Matching Items (274)
Description
John Harbison is one of the most prominent composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has made major contributions in all areas of classical music, including operas, symphonies, chamber music, choral works, and vocal pieces.Among his vast output is 'Four Songs of Solitude,' his only composition (to date) for solo violin. Though the piece is beautiful and reflective in nature, its inherent technical and musical difficulties present challenges to violinists preparing the piece. There is no published edition of 'Four Songs of Solitude' that includes bowings and fingerings, and violinists used to practicing and performing the études and repertoire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may have difficulty determining how to successfully navigate the music. This paper examines the piece in detail, providing an analytic description of the music and suggestions for practice. An interview with the composer yielded many insights into the structural and harmonic events of the songs, and the composer's interpretive suggestions are given alongside technical suggestions by the author. The solo violin has a centuries-long legacy, and some of the most performed repertoire exists in the medium. 'Four Songs of Solitude' is a demanding set of pieces that stands out in late twentieth-century violin music. Providing information about the piece directly from the composer and suggestions for practice and performance increases the accessibility of the work for violinists seeking to bring it to the concert stage.
ContributorsSchreffler, Sarah (Author) / McLin, Katherine (Thesis advisor) / Hill, Gary (Committee member) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Spring, Robert (Committee member) / Swartz, Jonathan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Examples of new or extended clarinet techniques first appeared early in the twentieth century. By the 1960s, composers and performers began to drastically augment standard clarinet technique, by experimenting with multiphonics and microtones. Subsequently, clarinetists-teachers William O. Smith, Gerard Errante, Ronald Caravan, and others further pushed the limits of sound through their compositions for clarinet. This study explores the important contributions of clarinetist-teacher-composer Eric Mandat to the clarinet repertoire, and presents readers with a detailed biography of Mandat. Additionally, this research paper provides insights into Eric Mandat's instinctive approach to life and considers how this modus operandi translates into success as a composer, as a clarinetist, and as a teacher. Interviews with Eric Mandat comprise the basis for this document; these are supplemented by his writings, articles about Mandat, reviews of his music, and interviews with select colleagues and students. This is the first document to examine Eric Mandat's history and development as a composer, teacher and clarinetist.
Contributorsd'Alessio, Rebecca Tout (Author) / Spring, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Hill, Gary (Committee member) / Hackbarth, Glenn (Committee member) / Schuring, Martin (Committee member) / McLin, Katherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707) is known for his many organ works. However, no significant portion of his choral music is in the standard performing repertoire. Buxtehude's large-scale choral work Membra Jesu Nostri should be considered a seminal "passion" composition in part because of its historic position in early German Lutheran church music. It also serves as an example of the heightened levels of affect in a seventeenth century devotional passion. To better understand Buxtehude and his music, an overview of his life, career and religious beliefs are discussed, including the incorporation of pietism and mysticism in his cantata, Membra Jesu Nostri. Details of the composition's structure, unifying thematic elements and text sources with translations are included. Historical performance practices are discussed, including the composer's probable intent of having one of the seven cantatas performed every day before Easter. This research study also provides conductors with a variety of practical performance considerations. Through these observations, it will be shown that Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri is one of the most well-conceived and well-constructed choral works of the early Baroque era.
ContributorsKim, Youn Ju (Author) / Gentry, Gregory (Thesis advisor) / Hill, Gary (Committee member) / Reber, William (Committee member) / Rogers, Rodney (Committee member) / Russell, Timothy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Musical Impressionism has been most significantly reflected through the works of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). These two key figures exhibit the essence of this art and their piano music remains substantial, influential, and frequently assigned and played today. Nevertheless, from a pedagogical perspective, important factors required in achieving a successful performance of Debussy and Ravel's piano music--delicate tone production, independent voicing, complicated rhythm, sensitive pedaling, and a knowledgeable view of Impressionism--are musically and technically beyond the limit of early advanced students. This study provides a collection of short piano pieces by nine lesser-known European and American composers--Edward MacDowell (1861-1908), Charles Griffes (1884-1920), Marion Bauer (1887-1955), Cyril Scott (1879-1970), Arnold Bax (1883-1953), Selim Palmgren (1878-1951), Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) and Federico Mompou (1893-1987). They were influenced by impressionistic aesthetics or composed at one time in an impressionistic manner over a span of their lifetimes and their music provides a bridge to the more advanced impressionistic pieces of Debussy and Ravel for early advanced students. These composers' selected short piano pieces display richly colored sonority through the use of impressionistic techniques such as non-functional harmony (parallel chords and free modulation), exotic setting (e.g. modality, pentatonic and whole-tone scales), ostinato figures, bell-sound imitation, and extended texture. Moreover, personal interpretive elements, such as poetic and folklore references, were incorporated in some piano works of MacDowell, Griffes, Bauer, Scott, and Bax; among them MacDowell and Bax were particularly inspired by Celtic and Nordic materials. Mompou infused Spanish folklores in his individual naïve style. Most importantly, these selected short piano pieces are approachable and attractive to early advanced pianists. These works, as well as other largely undiscovered impressionistic piano character pieces, ought to be a great source of preliminary repertoire as preparation for the music of Debussy and Ravel.
ContributorsChien, Chieh Jenny (Author) / Thompson, Janice Meyer (Thesis advisor) / Hamilton, Robert (Committee member) / Humphreys, Jere (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Pagano, Caio (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The craft of improvisation at the organ has survived a long period of dormancy and is experiencing a strong resurgence in the twenty-first century. This project seeks to establish a precedence for the value of notated music as a resource in learning improvisation, and then, through music analysis, provide examples of how that process can develop. The result of the ideas presented here is a pathway whereby any disciplined organist can learn to imitate composed music, assimilate the musical ideas, and innovate through the act of spontaneous improvisation.
