This dissertation focuses upon patterns and concepts of containment within selected Lieder from Hugo Wolf's Mörike collection. More specifically, I focus upon melody as a way of understanding how these found patterns and movements within melodic containers provide meaning. I focus on the melody for two reasons. First, my research here is the first to present such a detailed analysis of the melody. Second, the manuscripts of the Mörike-Lieder indicate that the melodic line was often an important referential point for Wolf. In my analysis, I focus upon six songs: "Der Knabe und das Immlein," "Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag," "Frage und Antwort," "Lebe wohl," "An eine Äolsharfe," and "Das verlassene Mägdlein." Two central questions guide my analysis. First and most important, how can our knowledge of musical patterns reveal meaning within selected songs of the collection? Each song analyzed presents numerous melodic patterns that enhance our understanding of the poems. Second, how can these patterns lead to a better understanding of some of the ways that the individual songs of the collection relate to one another? As we will with the analysis of "Der Knabe und das Immlein," "Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag," "Frage und Antwort," and "Lebe wohl," I propose that these four songs form two pairs. Here, the pair of "Frage und Antwort" and "Lebe wohl" create a newly identified song pair. The analysis follows a four-pronged approach applying Steve Larson's theory of musical forces, Candace Brower's theory of musical meaning, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's cognitive metaphor theory, and Schenkerian analysis. Looking at the Mörike-Lieder from this vantage point will allow us to see how melodies flow in such a way as to suggest motions or metaphors as they relate to the poetic ideas. Known as the "Poet's Composer," I hope to illustrate that Wolf portrayed great sensitivity when setting the poetry and created unique links between specific songs. / 2015-03-29

The last thirty years have seen a resurgence in the research of sonata form. One groundbreaking treatise in this renaissance is James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s 2006 monograph Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata. Hepokoski and Darcy devise a set of norms in order to characterize typical happenings in a late 18th-century sonata. Subsequently, many theorists have taken these norms (and their deformations) and extrapolate them to 19th-century sonata forms. My work aims to characterize Antonin Dvořák’s chamber music in the context of Sonata Theory, using the treatise as a jumping off point in order to analyze his music. This dissertation contains three main chapters. The first chapter deals with two of the themes of this dissertation: form and influence. Schubert’s influence on Dvořák’s music was notable, so after comparing some of Dvořák’s writing about Schubert’s music, I examine specific musical elements (sonic, formal, and structural) from Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, D. 956 that Dvořák emulates in his string quartet in the same key. Chapters 3 and 4 put Dvořák’s sonata form practices into a 19th-century context, and I examine how he treats the MC and EEC sections of an exposition. In Chapter 3, I contend that Dvořák’s use of energy loss before and after the medial caesura is just as rhetorically successful as 18th-century composer’s use of energy gain in the transition section of a sonata. Additionally, many of Dvořák’s sonata forms feature expositions with vastly elongated S themes, thereby pushing rhetorical closure of the exposition back. This is unlike 18th-century sonatas, whose expositions routinely wrap up with a cadence in the second key after the first phrase. Thus, Chapter 4 displays several sonatas where Dvořák extends S-rhetoric in order to delay the close of the exposition. Even though not originally intended for this music, Hepokoski and Darcy’s treatise provides a fruitful set of norms that can be related to works from the 19th century. Additionally, Dvořák’s music is especially appropriate for this treatment, as his compositional style owes many allegiances to 18th-century techniques.

Allen Forte's theory of pitch-class set structure has provided useful tools for discovering structural relationships in atonal music. As valuable as set—theoretic procedures are for composers and analysts, the extent to which set relationships are perceptible by the listener largely remains to be investigated. This study addresses the need for aural-perceptual considerations in analysis, reviews related research in music perception, and poses questions concerning the aural perceptibility of set relationships. Specifically, it describes and presents the results of a computer-assisted experiment in testing the perceptibility of set-equivalency relationships.

Long, I Ian. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese.

The life, music, and theoretical writings of Pietro Pontio (1532-1596) yield considerable insight into questions of theory and practice in the late sixteenth century. The dissertation places Pontio within his musical and cultural milieu, and assesses his role as both theorist and composer. Volume Two presents an annotated works list for Pontio's compositions, transcriptions of archival documents used in the study, and transcriptions of representative musical compositions.

The life, music, and theoretical writings of Pietro Pontio (1532-1596) yield considerable insight into questions of theory and practice in the late sixteenth century. The dissertation places Pontio within his musical and cultural milieu, and assesses his role as both theorist and composer. Volume Two presents an annotated works list for Pontio's compositions, transcriptions of archival documents used in the study, and transcriptions of representative musical compositions.

