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Musical interpretation is challenging when one's goal is to evoke an emotional response from an audience. In order to develop a well-informed interpretation of Mozart's Fantasia in D minor K. 397, a study was conducted on the historical background of the piece and various performances by well-regarded performers. Fantasias are written works, but improvisatory by nature. Mozart's fantasias were influenced by C. P. E. Bach's, which included sudden changes in emotion. An Emil Gilels performance provided a classically trained approach, while Mitsuko Uchida's performance provided an emotional approach. Colin Tilney and John Irving performances elucidated the sound of the instruments that Mozart would have been composing with. Altogether, the research culminated in an interpretation of the D minor Fantasia that endeavored to capture the essence of fantasy, improvisation and emotion.
ContributorsMo, Gina Nan (Author) / Emmery, Laura (Thesis director) / Creviston, Hannah (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
DescriptionReflections of Self is an original score containing three movements composed and transcribed entirely by myself (Cameron Labban) under the guidance of Dr. David Schildkret. The foundation of the movements within the score are based upon stand-alone melodies created since I first began teaching myself how to play the piano.
ContributorsLabban, Cameron Wael (Author) / Schildkret, David (Thesis director) / Evans, Bartlett (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The result of hundreds of hours of work is a few minutes of music. I am mechanical engineering student with a passion for music. The objective of this creative project was to learn as much as I could about music theory, composition, orchestration, notation, recording, and mixing, and to create some music of my own. I learned a great deal in my two semesters of work. My music was focused on small ensembles of strings and piano. I created over ten hours of musical audio sketches and produced notation for four pieces for the piano and strings. The finished scores fit together with similar tones and textures, all sharing a minor tonality. The first piece, "Little Machine," is a simple, methodical piano piece created in the style of second species counterpoint. The second piece, "Searching" is a duet between a piano and a cello. For most of the piece, the two instruments share a rhythmic sense of mutual independence, yet neither part can exist without the either. "Something Lost" is a piano solo written with a variety of sections and a unifying idea that pervades through the piece. Finally, "3 Strings & Piano" is a melancholy adagio written for the piano, two cellos, and a double bass. Overall, this project has helped to prepare me for a lifetime of continued learning and composition. In the future I will continue to write music, and I hope to specifically learn more about the tools and techniques used by professionals in the industry so that I can find more efficient ways to produce my own music.
ContributorsSchichtel, Jacob (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra (Thesis director) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
This project is a small scale investigation of various factors concerning "Flow" in Piano Performance. "Flow" is the sweet spot where ability and challenge are about equal, and usually high (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). Piano performance is a state of playing the piano with some intent to perform. In this case, the intent is to create something new or improvise. Improvisation is one form of expressive creativity on the piano stemming from some knowledge and extrapolation upon that knowledge (Nachmanovitch 82). Creativity is essential to the development of new music, and though extensive literature exists on both creativity and music independently, there is a gap in research regarding links between the two (Macdonald et al. 2006). This project aims to address some of these gaps by working with piano players and non-musicians of various technical skill levels to examine the "Flow" state in improvisation as well as potential factors affecting creative performance. Factors such as listening, self-confidence, frustration in methodology, and meditation practices were found to correlate positively with technical skill. Participants who completed the practice program were able to reconstruct challenges and enter the "Flow" state in improvisation regardless of high or low technical scores.
ContributorsDorr, Alexander Nathan (Author) / Kaplan, Robert (Thesis director) / Parker, John (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The purpose of this project is to create a useful tool for musicians that utilizes the harmonic content of their playing to recommend new, relevant chords to play. This is done by training various Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) on the lead sheets of 100 different jazz standards. A total of 200 unique datasets were produced and tested, resulting in the prediction of nearly 51 million chords. A note-prediction accuracy of 82.1% and a chord-prediction accuracy of 34.5% were achieved across all datasets. Methods of data representation that were rooted in valid music theory frameworks were found to increase the efficacy of harmonic prediction by up to 6%. Optimal LSTM input sizes were also determined for each method of data representation.
ContributorsRangaswami, Sriram Madhav (Author) / Lalitha, Sankar (Thesis director) / Jayasuriya, Suren (Committee member) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Collaborating with others is a crucial part of growing creatively, and gaining perspective. With different artistic mediums like dance, film, music and design, there is a lot artists can learn from one another. Art is also a way to convey important messages that reflect social, political and cultural issues, and artists have become increasingly responsible for presenting these issues in a way that will provoke thought and create change. “Luna” is a series of compositions with a goal of inviting the audience into a different world. The use of sound design and electronic music production paired with piano arrangements creates a vast, sonic landscape, and the titles of each piece are related to space. The live performance of the album also involves dance, which adds another human element to the experience.
ContributorsAzersky, Sadie (Author) / Yanez, Raul (Thesis director) / Costa Palazuelos, Jorge (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Collaborating with others is a crucial part of growing creatively, and gaining perspective. With different artistic mediums like dance, film, music and design, there is a lot artists can learn from one another. Art is also a way to convey important messages that reflect social, political and cultural issues, and artists have become increasingly responsible for presenting these issues in a way that will provoke thought and create change.
“Luna” is a series of compositions with a goal of inviting the audience into a different world. The use of sound design and electronic music production paired with piano arrangements creates a vast, sonic landscape, and the titles of each piece are related to space. The live performance of the album also involves dance, which adds another human element to the experience.
ContributorsAzersky, Sadie (Author) / Yanez, Raul (Thesis director) / Costa Palazuelos, Jorge (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Collaborating with others is a crucial part of growing creatively, and gaining perspective. With different artistic mediums like dance, film, music and design, there is a lot artists can learn from one another. Art is also a way to convey important messages that reflect social, political and cultural issues, and artists have become increasingly responsible for presenting these issues in a way that will provoke thought and create change.
“Luna” is a series of compositions with a goal of inviting the audience into a different world. The use of sound design and electronic music production paired with piano arrangements creates a vast, sonic landscape, and the titles of each piece are related to space. The live performance of the album also involves dance, which adds another human element to the experience.
ContributorsAzersky, Sadie (Author) / Yanez, Raul (Thesis director) / Costa Palazuelos, Jorge (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Collaborating with others is a crucial part of growing creatively, and gaining perspective. With different artistic mediums like dance, film, music and design, there is a lot artists can learn from one another. Art is also a way to convey important messages that reflect social, political and cultural issues, and artists have become increasingly responsible for presenting these issues in a way that will provoke thought and create change.
“Luna” is a series of compositions with a goal of inviting the audience into a different world. The use of sound design and electronic music production paired with piano arrangements creates a vast, sonic landscape, and the titles of each piece are related to space. The live performance of the album also involves dance, which adds another human element to the experience.
ContributorsAzersky, Sadie (Author) / Yanez, Raul (Thesis director) / Costa Palazuelos, Jorge (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Tales from the Amusement Park is a collection of songs in the musical theatre style with music and lyrics by Matt Villar. The song cycle illustrates a series of vignettes, with each song featuring a different archetypal character (or group thereof) as they navigate a day in a popular amusement park. The project is written for piano and voices, and is most-suited to twelve or fewer voices. The debut performance occurred on March 26 in the Evelyn Smith Music Theatre, and featured twelve singers and one pianist. The cycle aims to connect the audience through the demonstration of "human moments" which are widely relatable, while also introducing them to unique and interesting characters.
ContributorsVillar, Matthew (Author) / DeMaris, Brian (Thesis director) / Chin, Michelle (Committee member) / Yatso, Toby (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2023-05