This essay presents an analysis of Crystallisation, a composition for a large orchestra. The work consists of a single movement, with a duration of approximately 15 minutes. / The analysis focuses mainly on formal structure, pitch organization, texture and rhythm. Some of the main topics are: large-scale form and subdivisions of each section, thematic interrelations of the sections, central pitches, pitch collections, chord structure and interrelations between texture and rhythm. / Throughout the course of the work, the music closely follows an overall process of searching for a valid structure and "core". In realizing this process the music takes on a variety of devices, among them: various kinds of symmetry within texture and form; thematic relations between separate sections through variants and material transformation; a coherent pitch organization which contains structural pitches, symmetrical collections and three main groups of chords; a complex and carefully structured rhythmic organization. / The concluding section of this essay compares between some of the properties of a crystal and the structure of various parts in Crystallisation.

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This paper presents a conceptual and musical analysis of my composition Lineage, an eleven-minute work for large orchestra, written in 2013 for the New World Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony. Lineage takes as its premise the imagining of faux-folkloric music from a fictitious, distant culture. It engages with the idea of my artistic and personal ancestry, and revolves around the concept of return through the reworking of my own material, the re-contextualization of and linkage to past music traditions, and the repetition and transformation of musical material. I discuss the meaning behind the music, the choice of source material, and my compositional process, including descriptions of how I use technology. I place my work in relation to other composers who have revisited material, including Pierre Boulez, Yan Maresz, and György Ligeti. I also compare Lineage to Phonotopographie, my 2012 work for chamber ensemble that is closely related. The theoretical analysis involves an in-depth explanation of formal concerns, compositional techniques such as polyphonic and resonant usages of stratification, harmonic and pitch material from traditional, microtonal, and spectral sources, and finally rhythm. I conclude with a brief discussion on sideshadowing and temporal openess, a literary concept developed by Gary Saul Morson. I propose that the use of digital audio workstations (DAWs) as a compositional tool may provide composers with a form of musical sideshadowing - a way of understanding the plurality of possibilities present, while contemplating the global formal design.

This essay traces the development of the orchestral music of Brian Cherney (b. 1942, Peterborough ON). While not a comprehensive overview of his entire catalogue of orchestral works, I show the emergence of Cherney’s characteristic approach to the medium through the framework of extra-musical poetic texts, a painterly approach to orchestral textures, and a penchant for spinning intricate networks of self-quotation and references to extant musics (intertexts). Beginning with early student works (Chapter One: Two Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, 1963; Violin Concerto, 1963) and emergent transitional works (Chapter Two: Seven Images, 1971; Adieux, 1980), my tripartite framework culminates in Chapter Three with Cherney’s orchestral masterpiece, Transfiguration (1990). Reference is made to the musico-philosophical work of Theodor Adorno, Daniel Albright and Carolyn Abbate et al., alongside a host of musicological and music-theoretical sources. Further informed by details drawn from Cherney’s autobiographical sketches and lengthy correspondences with the author, I investigate these works with a hermeneutics which seeks to both draw out and draw together Cherney’s expressive reticence, imaginative fecundity and finely-honed technical prowess.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisor: Donald Grantham. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-108).

Excursions is a single movement piece for full orchestra based on a seven-note germinal motive. Its excursive qualities are produced by continuous variations. The form, therefore, is not derived from any particular sectional or formal organization, but is the result of continual motivic development. Transpositional combination of pitch class sets creates transformations of the germinal motive. / School of Music

Treatise (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: Marianne Wheeldon and Kevin Noe. Vita. Also available from UMI.

Inaug.-diss.--Münster. / Lebenslauf. "Quellen-verzeichnis": p. vii-xii.

Thesis (D.M.A.) Florida State University, 2007. / Advisor: Ladislav Kubik, Florida State University, College of Music. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 8-20-2007). Document formatted into pages; contains 84 pages. Includes biographical sketch.