Technology plays a vital role in the creation of any form of art. In music this has been dominated by a stationary condition in which contemporary ‘academic music’ (new music created in institutions and descending from traditional European models) is in its majority still generated exclusively by a technology of more than a century ago. Additionally, the totality of sound as musical material is now commonly acknowledged, posing problems about the nature and efficiency of the already existing musical instruments and the development of new ones. The current situation in the creation of contemporary music offers a myriad of possibilities in which tools, controllers and instruments have an impact on the creation and conceptualization of music, giving rise to different aesthetic positions and creating new dilemmas in which present, past and future are in constant assessment. This thesis seeks to examine some of the concepts and ideas behind a number of my works in which instrumental sound exploration is essential for the development of the compositional process. As a result, a series of questions, systems and techniques are analyzed, investigating the relation between tools, technique, notation, composition and musical result. This text is intended as an illustration of my own choices and methods, hoping to offer an insight into my own compositional practice as a product of an exercise of self-analysis and rationalization of my current musical output.

abstract: Piano Quintet> is a three movement piece, inspired by music of Eastern Europe. Sunrise in Hungary starts with a legato song in the first violin unfolding over slow moving sustained harmonics in the rest of the strings. This is contrasted with a lively Hungarian dance which starts in the piano and jumps throughout all of the voices. Armenian Lament introduces a mournful melody performed over a subtly shifting pedal tone in the cello. The rest of the voices are slowly introduced until the movement builds into a canonic threnody. Evening in Bulgaria borrows from the vast repertoire of Bulgarian dances, including rhythms from the horo and rachenitsa. Each time that the movement returns to the primary theme, it incorporates aspects of the dance that directly preceded it. The final return is the crux of the piece, with the first violin playing a virtuosic ornaments run on the melody. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.M. Composition 2014

Este trabalho expõe a transição estilística por que passou o autor, coincidente com o período do doutoramento. Antes adepto do emprego não ortodoxo das técnicas de preordenação, especialmente as derivadas das técnicas seriais, a privilegiar a sintaxe musical, volta-se o autor para as questões fundamentais da significação em música. Neste processo, experimentou-se, primeiro, a contraposição da elaboração motívico-temática às técnicas seriais. O propósito era o de constituir unidades estruturantes – motivos e temas - sobre a base serial, capazes de assumir funções formais perceptíveis, aptas a conduzir a escuta do ouvinte. Em seguida, fez-se estender o princípio serial à rítmica, num procedimento em que se definia uma rede de relações de proporções tomadas como referência para as decisões ao nível do ritmo. Entretanto, o deslocamento do interesse para as questões da significação musical levou à reflexão e crítica das práticas e estética baseadas na preordenação. A semantização musical passa a ser o motor primordial e principal ordenador das forças organizadoras da textura musical. Esta nova postura composicional impôs a reflexão acerca da técnica musical, e a definição de novas práticas aptas a instaurar os processos de semantização: o princípio da complementaridade cromática, os eixos cromáticos, a elaboração motívico-temática. No processo da transição estilística, na consolidação da nova postura composicional, o autor se apoiou na filosofia de Susanne K. Langer, na análise mitológica-musical de Claude Lévi- Strauss, no pensamento de Leonard Meyer. Igualmente fundamentais foram as categorizações de Jean-Jacques Nattiez, a semântica musical de Michel Imberty e a semiótica musical de Raymond Monelle. / This Doctoral Dissertation traces the stylistic transition of this author, which coincided with the period of the doctorate. From being adept to the employment of the preordination of unorthodox techniques, especially those derived from serial techniques, this author then focused his work on musical syntax, turning to the fundamental questions of meaning in music. During this process, the contraposition between motivic-thematic development and serial techniques was experienced. The purpose was to provide structural units - motifs and themes - based on the serial techniques that could take audible formal roles, thus leading the attention of the listener. A transition was made in order to extend serial principles to the realm of rhythm, a procedure in which a defined network of relationships of proportions became referential to the decisions at the pace. However, the shift of interest to the issues of musical signification led to the critique of practical and aesthetic issues based on preordination of techniques. The musical semantization became the primary impulse behind the organizational forces of the musical texture. This new position imposed compositional reflections on the musical technique, and led to the definition of new practices that would be able to initiate the process of semantization: the principles of chromatic complementarity, chromatic axes, and motivic-thematic development. In the process of the author’s stylistic transitions and the consolidation of a new compositional approach, the philosophy of Susanne K. Langer, the mythological-musical analysis of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the writings of Leonard Meyer were instrumental. Equally decisive were the categorizations of Jean-Jacques Nattiez, the musical semantics of Michel Imberty and the musical semiotics of Raymond Monelle.

Este trabalho apresenta os procedimentos composicionais das peças Murlidhar, Mahakal, Miniatura e O ciclo do tempo. Sendo esta ultima a principal, devido as ferramentas composicionais terem sido experimentadas com maior liberdade. As peças deste projeto utilizaram mitos e ritos do hinduísmo e conceitos da filosofia do Raja Yoga como motivadores para a imaginação sonora e para o desenvolvimento de técnicas de estruturação. Destaca-se, entre as técnicas utilizadas, a que denominei estrutura de ritmos cíclicos, cuja elaboração teve como referência o time point system de Miltton Babbitt. / This paper presents the compositional procedures of Murlidhar, Mahakal, Miniature and The Cycle of Time, the latter being the main piece because the compositional tools have been used with more freedom. The pieces of this project utilized Hinduism myths and rites and Raj Yoga Phylosophy concepts as motivators to the sound imagination and for the development of structuring techniques. Standing out among the techniques used is the one I called Cyclic Rhythms Structure, which had as a reference for its making Milton Babbitt’s time point system.

