Music and Dance Theses and Dissertations

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Open Access
Background Structures and Narrative in Music by Women
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Mau, Amelia; Boss, Jack
This thesis explores the use of modified Schenkerian analysis and how it relates to a feminine narrative in a piece of music. In music theory literature about music by women, Schenkerian analysis is a tool that is often ignored; some scholars claim that the goal-oriented nature of Schenkerian analysis prevents it from being an effective tool to analyze music that doesn’t adhere to traditional tonal models, including modern works by women composers. In this study, it was found that modifying the Urlinie and Bassbrechung to reflect salience rather than a traditional harmonic structure allowed for the tool to actually reveal a lot about the underlying narratives in the music. The case studies include Genesis II (Janika Vandervelde), Missa Gaia; Mass for the Earth (Libby Larsen), and “Music Box” (Cynthia Folio).
Open Access
Discussion of Schumann’s Musical Characterization in Carnaval, op. 9
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-26) LIU, TINGYU; Boss, Jack
The purpose of this study is to discuss Schumann’s fictional characters from Carnaval, op.9 and how Schumann expressed the unique aspects of each character in his music. I will apply Schenkerian analysis to explore the various structural layers of the music of these fictional characters and Schumann’s friends: Pierrot, Arlequin, Eusebius, Florestan, Coquette, Pantalon et Colombine, Chiarina, Estrella, Chopin and Paganini. Through my Schenkerian graphs, I hope to show that each piece coheres within itself, that pieces share middle-ground structures, that motifs come back at different levels, and that the musical structure contributes to the characterization, as well as the surface textures.
Open Access
Dissonance Within Discordance: The Influence of Equal Temperament on the Aesthetic Evaluation of Second Viennese Atonality
(University of Oregon, 2015-08-18) Shields, John; Boss, Jack
This thesis draws a distinction between the nature of intonation and tuning in tonal and atonal music. I describe the musical aesthetic of the Second Viennese School as conditioned by and born out of equal temperament. In contrast, tonal music often employs intonation that varies from equal temperament significantly. These contrasting notions are explored through an examination of two historically opposed ideologies that concern consonance and dissonance. This thesis suggests that the aesthetic evaluation of twelve-tone atonal music may be informed by its theoretical limitation to the equally tempered scale. It is dissonance within discordance, referring to a preponderance of dissonant harmony within a dissonant medium of tuning. Supplementary audio files are included to support this thesis. Examples 1-9 compare various chords and progressions in just intonation and equal temperament. Example 10 is a midi version of "Yesterday I Heard the Rain," arranged by Brent Graham, in equal temperament.
Open Access
Form and Tonal Spectrum in 12-Tone Music: Approaches to Analysis in Schoenberg, Walker, and Webern
(University of Oregon, 2023-03-24) Didier, Alex; Boss, Jack
Approaches to analysis in 12-tone music have been predominantly focused around the concept of atonality. Building off of ideas first imagined by theorists such as Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg, I propose that all music can be understood as tonal using nature’s model, the overtone series. Through a detailed description of the organic nature of tonality, my work suggests that what was once understood as a dissonance can be reimagined as a new type of consonance. Analyzing passages of 12-tone music from Arnold Schoenberg, George Walker, and Anton Webern, I provide a means for expanding upon traditional Schenkerian Analysis, which has been traditionally limited to music of the 18th and 19th century. I suggest that all music with “tones” can be considered tonal, and that background-level graphs representing higher partials can be used to categorize musical passages as “more” or “less” tonal, in a traditional sense.
Open Access
Formal Dialectic in Heavy Metal Music
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-26) Dekovich, Michael; Boss, Jack
This dissertation investigates the operationalization verse-chorus-bridge form in heavy metal music. Spread by the popular music industry and media, verse-chorus-bridge form became the most prominent form in rock music from the 1970s onward (Stephenson 2002). At the same time, heavy metal emerged as an international cosmopolitan subculture, freely adopting and modifying the syntax of popular music while negotiating its consumerist trappings (Weinstein 2001, Hudson 2021). I demonstrate that metal transformations of verse-chorus-bridge form enhance its value by contributing a vocabulary of section types and reorient its teleology to make for more flexible song structures. Drawing on a wide variety of examples from various metal subgenres, I show that verse-chorus-bridge form—usually appearing as a compound AABA form (Covach 2005)—is used as the template for expanded and truncated formal types (collectively called rotational form with bridge (Hudson 2021)) and that bridge sections are accorded greater importance in heavy metal as compared to other genres of commercial popular music. Bridge sections play a special role in signifying the metal genre and provide a means to diverge from referential models. By creating moments of expectation in bridge sections with instrumental passages and dance sections, metal artists divert the usual chorus teleology of verse-chorus-bridge form. These new methods of organization reinvigorate the possibilities of song form within metal and artists influenced by metal (Osborn 2011). Avant-gardism in metal composition therefore functions to produce new technologies within the dialectic of the popular music industry.
