Calling them “automatic,” “mechanical,” and “facile,” Patrick McCreless summarizes a common perception of modulations by tone or semitone in pop-rock music. Consequently, scholars have given these moments clumsy, utilitarian names such as “truck-driver” and “pump-up.” In place of this view, I frame modulation as an element of pop-rock music that is constructed with idiomatic signs involving texture, rhythmic energy, and harmony. I then define the modulation zone as a formal area that prepares for an ensuing modulation, modulates, and transitions to the next formal section.

With the boundaries and tasks of the modulation zone defined, this paper delineates four rhetorical strategies for modulation zones. These strategies differ in the nature of their expressive energy, idiomatic seams, and characteristic elements. By rethinking how pop-rock songs enact their modulations, this paper establishes a new perspective that recognizes a well-established set of stylistic signs and idioms rather than simply the stark juxtaposition of two keys. 

While prior authors identify a number of lyrical, textural, and timbral factors that engender our perception of chorus quality in pop/rock songs, the extant literature provides only brief explanations of the harmonic factors involved.  One notable exception is found in Doll 2011, which describes songs that modulate from a minor verse to a relative-major chorus.  This paper presents a broader theoretical context to understand how chorus quality may be generated within the harmonic domain.  I posit that the strength of chorus quality corresponds to arrivals of the Ionian tonic, as exemplified via five scenarios: 1) Verse and chorus are in the same major key, but the verse avoids tonic; 2) Verse and chorus are in the same major key, but the chorus includes more tonic arrivals; 3) Verse and chorus share the same diatonic collection but have different tonal centers; 4) Verse and chorus have the same tonal center but different diatonic collections; and 5) Verse and chorus have different tonal centers and different diatonic collections.  In the final portion, I address songs that appear to contradict this theoretical paradigm.  I argue that such examples present analytical opportunities, since they involve conflicting perceptual information conveyed by different domains.  

Singing voices are notoriously difficult to analyze systematically, yet they are central to listeners’ experiences, particularly in popular genres. To interpret an artist’s general manner of vocal delivery, I propose a framework for examining vocal prosody in popular music. Five constituent components—phrasing, metric placement, motility, embellishment, and phonation—illustrate differences in vocal prosody among four versions of a single song in contrasting styles: Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” (2002), Glen Hansard’s acoustic folk-rock cover (2003), Ten Masked Men’s death metal cover (2003), and the Cliks’ rock cover (2006). Analysis of phrasing draws attention to inter-phrase connectivity (the degree of connectivity between phrases) and intra-phrase connectivity (the degree of connectivity within each phrase). Within the domain of metric placement, elongation or truncation of vocal lines result in contrasting prosodic styles, both at the level of initial beat placement of repeated text and in differences in syncopated versus on-the-beat attacks of important syllables. Artists’ capacity for agility—singing rapid passages with apparent ease and fluidity—and execution of vocal motility manifest in contrasting ways, ranging from virtuosic melismas (Timberlake) to quick, virtuosic shifts in registration (the Cliks), and clear enunciation throughout rapid syllabic passages (Hansard). Pitch embellishments take the form of pitch bends and melismas, whereas timbral embellishments occur when the onset of an individual syllable is marked by significant coarseness before quickly restoring the artist’s normative, less turbulent timbre. Finally, analysis of phonation considers the degree of variation of duration and emphasis of voiced and unvoiced consonants.

Ambiguity of key has long fascinated analysts working with the Adagio of Brahms's second String Quintet. The first two measures alone seem to suggest both D minor (i – V) and A major (iv – I). In this paper, I explore the movement's tonic-subdominant ambiguity for formal reasons, for how one reads the 2-bar incipit each time it occurs leads to two different interpretations of form. Based on the obvious returns of the 2-bar incipit, the "outer" form comprises five rotations. That is, each of the first three rotations moves from i to V over an interrupted ^3-2 descent, while a successful descent occurs in the fourth rotation. The "inner," tonally driven form understands the first three rotations to be a lengthy prolongation of V after the initial statement of tonic in mm. 1-2; the tonal status of rotation four remains the same as before. This reading emphasizes the different rhetorical force of every thematic restatement, and better captures the movement's single-breathed quality. I argue in favor of the second reading, while acknowledging that the tension between two possible forms foregrounds questions of prolongation, arising from Brahms's ingenious techniques of prolonging the dominant across formal boundaries and highly repetitive material. I especially focus on the transition passages between rotations to examine the different contexts in which the motto's return is framed, illustrating the mechanisms whereby D does not emerge again with tonic function until the fourth rotation even though its status as tonic was never really in doubt. 

