last goodnight amidst Superior fog (for sinfonietta and fixed media) explores one recorded sound, analyzed at three increasingly quiet amplitude thresholds. From these analyses, I created three harmonic collections, each comprised of the thirty loudest tones under the chosen amplitude thresholds. Although a re-synthesis of the first collection sounds very similar to the actual acoustic model, the quieter collections point less clearly to an identifiable source. While a computer can show us that these tones exist in the source, what is their role in our perception of the sound? Do they create a background to the loudest tones, adding subtleties that make the sound unique? Or are they beyond our perception, filtered out by our psychological and physiological limitations, and only evident through technological means, like the observation of ultraviolet light? With these questions in mind, I wrote this piece to explore the ambiguous space between these two realities: one close to our perception, and one far from it. We spend much of our lives saying goodbye. Each of these moments is a threshold between two states of being. Through this piece, I seek to place the listener in this point of transition – a situation in which they are perpetually moving on, but in a sense, not moving at all. Uncertain of boundaries, a process may be perceived as unified - as if observing a single moment from many perspectives.

<p>Bilaga: 1 CD</p>

Generations 3.1 is a musical composition for improvisers, chamber orchestra, two-channel audio playback, and video. It is part of the generations series, a collection of works in which newer pieces are made by combining and/or reinterpreting older ones. generations 3.1 uses material from generations 0 (stereo audio), generations 1.1 (audiovisual fixed media), generations 1.2 (chamber orchestra and audio playback), and generations 2.1 (video and improvisers). Formally, generations 3.1 expands the duration of its predecessors by deconstructing their shared timeline, reordering and elongating sections, as well as introducing new interludes. The experimental video of generations 3.1 was created by Timothy David Orme, while the text instructions for the improvisers were greatly influenced by my work with Wombat, an improvisation trio consisting of Justin K. Comer on saxophone, Will Yager on double bass, and myself on electric guitar and electronics. The four layers of the piece (improvisers, chamber orchestra, audio playback, and video) have distinct roles. The audio and the orchestra almost always sound together and complement each other, and they either support or create sections to contrast the improvisers. The improvisers act as soloists, playing alone or over the other musical layers, and respond to the video, observing its mood, energy, and timing. The video works as the main thread through the piece, providing a path interrupted by interludes. Its visual content is set to music by the other three layers. However, all these roles are somewhat flexible during the piece. My main goal with the generations series was to explore the process of writing works derived from older ones, reusing my own music to produce new compositions. Moreover, by collaborating with other artists, the same material can be reinterpreted through different disciplines and perspectives. The name “generations” connects the creative process that happens throughout the series to the idea of humans passing on both genetic and cultural material to their descendants. In generations 3.1, the name specifically references the different ways in which music was generated for the piece: editing electronic sounds, by means of traditional notation, and through improvisation.

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Desmistificando a ideia de que música para o cinema e música para as salas de concerto pertencem a universos distintos, na qual a primeira seria inferior à segunda, o presente trabalho propõe a análise musical parcial de duas obras do compositor norte-americano Bernard Herrmann: a Sinfonietta for String Orchestra e a trilha sonora do filme Psycho (Psicose). Ele se desenvolve mostrando a interação e a intersecção do que denominamos domínios da sala de concerto e do meio cinematográfico, analisando essas peças sob a ótica da intertextualidade elemento de forte presença materializado em Psycho pela reutilização de ideias e até mesmo de movimentos integrais da Sinfonietta O trabalho também retrata o desenvolvimento histórico e estético da música para o cinema e discute questões de ordem funcional e formal. É acompanhado de um CD-ROM com os áudios dos trechos analisados e as imagens das sequências do filme que contêm os trechos musicais selecionados para análise. / In this work an attempt is made to demystify the idea that music for film and music for concert halls belong to different universes, where the first would carry less value than the second. The Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and the soundtrack from the movie Psycho, two musical works of the american composer Bernard Herrman, will be partially analyzed. The analysis portrays the interaction and intersection of what we call the domains of the concert hall and the cinema, analizing these scores from the perspective of intertextuality which can be seen through the reuse of ideas and even whole movements from the Sinfonietta within the soundtrack of Psycho. The work also depicts the historical development, aesthetics of music for film and discusses issues of its function and form. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM with audio excerpts and sequences from the film which contains the musical excerpts selected for this analysis.

Desmistificando a ideia de que música para o cinema e música para as salas de concerto pertencem a universos distintos, na qual a primeira seria inferior à segunda, o presente trabalho propõe a análise musical parcial de duas obras do compositor norte-americano Bernard Herrmann: a Sinfonietta for String Orchestra e a trilha sonora do filme Psycho (Psicose). Ele se desenvolve mostrando a interação e a intersecção do que denominamos domínios da sala de concerto e do meio cinematográfico, analisando essas peças sob a ótica da intertextualidade elemento de forte presença materializado em Psycho pela reutilização de ideias e até mesmo de movimentos integrais da Sinfonietta O trabalho também retrata o desenvolvimento histórico e estético da música para o cinema e discute questões de ordem funcional e formal. É acompanhado de um CD-ROM com os áudios dos trechos analisados e as imagens das sequências do filme que contêm os trechos musicais selecionados para análise. / In this work an attempt is made to demystify the idea that music for film and music for concert halls belong to different universes, where the first would carry less value than the second. The Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and the soundtrack from the movie Psycho, two musical works of the american composer Bernard Herrman, will be partially analyzed. The analysis portrays the interaction and intersection of what we call the domains of the concert hall and the cinema, analizing these scores from the perspective of intertextuality which can be seen through the reuse of ideas and even whole movements from the Sinfonietta within the soundtrack of Psycho. The work also depicts the historical development, aesthetics of music for film and discusses issues of its function and form. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM with audio excerpts and sequences from the film which contains the musical excerpts selected for this analysis.

