This dissertation focuses on three of Busoni’s late orchestral works known as “orchestral elegies”: Berceuse élégiaque (Elegie no. 1, 1909), Gesang vom Reigen der Geister (Elegie no. 4, 1915), and Sarabande (Elegie no. 5, 1918-19). The study seeks to provide a better understanding of Busoni’s late style as a crucial bridge from late nineteenth-century chromaticism in the works of Liszt, Wagner, and others to the post-tonal languages of the twentieth century. At the heart of this study lies a particular concept that forms the basis of many characteristic features of Busoni’s late style, namely the concept of polyphonic harmony, or harmony as a cumulative result of independent melodic lines. This concept is also related to a technique of orchestration in which the collective harmony is sounded in such a way that the individual voices are distinct. In the highly personal tonal language of Busoni’s late works, passages often consist of a web of motives weaved throughout the voices at the surface level of the music. Linear analysis provides a means of unravelling the dense fabric of voices and illustrating the underlying harmonic progressions, which most often consist of parallel, primarily semitonal, progressions of tertian sonorities. Chapter 1 provides a backdrop for this study, including a brief summary of Busoni’s ideas on the aesthetics of music and a summary of his influence and development as a composer. Chapter 2 addresses the concept of polyphonic harmony in more detail, some theoretical ideas related to it, and characteristics of Busoni’s late style that reflect this concept. Chapter 3 is dedicated to analytical methodology, addressing concepts which emerge from various linear approaches to the analysis of some twentieth-century music. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are each dedicated to a specific work, the purpose being to illuminate through linear analysis compositional characteristics and techniques related to the concept of polyphonic harmony, including the flexibility between the melodic and harmonic realms, chord misalignment, overlap, and superposition.

This study compared the effects from the use of aural and notated exercises as pedagogical procedures for teaching harmonic accuracy to beginning jazz improvisation students. The methods of pedagogy were identified from published pedagogic and historical sources, the results of oral and written traditions of jazz pedagogy. The performance objective was produced from a review of the related literature as a recognized and measurable characteristic of jazz improvisation. The purpose of this study was to compare measurements of harmonic accuracy, following the use of notated and aural exercises as experimental procedures of jazz improvisation pedagogy. A lesson plan, materials, curriculum and outline were developed followed by student recruitment and participation. A total of 20 student volunteers participated in the methods of pedagogy (aural or notation). Data collection consisted of a musical background questionnaire and pre and posttest performance recordings. Student recordings were evaluated by six judges using the “experimental performance evaluation measure.” Statistical analyses were conducted, including comparisons of pre to posttest effects between, and among the methods of pedagogy. Although all student participants performed mostly from notated music prior to this study, students who received the aural method of pedagogy produced greater improvement for all measurement items. While the aural method produced no differences between grade level, the notation method produced significantly lower scores for 9th graders compared to 12th graders; no other significant grade level differences were noted. Conclusions were that although many sources of pedagogy do not include aural exercises as the predominate activity, beginning improvisers who have more experience reading music than playing by ear, learn better from aural, than notated exercises.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In the winter of 1832-1833, German scientist and aristocrat Prince Maximilian of Wied spent five months in the Indiana town of New Harmony during a two-year expedition to the interior of North America. Maximilian’s observations of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River have influenced European and white American perceptions of the Indigenous peoples of North America for nearly two centuries, but his time in New Harmony has gone understudied. This article explores his personal journal and his published travelogue to discover what Maximilian’s time in New Harmony reveals about his work. New Harmony exposed him to a wealth of information about Native Americans produced by educated white elites like himself. However, Maximilian missed opportunities to encounter Native Americans first-hand in and around New Harmony, which he wrongly thought required crossing the Mississippi River. Because of the biases and misperceptions caused by Maximilian’s racialized worldview and stereotypical expectations of Native American life, he overlooked the Indigenous communities and individuals living in Indiana.

The Monade sculpture from a series called Harmonies is a 350 cm tall steel object made of welded metal plates, representing harmonic intervals applied to idealised proportions of the human figure. The impetus is a need of transcendency and meaning in perception of reality. Creative strategies are reduction, abstraction and remediation.

This dissertation consists of two parts: (1) a portfolio of recent works composed during my fellowship at Columbia University, including Aruah (2022) for mixed octet, String Quartet No. 2 (2021), and Clarinet Concerto (2019) for solo clarinet, orchestra, and electronics, and (2) this subsidiary essay. This written discussion centers around three pillars that form the foundation of how I presently conceive of music that incorporates both Arab and Western musical aesthetics. These pillars are organized into three chapters (1) Recontextualizing maqām, (2) “Ṭarab-ic” Harmony, and (3) Organological Transethnicism. At the end of each of chapter, I relate the discussed principles to specific moments in my own music, taken from excerpts from this dissertation’s musical portfolio. My analysis of these works through the lens of these three pillars highlights the amorphous qualities of perception across disparate cultures, and how authenticity as a spectrum, rather than as a fixture, can result in new aural experiences.

In this project I aimed to deepen my insight into musical craftsmanship, form conclusions about counterpoint, harmony and melody (both written and improvisational) and how these can intertwine in order to create a larger coherent musical work. Whilst working on the project I used a wide plethora of jazz and classical techniques to create programmatic music molded after the great Swedish novel Doktor Glas. The music was written for a small orchestra with musicians with backgrounds in jazz, classical and folk music, and was performed live at KMH on the 12th of April 2022.

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Design optimization of structures has become an important method to study and develop these days. Due to the fact that the world's population is increasing, and the worlds' resources are decreasing. An optimum design algorithm is a useful tool that can help to minimize the weight of a structure. Over the last four decades, several number of algorithms have been developed to solve engineering optimization problems, for example, metaheuristic algorithms. An example of metaheuristic algorithms is the Harmony Search algorithm (HS). HS algorithms make use of the analogy between the performance process of natural music and searching for solutions to optimization problems. In this research, the HS was applied on the College of Engineering Building at Temple University Main Campus in Philadelphia, PA. The HS algorithm searches for minimum cross-sectional areas that leads to find optimal steel sizes considering design constrains such as: stress, deflection, and lateral displacement limitations. The HS algorithm obtained lighter weight of steel frames by selecting a suitable steel section from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and by following the specification of Allowable Stress Design method (ASD). The results show that HS yielded lighter steel moment frames with approximately 20% weight reduction. Keywords: Harmony Search Algorithm, Steel Moment Frame, Optimization. / Civil Engineering