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- Genre: Academic theses
- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: Ryan, Russell
Description
This document accompanies new recordings of four recent sonatas for trumpet and piano. The project’s objective is to promote these works, while providing a comprehensive resource for potential performers. The four sonatas were selected based on their appeal to modern audiences. Composers Brendan Collins, Luis Engelke, William Rowson, and Christoph Nils Thompson each represents a different country, and they offer significant contributions to the trumpet repertoire. Each sonata expertly features the trumpet by highlighting its lyricism, virtuosity, and ability to cross genres.
The accompanying document draws upon interviews with the four composers, which reveal insights into the compositional process and provide details that performers will find useful. This document also offers in-depth musical descriptions, allowing performers to enhance their understanding of each sonata. The principal component of the document is the performer’s guide: Advice is presented directly to the trumpet player that has been garnered from the composers’ interviews, study of the music, and the author’s thoughts on preparing the music. To help other young musicians better comprehend the recording process, the author’s own experience is detailed. Ultimately, this document provides a window into the lifespan of the four sonatas; from their initial composition through the various stages of studying and rehearsing, culminating with the experience of recording these works for the first time.
The accompanying document draws upon interviews with the four composers, which reveal insights into the compositional process and provide details that performers will find useful. This document also offers in-depth musical descriptions, allowing performers to enhance their understanding of each sonata. The principal component of the document is the performer’s guide: Advice is presented directly to the trumpet player that has been garnered from the composers’ interviews, study of the music, and the author’s thoughts on preparing the music. To help other young musicians better comprehend the recording process, the author’s own experience is detailed. Ultimately, this document provides a window into the lifespan of the four sonatas; from their initial composition through the various stages of studying and rehearsing, culminating with the experience of recording these works for the first time.
ContributorsKlein, Garrett Lane (Author) / Hickman, David R (Thesis advisor) / Holbrook, Amy K (Committee member) / Hill, Gary W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This thesis examines the jazz jam session’s function in the constitution of jazz scenes as
well as the identities of the musicians who participate in them. By employing ritual and
performance studies theories of liminality, I demonstrate ways in which jazz musicians,
jam sessions, and other social structures are mobilized and transformed during their
social and musical interactions. I interview three prominent members of the jazz scene in
the greater Phoenix area, and incorporate my experience as a professional jazz musician
in the same scene, to conduct a contextually and socially embedded analysis in order to
draw broader conclusions about jam sessions in general. In this analysis I refer to other
ethnomusicologists who research improvisation, jazz in ritual context, and interactions,
such as Ingrid Monson, Samuel Floyd, Travis Jackson, and Paul Berliner, as well as ideas
proposed by phenomenologically adjacent thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Martin
Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Karen Barad.
This thesis attempts to contribute to current jam session research in fields such as
ethnomusicology and jazz studies by offering a perspective on jam sessions based on
phenomenology and process philosophy, concluding that the jam session is an essential
mechanism in the ongoing social and musical developments of jazz musicians and their
scene. I also attempt to continue and develop the discourse surrounding theories of
liminality in performance and ritual studies by underscoring the web of relations in social
structures that are brought into contact with one another during the liminal performances
of their acting agents.
well as the identities of the musicians who participate in them. By employing ritual and
performance studies theories of liminality, I demonstrate ways in which jazz musicians,
jam sessions, and other social structures are mobilized and transformed during their
social and musical interactions. I interview three prominent members of the jazz scene in
the greater Phoenix area, and incorporate my experience as a professional jazz musician
in the same scene, to conduct a contextually and socially embedded analysis in order to
draw broader conclusions about jam sessions in general. In this analysis I refer to other
ethnomusicologists who research improvisation, jazz in ritual context, and interactions,
such as Ingrid Monson, Samuel Floyd, Travis Jackson, and Paul Berliner, as well as ideas
proposed by phenomenologically adjacent thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Martin
Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Karen Barad.
This thesis attempts to contribute to current jam session research in fields such as
ethnomusicology and jazz studies by offering a perspective on jam sessions based on
phenomenology and process philosophy, concluding that the jam session is an essential
mechanism in the ongoing social and musical developments of jazz musicians and their
scene. I also attempt to continue and develop the discourse surrounding theories of
liminality in performance and ritual studies by underscoring the web of relations in social
structures that are brought into contact with one another during the liminal performances
of their acting agents.
