Both of the Chopin concertos are the earliest of his works to be found in the ordinary piano repertoire, and they possess the direct influences and inherited traits of the composer. Since he did no more orchestral work after completing these two works, it is evident that he thought only in terms of pianistic expression. Probably one of the reasons for Chopin's ineffectiveness as an orchestral writer is due to his inability to conform to the classical form: sonata allegro. The e minor concerto is representative of his treatment of the larger forms. Analyzing the elements of an early work of the composer reveals the degree of maturity in individual traits. Elements of basic chord structure and use of harmony, melodic characteristics, and pianistic expression mark the style of a composer. This concerto demonstrates the beginning of chromatic harmony in his time and in his own writing; it contains melodic beauty and pianistic features which make it acceptable in standard concerto repertoire in spite of its many defects.

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A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science / This thesis examines how emotion is conveyed in music from different eras, and attempts to reconcile differences between psychological and music-theoretical approaches. Chapter 1 introduces the concepts embodied by the two manuscripts within this thesis. Chapters 2 and 3 describe two separate but related complimentary research projects. Chapter 2, entitled “Breaking with Common Practice: Exploring Modernist Musical Emotion”, compares perceived emotion in prelude sets by D. Shostakovich, F. Chopin, and J.S. Bach. This work seeks to clarify the relationship between historic changes in music’s structure and conveyed emotion, particularly in the twentieth century–which remains largely unexplored. Building on previous work, we used commonality analysis to break down the unique and joint contributions of various cues to perceived emotion and provide insight into their changing roles in the twentieth century. The work described in Chapter 3, “Cleaning up our work: Applying decision hygiene to analysis of musical structure”, was inspired by previous attempts in diverse fields (e.g., medicine, judicial sentencing) to resolve unwarranted disagreement, and used a novel procedure to distinguish genuine disagreement from disagreement that is not reflective of true differences of opinion amongst music theorists. Unlike other fields involving judgement, individual theorists’ unique perspectives are valuable. Therefore, rather than forcing inauthentic agreement, our procedure clarified and enhanced individual perspectives in musical analysis. Taken together, the research described in Chapters 2 and 3 bridge the gap between epistemologically different approaches to disseminating musical knowledge–cognition and theory. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Music’s expressive capabilities has inspired scholarship from psychology, music theory, musicology, and philosophy for centuries. Although research in psychology has produced consensus about how certain musical elements contribute to its emotional meaning, musicological research shows that music’s structure evolved across history. Little research has explored emotional communication in music from the twentieth century, raising important questions about how emotion is conveyed in the music of our time. This oversight may contribute to continuing disagreement between music psychologists and music theorists on how music’s structure affects its perceived meaning. Thus, by bridging the gap between theory and cognition, this thesis aims to: (i) shed light on the role of music’s evolving structure–particularly in the twentieth century–on perceived emotion; and (ii) reduce error in music analysis while preserving valuable differences in theorists’ perspectives through applying a novel method inspired by optimized decision-making procedures.

This essay examines women's choir music from a musical perspective, to give contrast to the several previous cultural and sociological studies. The method used was a combination of literature study, an interview with former women’s choir founder and conductor Robert Sund and a music analysis of five different women’s choir pieces. The analysis showed that the sound and compositional practices in the genre stems from the challenges of the genre historically, and the uniqueness of the woman’s voice and the woman itself. Examples of these are compositional techniques like close voicings, challenging the range of the singers, or music put to lyrical themes of, for example, feminism. The challenges to the genre are something that has evolved it in the last 40 years, and in some cases things that will possibly evolve both women’s choir music further and choir music in general in the future.

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Das überschaubare Cembalowerk von Iannis Xenakis ist aus musikanalytischer Perspektive ergiebig. Gerade sein erstes (Khoaï, 1976) und letztes (Oophaa, 1989) Werk für Cembalo zeigen auf, wie unterschiedlich er mit dem performativen Aspekt seiner Musik kompositorisch umgegangen ist. Während in Khoaï zahlreiche Überlegungen zur Spielbarkeit mit einflossen, was gerade anhand der Stellen, die Xenakis aus seinen beiden Klavierwerken Erikhthon (1974) und Evryali (1973) übertrug, deutlich wird, konzentrierte er sich bei Oophaa eher auf das dem Werk zugrundeliegende Konstruktionsprinzip und die architektonische Struktur des Werks, was in unspielbaren Stellen resultierte. Der Beitrag zeigt diese dem Werk Xenakis’ inhärente Dichotomie analytisch auf und untersucht aufgrund dessen zwei interpretatorische Lösungsvorschläge für Oophaa. Der Aspekt der Spielbarkeit bzw. Performance-Überlegungen auf Seiten des Komponisten werden somit als einen die Analyse mitbestimmenden Parameter ernst genommen. / The small harpsichord oeuvre of Iannis Xenakis yields a great deal of insight from a musicanalytical perspective. Especially his first (Khoaï, 1976) and last (Oophaa, 1989) works for harpsichord show how differently he dealt with the performative aspects. Whereas in Khoaï, numerous considerations regarding playability were incorporated, which becomes particularly evident in the passages that Xenakis transferred from his two piano works Erikhthon (1974) and Evryali (1973), in Oophaa, he concentrated more on the underlying construction principle and the architectural structure of the work, which resulted in unplayable passages. This contribution analytically demonstrates this dichotomy inherent in Xenakis’ work and, based on this, examines two proposed performative solutions for Oophaa. Thus, the aspect of playability, or performance considerations on the part of the composer, are taken seriously as a parameter contributing to the analysis.