Recomposing an exceptional passage of music to show how it might have gone, had it followed conventions or expectations, is common in music theory, from the late eighteenth century to the present. Despite its ubiquity, however, recomposition is rarely examined in detail: theorists who recompose generally consider their musical arguments to be self-evident, and studies of musical borrowing pay little attention to its possible ramifications for theory and criticism. Drawing on prominent studies in linguistics, logic, and “possible world semantics,” by Saul Kripke (1963), Richard Stalnaker (1968), David Lewis (1973), and others, this presentation explores recomposition by considering several examples as counterfactual conditional statements, of the form “if A were true, then B [might/would] be true.” Using Lewis’ distinction between “might” and “would” counterfactuals, which describe possible and necessary outcomes of counterfactual statements, I examine the counterfactual semantics of three recompositional treatments of Mozart.

Anton Reicha (1824-26) teaches his readers to write a sonata-form development section by reimagining the overture to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro as a symphonic movement. This musical “might” counterfactual shows how the musiccould have gone, had it been a sonata form rather than an overture. Similarly, Carl Czerny (1848) uses recomposition to explore the possibilities for the expansion of the first theme of Mozart’s Sonata in D Major, K. 381. Finally, the responses to Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet (K. 465) by Fétis and Weber, both of whom attempt to reveal Mozart’s true intentions through recomposition, test the limits of “might” and “would” counterfactuals in music.

To what extent do our musical values transcend mere "taste" and constitute musical knowledge in the Platonic sense ("justified, true belief")? Recent music theorists (Meyer 1956, 1967; Lehrdahl & Jackendoff 1982; Huron 2001) and aesthetic philosophers (Beardsley 1981; Dickie 1988; Scruton 1997) have attempted to ground musical values in a positivistic framework, identifying the "good" in music through non-contradictory sets of universally appearing traits. Though this approach deftly evades the slippery slope of relativism, a key problem emerges: given the diversity of music we wish to categorize as "good," the requirement of universality yields musical values so general as to be obvious or uninformative. Instead, I propose that we would be better served by a more flexible epistemological framework based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of "family resemblances" (Philosophical Investigations, 1953): identifying musical values by networks of overlapping qualities, none of which is necessarily common to all members. This concept is increasingly prevalent in definitions of art in contemporary aesthetics (Weitz 1956; Gaut 2000; Diffey 2004; Dutton 2006); with this paper, I wish to add to this discourse by demonstrating the applicability to musical values in particular.  I explore this concept in detail with respect to its applicability to the "rules" of common-practice voice leading, as well as touching briefly on its ramifications across a wide range of more general contexts.

The perception of motion as an attribute of music is most often accounted for by what Larson called the “metaphorical status” granted to physical forces–such as gravity and attraction–operating in musical “space.” Considerably less attention has been paid to the significance of the motor patterns that musicians employ in the generation of music. Godoy’s “motor-mimetic hypothesis” and Bailey’s “motor-grammars” are exceptions, yet neither advance a notion of syntactic relations between musicians’ movements, thus are limited in their power to explain how human movements may be sequenced and combined, in creation or in perception, to create musical meaning.  In recent decades, however, a novel categorization of vertebrate locomotion has gained widespread international currency in the dance and movement therapy fields, based principally on its elaboration in the work of somatic theorist Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and parallels in the legacy of movement theorist Rudolf Laban. This paper proposes that the categories of locomotion described in this model can function as biomechanical and perceptual templates for the creation and cognition of patterns in sound. It proposes that instances of four modalities of locomotion, appearing in modified forms in the movements of musicians, can be identified as encoded movement content in musical passages. These modalities can be distinctly identified in both scores and in sound, offering a foundation for the analysis of relationships between “locomotion-encoded” musical objects: their hierarchical and interdependent characters, their transitions, transformations and juxtapositions. The paper will also address implications of this model for composition, ethnomusicology and evolutionary musicology.

Because of their mechanical construction and licenses to voice leading and harmonic succession, harmonic sequences are traditionally considered to be connective material between tonal and thematic signposts.  While this characterization may be largely true of 18^th-century practice, sequences in the 19^th century’s “second practice” belie this account.  Richard Bass, for example, has argued that alterations in the middle of a sequence can take on motivic significance.

