Browsing by Author "Walls, Jacob"
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Item Open Access Kernel(University of Oregon, 2015-08-18) Walls, Jacob; Crumb, DavidKernel is a fifteen-minute work for wind ensemble. Its unifying strands of rhythm, melody, and harmony are spun out of simple four-note tone clusters which undergo changes in contour, intervallic inversion, register, texture, and harmonic environment. These four notes make up the "kernel" of the work, a word used by Breton to refer to the indestructible element of darkness prior to all creative invention, as well as a term used in computer science to refer to the crucial element of a system that, if it should fail, does so loudly.Item Open Access Is There a Way to Invoke the Music Itself Without Embarrassing Ourselves?(University of Oregon, 2014-09-29) Walls, Jacob; Grant, RogerThe interpretation of analytical claims about music presents a dilemma between positivism and fictionalism: is it that the structures imputed by the analysis are part of the reality of "the music itself" or are the structures merely a shorthand? Although there is growing agreement that we lack direct epistemological access to the music itself, the dilemma does not disappear, in large part because we feel an ethical obligation to respect the music. We intend to "get it right" by hearing how we believe the music itself demands to be heard. This thesis adapts Simon Blackburn's quasi-realist program in meta-ethics to the ontological interpretation of music analysis. Quasi-realism allows scholars to hold that although analytical choices boil down to values, this does not prevent the expression of realist-sounding ontological claims implied by their work. The analogy with quasi-realism provides an additional motivation for further work in the ethics of music analysis.