This thesis explores the creation of music for a video game level utilizing industry tools for music compositions as well as level design. Music as an element of game design and its resulting impact is also examined.

The songwriting process, inspiration to song, can take many forms. This project explores a highly structured approach, using themes derived from reported individual experience to direct the creation of musical ends addressing common experience.

This paper examines data from Spotify’s API for 2017-2018 to determine the effects of song attributes on the success of tracks on Spotify’s Top 200 Chart across five different countries: the U.S., Norway, Taiwan, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. Two dependent variables are used to measure the success of a song – a track’s peak position on the charts and the number of days it survives on a country’s Top 200 Chart. Using ten separate regressions, one for each dependent variable in all five countries, it is concluded that the presence of a featured guest on a track increases a song’s peak position and the number of days it survives on the charts in almost every country. Further, songs that are perceived as “happier” are more successful for both metrics in Norway and Taiwan while those that are louder and more aggressive have a shorter lifespan on the charts in three out of five of the countries studied. The paper concludes that further research should be conducted with a larger, more diverse dataset to see if these findings hold and if they are present in other countries as well.

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.

Ēriks Ešenvalds is an early twenty-first century composer who has been commissioned to write works for some of the most noteworthy ensembles in the world. Having written over 100 compositions to date, 72 of which are choral pieces, Ešenvalds is quickly becoming one of the most prolific and significant composers of his time. He currently works as a full-time composer out of Riga, Latvia. Ešenvalds’s choral works are primarily unaccompanied, while some include brass band, saxophone quartet, percussion, or orchestral accompaniment. Textures vary from three to twelve voice parts. His oratorio Passion and Resurrection (2005), written for soprano solo, SATB quartet, SATB chorus, SS soli, and strings, is an amalgamation of compositional techniques drawn from all eras of music history. This project identifies characteristics of Roman Catholic and Byzantine chant that are imitated throughout Passion and Resurrection. A succinct history of both styles is presented along with a detailing of Ešenvalds’s compositional technique and an overview of his oratorio. Aspects of form, melody, text, rhythm, harmony, and texture present in each movement are also discussed. This study provides conductors with insight into the chant-like aspects of Ešenvalds’s work and any influences on performance. Listings of notable Passion settings and Ešenvalds’s choral output are also included.

This dissertation considers the intersection of aurality and visuality in seventeenth-century New Spanish poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s (1648/1651-95) acoustico-poetic discourse. Prior scholarship has focused either on the author’s engagement with Western music theory and compositional practices or else the role of musical references in her works. This has resulted in the marginalization of Sor Juana’s engagement with sound through disciplines that are not strictly musical or poetic, including: acoustics, cognitive theory and visual art. I address these lacunae by considering such concepts as echo, reflection, Ear, Voice, musica poetica (links between music and rhetoric) and musical pathos within the poet’s canon. Throughout my readings, Athanasius Kircher’s encyclopedic musical treatises— Musurgia universalis (1650) and Phonurgia nova (1673), both of which circulated within New Spain during Sor Juana’s lifetime—stand out as important sources by which such ideas were transmitted. My approach sharpens extant scholarship on these topics and identifies two new influences within Sor Juana’s poetic world: Aristotelian theories of cognition and Kircher’s unique position on musica poetica. More generally, this dissertation engages emerging scholarship on Ear in the early modern world and thus responds to the critical limits of ocularcentrism.

Music is a powerful modality that can bring about changes in individuals of all ages. This research employed both an experimental and quasi-experimental design to identify the effects of music as it influenced psychological well-being, memory, and cognition among older adults. Specifically, it addressed three aims: (a) To determine to what extent learning to play a music instrument later in life influenced psychological well-being and cognitive function of non-institutionalized healthy seniors, (b) To determine the effects of the amount of music involvement on psychological well-being and cognitive function (c) To determine the benefit of music for those with limited/no music experience. For the first aim, it was hypothesized that individuals in the experimental music group would maintain and/or improve psychological well-being, memory, and cognitive function more than those assigned to the wait-list control group. For the second aim, it was hypothesized that participants with extensive music involvement would have higher scores on cognitive ability measures and experience greater psychological well-being than those who had not been actively involved in music throughout their life. For the third aim, it was hypothesized that the participants with limited/no music involvement throughout their life would have a larger change on the psychological well-being measures and cognitive assessments than those who had more music involvement. For the experimental portion (Aim 1), the study employed a 6-week music intervention with non-institutionalized older adults. The quasi-experimental portion (Aims 2 & 3) divided participants according to their amount of time involved in music and then looked at psychological well-being and cognitive function. This dissertation did not show a strong connection between music, memory, and cognition so it did not achieve the desired overall results. However, the findings did suggest that music may modify some areas of cognitive function (verbal learning, memory, and retention) and psychological well-being but did not influence other areas (playing a music instrument for any length of time). Therefore, the findings of this dissertation can be a basis upon which future research relating to music, cognitive functioning, psychological well-being and involvement in music can build.

My capstone is a conversation of the Millennial Generation’s views of individual identity and masculinity, with the hopes of deconstructing the socially constructed and exclusive notions of masculinity by defining a generation’s “common sense.” My piece is inspired by the portraiture of Chad States in Masculinities (2011) as well as Loren Cameron’s work in Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits (1996). The theoretical basis of my project relies heavily on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “common sense” as well as José Esteban Muñoz’s disidentification. Common sense refers to an instinctual, “uncritical and largely unconscious way of perceiving and understanding.” It “is a collective noun, like religion” yet it “is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself, enriching itself with scientific ideas and with philosophical opinions which have entered ordinary life.” Furthermore, disidentification is Muñoz’s third mode of dealing with a dominant ideology. This aspect “neither opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather, disidentification is a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology and hegemony. Disidentification works as the negotiating mechanism for common sense because it is against assimilation to mainstream masculinity as well as asks individuals to be their personal identity in spite of what hegemonic masculinity dictates. Thus, I hope to instill a new understanding of the “common sense” of the Millennial Generation, and how the notion of masculinity is personal, fluid, and disidentified.

iGrooving is a generative music mobile application specifically designed for runners. The application’s foundation is a step-counter that is programmed using the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer. The runner’s steps generate the tempo of the performance by mapping each step to trigger a kick-drum sound file. Additionally, different sound files are triggered at specific step counts to generate the musical performance, allowing the runner a level of compositional autonomy. The sonic elements are chosen to promote a meditative aspect of running. iGrooving is conceived as a biofeedback-stimulated musical instrument and an environment for creating generative music processes with everyday technologies, inspiring us to rethink our everyday notions of musical performance as a shared experience. Isolation, dynamic changes, and music generation are detailed to show how iGrooving facilitates novel methods for music composition, performance and audience participation.

This study investigated the application of music as a factor in influencing running pace of runners. Thirty (30) runners of varying ages, paces, and distances run per week were individually tested on two runs: one, with music, using a portable cassette player; the other, without music. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference in actual, as well as perceived, running pace between the experimental conditions. Of the 30 runners: 19 actually increased their pace, 20 runners perceived an increase in running pace, 3 maintained there was no change and 7 felt the music decreased their running pace. In addition, most runners reported that they enjoyed running to music, and felt that it assisted them in diverting attention from the actual run, thereby enhancing the total running experience.