The late music of Gabriel Fauré is especially fertile ground for sequences.  Fauré’s sequences, which feature intricate alterations as well as long and multi-level patterns, are often located just prior to formal reprises.  And one of the attractions of Fauré’s style in general is, in the words of Ken Johansen, “the way in which the composer continually departs from the central key, travels to remote regions of the tonal universe, and returns…to the tonic by means that seem as inevitable as they are astonishing [my emphasis].” In this paper, I examine four reprise-preparatory sequences, describing the varied ways in which each sequence prepares and colors the reprise of an opening theme.  Far from mere connective material, such sequences serve both formal-structural and expressive functions.  The four sequences are drawn from Barcarolle No. 4 (1886), Nocturnes No. 9 and 10 (1908), and the third movement of the Violin Sonata No. 2 (1916–17).  Each sequence produces a different effect dependent upon its overall length, its internal construction, and the degree and kinds of transformations its patterns undergo.

In a 2008 article, William Rothstein identified different “national metrical types” for music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  In “German” barring, melodies typically begin on a notated downbeat and end on a weaker beat in the middle of a measure.  In contrast, in “Franco-Italian” barring, melodies typically begin with an anacrusis and end on a downbeat.  In this paper, I use Rothstein’s framework to examine metrical practices in French opera from the mid-to-late nineteenth century.  I conclude that while “Franco-Italian” barring practices generally remained in place, French operatic composers also made selective and significant use of “German” barring practices as well.  I suggest that these departures from traditional French metrical practices were often influenced by dance forms, most notably the polka, a Czech import.  

As Rothstein points out, traditional French barring practice was influenced by French poetic meter and allowed composers to provide characteristic verse-ending tonic accents with metrical emphasis.  In contrast, the characteristic barring of polka melodies reflects the beginning-accented nature of the Czech language.  The combination of French texts with polka melodies thus created a contradictory situation where composers ended up (in the words of Saint-Saëns) “applying German rhythms to French words.”  My paper will discuss examples of “German” barring from operas by Bizet, Massenet, Offenbach, Saint-Saëns, and Thomas, in each case in an excerpt that highlights dance-based rhythms.  Taken together, the examples suggest that in French opera from this period, dance-based metrical practices often superseded traditional metrical practices based on poetic rhythm.

Many have described twelve-tone music as difficult to aurally comprehend (e.g. Meyer 1967, Huron 2006).  This paper addresses such claims by investigating what novice listeners can implicitly learn when hearing an unfamiliar twelve-tone composition.  Krumhansl (1990) has argued that listeners unfamiliar with a musical style attune to the distribution of pitch occurrences.  Because the pitch distribution in Webern’s Op. 24/iii is nearly flat, this study investigated the hypothesis that listeners would instead perceive its repetitive intervals.  Experimental findings suggest that musician listeners without knowledge of non-tonal theory learned the distribution of trichords in Op. 24/iii by attuning to pairs of intervals.

This interval-based view of twelve-tone perception informs an analytical method.  Whereas previous analytical approaches to Op. 24/iii have focused upon the trichordally-derived row and its transformations (e.g. Babbitt 1955, Bailey 1991), this paper studies the repetitive interval pairs on the musical surface.  Because the trichord with pitch intervals 8 and 11 occurs most often, it can be learned as the primary motive.  Other intervallic versions of SC[014] play different roles: some are cadential, some are harmonic, etc.  This interval-based interpretation of the movement also provides a way for listeners to ascertain the work’s formal structure.

I conclude my paper by extending this analytical approach to other works.  In these analyses, I contend that listeners can hear meaning by attuning to interval pairs, and that these analytical narratives align well with listeners’ perceptions.

Meter, at least in the common practice, is often defined as a recurrence of some kind of accent.  In contrast, I will show that meter can be determined by observing the periodic rise and fall of musical probabilities (i.e., the likelihood of particular chords, scale-degree sets, rhythmic durations, etc. occurring in particular contexts) throughout a passage of music. Instead of focusing on predicting events occurring at all ­­– i.e., being able to predict the periodicity of any event onset – I will argue that the corpus-derived probabilities of musical events recur with certain periodicities. I will propose a novel definition of meter: meter is not just the periodic and predictable recurrence of accented events such as louder attacks, pitch onsets, or harmonic changes, but rather is the recurrence of a series of higher and lower event probabilities at constant periodicities.

