koyaanisqatsi, The Terminator, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Solaris, Kundun, A Beautiful Mind, Proof, The Truman Show, Gattaca, and The Thin Blue Line), showing how musical meaning in these films is tied to minimalism's particular stylistic attributes. Through the repeated linkage of minimalism with the Other, the mathematical mind, and dystopia, these meanings have the possibility--like the socially-encoded meanings of the classical score--of becoming enculturated. / text

The study of popular music has experienced an astonishing growth in the past two and a half decades; however, the detailed analysis of musical texts has lagged far behind other areas, such as the sociology of the youth audience and analysis of the visual components of music video. This thesis undertakes a survey of recent approaches to popular music at the textual level, before examining the construction of an individual song, the Beach Boys' 1964 recording of "All Summer Long". While many parameters affecting the creation of the cultural significance of the text in question are discussed, ultimately the exegesis serves to problematize larger issues in scholarly work on popular music, particularly the dominance of the paradigms of rupture, rebellion, and authenticity in relation to the historiography and criticism of the formation known as "rock".

This thesis investigates the theory and practice of song criticism from a primarily literary perspective. It maintains that much contemporary song criticism deals inadequately with the complex relationships between verbal, vocal and musical texts that comprise the three basic elements of the modern song. To justify this claim, and to grasp how the current situation might have arisen, the thesis delves into the history of song and traces its developments. It concludes that modern and classical song differ in ways that the "serious vs. popular" debate do not address: autonomy of authorship, frame of reference, and proper context for interpretation. To remedy this situation, the thesis anatomizes modern song and outlines a "top-down" approach to song criticism with lyrics as the primary frame of reference, supplemented by emotive cues found in the music and vocal performance. Concurrently, the anatomy is put into practice, using examples from the unofficial canon of modern song.

This dissertation traces the history and development of algorithms in musical composition from ca. 1957 to 1993 and attempts to clarify related terminology from the contexts of computer science, information science, and music theory and composition.The first of three sections begins with an extensive definition of the term algorithm. Because this term is relatively new to musical vocabulary, the definition appearing in this dissertation will include both musical and non-musical applications.Historically and currently, there are three major approaches to algorithmic composition with computers: 1) algorithms for sound synthesis; 2) algorithms for compositional structure; and 3) algorithms for the correlation of sound synthesis with structure. Consideration will be given to the latter two approaches, algorithms for the generation of the micro- and macrostructural elements of musical composition.Several different processes exist under the umbrella of algorithmic composition. Included in the body of this dissertation are detailed explanations and descriptions of specific software and hardware from the following processes: stochastic, chaotic, rule-based, grammars, and artificial intelligence.Second, an historical survey of musical compositions and related written literature covering musical and non-musical resources organized into three chapters: 1957-1972, 1973-1982, and 1983-1993. These compositions and written resources have had significant impact on determining how subsequent composers made use of computers for composition.In the third section an annotated study of the algorithmic compositions from ca. 1957-1993 will be presented. Special emphasis has been placed on information garnered from personal correspondence and interviews.Five appendices are devoted to relevant cross-disciplinary information from the fields of computer science, information science, and music theory and composition; included are: 1) a list of terms; 2) an alphabetical listing of algorithmic compositions; 3) a discography; 4) a bibliography of relevant information from the disciplines discussed; and 5) a list of algorithmic computer systems, languages, and programs covered in this research. There is significant overlap in the use of computer algorithms by the scientific and the musical communities, therefore, the inclusion of definitions and terminology is necessary for a deeper understanding of the musical applications. / School of Music

This study is framed by questions about the wider implications of a belief in Boulez's independent indeterminate aesthetic for divergent trends such as Europeanism vs. Americanism, modernism vs. postmodernism and serial structure vs. non-serial structure. In conclusion it suggests that an ongoing tendency toward historical revisionism in Boulez's texts may be a function of the difficulty in articulating an intentional indeterminate aesthetic in light of the serial inheritance.

The concept of World Music is important for the explanation of various twentieth-century musical phenomena but its application to virtually every genre of music creates an inevitable confusion. In the 1980s, World Music was a term useful for describing popular music in fusion with ethnic music. That fact has lead many to an association of the term exclusively with that new genre. In this study I define World Music in Western art-music---from an historical perspective as well as with regard to musical style, ideology, and aesthetics and give examples of various composers' approaches. In the ideological discussion, the debate over "exotic" music and musical borrowings turns out to have many points of contact with the notions of modernism and postmodernism. I exemplify and test my ideas by using the stylistic development of Swedish-Canadian composer Bengt Hambraeus as a case study and discuss ideological and musical applications to the concept of World Music in relation to Hambraeus's piece Nocturnals for Chamber Ensemble (1990).

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, March 2017 / This thesis documents the development and realisation of an augmented instrument, expressed through the processes of artistic practice as research. The research project set out to extend my own creative practice on the guitar by technologically enabling and extending the instrument. This process was supported by a number of creative outcomes (performances, compositions and recordings), running parallel to the interrogation of theoretical areas emerging out of the research. In the introduction I present a timeline for the project and situate the work in the field of artistic practice as research, explaining relationship between the traditional and creative practices. Following on from this chapter one, Notation, Improvisation and the Cyber-Guitar System discusses the impact of notation on my own education as a musician, unpacking how the nature of notation impacted on improvisation both historically and within my own creative work. Analysis of fields such as graphic notation led to the creation of the composition Hymnus Caesus Obcessiones, a central work in this research. In chapter two, Noise, Music and the Creative Boundary I consider the boundary and relationship between noise and music, beginning with the futurist composer Luigi Russolo. The construction of the augmented instrument was informed by this boundary and aimed to bring the lens onto this in my own practice, recognising what I have termed the ephemeral noise boundary. I argue that the boundary line between them yields the most fertile place of sonic and technological engagement. Chapter three focuses on the instrumental development and a new understanding of organology. It locates an understanding of the position of the musical instrument historically with reference to the values emerging from the studies of notation and noise. It also considers the impacts of technology and gestural interfacing. Chapter four documents the physical process of designing and building the guitar. Included in the Appendix are three CDs and a live DVD of the various performances undertaken across the years of research. / XL2018

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