My work has a strong formal quality and a deep relation to minimalism without ever buying into it. Through tension and inserting my personal experience into the making of the work, but not always within the meaning of the work, I leave the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

Post-minimalist American composer Julius Eastman's residency at Northwestern University in 1980 provides a rare opportunity to mitigate, if not eliminate, the problems involved in defining his compositional style. Eastman occupies a complex and unlikely position in late twentieth-century music as an openly gay, African-American composer of serious art music who both a member of the Creative Associates at SUNY Buffalo as well as participated in the diverse musical culture of Downtown New York. Eastman's surviving scores are notated in a fragmentary and idiosyncratic fashion and the composer's outrageous personality left few people with whom he worked closely or on a regular basis. However, scores of three of Eastman's works survive. Crazy Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerilla were performed on January 16, 1980, as the culmination of Eastman's residency at Northwestern. Eastman's use of inflammatory was influenced by the political timeframe of their composition, particularly black cultural narratives and the state of gay rights conflict in the era between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis. Drawing upon newspaper reports, early scholarship on Eastman's biography, and interviews with concert participants, this thesis documents the rehearsal process and the controversy surrounding the titles of the works. For Members Only, the black student organization at Northwestern, protested advertisements of the concert in the midst of their own conflict with the student government. A viable analytical framework for Eastman's works draws from the techniques of earlier minimalist theorists, including John Roeder's adaptation of set theory. Crazy Nigger, the earliest and longest of the three works, provides to be the least complex example of Eastman's "vertically additive process." Whereas composer Philip Glass extends an original melodic kernel by adding notes horizontally, Eastman adds notes vertically to create increasingly dense textures. Evil Nigger's use of the process is more complicated, introducing additional elements such as ostinati and de-emphasizing the kind of sectional form found in Crazy Nigger. In Gay Guerilla, the last of the three works to be composed, Eastman totally obscured any salient perception of form by eliding several simultaneous occurrences of the vertically additive process and introducing a quotation of the Lutheran chorale "Ein feste Burg." With these three analysis, a more generalized concept of Eastman's compositional style thus consists of his vertically additive process, the introduction of modernist harmony into minimalist technique, the use of hendecachords (11-note sets), a gradual dissolution with the sectional form dominant in concert-length minimalist works, and a move away from post-modernity that Eastman termed "organic music."

This thesis includes an Introduction, which explains some of the ideas and procedures involved in a series of compositions I produced during the period from October, 2008 through November, 2011, a discussion of the works themselves individually and in roughly the same chronological order in which they were composed, and a summary of Conclusions which may be drawn. Included as an Appendix are texts for reference while listening to the vocal works. Complete scores of the works with representative recordings make up the main body of the thesis, except in the case of the solo piano suite Equilibria, where the score is included but the work remained unrecorded at the time of submission. Ideas discussed include some which unite or distinguish the processes of musical improvisation with/from more methodical modes of composition. Also the theme of musical collaboration is considered in contrast to the notion of the composer who works – or appears to work – in isolation. Research into traditions of music is regarded as important to compositional practice overall. Among the Conclusions is that my own orientation to these ideas places me in the category of post-minimalist composers. Throughout this discussion I have involved commentary from other relevant and important thinkers, critics and composers.

After the strict processes of mid-twentieth-century minimalism, a new musical style has emerged which retains extensive use of repetition, but is generally more aurally accessible, based in non-functional triadic harmony, and flexible in its compositional structure. Frequent use of non-minimalist resources, musical resources from multiple styles in a single composition, and quotation from previous historical periods define this flexibility. American choral music has many popular compositions that exhibit characteristics of this new musical style, in part because of its accessibility relative to earlier minimalist styles, and in part because it adapts easily to the choral setting. At the same time, teaching this music to choirs requires resources that are not in standard-practice choral pedagogy textbooks or peer-reviewed choral journals. This monograph utilizes newer research in musical analysis and several recent writings attempting to generalize the postminimalist style to develop a definition of choral postminimalism. Then, this monograph also suggests analytical approaches and resources for choral warm-ups, score preparation, and other pedagogical tools for three pieces: Arvo Pärt’s The Beatitudes, Nico Muhly’s Bright Mass with Canons, and Tarik O’Regan’s The Ecstasies Above.