State-of-the-art models for the perception of grouping structure in music do not attempt to account for disagreements among listeners. But understanding these disagreements, sometimes regarded as noise in psychological studies, may be essential to fully understanding how listeners perceive grouping structure. Over the course of four studies in different disciplines, this thesis develops and presents evidence to support the hypothesis that attention is a key factor in accounting for listeners' perceptions of boundaries and groupings, and hence a key to explaining their disagreements. First, we conduct a case study of the disagreements between two listeners. By studying the justi cations each listener gave for their analyses, we argue that the disagreements arose directly from differences in attention, and indirectly from differences in information, expectation, and ontological commitments made in the opening moments. Second, in a large-scale corpus study, we study the extent to which acoustic novelty can account for the boundary perceptions of listeners. The results indicate that novelty is correlated with boundary salience, but that novelty is a necessary but not su cient condition for being perceived as a boundary. Third, we develop an algorithm that optimally reconstructs a listener's analysis in terms of the patterns of similarity within a piece of music. We demonstrate how the output can identify good justifications for an analysis and account for disagreements between two analyses. Finally, having introduced and developed the hypothesis that disagreements between listeners may be attributable to differences in attention, we test the hypothesis in a sequence of experiments. We find that by manipulating the attention of participants, we are able to influence the groupings and boundaries they find most salient. From the sum of this research, we conclude that a listener's attention is a crucial factor affecting how listeners perceive the grouping structure of music.

An overview on a highly intertwined generative system through Stockhausen's late piece Lichter - Wasser (1998-1999). Lichter - Wasser is a work that constantly attempts to conjugate the contemplation and the paroxism of an ur-element, the so called super formula, with the long sought utopia of the infinite progress of perception faculties (a journey formally began in 1955 with Stockhausen's composition Gruppen, for three orchestral groups).

abstract: This fifteen-minute cyclical mass uses excerpts from the text of the Mass Ordinary and is laid out into five movements and across three different languages: Kyrie (Latin), Gloria (Chinese), Credo (English), Sanctus (Chinese), and Agnus Dei (Latin). Rather than following the tradition of celebrating devotion, this mass tells the story of the abuse of power in political and religious leadership. Movements sung in Latin represent the devout Christian base whose motives and inspiration remain pure and divine. The English movement, Credo, has been altered from the original and represents the manipulation and distortion of scripture, truth, and facts by self-serving leaders and politicians. Finally, Chinese movements represent those who are persecuted for their convictions and their identity. The turmoil of the Chinese movements is characterized by atonality and fast tempos with contrasting, meditative, lyrical B sections. The outer Latin movements contain the familiar Kyrie and Agnus Dei texts in triple canon with the orchestra. The English middle movement is simultaneously familiar and awkward, with harmonies that almost function, under an altered Credo text. After an aria-like passage, the orchestra takes the “I believe” figure and manipulates it in a modal fugato, culminating in a climactic version of the main motive. A repeated double-dotted quarter note—sixteenth-note rhythm followed by a fast tremolo in the castanets make up the central “bangu motive.” This motive is derived from traditional Beijing Opera, in which the bangu is the principal percussion element. As a rhythmic motive, fragments of it appear in every movement and in several different instrument groups. These fragments undergo various transformations before a version of it arrives as the final Agnus Dei rhythmic figure. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Music 2018

Since the late seventeenth century, Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) has been acknowledged as one of the great organists and composers of the North German tradition. Nowadays, his free organ preludes are considered both as examples of the Stylus Phantasticus, and also as the repertoire in which he developed most of his innovations. My goal is to analyze these works, interpreting the preludes' pitch and textural organization in terms of seventeenth-century music theory, in order to incorporate an awareness of the organist's perspective, and to further the appreciation of Buxtehude's contributions to the organ tradition of his time. Most of the analyses of the preludes written during the past 34 years have focused on explicating their texture, and pitch organization in terms of eighteenth-century tonality as well as the seventeenth-century tradition of musical rhetoric. In contrast, William Porter (1986) and Geoffrey Webber (2007) have analyzed the preludes in terms of a theoretical system contemporary to Buxtehude: the psalm-tone tonalities. Their analyses also draw on Harold Powers's theory (1981) regarding the transition from psalm tones to keys, which proposes an alternative system of church tones based on the organ practice of the early seventeenth century. In my analysis of Buxtehude's free organ preludes I aim to build on these insights and study the musical content in contemporary terms, by integrating a church-tone analysis of the pitch organization with a rhetorical analysis of the texture. My findings suggest an awareness of the church tones as an organizing factor in the preludes' compositional process.