ContributorsHoward, Devon (Author) / Marshall, Kimberly (Thesis advisor) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
DescriptionA self-help guide for the independent animator. Answers the question, "What do I do when I finish a film?" Includes information on how to successfully market a film as well as different avenues of distribution. Discusses both shorts and features.
ContributorsHoma, Christopher Andres Burruel (Author) / Pinholster, Jacob (Thesis director) / Bernstein, Gregory (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The globalization of dance offers a unique situation to encourage peace. The kinesthetic experience associated with dance builds communities and unites people without needing to share the same language or be in the same location on the planet. Dance is a vehicle to understand other cultures but how can people be given the keys? As the 2014 Circumnavigator Travel Study Grant recipient for Arizona State University (ASU), I traveled to six countries in three continents over seventy-two days conducting ethnochoreology (dance ethnography) research. Upon returning I had a passion to share my experience through dance. Therefore I organized a charity dance concert. To share my kinesthetic education from my trip I taught six high schools each a dance from the countries I visited. An additional high school, elementary school and ASU students joined the concert. The performers and audience members gained new understanding, curiosity and appreciation. The proceeds of the concert have started a new scholarship for ASU students pursuing dance or studying abroad. This journey has come full circle just like the Circumnavigator trip which began this project. Knowledge of other dances from around the world invites participants to see into the heart of the culture, creating empathy. Therefore dance can ignite peace.
ContributorsCoury, Melia Ann (Author) / Vissicaro, Pegge (Thesis director) / Ostrom, Amy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
I am double majoring in Film & Media Production and Geography, and whenever I tell anyone that their first reaction is one of polite incredulity. The two disciplines seem so far from each other that there doesn't seem to be any possible way of combining them. With this project, I wanted to incorporate these two very different fields into one meaningful product. Using film as a medium, I explored how impactful a geographical location can truly be on someone. When we think about our pasts, we often focus on the people and events, losing sight of the physical location where these memories take place. Life in a Museum attempts to shine a light on this forgotten aspect of memory. I moved to Prescott, Arizona when I was 11 and moved away when I was 18, living there for only 7 years. Yet as time passes, I am starting to realize how impactful Prescott has been on me. For my Honors Creative Project, I created a video essay in an attempt to "map" my relationship with Prescott and how it has changed over time. Incorporating digital video, Google SketchUp Animations and historical photographs, Life in a Museum acts as collage that attempts to mimic the tangential aspects of memory. The film addresses my upbringing in Prescott, the town's intense pride for its history, and how living there has affected my own perception of time, memory, death and the future. Link to video: https://vimeo.com/126633587
ContributorsJones, Zachary Loren (Author) / Larson, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / Kitson, Jennifer (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
A longing to revisit the people, places, and moments of my past has followed me for years, sometimes affecting me to the extent that the past seems to intrude on my present. In this piece, I wish to turn a critical eye on these feelings of nostalgia and examine how strong emotion can emerge from nothing more than fractured, faded memories. Using footage of moments I had recorded over six months of living in Europe, I seek to sculpt these images from my past into a form that rejects the daze of nostalgia for the fragmented truth of memory. My background is in more traditional narrative filmmaking, and so I was excited to work in this experimental three-screen format, in which I could explore the concept of memory in a manner that felt truer to how I actually experience it. I tested various combinations of imagery in my videos to build the progression of the piece, which I hoped would play out in an associational style that mimicked the process of my own memory. I hope that this will cause people to walk away from the piece thinking about how memory can fuel emotion and even to investigate their own relationship to the past.
ContributorsPowell, Matthew Rhys (Author) / Bradley, Christopher (Thesis director) / Brye, Anne (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Beautiful Accidents is a debut drama-comedy feature screenplay written as a thesis project. For a screenwriter trying to bloom in the Film Industry, the big question is "where is your great feature script?" and "how many do you have?" The pressure is all about the quality of the work and how many feature screenplays are written. Thus, this draft has been in pre-production and conception for a year and a half now. The draft presented as the thesis project is the third draft of a total of three versions of the script. The first and second drafts are drastically different from this third draft in content and character development. After having the opportunity to attend the Cannes Film Festival, the inspiration for another new and improved third draft came to be. It runs 93 pages, and goes beyond presenting an example debut feature screenplay. Throughout the process of writing a feature screenplay, learning to write several drafts to reach a polished draft is a crucial part of the journey as a writer. This was not only a project that included writing a feature film screenplay, but it also contained valuable lessons about the growth of an inspiring writer in regards to being willing to go through several drafts. In addition to the third draft of the script, a teaser opening of the first scene was produced, directed, and starred in as another segment of the thesis project. Run Time: 2:51. The goal for this teaser opening is to serve as a visual sample along with the screenplay. When the time comes to search for investors and producers for the script, this teaser will accompany the material. The script is intentionally written to be a low budget film, so that production could take place independently and locally for a tight budget. The ultimate goal is to produce this film as either an independent film or a semi-independent as writer/director of the project. Synopsis: A quirky romantic comedy about two individuals, Meg and Dave, who believe they are narcissists explore their own perceived narcissism in one another. Meg is a budding music genius who is stuck at Law school, while Dave is a bartender and pool shark. At the ripe age of 22, Meg finds herself for the first time in her life, deeply fascinated in one other person other than herself: Dave, who happens to also be ten years older than her. Her first meeting with Dave is purely an accident, as their continued journey appears to have plenty of them. These accidents prove to be, however, beautiful.
ContributorsKheshtchin-Kamel, Amena (Author) / Montesano, Mark (Thesis director) / Bernstein, Gregory (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2015-05