Based on this model, I will argue for a related definition of metric dissonance. Using new computational and psychological research, I will argue that metric dissonances occur when an event’s probability does not align with expectation. Unlike traditional music theories, my conception of meter considers events dissonant if they conflict with expectations of probability periodicity.  Such a theory not only brings a new subtlety to the idea of metric dissonance as it represents events as more or less dissonant using a sliding probabilistic scale, but also potentially formalizes the differences between types of dissonance (e.g., hemiola, displacement) from a corpus-based perspective.

In this paper, I argue that the acoustical information captured by the audio descriptor known as “sharpness” provides a musically insightful window into the timbral structures of Kaija Saariaho’s Sept Papillons for solo cello.  In Papillon I, I utilize Saariaho’s concept of a “sound/noise axis” as a means of interpreting both the succession of timbral states at the surface as well as the distribution of sharpness energy over time.  I also investigate timbre’s narrative role in binding together distinct and seemingly opposing thematic gestures into a symbiotic relationship in Papillons IV and VII.  The analyses as a whole demonstrate that audio descriptors provide a useful representation of timbral structures.  By interpreting these representations through appropriate analytical lenses, analysts can begin to engage in more detailed inquiries into timbre’s crucial role in many contemporary musical languages.

A hallmark of Schoenberg’s Formenlehre was the thematic designation of sentence as well as period. Thanks to Caplin, who takes as his point of departure the writings of Schoenberg’s student Erwin Ratz, scholars are now well versed in identifying sentential and periodic structures. This familiarity notwithstanding, comparatively little is known about Schoenberg’s formulation of the sentence. In order to explore this topic, his analytical comments on individual Beethoven sonatas must be read within the context of his broader compositional philosophy.

Among the most illuminating of Schoenberg’s writings on this topic are the Gedanke manuscript (1934–6) and the drafts for Fundamentals of Musical Composition (1937–1940s). Read together, they facilitate an appreciation of Satz as both phrase and theme. Calling attention to “half-sentences” including “fore-sentence” and “after-sentence”, they reveal a more nuanced distinction between sentence and period: conceived as “two main forms of the sentence,” the period is designated the “divided form” as compared with the “undivided” sentential structure. The apparent imprecision, or perhaps confusion, can be attributed in part to his inability to express himself clearly in a new language, and, moreover, to a more complex relationship between sentence and period than has hitherto been acknowledged. Schoenberg’s flexible understanding of thematic construction invites us to attend to the performative aspects of the theme, comparing the balance and repose of the period with the dynamism of the sentence, a dynamism that is apparent not only in his analyses of tonal works but also in his own non-tonal compositions. 

The sentence, more than any other small musical structure, seems to crop up in a multitude of musical styles. Its incarnation in rock music has been dubbed “srdc” by Walter Everett (1999, 2009) in reference to its usual layout of four phrases: statement, restatement or response, departure, and conclusion. Discussions of srdc structure generally focus on melodic groupings and thematic relationships. In this paper, I instead focus on the harmonic aspects of rock’s sentences. Drawing on recent work on srdc (Summach 2011, Nobile 2011), I demonstrate that rock’s srdc forms generally follow one of three harmonic models. In all three models, s and r prolong the tonic, d begins off-tonic, and c cadences.

Srdc structures underlie not only single sections—usually verses—but also expand to encompass a verse and chorus or even a verse, prechorus, and chorus. The three models do not expand randomly: verse–prechorus–chorus expansions generally follow Model 1, while verse–chorus songs follow Model 2. I will argue that this is a crucial difference between verse­–chorus songs with no prechorus and verse–prechorus–chorus songs: the former aim towards a cadential goal at the end of the chorus while the latter achieve that goal at the beginning of the chorus. Choruses that follow prechoruses therefore act as telos themes (Hepokoski 1993), plateauing in celebration of the cadential arrival rather than pointing towards an arrival of their own.

This paper addresses expressive ramifications of common and “deviant” verse-chorus arrangements in Hip-hop in general and with respect to Eminem’s output in particular.  Verse-chorus forms are seen as either balanced or unbalanced.  Balanced forms have verses of equal length, while the unbalanced forms exhibit a plurality of deviations, such as expanding, contracting, or hair-pin (palindromic) structures.  Songs produced by Eminem and Dr. Dre (ca. 1999–2003) demonstrate that there is an evolving standard for verse-chorus arrangements, but that there are also important variations.  Significantly, many of Eminem’s arrangements eschew the conventions of (hyper)-hypermetric regularity of either “short beats,” based on a repeating 8-bar pattern, or of “long beats,” which are different for verses and choruses, but still based on a four-bar scheme multiplied to obtain 12- or 16-bar verses (and less commonly 20-bar verses).  Eminem’s personal style extends beyond the rapid-fire twisting and turning of language, as his arrangements frequently feature expanding or contracting forms.  In this paper I illustrate how his 7-phrase verses exemplify the most intensely personal rebuttals or confrontations of the artist with “his world.