<p>Dematerialiseringen av konsten är inget nytt fenomen, den har pågått länge. Under konceptkonsten ansåg många att konsten är en idé och tankeprocess som inte alltid behöver materialiseras. I samtidskonsten är verken allt oftare virtuella eller relationella och nomadism och impermanens betraktas som progressiva egenskaper. Dematerialiseringen av konsten är parallell med annan dematerialiserande samhällsutveckling och immateriell form utvecklas på internet och i virtuella världar. </p><p>Konstens dematerialising för med sig förändrade konstnärsroller. Det handlar inte längre om att skapa konstobjekt utan om att ställa frågor och finna nya kontexter för konsten. Konstnären agerar som kritiker, nomad, curator, etnograf, sociolog och virtuell kreatör. </p><p>Verk som exemplifierar konstens dematerialisering diskuteras i uppsatsen liksom de konsekvenser verkens genomförande får. Teorier om hur konstinstitutionerna kan komma att se ut i framtiden och hur den dematerialiserade konsten kan kategoriseras, återskapas och presenteras för kommande generationer behandlas.</p><p>Konstens utveckling hänger samman med det politiska och sociala klimat som råder i samhället. Konsten försöker stå fri men även de mest radikala konstformer fångas upp och integreras i institutioner som tar över och normaliserar dem.</p>

Dematerialiseringen av konsten är inget nytt fenomen, den har pågått länge. Under konceptkonsten ansåg många att konsten är en idé och tankeprocess som inte alltid behöver materialiseras. I samtidskonsten är verken allt oftare virtuella eller relationella och nomadism och impermanens betraktas som progressiva egenskaper. Dematerialiseringen av konsten är parallell med annan dematerialiserande samhällsutveckling och immateriell form utvecklas på internet och i virtuella världar. Konstens dematerialising för med sig förändrade konstnärsroller. Det handlar inte längre om att skapa konstobjekt utan om att ställa frågor och finna nya kontexter för konsten. Konstnären agerar som kritiker, nomad, curator, etnograf, sociolog och virtuell kreatör. Verk som exemplifierar konstens dematerialisering diskuteras i uppsatsen liksom de konsekvenser verkens genomförande får. Teorier om hur konstinstitutionerna kan komma att se ut i framtiden och hur den dematerialiserade konsten kan kategoriseras, återskapas och presenteras för kommande generationer behandlas. Konstens utveckling hänger samman med det politiska och sociala klimat som råder i samhället. Konsten försöker stå fri men även de mest radikala konstformer fångas upp och integreras i institutioner som tar över och normaliserar dem.

In his Southern Harmony collection, William Duckworth extracts existing material from shape-note hymns found in William Walker's 1835 publication A Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. He then applies minimalist and postminimalist processes to this material to create innovation choral compositions. This document provides a comprehensive analysis of the methods used to construct all twenty works in Duckworth's collection by tracing the extracted source material through the fabric of the new compositions. This study provides substantial evidence of Duckworth's place as a pioneer of the postminimalist genre. It also provides a discussion on the vocal implications of utilizing shape-note hymns as source material as traditional performances of the genre are typically associated with a unique vocal style.

A text about the difficulties of letting go of worries and forgiving oneself. This is discussed through the practice of mindfulness and the ritual as an artistic process. Dedicating time and acknowledging the present generates presence, visible in the artistic objects. The method of Collage reflects this through piece by piece building stronger artwork and a stronger self.

Though we may not perceive it, we are surrounded by material-in-flux. Inert materials degrade and the events that comprise our natural and social environments causally thread into a duration that unifies us in our incomprehension. Sounds reveal ever-present vibrations of the landscape: expressions of the flexuous ground on which we stand.