Since the 1950s, composers worldwide have explored the use of the trombone in new and exciting ways, from expanding the functional range of the instrument to creating unique timbres through the use of mutes and extended techniques. Since then, many standard works in the literature have been born from this pushing of the envelope from composers like John Cage, Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, and Daniel Schnyder. On the forefront of the newest crop of composers expanding the voice of the trombone is Tyler Kline (b. 1991). This project will function as a formal analysis and performer’s guide to his 2015 work render for bass or tenor trombone and fixed electronics. Through examination of this music, as well as a discussion with the composer and performances of this work, the performer will gain insight into the inspirations behind this work, Kline’s compositions on the whole, as well as performance considerations for this work. In addition to the performance guide, a recording of render, as well as several other works of Kline’s, will be produced and released as an album through New Branch Records in Lexington, KY.

Songwriters have been creating music for the church for hundreds of years. The songs have gone through many stylistic changes from generation to generation, yet, each song has generated congregational participation. What measurable, traceable qualities of congregational songs exist from one generation to the next? This document explores the history and development of Congregational Christian Song (CCS), to discover and document the similarities between seemingly contrasting styles of music. The songs analyzed in this study were chosen because of their wide popularity and broad dissemination among non-denominational churches in the United States. While not an exhaustive study, this paper reviews over 200 songs spanning 300 years of CCS. The findings of the study are that songs that have proven to be successful in eliciting participation all contain five common elements. These elements encourage congregations to participate in singing when an anticipation cue is triggered and then realized. The anticipation/reward theory used in this study is based on David Huron’s ITPRA (Imagination-Tension-Prediction-Reaction-Appraisal) Theory of Expectation. This thesis is designed to aid songwriters and music theorists to quickly identify whether a CCS can be measured as successful (i.e., predictable).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität Oldenburg, (2006?). / Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-315).

Spanning the first seven centuries of Christianity, this paper explores how Eastern Christian and Byzantine hymn chant was developed alongside pagan and Jewish worship traditions around the Near East. Comparison of hymns by Christian composers such as St. Romanos the Melodist and pagan poetry reveals many similarities in the types of metaphorical imagery used in both religious expressions. Common in Christian hymn texts, well-known metaphors, like the “Light of God,” are juxtaposed with pagan mythological gods, such as Apollo and Helios. This paper attempts to explain how and why Christians appropriated and adopted ancient pagan imagery into the burgeoning musical tradition of Christian hymn singing.

Die Arbeit „Zur Dualität zwischen doppelter Periodizität und binärer Intervall-Struktur in der Theorie der Tonregionen” gibt zunächst einen Überblick über die Arbeiten Norman Careys und David Clampitts zu dem von ihnen selbst eingeführten Terminus der Tonregionen. Im Anschluss werden Zusammenhänge zur mathematischen Disziplin der Algebraischen Kombinatorik aufgezeigt und somit in einen erweiterten Kontext gestellt.

Detta är en studie om lärande- och skapandeprocesser. Mer specifikt innefattar studien en observation av hur jag arrangerar 3 låtar för olika instrument under en tidsbestämd period. De frågor som behandlas är vilka tekniker jag använder, vilka problem som uppstår och hur det fungerar att arrangera på tid. Slutsatsen av hela observationen har visat att det är en bredd av faktorer som samspelar i kompositionsprocessen. Det har visat sig att jag applicerar intuition, diskursivt tänkande, musikteoretisk teknik och erfarenhet i arrangeringen av musik. Observationen är till stor del belyst av det fenomenologiska perspektivet och fenomenologisk metod används i analysen av mitt observerade material. / This is a study about learning and creative processes. More specifically, the study contains an observation of how I arrange three songs for different instruments within a specific time limit. The questions that are accounted for in this study are what techniques I use, which problems arise and how the time limit affects the result. The result of this study shows that a variety of factors are present during my composition/arranging process. It shows that I apply intuition, discursive thinking, music theoretical techniques, and experience in the field of arranging music. The observation is, to some extent, analysed from phenomenological perspective.

