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- All Subjects: contemporary music
- Creators: Rogers, Rodney
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
This research concentrates on the five sonatinas for piano by Walter Saul. It consists of a recording and a document providing musical analyses and performance guides to these sonatinas.
The purpose of the research is to introduce Walter Saul’s five sonatinas, composed from 1998 to 2015. Walter Saul is a gifted living American composer and pianist. He has written a quantity of piano music intended for study by young performers. His five sonatinas, in traditional sonata forms, use a variety of compositional techniques, including twelve-tone rows, jazz elements, modulations, modes, scales, and contrapuntal procedures. Performers may find that the analyses in this document are useful in understanding these pieces. The guides are likewise provided to teachers and students studying these pieces.
This paper consists of six chapters. It begins with an introduction in Chapter 1; Chapter 2 presents a biography of Walter Saul; Chapter 3 observes characteristics of Walter Saul’s piano music; Chapter 4 deals with background of the five sonatinas; Chapter 5 provides performance guides including simple analyses; Chapter 6 arrives at a conclusion.
The purpose of the research is to introduce Walter Saul’s five sonatinas, composed from 1998 to 2015. Walter Saul is a gifted living American composer and pianist. He has written a quantity of piano music intended for study by young performers. His five sonatinas, in traditional sonata forms, use a variety of compositional techniques, including twelve-tone rows, jazz elements, modulations, modes, scales, and contrapuntal procedures. Performers may find that the analyses in this document are useful in understanding these pieces. The guides are likewise provided to teachers and students studying these pieces.
This paper consists of six chapters. It begins with an introduction in Chapter 1; Chapter 2 presents a biography of Walter Saul; Chapter 3 observes characteristics of Walter Saul’s piano music; Chapter 4 deals with background of the five sonatinas; Chapter 5 provides performance guides including simple analyses; Chapter 6 arrives at a conclusion.
ContributorsYun, Ahyeon (Author) / Cosand, Walter (Thesis advisor) / Rogers, Rodney (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
A New Home is a multi-movement musical composition written for a chamber orchestra of flute, oboe, clarinet in B-flat, bassoon, horn in F, trumpet in C, trombone, bass trombone, percussion (1), pianoforte, and strings. The duration of the entire piece is approximately fourteen minutes (movement 1: four minutes; mvt. 2: four minutes and thirty seconds; mvt. 3: five minutes and thirty seconds). As an exercise in compositional experimentation, some of the musical techniques explored throughout the piece are harmonic planing or parallelism, ostinati, modality, chromatic dissonance, thematic transformation, mixed meter, and syncopation, as well as issues of orchestral blend, balance, and color.
The first movement, ironically titled “Don’t Panic,” highlights my initial anxieties on experimentation by creating hectic textures. The movement is structured around two main alternating sections of chromatic, chordal dissonance with more modal, melodic syncopation in addition to a developmental section, but a sense of rhythmic groove is prominent throughout. The second movement, “Still Here,” is a darker, more sensitive music as it explores various settings of its main thematic material interspersed with march-like episodes and a related secondary theme. The themes are organized around a diatonic scale that omits one pitch to comprise a six-note scale. The third movement, “Change of State,” recalls the modality and rhythmic liveliness of the first movement, and it bears a thematic relationship to the second movement. Much of the material also revolves around scales and mediant relationships to comprise an opening theme, a groove section, and an ethereal, glassy texture which ends the movement. Essentially, the piece closes with a calmer music in contrast to the brute force that opened the piece.
The first movement, ironically titled “Don’t Panic,” highlights my initial anxieties on experimentation by creating hectic textures. The movement is structured around two main alternating sections of chromatic, chordal dissonance with more modal, melodic syncopation in addition to a developmental section, but a sense of rhythmic groove is prominent throughout. The second movement, “Still Here,” is a darker, more sensitive music as it explores various settings of its main thematic material interspersed with march-like episodes and a related secondary theme. The themes are organized around a diatonic scale that omits one pitch to comprise a six-note scale. The third movement, “Change of State,” recalls the modality and rhythmic liveliness of the first movement, and it bears a thematic relationship to the second movement. Much of the material also revolves around scales and mediant relationships to comprise an opening theme, a groove section, and an ethereal, glassy texture which ends the movement. Essentially, the piece closes with a calmer music in contrast to the brute force that opened the piece.
ContributorsJones, Zachary William (Author) / Rogers, Rodney (Thesis advisor) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This document examines select percussion works of Toshi Ichiyanagi (b. 1933), in order to create a resource that brings exposure and sparks interest in his percussion music. Ichiyanagi has long been one of Japan’s leading composers. However, despite having a successful career since the 1960s, he is not well-known in the United States. Furthermore, his close associations with celebrated American avant-garde composers and performers like John Cage, David Tudor, and La Monte Young, make Ichiyanagi’s virtual obscurity in the United States even more striking. Particularly, for a field birthed in the avant-garde, it is surprising that many of his percussion compositions avoid mainstream recognition.
For the study, the author prepared and performed a recital of the five works that are discussed: Wind Trace (1984), Trio Interlink (1990), Rhythm Gradation (1993), Perspectives II (1996), and Ballade (2002). The document is a performance guide that also provides background information on each piece. The guide discusses technical and interpretative issues uncovered through firsthand preparation and performance, and provides suggestions to solve them. At the conclusion, the author draws connections between these pieces, to highlight similarities that will be helpful to consider when preparing performances of any of his works involving percussion. Finally, an exhaustive catalog of known Ichiyanagi percussion works is provided as a resource for further performance and research.
Ichiyanagi has been writing for percussion since the 1970s. His catalog includes solos, chamber pieces, ensemble pieces, mixed-chamber pieces, and concerti. With recent compositions like Marimba Scenery (2011), Concerto for marimba and orchestra (2012), and the duo Two Dimensions (2012), Ichiyanagi continues to write for percussion. Virtuosi such as Sumire Yoshihara, Atsushi Sugahara, Momoko Kamiya, and Mutsuko Taneya have commissioned and premiered works by the composer. These pieces are on par with the challenging repertoire that has dominated percussion literature since the mid-twentieth century. Nonetheless, the author has found no existing document that is fully devoted to Ichiyanagi’s percussion work.
For the study, the author prepared and performed a recital of the five works that are discussed: Wind Trace (1984), Trio Interlink (1990), Rhythm Gradation (1993), Perspectives II (1996), and Ballade (2002). The document is a performance guide that also provides background information on each piece. The guide discusses technical and interpretative issues uncovered through firsthand preparation and performance, and provides suggestions to solve them. At the conclusion, the author draws connections between these pieces, to highlight similarities that will be helpful to consider when preparing performances of any of his works involving percussion. Finally, an exhaustive catalog of known Ichiyanagi percussion works is provided as a resource for further performance and research.
Ichiyanagi has been writing for percussion since the 1970s. His catalog includes solos, chamber pieces, ensemble pieces, mixed-chamber pieces, and concerti. With recent compositions like Marimba Scenery (2011), Concerto for marimba and orchestra (2012), and the duo Two Dimensions (2012), Ichiyanagi continues to write for percussion. Virtuosi such as Sumire Yoshihara, Atsushi Sugahara, Momoko Kamiya, and Mutsuko Taneya have commissioned and premiered works by the composer. These pieces are on par with the challenging repertoire that has dominated percussion literature since the mid-twentieth century. Nonetheless, the author has found no existing document that is fully devoted to Ichiyanagi’s percussion work.
ContributorsFragiskatos, Alexandros D. (Author) / Smith, J. B. (Thesis advisor) / Mancuso, Simone (Committee member) / Rogers, Rodney (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017