This thesis will deal with five points of emphasis--content, logic, organization, demon errors, and style. Not a complete manual for teaching freshman composition, this thesis will serve as a simplified guide. This thesis is written for the inexperienced teacher of freshman English who may need guidance, but it should also be of interest to the experienced teacher who wants to confirm his own practices or to find new approaches for teaching the college freshman how to write.

It is the purpose of this thesis to describe various small-group activities which could be used in classes of secondary English to help to "teach-Johnny-to-write." These activities are divided into four areas of study--developing and practicing specific skills related to writing, developing a topic, planning a theme, and evaluating student writing.

Sinfonietta is a work of about 18 minutes for orchestra with an instrumentation of 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 4 timpani, percussion, harps, piano and strings. Three players are required for the percussion battery. The work is in four movements: Prelude, Theme and Variations, Largo and Finale. Movement I is in a tri-partite design. In the second movement, the theme is first enunciated by a solo violoncello in its high register followed by seven variations in the orchestra. In Movement III, there are three brief sections plus a longer coda which links to the Finale, the last movement of the Sinfonietta. This movement ends the work with a double fugal section where many of the important features used in the work recur. The movements are made coherent by means of cyclic treatment of the material.

Computer Simulacra is a musical work composed for amplified instrumental ensemble and computer instruments on tape. It is a computer-assisted work, composed with the help of a stochastic compositional algorithm, called PTERIO, designed by the composer.

No description available.

Mark Twain was not only a wit but a literary man. He could paint a scene and he could make a character live, but could he plot a novel? It is the purpose of this study to analyze his methods and his products, with emphasis upon the building of plots.

Thesis based on the submission of orchestral compositions relating the music pieces to visual works. The compositions are also discussed in terms of where they fit within a contemporary, orchestral context.

This thesis, and the accompanying portfolio of pieces, is concerned with investigating practical and theoretical meeting points between improvisation and composition. Such meeting points are evaluated alongside a consideration of ‘freedom’ in improvised music, for which a frame is drawn from George Lewis’s concepts of the ‘Afrological’ (placing emphasis on expression of the ‘self’) and ‘Eurological’ (in which the ‘self’ is explicitly avoided). It is suggested that a reconciliation of these two extremes might be found in a compositional ‘creative displacement’, which might change an improviser’s environment in unforeseen ways and thus stimulate explorations of expressive novelty. Three different compositional approaches to ‘creative displacement’ are investigated: through fixed notation, through electronic real-time notation, and through leadership in a workshop setting. In each case compositional experiments will be undertaken and documented, detailing the creation and realisation of the pieces included in the accompanying portfolio. A terminology for the theoretical consideration of these approaches will draw on theories of complex systems, the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and various socio-musicological models such as those of Steven Feld and Charles Keil. Through an evaluation of the portfolio compositions in rehearsal and performance, this thesis will conclude that a reconciliation of Lewis’s ‘Afro’ and ‘Eurological’ can be found through the external application of limitations to improvisational creativity. Such constraints will be described as ‘creatively displacing’ if they provoke a performer towards an exploration of novel expressive approaches. In order to achieve this in practice, limitations must be carefully judged with regard to their degree of abstraction, the manner of their presentation and the nature of their notation; it will be suggested that the presence of a leader is vital in achieving this. These conclusions will lead to a questioning of conventional ideas of improvisation and leadership, and suggest a re-evaluation of indeterminacy within notation.

The central subject of this thesis is the application of the concepts of symmetry and proportion in music and how these can be used to generate original compositions. Information about the musical application regarding concepts of symmetry and proportion both in the twentieth-century and earlier is provided. The first section also offers additional information about the construction of symmetrical harmony and its common usage; here too, principles of intervallic proportion are explained based on the compositional thinking of English composer Christopher Bochmann. The second section presents seven original compositions, each supported by their own commentary. Each work features a variety of instrumental forces ranging from solo to orchestral. Lending a separate emphasis (in analysis) to each composition helps to provide a broad picture of the potential that the ideas of symmetry and proportion bring to contemporary composition.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1986 O38 / Master of Science / Animal Sciences and Industry