Open Access
Formal Functions in the Music of Arnold Schoenberg
(University of Oregon, 2020-02-27) Eason, Andrew; Boss, Jack
Musical form has undergone a significant revival in the past twenty years, largely due to Caplin’s Classical Form. However, most of this attention has focused on tonal forms in the Classical and Romantic eras. This project establishes a form-functional approach for analyzing the music of Arnold Schoenberg. Drawing on Schoenberg’s own theoretical writings throughout his career, I show how his concept of form can be applied to without relying on the traditional harmonic signs. This project expands form-functional analysis into the 20th century while finding its roots in Schoenberg’s thought. I begin by climbing up the formal hierarchy, beginning with smaller formal units and combining them into larger sections and movements. I do this by identifying prototypical functions in Schoenberg’s tonal sextet Verklärte Nacht Op. 4 and the twelve-tone Suite for Piano Op. 25. From there, I show how themes can be combined into ternary movements and larger sonata forms using Op. 25 as well as the Klavierstück Op. 33b. Chapter 6 examines the Third String Quartet Op. 30, which shows how Schoenberg expands the prototypical forms into much larger pieces. Chapter 7 demonstrates the analytical technique with the first two movements of Op. 11, showing how less typical forms still convey temporality and formal functions.
Open Access
How to Apply the Schenkerian Method to the Performance and Teaching of Chopin's and Mozart's Piano Music
(University of Oregon, 2019-01-11) Wang, Yanjie; Boss, Jack
This thesis focuses on the relationship between piano performance and Schenkerian analysis. Schenkerian analysis was designed initially as a practical guide for performers. In the different levels of a Schenkerian graph, we can see “musical forces” which lead the performer to deeply understand music itself. Using Schenkerian notation to highlight certain notes helps us to recognize lines behind the surface of the music that give certain passages coherence. This study concentrates on Chopin’s mastery of counterpoint and voice leading which leads me into the relationship of analysis and performance, typically by using the Schenkerian method. My examples will include a variety of pieces by both Chopin and Mozart, to show in what ways the Schenkerian analysis both highlights similarities and makes distinctions between composers and genres.
Open Access
Modal Prolongational Structure in Selected Sacred Choral Compositions by Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams
(University of Oregon, 2012) Francis, Timothy; Francis, Timothy; Boss, Jack
While some composers at the beginning of the twentieth century drifted away from tonal hierarchical structures, Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams sought ways of integrating tonal ideas with new materials. By analyzing the music of Holst and Vaughan Williams using a technique expressly designed for the analysis of tonal musical structure—Schenkerian Analysis—this study looks at ways in which the composers combined old and new techniques and what that means with regards to our understanding of their music. To do this, the current study focuses on the sacred choral repertory because it can form a stylistic bridge between nineteenth-century tonality and the composers’ more experimental works. This repertory also provides an opportunity for interpreting text-music connections that help us understand the music at a deeper level. In order to establish groundwork for the analytical methodology, I begin the study with background information on the composers and previous research done on their music, after which I summarize their most pertinent stylistic features (including their use of diatonic modes and other pitch collections, their harmonic, melodic, and contrapuntal techniques, and their formal structures). I then discuss how an analyst can determine prolongational structure in Holst’s and Vaughan Williams’s music by establishing the tonic or pitch-class center, establishing the context for harmonic and melodic stability, and following predictable formal patterns. Finally, I apply the analytical methodology in detail to Vaughan Williams’s Benedicite and Holst’s The Hymn of Jesus, two substantial single-movement choral works that represent both the conservative (Benedicite) and experimental (The Hymn of Jesus) sides of the composers’ style. I also compare the analyses with the texts and show how the composers portrayed religious ideas, even at deeper levels of the prolongational structure. The modified Schenkerian analytical techniques used in these analyses show that even though Holst and Vaughan Williams used a number of twentieth-century compositional techniques, their prolongational structures still follow expected patterns and closely resemble traditional structures.