Huzuni is a composition for a sinfonietta ensemble comprised of flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, two percussion instruments, piano, violin, viola, violoncello, double bass. The inspiration for it began when I was told that my music was too guarded and that a greater degree of emotion was needed. Such a critical response led me to reflect on compositional techniques, styles, and approaches that were outside of my comfort zone, all of which became the inspiration for this work. Huzuni, Swahili for grief, , is a thirteen-minute single movement work in three sections that reflects the raw emotions in dealing with grief. The form of the composition exposes the five stages of grief-denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance- first introduced in 1969 by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who founded the Kübler-Ross Model. In Huzuni, we move through each stage slightly differently than in the grief model. The first section establishes denial that leads directly into the bargaining stage. Throughout this movement, g minor provides a sense of denial of truth, achieved in part because the traditional and expected g minor tonic-dominant-tonic progression is replaced with i-v-vi. This replacement weakens g minor and sets up different expectations for the listener. The second section begins with “depression” and transitions to “anger.” Throughout this section, dissonance is emphasized and helps to suppress a clear and perceivable tonal center. “Depression” functions as a bridge that slowly and gradually simulates a sense of despair. When juxtaposed against the first section, it shows us that consciousness can be related to tonality and unconsciousness to atonality. Although the second section might be considered the lowest emotional point of the work, I attempted to imbue it with a sense of humor that represents the working through of difficulties while never losing faith. The third and final section exposes the idea of acceptance which is achieved by a juxtaposition of sections one (g minor) and three (B major). The ascending third relationship between their two keys suggests the triumphant climb from a depressed state into a state of acceptance that is finally resolved, in the coda, in the key of E major simulating the sense of moving on. The work relies on processes drawn from electronic music in which sound masses are transformed by adding or subtracting discrete variables, or single parameters of sound and time: pitch, rhythm, and dynamics. For example, bars 111-127 contain a rhythmic figure in the piano that slows down and is transformed into a sound-mass. That sound-mass is then orchestrated throughout different instrumental groupings, creating a spatialized musical effect where the phasing of the sound mass from one instrumental group to the next changes the way the listener experiences the piece. Passing the main melody from one instrumental group to another quickly creates a three-dimensional listening space where the listener can experience a change in timbre in addition to the isolation of the harmonic series as the melody passes through each group. Throughout the compositional process I attempted to incorporate the elastic properties of time and space made possible using the tools found in 8-channel electronic music. These tools were incorporated by manipulating both chordal progressions and orchestration as illustrated in the previous paragraph. Such a musical effect spatializes sound by diffusing energy evenly throughout a performance environment. The result is an immersive listening experience, in which sound is generated from specific directions at precise times, different from the standard front and center direction we have come to expect.

Det är allmänt erkänt av forskare att klassisk musik förefaller förlora sin popularitet bland ungdomar, åtminstone i dess traditionella framförandeformer. Emellertid har det visats i undersökningar att vissa förändringar i utformning kan göra konstmusikkonserter mer intressanta för en yngre publik. Den här studien syftar på att undersöka hur sådana förändringar är representerade i ungdomstilltalande annonser för konstmusikkonserter, och i vilken utsträckning annonsernas musikaliska aspekter påverkar och väcker ungdomars intresse. Tre reklamvideor med olika form och karaktär valdes ut för utförlig undersökning. Reklamfilmerna beskrevs i detalj och därefter utfördes en analys av deras musikaliska aspekter och ungdomsinriktade element. Annonsernas användning av musik analyserades enligt en analysmall baserad på Nicolai Graakjærs bok Analyzing Music in Advertising: Television Commercials and Consumer Choice (2014). I analyserandet av reklamfilmernas ungdomstilltalande karakteristiker eftersöktes både sådana faktorer som var beskrivna i tidigare forskning och nya element. Studiens resultat finner ett stort urval av ungdomsinriktade strategier och tekniker i reklamfilmerna, inklusive valet av deras använda musikstycken och hur dessa musikstycken infogas i reklamfilmerna. Förslag för vidare forskning diskuteras i uppsatsens avslutande kapitel. / It is widely recognised by scholars that classical music seems to lose popularity among young people nowadays, at least in its traditional forms of performance. However, research has shown that there are certain changes that can be made to classical music concerts to make them more interesting for a younger audience. This study aims to examine how these changes are represented in youth-addressing commercials for classical music concerts, and to which extent the commercials’ musical aspects contribute to the aim of arousing young people’s interest. Three commercials of different form and character were chosen for detailed examination. The commercials are described in detail and then analysed based on their musical aspects and youth-oriented components. The use of music in the commercials is analysed according to a template based on Nicolai Graakjær’s book Analyzing Music in Advertising: Television Commercials and Consumer Choice (2014). The analysis of the commercials’ youth-appealing features consists of searching for elements described in previous research as well as new ones. The study’s results find a wide variety of strategies and techniques used in the commercials to attract young people, including the choice of the used music pieces and the way these pieces are incorporated in the commercials. Suggestions for further research are discussed in the closing chapter.