Frank Zappa considered “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary” hismasterpiece. It contains every aspect of his melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic language. These techniques include: folk-influenced songs, quartal melodies, asymmetric meters, speech-influenced rhythms, octave-displaced chromaticism, “conceptual continuity,” and creative studio techniques. He considers these aspects and weighs them against each other to maintain a sense of balance on both a micro- and macroscopic scale. The first chapter of this dissertation explores the events that led up to the creation of the composition. A chronology of historical events precedes a synopsis of the piece’s narrative. The second chapter examines a rehearsal tape from March of 1972, which was released posthumously, that contains the song that will eventually become the fourth movement of the piece: “The New Brown Clouds.” That song, as well as others on the recording, contains several examples of Zappa’s musical vocabulary. These excerpts are also included in the two albums that were released and are also heard in Zappa’s magnum opus. The third and fourth chapters examine the first version of “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary.” The third chapter focuses on musical analysis and identifying key components of Zappa’s compositional style. The fourth chapter talks about he Grand Wazoo’s tour, the Petit Wazoo tour a month later, and the subsequent tour in 1973. Zappa wrote new music for these tours, and those pieces became part of the large revision that is discussed in chapter 5. The sixth chapter examines the recording process, locations, and the innovative techniques Zappa uses in the studio. Every time he released a recording of the composition, there was always a notable revision— including shortly before his death in 1993. Finally, the Ensemble Modern’s posthumous recording of “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary” is also scrutinized.

In a Mirror Dimly… is an autobiographical work that follows my mental development from my teen years into my mid-20s and offers a way forward into the future. First comes legalism: a canon, which represents a rule-based thought process. Next is freedom and individuality: indeterminate methods and textures. Finally, the piece concludes with unity and wholeness, using quoted and composed hymns in chorale settings. The conceptual content is taken from Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, a story of a Hindu man’s life through the development of his own ideology into Buddhism. He begins by following the rules of his faith obsessively, then he decides that the rules themselves don’t matter as much as the spirit behind them, and finally he begins to see the interconnectedness of nature through the flow of a river and gains a fuller picture of all that is. I have also included an anxiety motif which begins as an interruption or nuisance; it then takes over in the form of a panic attack but is quelled by a hymn: “Be Still My Soul,” with text written by Katharina von Schlegel set to the tune of Sibelius’ Finlandia. Finally, the anxiety is contained and molded to help the overall texture rather than disrupting it. The anxiety is never truly eradicated, but it is transformed.

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.

CONCERTO GROSSO is a 15-minute three-movement piece composed for an 11-instrument ensembleand electronics which is performed by an additional performer. The aim of this piece is to expresses my interpretation of classical Egyptian and contemporary Western musical idioms through the methods of both live orchestration and electronic processing. The relationship between the acoustic instruments and the electronics is meant to sound as if the electronicpart is a live processing of each acoustic instrument in real time, but in reality the processing does not occur live, and has been prepared prior to the performance by a recording of each individual instrumental part which has been made in advance. These recordings are processed and prepared into cues which are then triggered by an individual performer on a synthesizer. CONCERTO GROSSO explores the generation of new timbers, textures and tuning systems out of theacoustic material performed by the instruments through the use of electronic processing. Through the alteration of timbres, the instruments can be altered to sound similar to native Egyptian and other-wordly instruments. The alteration of textures results from the duplication of one instrument into a choir of that instrument, which can either be aligned vertically or offset by small durations to create a brief nebula of sound. Finally, non-western tuning systems such as the Arabic "Maqamat" are generated through the processing of pitch in order to create intervals such as neutral seconds, which are not in the common practice technique of the instruments of the ensemble.

Temporal Creative Entanglement and the Composer’s Search for a Unique Voice is about some of the creative challenges inherent in the composing process. Creative entanglement is when a composer gets caught up—entangled—in the creative process and it tarnishes their sense of how to appropriately assemble the formal structure of a piece. The word temporal means that I’m focusing on how a lot of creative entanglement happens because of process / product disparities related to time. Process / product disparity is the term I use to describe the enormous differences between the experience of composing and the experience of hearing the premiere of a work. And, I bring up the composer’s search for a unique voice because composers are especially vulnerable to creative entanglement when they are trying to write in a new style. I try to identify some different ways a composer can become entangled by discussing some specific ways that people subconsciously process music (musical expectations and information flow). I draw on the works of David Huron, Fred Lerdahl, and John Sloboda, among others, to paint a picture of the different mental processes that occur during composing and listening. I discuss how schematic, veridical, and dynamic expectations work in the mind of composer and the listener, and how these relate to creative entanglement. I also discuss how the conception of large-scale form fits into this topic. In the conclusion, I offer some thoughts on approaching composing from the perspective of creative entanglement. To close, I offer a perspective about artistic satisfaction and composing.