Open Access
Music Borrowing in Organ Literature through History: Couperin, Bach, Brahms, Ives, Alain, and Cage
(University of Oregon, 2020-12-08) Schroeder, Joy; Boss, Jack
This dissertation is a study of borrowed melodies, harmonies, and formal structures in six representative works from the organ literature of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. These works, by composers François Couperin, J. S. Bach, Johannes Brahms, Charles Ives, Jehan Alain, and John Cage, exhibit different methods of varying the borrowed material by addition of elements as well as subtraction. It focuses on how composers stayed within the normative practices of their eras by enhancing the tonal implications of their original sources, or (in the twentieth century) by obscuring or even erasing them. J. Peter Burkholder’s work on borrowed material is the foundation of this study. His work is illustrated through my considerations of these six examples, and also used to step further into a discussion of how each composer either stays within the boundaries of tonality or pushes beyond them. In addition, I consider how composers either elaborate the texture of the original, or (in Cage’s case) remove and fragment large parts of it timbrally to make it sound more random. My assertions about tonality and texture are supported by Schenkerian and post-tonal analyses, and in places I also consider rhythmic and metric alterations through the use of detailed tables.
Open Access
Music, Motion, and Space: A Genealogy
(University of Oregon, 2015-08-18) Park, Joon; Boss, Jack
How have we come to hear melody as going “up” or “down”? Why does the Western world predominantly adopt spatial terms such as “high” and “low” to distinguish musical notes while other non-Western cultures use non-spatial terms such as “large” and “small” (Bali), or “clear” and “dull” (South Korea)? Have the changing concepts of motion and space in people’s everyday lives over history also changed our understanding of musical space? My dissertation investigates the Western concept of music space as it has been shaped by social change into the way we think about music today. In our understanding of music, the concept of the underlying space is so elemental that it is impossible for us to have any fruitful discourse about music without using inherently spatial terms. For example a term interval in music denotes the distance between two combined notes; but, in fact, two sonic objects are neither near nor far from each other. This shows that our experience of hearing interval as a combination of different notes is not inherent in the sound itself but constructed through cultural and social means. In Western culture, musical sound is often conceptualized through various metaphors whose source domains reflect the society that incubated these metaphorical understandings. My research investigates the historical formation of the conceptual metaphor of music. In particular, I focus on historical formation of the three underlying assumptions we bring to our hearing of music: (1) “high” and “low” notes and motion between them, (2) functionality of musical chords, and (3) reliance on music notation. In each chapter, I contextualize various music theoretical writings within the larger framework of philosophy and social theory to show that our current understanding of musical sound is embedded with the history of Western culture.
Open Access
Musical Distance in Kaija Saariaho's "L'amour de Loin"
(University of Oregon, 2022-02-18) Choma, Gabrielle; Boss, Jack
Kaija Saariaho’s and Amin Maalouf’s 2000 opera “L’amour de Loin” has received world-wide praise and acknowledgement for their masterful storytelling, and breathtaking, fresh musical setting. In 2020, the Met offered this work to viewers at home as part of their stay-at-home program, where it received further acknowledgement and praise among contemporary operas. Despite the success of this opera, few music theorists have attempted to dissect and understand the music of this opera. This comes as no surprise, as Saariaho’s pluralistic and idiosyncratic compositional style can seem intimidating, with complex electronics and a heavy emphasis on the timbral and cerebral reception of sound. But a glance at some of Saariaho’s preliminary sketches for this work demonstrates a rather straightforward method to composition: she assigned unique harmonies, timbres, and other musical characteristics to her three main characters. My work will focus on using these drafts to track harmonic changes as they relate to character development, specifically Clémence, Countess of Tripoli. We will find through this analysis that Saariaho painstakingly planned the projection of Clémence’s character through her harmonic progression, expressing these character changes as they relate to three kinds of distance—physical, temporal, and anticipatory.
Open Access
Musical Representations of Gender in Nier: Automata and Similar Role-Playing Video Games
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Harper, Hayden; Boss, Jack
It is no secret that the video game industry codifies gendered stereotypes, which appear in mechanics and visual illustrations of characters in games. In this thesis, I scrutinize the construction of gender in the musical elements of soundtracks in role-playing games. Expanding upon Michael Austin’s work (2018), I examine how musical gender construction compares with the visual and interactive representations of gender on the screen. Using Nier: Automata as the primary case, I employ a variety of techniques to demonstrate how musical parameters subvert expectations established by other role-playing games. However, a conflict exists when we contrast musical observations with the visual and interactive elements. A ludomusical dissonance sustains between the aural and visual images of the main characters. In examining the gendered ludomusical dissonance in Nier: Automata, my thesis shows that dissecting musical representations of gender, in relation to the visual and interactive constructions, transforms unnecessarily gendered perceptions.