Film musicology is growing at a heartening pace, but the discipline is still bereft of sustained contributions from music theory. The current study seizes the opportunity presented by the underanalyzed repertoire of film music, offering an argument for applying the techniques of transformational analysis, and neo-Riemannian analysis in particular, to the interpretation of music for the moving image. Film musical style and form respond strongly to a transformational approach, which adapts well to both the triadic chromaticism characteristic of Hollywood’s harmonic practice and the dynamic and contingent condition of musical design inherent to the medium. Concurrently, the analytic tools and conceptual structure of neo-Riemannian theory benefit from exposure to a fresh repertoire with different analytic needs than those of art music. In this dissertation, the author scrutinizes the capacity for tonality to act as a unifying and dramatically potent force in film. With parameters of effective cinematic tonal design established, the adapted transformational methodology responds faithfully to the expressive and temporal qualities of the soundtrack. The author develops a model for harmonic associativity and a general hermeneutics of transformation, extrapolated from analyses of scores from John Williams, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and many others. The power of the transformational approach to capture tonal phenomena through spatial representations is marshaled to perform critical readings of scores for A Beautiful Mind and Star Trek. Not only can the neo-Riemannian stance illuminate the way film music works, but it can train the listener and analyst to perceive and enjoy film with more sensitive ears. / Music

Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (1650) was one of the largest and most widely circulated works of music theory in the seventeenth century. Although his reputation has waned over the centuries, Kircher was a leading intellectual figure of his day, authoring dozens of treatises on a multitude of topics and corresponding with scholars from around the world. Kircher’s central place within the world of learning resulted in a unique perspective on music theory and musical practice within the seventeenth century. The present study investigates a number of topics from Kircher’s music treatise and provides context from within the intellectual discourse of the time. The first chapter explores the seventeenth-century conception of encyclopedias, as well as the possible meanings associated with an encyclopedia musica, a novel term Kircher uses in his preface to describe Musurgia. Kircher’s attempt to describe all that was known about music, from highly speculative theories to the most utilitarian compositional tools, results in a complex blend of philosophical and practical elements. The middle chapters disentangle a few strands from this web of ideas, tracing the development of Pythagorean traditions and speculative music theory, as well as changing attitudes regarding empirical and occult methodologies in the early modern period. The final chapter concerns Kircher’s central goal for Musurgia, an algorithmic method based on the ars combinatoria and the emerging mathematical field of combinatorics that would allow anyone to compose musical settings, including the setting of texts in any poetic meter and in any language. Kircher’s arca musurgica—a device that contained tables to generate music—was in effect a distillation of the rules of harmony and counterpoint in the seventeenth century. Its underlying syntax of standard four-part progressions stands at the juncture between old and new ideologies of music theory and composition. / Music

The idea that music acts in part as a vehicle for meaning is a truism in both popular reception and music scholarship. The language used to speak and to write about music is replete with words that describe it metaphorically. Melodies descend; rhythms speed up; timbre is smooth. Certainly, we use these terms for communicative facility, yet by applying this language to music, we create metaphors that, according to Ludwig Wittgenstein, act as frames that direct interpretation. In the paper, I put forth a theory that views metaphor as the process of semantic transfer or substitution in which a non-musical concept stands in for a musical feature, effectively enabling us to hear music as more than simply sound. The use of certain metaphors receives inspiration from previously heard music, programs, a perceived similarity with non-musical phenomena, or a combination of these. The methodology that I propose coordinates these metaphors—places them within a single frame—and enables them to interact with one another and to create a more palpable musical experience for the listener. I use Chopin's E minor and A major preludes from Op. 28 as the primary models for expounding this hermeneutic. / text

This essay aims to explore acoustiographies of the interior and interpret the cultural impressions that they perpetuate. While I do consider the conventional iconographies of headphones and full-body suits (e.g., spacesuits) that filmmakers employ as tools to focalize a character’s internal subjectivity, acoustiographies often supersede or occur in lieu of such visual symbols. While the acoustiography of “leakage” symbolizes the disparity between the self-perception of the self and the social perception of the self, that of “head sound” aims at placing the audience inside the head of a given character by positioning the point of audition as if it were emanating from the character’s head. Leakage is a diegetic sound that is somewhat obscured or filtered by some barrier blocking the sound’s full frequency emission, whereas sound effects or music seemingly sounding from inside a character’s head, as for example through headphones, represent head sound. These acoustiographies of leakage and head sound play a crucial role in the filmic expression of a character’s interiority, which they accomplish through their ability to physically represent interior space, but also figuratively represent a character’s subjectivity. / text