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"…Threaded Through": The Multitextuality of Site-Specific Music Composition

Description: The two fields of acousmatic music and site-specific conceptual art take strikingly different approaches to the notions of space and place. In this document, I describe how these two areas of aesthetic research diverge and relate to each other, focusing on how their unique approaches can be implemented in the practice of site-specific music composition. The first part of this document surveys the distinctive features of each of these fields, describing the particular differences between them in… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Vaughn, Mark, 1987-
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Chicago Renaissance Women: Black Feminism in the Careers and Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds

Description: In this thesis, I explore the careers and songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds—two African American female composers who were part of the Chicago Renaissance. Price and Bonds were members of extensive, often informal, networks of Black women that fostered creativity and forged paths to success for Black female musicians during this era. Building on the work of Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins, I contend that these efforts reflect Black feminist principles of Black women workin… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Durrant, Elizabeth
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Theory and Practice in Book 2 of Ugolino's (c. 1380-1457) "Declaratio musicae disciplinae"

Description: Ugolino (c. 1380-1457) wrote one of the largest treatises on music theory in the first half of the fifteenth century. This work, the "Declaratio musicae disciplinae," is comprised of five books that cover everything a musician of the era would need to know, from plainchant to harmonic proportions, from musica practica to musica speculativa. However, the treatise has received contradictory interpretations by modern scholars, some viewing it as mainly practical, others as mainly theoretical. I ar… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Turner, Joseph (Joseph Alexander)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814) and His Jesuit-Influenced "System" of Harmony

Description: This dissertation reexamines the music-theoretical writing of Georg Jospeh Vogler (1749-1814) in light of his educational background. His system, which is often characterized as "awkward" or "self-contradictory," is actually indicative of the rationalist/humanist preferences of Vogler's main source of training: the Jesuit Order. I argue that Vogler's theories and compositional style have been marginalized, partially due to their incompatibility with the more prevalent systems of his era, whic… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Donley, Douglas Michael
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Early Songs (1880–1885) of Claude Debussy: An Analytical Approach to Defining a Repertoire

Description: The period between 1880 and 1885 was a significant time in Claude Debussy's life and compositional career. 1880 marks the date of his first published composition, "Nuit d'étoiles," and 1885 is the year in which he began his two-year tenure in Rome after winning the coveted Prix de Rome in 1884. During the intervening time Debussy composed about forty songs. Scholarly literature, especially analytical literature, tends to focus heavily on music in Debussy's mature style, often casting his early… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Waldroup, William Allan
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Change, Longing, and Frustration in Djent-Style Progressive Metal

Description: The progressive metal style "djent" emerged in the mid-to-late 2000s with bands that modeled their use of extended range instruments and complex rhythmic cycles after that of Swedish metal band Meshuggah. The addition of a new vocabulary of melody and harmony by bands such as Periphery, Tesseract, and Animals as Leaders has come to define djent in a new way and provided fruitful ground for voice-leading and metrical analysis. In this dissertation, I approach analysis in two steps. The first ste… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Sallings, Patrick Nolan, 1982-
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Making Sense of Things

Description: Making Sense of Things is a piece composed through consideration of the relationship between music, meaning, and materiality. The piece, written for voice, flute, percussion, and live electronics, explores topics of the "sensible" and "nonsensical" in music, moving through a variety of sonic episodes that feature different notational approaches, electronic textures, technical instrumental practice, and theatrical elements in order to explore a variety of expressive possibilities while unified a… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Fox, West
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Nontraditional Six-Four Chords and Their Impact on Middleground Structures in Schumann, Brahms, and Saint-Säens

Description: This dissertation explores middleground functionality of six-four chords by combining a voice-leading approach with hypermetrical analysis. By acknowledging the functional ambiguity of certain six-four chords that do not fit into traditional classifications (Aldwell and Schachter's cadential, consonant, passing, and neighboring six-four), or that can be seen as fitting in more than one category, I show that our interpretation of deeper-level structures is contingent upon how we choose to hear t… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Gao, Yiyi
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

"Femininity: Ownership and Power": A Multimedia Exhibition

Description: This thesis is a critical analysis and creative commentary providing research and insight into my 150-minute multimedia exhibition, "Femininity: Ownership and Power," that premiered October 23, 2021. All of my research, composition, and collaboration efforts seek to recontextualize the semiotics of ‘femininity' through ownership and empowerment from varying intersections and identities. The titles of the eight works composed and premiered as part of the exhibition include: a beautiful reckoning… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Brown, Aleyna M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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