ContributorsLebert, Raymond Russell (Author) / Wells, Christopher J. (Thesis advisor) / Stover, Christopher (Committee member) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The unmeasured Fantasias by Johann Gottfried Müthel appear as part of a collection of pedagogical exercises to foster improvisation. The information he gives in the notation of his fantasias can be elucidated with a historiographical interpretation of musical rhetoric. Müthel developed musical figures and contrasting textures in accordance with contemporary rhetorical principles of inventio, dispositio and elaboratio. An analysis of Müthel’s G-minor Fantasia provides a link between musical rhetoric and performance, as seen through its improvisatory gestures. Issues of performance practice that arise in the G-minor Fantasia are the execution of ornaments, rhythmic alterations, registration, and articulation. This paper explores primary sources contemporary to Müthel to make sense of these issues. The unmeasured Fantasias are written for a keyboard with pedal. At the time that they were written, the pedal fortepiano and pedal clavichord were seen by musicians such as Carl Phillip Emanual Bach to be the superior instruments for performing improvisations. While the notation and texture of the Fantasias suggests that Müthel intended them for organ, a consideration of the possibilities provided by the fortepiano suggests that it may be more suited to conveying aspects of the galant aesthetic.
ContributorsMealey, Natalie (Author) / Marshall, Kimberly (Thesis advisor) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Fingerboard study is an essential component of the college guitar curriculum. A Course on Guitar Fingerboard Melody and Harmony is a method to acquire and integrate fundamental music vocabulary for the guitar performer, interpreter, improvisor, and composer, the end goal being mastery of musical vocabulary to enable artistic freedom and creative depth. This class design facilitates a solid foundation of fundamental components and provides a framework for further study and integration. It offers a concise yet intense course that consolidates, codifies, explores, and applies scale, interval, and chord vocabulary through interpretive, compositional, and improvisational engagement. This project aspires to contribute to the discipline of guitar, its canon, and its pedagogy. This programmed curriculum offers a comprehensive one-year, two-semester, college-level course on fundamental music vocabulary on the guitar fretboard. Its design facilitates a solid foundation for fundamental musical components, equips the student with a working scale and chord vocabulary, reveals how vocabulary is generated on any fretted instrument, and provides a framework for further study and integration. Semester one facilitates in-depth scale and interval study, while semester two investigates triads and seventh chords, reflecting one, two, three, and four voices textures. Each unit contains lessons, assignments, and integration activities. This document provides both teacher edition, units one through four, and student workbook, units five through eight.
Students of A Course on Guitar Fingerboard Melody and Harmony can expect dramatic strides in their understanding of musical vocabulary, its applications, and their abilities to associate and engage in real-time interpretative, compositional, and improvisational contexts. Fingerboard knowledge greatly enhances sight reading skills and enables the interpreter to find fingerings that express the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic character of any particular musical gesture, and consequently, an entire composition. Guitar composers will be most effective when they know the possibilities and parameters of musical vocabulary on the instrument. Often, the study of vocabulary can inform and expand a composer's sonic palette and conception. For improvisers, fingerboard comprehension allows access to any interval, scale, arpeggio, or voicing the ear desires, regardless of where they happen to find themselves on the instrument in that unique moment.
ContributorsZweig, Phillip (Author) / Kim, Ji Leon (Thesis advisor) / Swartz, Jonathan (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This paper presents three new arrangements of works for solo tuba and piano, originally written by Black composers before 1950. The works presented here include Méphisto masqué by Edmond Dédé, Three Arabian Dances by Amanda Aldridge, and Warbling in the Moonlight by Alton Augustus Adams. Composer biographies, a formal analysis, and form diagrams are included for each piece, along with the new transcriptions.
ContributorsMatejek, Matthew Ryan (Author) / Swoboda, Deanna (Thesis advisor) / Edwards, Bradley (Committee member) / Shea, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Alexina Louie (b. 1949) is a highly respected Canadian composer who has received numerous prestigious awards. The present study focuses on her pedagogical works for young pianists: Music for Piano (1982), Star Light, Star Bright (1995), and Small Beautiful Things (2016). All three sets, written in different periods of her compositional career, reveal Louie's highly artistic musical style adapted to her strong interest in piano pedagogy.
Music for Piano, intended for intermediate-level pianists, has four individual pieces, taking two to three minutes each, representing Louie’s early compositional style. Star Light, Star Bright, for intermediate-level pianists at a slightly lower level than intended for Music for Piano, consists of nine short character pieces inspired by the stars and planets and other phenomena of the solar system. Small Beautiful Things is technically less challenging than the other works. It consists of eleven-character pieces with titles from everyday life that are designed to appeal to young musicians.
