Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois, 1963. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-299).

<p> Afro-Brazilian guitarist-composer Baden Powell de Aquino (1937-2000), one of Brazil's earliest and most successful international musicians, is renowned for his inexplicable rhythmic style. This is especially true in the context of instrumental samba, or samba-jazz, which emerged in the late-night music clubs of 1950s-60s Rio de Janeiro. Samba-jazz engages a set of normative expectations: (1) a theme-and-variations performance involving a (2) cyclic scheme of regular and even chord changes comprising (3) a form of often 16 or 32 bars traditionally conceived of as being in duple meter (e.g. 2/4), where (4) improvised variations track the chord changes of the form. Against this recursively even, duple-meter background, Baden's chord-melodic improvisations frequently foreground dotted or asymmetrical rhythms that, in their interaction with the duple frame, suggest uneven periodicities. This study argues that such uneven regularities can, under certain conditions, be defined as metric and as such can be treated as participating in generalized hemiolas of the background form's meter. This two-fold expansion of meter and hemiola leads to the discovery of a much larger and more variegated abstract space constituted by the even and uneven metric possibilities for a given span of musical time. </p><p> This dissertation consists in two complementary projects. The theoretical project expands current theories of meter, hemiola, and metric space, as most recently defined by Richard Cohn (2018), to incorporate Justin London's (2012) theory of non-isochronous meters. The analytical project explores the richness of Baden's rhythmic art&ndash;it's metric implications and relationship to tropes of samba-jazz. </p><p> Through an exploratory analysis of "&Eacute; de lei," Chapter 1 shows why we should and how we can expand current meter theory, while introducing the reader to Baden Powell and his musical context of Brazilian samba and samba-jazz. Chapter 2 is a formal exposition of the expanded theory of meter, hemiola, and metric space. Using the language and representations of mathematical set and graph theories, it builds analogous (to Cohn 2001) analytical models of hemiola and metric space from the ground up upon an expanded and revised definition of meter that allows for both isochrony and well-formed non-isochrony. Through a series of shorter examples, including passages from "Tristeza," "A lenda do Abaet&eacute;," and "Canto de Xang&ocirc;," Chapter 3 defines, contextualizes, and analyzes four of the most prevalent rhythmic tropes of samba-jazz, while building some basic familiarity with the method of the analytical model. Chapter 4 considers larger examples organized around the idea of harmonic quantization, including extended improvisations from "Samba triste," "Conversa de poeta," and "O barquinho." It seeks to understand the metric implications of how Baden in theme-and-variations form can simultaneously support the 2/4 bar-to-bar chord changes required by the harmonic form of the theme while soloing with long extensions of dotted chord-melodies. Chapters 3 and 4 gradually increase the tempo and scope of analysis&ndash;from a few bars to entire form variations. Chapter 5 analyzes an entire recording, the afro-samba "Candombl&eacute;," principally asking how metric change and hemiola influence our perception of musical form, especially in the absence of more traditional form-defining parameters.</p><p>

<p> Throughout his career, Alexander Scriabin created a bridge between traditional romantic harmony and modernistic, chromatic tendencies that ultimately led to the post-tonal era. Scriabin&rsquo;s middle period after Opus 32 displays several examples of his progressive harmony. However, Scriabin&rsquo;s transition into harmonic exploration is quite apparent in his <i>Fantasy in B minor </i>, which was written three years before his middle period is observed. This may demonstrate that Scriabin was developing his harmonic techniques much earlier in his career. </p><p> Furthermore, the thorough documentation of Scriabin&rsquo;s color associations shows that Scriabin conceived his music with a strong integration of sound-color awareness. Many moments in the <i>Fantasy</i> appear to possess relationships between sound and color, which can be found in expanded harmonic techniques and multi-timbral textures within the pianistic writing. This essay will first discuss the existing research completed on Scriabin&rsquo;s harmonic tendencies within earlier works, and then analyze the similar techniques used in the <i>Fantasy</i>. Using previous knowledge gathered about synesthesia, this essay will then examine the connections between Scriabin&rsquo;s perspective on composition and his connection to synesthesia. </p><p> In summary, Scriabin&rsquo;s unconventional voice leading, chromatic harmonic progressions, and altered tertian voicing, will be analyzed in Opus 28. Afterwards, synesthetic and multi-textural analysis will be demonstrated for the purposes of observing Scriabin&rsquo;s exploration of the pianistic soundscape and synesthetic-inspired compositional techniques.</p><p>

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1983. / Vita. Bibliography: leaves [264]-276.

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.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Warburg Institute, University of London, 1982. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 367-383).

Inaugural-Dissertation. / "Curriculum vitae": p. [68]-[69]

Inaugural-Dissertation. / "Curriculum vitae": p. [68]-[69]

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