Fauré’s music is often described as colorful, and this color is often attributed to his choice of scalar materials. Though many scholars have discussed these colorful scalar materials, this presentation adds new perspectives by distinguishing between theoretical key-scales (through which chord successions supposedly move) and chord-scales (which supposedly govern the inner tonal space of a single chord). This distinction facilitates examination of Fauré’s colorful scalar embellishments of individual chords—more specifically, their derivations, their relationships with broader tonal contexts, and their implications for tonal function. These chord-specific scalar materials often contribute additional tonal color and functional meaning beyond that of their chords alone. Some take advantage of Mehrdeutigkeit, obscuring their chords’ deeper functions and sometimes alluding to different ones, while others enrich and even reveal more obscure chord functions.

After briefly introducing an original approach to the analysis of scalar materials that integrates ideas from jazz chord-scale theory and classical tonal theory, this presentation considers musical examples in three categories: 1) Fauré’s scalar embellishments of potential augmented-sixth chords, 2) Fauré’s apparent Lydian embellishment of major triads, and 3) Fauré’s apparent acoustic-scale embellishment of major-minor seventh chords. In addition to discussing possible derivations of these scalar materials and their implications for tonal color and function, this presentation also addresses historical implications. Though some scholars describe Fauré as using new scale types, most of these can be understood as deriving from traditional major/minor sources. Regardless, some of his techniques for creating local scalar colors are seemingly innovative.

Philip Glass’s Two Pages (1968) is one of his first pieces to feature a linear additive process. The piece features an ascending five-note motive (G4-C5-D5-Eb5-F5), and Glass systematically adds to this motive throughout the work. These subtle additions result in an awareness of multiple levels of melodic contour across the piece’s formal structure. These contours, however, seem to be at odds: at a small-scale level, one may be aware of simple strings of linear ascents, but a deeper awareness informed by Glass’s musical syntax highlights more complex contours.

Robert Morris’s (1993) contour reduction algorithm, modified by Rob Schultz (2008), illuminates these structures. It provides a reductive hierarchy that highlights salient details of a contour-segment from the surface-level down to its abstract shape (the prime).  This paper uses the modified contour reduction algorithm (MCRA) to explore interactions between contour- segments on these multiple scales through their prime representations and the hierarchy of intermediary structures between the prime and the surface. I will show how Glass’s pattern of addition highlights a large-scale, nearly symmetrical form based on a dichotomy between two prime contours—á01ñ and á021ñ—that result from his additive processes. I will examine how á01ñ and á021ñ interact throughout Two Pages in order to highlight the multistable perception of melodic shapes within the repetitive context of minimalist music.  Such multistability serves the very heart of the minimalist idea: it provides a wealth of experiential opportunity with relatively little material.

Popular music genres often employ short harmonic progressions that are looped repeatedly. These progressions often occur within a diatonic framework, though some may be considered functionally tonal while others are not. The topic of this paper investigates one particular looped progression found in Elliott Smith’s 1997 “Between the Bars” from his album Either/Or and the potential for hermeneutic reading in the breaking of this loop.

Using Riemannian Schritts and Wechsels, I will be investigating one four-chord loop that is created by the binary generator Q↔LW. The Schritt/Wechsel system evokes harmonic dualism. Q (abbreviated for Quintschritt) is the transformation where a triad is transposed by the same intervallic distance as the Einheit to the Zweiheit of the chord (i.e. C+→G+, C-→F-). LW (Leittonwechsel) is equivalent to the neo-Riemannian L. These loops are often not explicitly referenced in the lyrics, but they invoke the musical topic of repetition and endlessness that is confirmed in hermeneutic readings across varied repertoires.

These hermeneutical implications of the Q↔LW loop are explicitly evoked in the lyrics of Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars.” In the form AABAAB, “Between the Bars” depicts an alcoholic struggling to break free from his alcoholic abuse. This paper will focus on deviations and breaking of the loop progression and how they symbolize Smith’s own personal struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse during his life.