The first chapter is an account of Louie's educational background and how mentors influenced her development as a pianist, composer, and teacher. The chapter also documents Louie's strong interest in teaching, which led her to compose piano music with pedagogical intent. The second chapter describes the compositional elements of Music for Piano, examining Louie's uses of various Asian elements, minimalism, notational innovations resulting in rhythmic freedom, and Impressionistic timbres and sonorities. The third chapter assesses Star Light, Star Bright, showing the overall palindromic structure of the set while discussing the content and pedagogical value of the individual pieces. The fourth chapter focuses on how the pieces of Small Beautiful Things help young pianists to develop basic techniques and musicianship.
Overall, the discussion reveals not only the musical and expressive qualities of Louie's works for young pianists, but also their value for cultivating both technique and musicality.
ContributorsNam, Michelle Yelin (Author) / Hamilton, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Holbrook, Amy (Thesis advisor) / Meir, Baruch (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This research paper investigates the relationship between orchestration and harmony in Prokofiev’s orchestral works through selected case studies drawn from his symphonies and several of his symphonic suites. The research focuses on moments where the combination of orchestration and harmony stand out from the orchestral texture. Prokofiev uses these two elements of music to create both a large range of orchestral colors as well as to highlight structurally important moments in thematic development. Through the selected music examples, I highlight how the two elements are mutually dependent, even synergistic. I also argue that Prokofiev uses the two elements in a highly inventive manner to create unique timbral/harmonic effects. Drawing on recent theories related to timbre and perception, the chosen segments of music are analyzed in detail within the context of the works’ form and narrative. The study of these combinations suggests further research and interpretative possibilities for composers, music theorists, and performers.
ContributorsTay, Yun Song (Author) / Meyer, Jeffery (Thesis advisor) / Schmelz, Peter (Committee member) / Bolanos, Gabriel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This paper is an in-depth analysis of the symphonic piece titled Subconsciousness for symphony orchestra that was composed during the summer of 2021. This document will explain the conceptual ideas and compositional processes involved in its creation. This document was written as a resource for musicians, music theorist, composers, and public interested in the creative process used to compose the piece. Much of this work was inspired by the writings of Carl Gustav Jung that explore dreams and how the unconscious mind plays an important role in developing these dreams. In addition, this paper shows how Jung’s ideas are manifested in the music, providing arguments that demonstrate how both psychology and music are correlated in the development of the piece.
ContributorsTaborda Higuita, Daniel Felipe (Author) / Rockmaker, Jody (Thesis advisor) / Bolanos, Gabriel (Committee member) / Temple, Alex (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
A Garden of Roses is a composition for wind ensemble written between October 2022 and March 2023 during a residency with the Arizona State University Wind Ensemble. The piece was inspired by a narrative of grief and acceptance abstracted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s children’s story The Little Prince, and explores the relationship between auditory perception and expectation, influenced by David Huron’s Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. The piece is approximately 9 minutes in duration.
ContributorsCastillo, Alicia (Author) / Bolanos, Gabriel (Thesis advisor) / Navarro, Fernanda (Committee member) / Shea, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The organ sonatas of Hans Fährmann are some of the fullest realizations of the orchestral potential of the pipe organ. These works fill a crucial gap in the existing canonic organ repertoire; they allow the organist to engage with the late German Romantic symphonic works of Brahms, Mahler, and Strauss. There is relatively little remaining documentary evidence about Fährmann’s life. This paper provides a biography summarizing what is known about the composer and situates his work historically. Turn-of-the-century Dresden, the so-called “El Dorado on the Elbe,” provided an environment where musical conservatism and radical progressivism lived uneasily side-by-side. The evolution of the German Romantic organ and the organ sonata paved the way for Fährmann’s important contributions to the genre. Fährmann’s own musical language situates him between the organ tradition and broader trends in 19th-century German composition, especially Richard Wagner.Although there is little information on the performance practice of Fährmann’s music, it is possible to derive ideas from German Romantic conducting practices. The study compares the rhythmic interpretive decisions of conductors contemporary to Fährmann with organ-playing in the Straube tradition. The symphonic performance tradition is a better source for organists interpreting Fährmann because of the stylistic similarities between his organ sonatas and the orchestral repertoire, as opposed to the approach of the Straube school, which was at that time laying the foundation for and engaging with the Orgelbeewgung. To elucidate the registration of Fährmann’s organ sonatas, the author investigates contemporary practices and specification of the Johanneskirche instrument on which Fährmann spent most of his time. The study concludes with an analysis of his First Sonata, demonstrating the composer’s craftsmanship and creation of a narrative arch across the form.
ContributorsHalbert, Nicholas (Author) / Marshall, Kimberly (Thesis advisor) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Reymore, Lindsey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024