The diploma thesis deals with musical inspiration on the base of the analysis of the composition and motives in Kundera's novels. Basic source of the analysis is Kundera's own reflection of modern music, its principles and functions in author's essays. The aim of the thesis is to chart sources of inspiration which mirror in Kundera's prose and other texts. We proceed from the concrete to the abstract, from analysis of motives and composition of each book, to the intellectual level which is perceptible mainly in author's essays and essaistic passages in some novels. Author's texts are dealt with chronologically. As the level of motives and themes are concerned, the musical inspiration is treated via themes, such as Beethoven and his art of variations, noisy contemporary music and the end of music in the work of Schoenberg. On the level of composition, the author writes novels using schemes of musical forms, such as theme with variations, rondo, sonata form or fugue. In his essays, he mainly examines works of composers Beethoven, Janacek, Stravinskij and Schoenberg. All three levels are connected and they influence each other. The last chapter is oriented didacticly and an option is offered how to use this topic at school. It is important to considerate cross-curricular links between literature and music.

This commentary details the methods and ideas involved in creating the seven portfolio works. The portfolio is comprised of stereo acousmatic works, one mixed work and a multi-channel work, forming the practice-based research completed during the PhD programme at the University of Manchester. The works explore a number of aesthetic concepts encompassing instrumental timbres, cultural sound objects, rhythm incorporation, habitual spaces (the kitchen), imaginary and real objects (jukebox), and visual art sculpture (origami). Uniting the portfolio works is the use of Denis Smalley’s spectromorphology (1997). In its intended function, this tool provides the listener of electroacoustic music with thorough and accessible sets of vocabulary to describe sound events, structures and spaces. The use of this descriptive tool need not stop here. Fortunately, and often unconsciously for the composer, it does not, since all composers create music that is spectromorphological with or without an awareness of its presence at work. In a reversal of conventional practice, my research approaches spectromorphology from an alternate angle, viewing the vocabulary as the informer upon sound material choice and creation. In this reversal, vocabulary no longer functions descriptively; instead the vocabulary precedes the composition, directing my compositional pathway in each piece. This new application, used as a method for selecting and creating sound in the creation of each portfolio work, is an attempt at systemisation and an effort to partly remedy the seemingly endless choice of possibilities we are faced with when beginning a new work.

Something About Marybell is a children's book with audio compact disk, in which I combined three art forms: storytelling, illustrating, and music composition. The nature of the story reflects my love of animals, which has been the essence of all my previous works as well. Beyond the technical matters I practiced and obstacles I encountered while working on each of the aforementioned art forms, the most important point I discovered was that all three were consistently interrelated, and I never could develop one medium without considering the others. Working on this project also was a journey to trace my major influences in different subjects. My drawing style is influenced by cartoons and animation films, which are now considered significant artistic styles in Japanese subculture. My music composition reflects a broad influence from many composers' works working in a variety of genres, especially piano works, of all eras. There are two specific works I studied as model works for this project: Poulenc's L'Histoire de Babar le petit éléphant (The Story of Babar the Little Elephant) and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. It was a challenge to blend one stylistic approach into another to accurately realize my musical conception.

The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to compare the effects of three different composition tasks with varying degrees of structure on pre-service music teachers’ creative self-efficacy as composers and their instructional self-efficacy as pedagogues of composition; and 2) to describe through pre-service music teachers’ talk perceptions of composition and their experiences completing the three composition tasks. Participants (N = 29) were music education majors from three different sized universities in the northern-central region of the United States. At the beginning of the study, the participants answered a researcher-design self-efficacy questionnaire that measured (a) their self-efficacy as composers and (b) their self-efficacy as teachers of composition. Next, they composed three compositions of various task structures (unstructured, poem, and rhythm). Immediately after completing each task they again completed the self-efficacy questionnaire. Statistically significant mean differences between the pre-task administration of the measuring instrument and all three composition tasks were found for the pre-service teachers’ compositional self-efficacy. Statistically significant mean differences were also found between the unstructured task and the rhythm task, but not between the rhythm and poem tasks or the unstructured and poem tasks. For the pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy as pedagogues of composition question, the results were also statistically significant between the pre-task administration of the measuring instrument and all three composition tasks. Statistically significant mean differences were also found between the unstructured task and the rhythm task as well as the poem and rhythm tasks, but not between the unstructured and poem tasks. Additional data were gathered through semi-structured one-on-one interviews. Through their talk the pre-service music teachers commented that they enjoyed the overall composition process. This experience also seemed to challenge the participants’ assumptions about composition and appeared to make creative experiences more tenable and relevant to their future classroom experiences. The results of this study suggest that incorporating composition activities regardless of structure within a music teacher’s pre-service training might impact their self-efficacy beliefs not only as composers, but also as pedagogues of composition. This study suggested that teacher educators might want to consider using a rhythmic structure as the first task to help provide an initial framework to guide and initiate their composition. Pre-service teachers engaged in similar compositional activities might also gain further insights about what it means to be a composer and into the pedagogy of composition.

The three movements of this piece are related proportionally in that movements one and two represent three-fifths of the length of the whole. Movement three represents two-fifths of the length of the whole. Another proportional relationship exists between movements one and two. Movement one represents two-fifths of the length of the first two movements, while movement two represents three-fifths of the length of the two. An additional link between the three movements is pitch content. Movements one and two have little in common in this regard, but movement three combines elements of the first two. The duration of the entire piece is approximately fifteen minutes.

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