Frank Zappa’s interest in atonal music waxed and waned throughout his career. However, as a teenager, he began his career as a committed composer of twelve-tone serial music. In a letter written to Varèse circa 1957, Zappa reveals modernist ambitions through claims of using a “strict twelve-tone technique” and “having something to offer [Varèse] in the way of new ideas.” However, soon thereafter he sharply turned away from serial composition and towards a “more haphazard style.” To better understand the repercussions of these events, this presentation will investigate techniques used in Zappa’s later atonal music, focusing in particular on melodic structures.

Four relevant aspects will be discussed. First, pitch-class diversity is the tendency to avoid pitch-class repetitions within substantial segments of a melody. Second is chromatic completion, whereby large portions of the aggregate are exhausted, often by coupling a surface emphasis on interval-class 1 with gap-fill techniques. Third is Zappa’s occasional suggestion of, but ultimate avoidance of, symmetrical pitch formations. Finally, isomelism is a technique of melodic variation through which a melody’s ordered series of pitch classes is preserved (or transposed) while its rhythms are altered.

Following an analysis of Zappa’s only published twelve-tone piece “Waltz for Guitar” (1958), I will discuss how the his employment of the above-mentioned procedures allowed him to situate his music relative to his two early influences Webern and Varèse. I will conclude by demonstrating how combinations of these four techniques may establish relationships across entire pieces, focusing on “Be-Bop Tango” and “Jumbo Go Away.”

Most analyses of George Perle’s music focus on compositional procedures associated with his twelve-tone tonality, such as labeling the melodic and harmonic structures of his music and describing the modulatory techniques from one harmonic area to the next. Aside from brief discussions by Dave Headlam 1995 and Gretchen Foley 1999, little has been written about Perle’s use of dissonance. The goal of my presentation is to extend the conversation by focusing on the dissonant, “non-chord tones” in Perle’s music. I begin with a brief review of twelve-tone tonality and then demonstrate Perle’s concept of cyclic passing tones, a type of dissonance he used with considerable frequency later in his career. I conclude with an analysis of the second movement of Perle’s Triptych for Solo Violin and Piano. Completed in 2002, Triptych is a three-movement work and is one of Perle’s last compositions. All three movements of Triptych include cyclic passing tones—no other dissonant types, such as suspensions and anticipations, are used—but the second movement is particularly noteworthy since dissonance occurs in every bar except for one. With my analysis I will show how the interplay between the “consonant”, twelve-tone tonal harmonic structures and the many dissonant figurations that saturate this movement exemplifies Perle’s sophisticated and mature understanding of dissonance in one of his late compositions.

Modular analysis allows for effective comparisons to be made between works across a broad stylistic range by isolating discrete patterns within each work and formulating relatively precise descriptions of the roles of these patterns as functional components, or modules, of a larger formal structure. This type of analysis leads to the formation of narratives of compositional process that feature a high degree of descriptive precision while remaining neutral with regard to considerations of style. In this paper, I apply a modular analytical approach to Figment No. 2: Remembering Mr. Ives by Elliott Carter, the second of Thomas Adès Mazurkas Op. 27, and "Papillon II" from Kaija Saariaho's Sept Papillons and suggest ways in which an awareness of modular design may enrich the experience of listening to or performing aesthetically challenging contemporary music.

Following in a long line of writers who have read Britten’s works as autobiographical, Canton et al. (2012) argue that from Death in Venice on his works reveal his “profound struggle to come to terms with the betrayal of his body.” Touching on the notion of late style—or what Straus (2011) has reconfigured as disability style—they write, “the features of Britten’s late style were at once shaped by his physical circumstances and reflect an organic culmination of his life’s work.“ Death in Venice is especially apt for an examination of Britten’s late style as disability style, since it was while he was composing the opera that doctors recommended a surgery that left him partially paralyzed, and he neither performed as a pianist nor wrote for the piano again.

In retrospect then, the recitatives in Death in Venice deserve special attention, representing as they do last remnants of Britten’s piano writing. Though often omitted from analyses of the opera entirely, Britten’s innovative refigured recitatives provide important insights into his oeuvre. Drawing on writings of artists with whom Britten collaborated, this paper presents an analysis of the recitatives within the opera’s drama and examines how they help to create a profound portrayal of an aging artist struggling with writer’s block. In light of these findings, the paper concludes with fresh readings of the recitatives, hearing in them not only Britten as an adroit improviser and collaborative pianist, but also as a self-analyst aware of his failing abilities.