Open Access
Mystic Chord Harmonic and Light Transformations in Alexander Scriabin's Prometheus
(University of Oregon, 2013-10-10) Secor, Tyler; Boss, Jack
This thesis seeks to explore the voice leading parsimony, bass motion, and chromatic extensions present in Alexander Scriabin's Prometheus. Voice leading will be explored using Neo-Riemannian type transformations followed by network diagrams to track the mystic chord movement throughout the symphony. Bass motion and chromatic extensions are explored by expanding the current notion of how the luce voices function in outlining and dictating the harmonic motion. Syneathesia will also be examined as a composition device used to create the light, harmony, and drama of Prometheus.
Embargo
Set Class Conceptualizations: A Pedagogical and Theoretical Framework
(University of Oregon, 2024-03-25) King, John; Boss, Jack
Set Class Conceptualizations has two main goals: one, facilitate a student’s learning of set classes; and two, demonstrate multiple ways in which they could benefit from doing so. The intended audience of this dissertation is music professionals and teachers. The main gist of this approach is: one, as the student studies individual set classes, they refine a “bigger picture” of how the set classes relate; two, they relate “new” set classes to ones that they are already familiar with; and three, they let their own musical interests guide them. Part I and the Appendices provides general background information and resources that can act as an aid and inspiration towards the student’s development of their own “bigger picture.” Part II, the heart of this pedagogy, provides tools and resources that are specifically tailored towards the learning of the set classes. Part III provides examples of how an increased knowledge of set classes may enhance various musical endeavors.
Open Access
Structural Coherence in the Variation Movement from Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 87
(University of Oregon, 2019-09-18) Choi, Ga-In; Boss, Jack
The variation form, despite its significant to Brahms, has often been neglected in favor of the sonata form. A Schenkerian perspective of the Andante con moto from Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 87 reveals the motivic and harmonic connections that occur on the surface and deeper levels. The salient features of the music arise from the deeper-level changes, and certain features do not become clear until one looks at the music from a broader structural view. My analyses will reveal how the music unfolds, with a sense of departure and return, to create an expressive and progressive narrative that spans the entire movement. This is achieved through the changes in the fundamental structure, as illustrated by the complete Schenkerian analysis: the first two variations are a foreground variation, the next two are middleground variation, and the final variation returns to the theme’s fundamental structure.
Open Access
Structure, Musical Forces, and Musica Ficta in Fourteenth-Century Monophonic Songs
(University of Oregon, 2015-01-14) Holmquest, Heather; Boss, Jack
This study provides insight into the compositional features of the monophonic ballata, a genre developed in the early to mid-fourteenth century in northern Italy. In analyzing the formal structure, melodic contour, application of musica ficta, and relationship between text and melody, I suggest ways in which performers of this repertoire can highlight the exceptional qualities of this music while remaining rooted in a historically-informed tradition of early music performance practice. Using principles of Schenkerian ideas of prolongation, Salzerian approaches to constructing voice-leading analyses of early music, and Steve Larson's theory of musical forces as criteria for well-formed melodies, I created a method that shows every note as structural or ornamental at every given level. The use of these theoretical approaches serves to highlight what about this music is compelling and what can be brought out as 'familiar' in a piece, what repeats, and what connects sections and how. I conclude that counterpoint is behind the organization of these works at the structural level, even as monophonic songs. I acknowledge that there are features we could construe as "tonal," but that information is only useful to a performer familiar with tonal elements, and it is therefore only one of many layers of understanding that should be accessed by the modern performer.
Open Access
Text Painting through Neo-Riemannian Transformation and Rhythmic Manipulation in the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten
(University of Oregon, 2015-08-18) Centeno, Vincent; Boss, Jack
The music of Benjamin Britten is both inspiring and intriguing: inspiring, because his music can move the listener; intriguing, because his use of triadic harmonies and rhythmic settings seems at once free, flexible, and spontaneous yet sensible and appropriate in representing the mood of the text. Although many of Britten’s harmonies are traditional in nature, e.g. major and minor triads, it is difficult, almost impossible or cumbersome at best, to assign Roman numerals to his harmonies because his manner of chord progression does not always conform to functional theory. In my analyses, I will demonstrate that the logic behind Britten's harmonic progressions can be explained through two types of neo-Riemannian transformation theories, namely Richard Cohn's Four Hexatonic Systems and Leonhard Euler's Tonnetz. In the case of the "Spinning Scene" from The Rape of Lucretia, Hindemith’s "Table of Chord-Groups" will be used to explain the presence of harmonies that are not part of the four hexatonic systems. Throughout, Schenkerian graphs will be presented to illustrate how the underlying structure and overall harmonic design of each piece work in conjunction with the emotion of the text. In addition, I will show that his rhythmic manipulations, when coupled with the meaning behind his chord progression, vividly paint the emotion of the text, as well as the state of mind of the poet or the character in an opera.