In a 1936 essay titled “New Instruments and New Music” Edgard Varèse describes a music in which “the role of timbre would be completely changed from being incidental, anecdotal, sensual, or picturesque; it would become an agent of delineation, like the different colors on a map separating the different areas, and an integral part of form. These zones would be felt as isolated, and the hitherto unobtainable sensation of non-blending would become possible.” For Varèse timbre ideally transcends the referential associations suggested by pastoral oboes and military drums. His analogy between timbral zones and areas on a map suggests not a precisely locatable pitch point but a relatively “unpitched” sound. Using Ravel’s Boléro and Brahms’s First Symphony as examples, Varèse describes orchestration in terms of a binary between a “non-blended Spaltklang” and a “blended Mischklang.”

These suggestive writings invite a closer analysis of the timbral development in Hyperprism (1924), Ionisation (1931), and Déserts (1954). Just as a dispersive optical prism separates white light into the compact colors of the rainbow, Hyperprism’s timbral “agents of delineation” enact large- and small-scale processes of sound dispersion and compaction. Likewise, Ionisation compacts percussion timbres until they break free from the neutral Mischklang to create a differentiated Spaltklang, and the electronic processes of timbre construction in Déserts compact recorded factory noises into more discrete pitches. In retrospect, Varèse’s writings might be read as a verbal articulation of his early 20^th-century compositional innovations.

Much of the literature about Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King focuses on a single musical element. Pointing to unifying aspects and to ways the composer “distorts” musical material, this paper presents a comprehensive analytical approach. Although not using an exhaustive list of musical elements, the analysis considers pitch, timbre, rhythm, dynamics, and theatrical elements. The paper shows the ways in which the song cycle is unified, such as pitch centricity, motivic repetition with a limited use of transposition, and tonal prolongation within a post-tonal language. Davies’s idea of a “distortion process” is examined using examples such as the chromatically-altered style parodies in the work. This paper uses a 1969 recording of Eight Songs given by Roy Hart (the vocalist for whom the piece was written) and a 1968 “demo” recording of Hart improvising and using his extended vocal technique. This paper examines material from the demo that is similar to the published score: Hart’s unattributed contributions to the work. Given Hart’s unique vocal abilities, some sounds are not executed by other vocalists (e.g., multiphonic chords). These chords contain important pitch content that contributes to the unity of the work and to the distortion process that Davies described.

In her article “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?” Carolyn Abbate posed a question: “What does it mean to write about performed music?” This paper grapples with her question in order to provide a provisional answer. In doing so, I draw on an ontology that connects traditional music-analytic techniques to the sonic encounter with music. Weaving together the concrete and the abstract, I both describe a particular musical encounter—a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony—and develop abstractions adequate to its analysis. Following Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Manuel DeLanda, I rethink the musical encounter in terms of interconnecting and nested assemblages—dynamic wholes emerging out of the interactions of their constituent heterogeneous parts. I find two assemblages of particular interest: the sounding body and the listening body. I conceive of the sounding body as the diverse assemblage of vibrating air, listeners, performers, instruments, and architecture that dynamically coalesce during the concert event. A listening body is a particular human assemblage nested within the sounding body, immersed in its vibrational push and pull. The listening body, then, is part of a sounding body. As such, the listening body comes into relation with other parts of a sounding body—affecting and being affected by them. Returning to Abbate’s question, I propose an answer: writing about performed music means describing the complex interrelations among listening and sounding bodies.

Meter has long been recognized as a central purveyor of music's temporal normativity. In fact, the very label meter explicitly invokes measurement, which presumes a consistent unit to do the measuring. What is metrically normative, though? Most recent approaches have considered musical meter to be fundamentally an issue of locating boundaries, of locating accented beat beginnings on various levels. These theories turn meter into a nested hierarchy of what Christopher Hasty has called “empty containers,” each level internally differentiated only by the simple distinction between boundary and non-boundary, on and off the beat.

Metrical boundaries are obviously of extreme importance—they are undeniably the most basic element of meter; however, the obsession with boundaries has impoverished our analyses, desensitizing us to the richness of meter in some musics and even leading to significant misinterpretations. In this paper I focus on meter in Baroque sarabandes. While the stereotypical sarabande's consistent emphasis on beat 2 has been theorized abstractly as a metrical displacement dissonance, a proper analysis must address the pattern in context, considering the effects of deviations from the pattern and the appropriateness of an imagined “resolution.”