Open Access
The Chinese and Javanese Influences in Works That Exemplify Early Twentieth-Century Musical “Exoticism”
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Xu, Jiayi; Boss, Jack
In Western music of the early twentieth century, pentatonic elements are particularly prominent when composers emulate Chinese music. Claude Debussy, for instance, drew upon Eastern musical styles in works such as “Pagodes” (from the collection Estampes of 1903). According to most scholars (E. Robert Schmitz 1950 and Sylvia Parker 2012), the historical record demonstrates that Debussy’s inspiration for composing “Pagodes” was the sound of the Javanese Gamelan in the Exhibition Universelle in Paris in 1889. There is also a historical description about Debussy’s writing to show his connection to Chinese music. Debussy himself expressed an awareness of Chinese musical practices: Roger Nichols has cited a newspaper article written by the composer published in February 1913 in which Debussy mentions that in the 1889 exhibition, the performance of the Annamite theater from the central Eastern region of Vietnam was influenced by Chinese practices. Debussy’s awareness of Chinese—as well as Javanese—music will propel my discussion of how to use a mathematical method to determine the musical character of a region of the world, and more specifically, to demonstrate how an analytical method based on the J function may make the connection between “Pagodes” and the “Chinese” style in the early twentieth century. The conventional wisdom regarding “Pagodes” is that its inspiration is taken from Javanese gamelan. In the later parts of my thesis, I will show that the intersection between “Pagodes” and Javanese gamelan is mainly in the rhythmic and textural aspects.
Open Access
The Role of Music Theory in Music Production and Engineering
(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23) Wiederkehr, George; Boss, Jack
Due to technological advancements, the role of the musician has changed dramatically in the 20th and 21st centuries. For the composer or songwriter especially, it is becoming increasingly expected for them to have some familiarity with music production and engineering, so that they are able to provide a finished product to employers, clients, or listeners. One goal of a successful production or engineered recording is to most effectively portray the recorded material. Music theory, and specifically analysis, has the ability to reveal important or expressive characteristics in a musical work. The relationship between musical analysis and production is explored to discover how music analysis can provide a more effective and informed musical production or recording and how a consideration of music production elements, notably timbre and instrumentation, can help to better inform a musical analysis. Two supplemental MP3 files are included with this thesis to demonstrate proposed mixing guidelines derived from the analysis.
Open Access
The Use of Guitar in Anton Webern's Op. 18 and its Influence on His Late Works
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Shanley, Adam; Boss, Jack
Anton Webern’s Op. 18 stands at nearly the exact center of his published work. Though it was in his Op. 17 that Webern began working with ordered pitches, there are some logistic struggles evident in his diversions from the row throughout that work. It is in Op. 18 that Webern first consistently uses a row in its complete, unchanged form. His increasing mastery of this style of composition is shown throughout Op. 18, a collection of three songs; the first with a single row repeated with no permutations of any kind; in the 2nd song, inversions and retrograde are introduced; and in the final song Webern experiments with simultaneous unique row forms for each instrument. These songs feature a guitar, E-flat clarinet, and soprano voice, with the first song a setting of a folk text. In this dissertation I argue that Webern’s later style–his orchestration, harmonic progressions, and formal structures–grows out of his choice of guitar as harmonic foundation in Op. 18. In my analysis I look at row construction and usage, as well as orchestrational considerations, folk implications, text setting, and specific voice-leading properties of Webern’s Opp. 18, 25, and 30. In so doing I will uncover a link between Webern’s pivotal Op. 18 song cycle, with the guitar playing a central role, and many of his compositional choices in his later works. My analysis looks at Webern’s works through the lens of a guitarist. I will explore the piano accompaniment of Op. 25 as if it were written for guitar, and do the same for his Op. 30 Variations for Orchestra. These analyses will show that his later works, and later style in general, have an underlying idiomatic character of guitar music. I argue that Webern’s late works feature, as a result, are his own version of folk music through their simplicity, clarity of form, and overall encapsulation of the sound of the guitar.