I maintain that rhythmically consistent music may establish metrical levels that are internally differentiated, involving distinct shapes of weight throughout a beat. I call these mutually dependent phenomena dual-aspect meter and complex metrical consonance, respectively. In contrast to recent universalist approaches, dual-aspect meter highlights the individual work's power to define its own contextual norms. 

In the works of Maurice Ravel, the use of antiquated styles, historical dances, and quotations of the past constructs a complex relationship with history. Of course, not all appropriations of the past are identical in expression – even for an individual composer, a single historical object can at different times bring widely varying implications. Yet despite potential differences, uses of the musical past share an interpretive potential: their appropriations can point to specific cultures, forms, meters, musical clichés, and moments in history. In this paper, I argue that anachronistic tensions within the “Forlane” of Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin manifest themselves primarily in the interplay of metrical accent hierarchies and the treatment of phrase rhythm, grouping structure, and gesture. Through the adoption of William Rothstein’s conception of national metrical types, the functional ambiguities within Ravel’s “Forlane” and its productive relationship with its historical model can be seen more clearly.

Ravel’s “Forlane” has been described as a work so reverential in its imitation that it cannot breathe new life into its model, but it is this very reverence that establishes the dialogical relationship between the works of Ravel and Couperin. Fastidious adaption of anachronistic form permits the appropriation of formal potentials and implications as well and enables alterations to act expressively. The reverence with which Ravel treats Couperin’s work does not embalm the past, making irrelevant the inevitable impossibility of resolving the past and present – it magnifies every violation of the past’s norms.

The role that the human body plays in the listening process has gained a great deal of traction over the past decade. Music theorists such as Robert Hatten (2004), David Lidov (2005), and Alexandra Pierce (2007) have come to understand our perception of music as mediated through the body, and each has contributed to a theory that views music as a corporeal experience that is heard as mimetic of physical human gesture. Furthermore, Arnie Cox (2011) and Robert Hatten (2004; 2012) suggest that hearing music gesturally implies that a listener embodies a virtual agent who enacts the gestures heard in the music. Thus, in listening to a slow funeral march, a listener imagines himself or herself moving slowly, as if enacting the musical motion literally. These gestures are performed offline in the brain and at times manifest themselves in subtle or overt bodily movements.

In this paper, I propose that musical gestures can also be mimetic of indexical somatic movements, that is, bodily movements of pointing that draw attention away from the gesturing agent toward an inferred virtual object. These gestures take many forms, such as finger pointing, looking, and reaching. I expound this theory with an analysis of Chopin's Prelude in B Minor, Op. 28, no. 6 (“Tolling Bells”), a piece known for its funereal character. By identifying and examining the indexical gestures within this prelude, we are able to find even deeper meaning within the musical discourse, further articulating the solemn expression of the work.

She blushes. She turns pale. She casts down her eyes. These are some of the gestures 18^th century English novelists used to portray their characters’ sensibility and moral virtue. The literary idea that words were inadequate for expressing Sensibility, which must instead be expressed through gestures, maps well onto the textless signification of topic theory. As a musical topic, Sensibility is often associated with the north German keyboard style of C.P.E. Bach, however I suggest that this is too limited of a definition. Instead, it can function as a topical world (Monelle) with multiple signifiers and a complex signified, and at times even be expanded into an expressive genre (Hatten).

In this paper I will show how movements from Haydn’s string quartets often embody musical Sensibility, such as in the slow movement in opus 64/5, an exemplar of the style. I will then show how Haydn integrates the unmarked, galant style and the marked, sensible style in the slow movement from opus 33/3, as a musical commentary on the balance between reason and sentiment. Finally, I will show how Sensibility functions as an expressive genre in the slow movement of opus 76/3, in which the learned, pastoral, and hymn topics are combined under the dramatic trajectory of Sensibility, portraying the attainment of 18^th century moral virtue in music.

After three attempts to provide his opera with an adequate introduction, Beethoven composed a completely new overture for the 1814 revival of Fidelio. Critics often describe the Fidelio Overture Op.72 b as lighter and less ambitious than its predecessors, but it raises tonal issues that anticipate crucial forthcoming events — not only in the opera, but also in Beethoven’s stylistic development. The overture and other newly composed fragments emphasize an opposition between the keys of C major and E major, which were often associated with nature and heavens respectively (Steblin, 1996). I argue that Beethoven draws on these loose expressive characteristics to construct, through key relationships and musical topics, a complex musical metaphor that captures a metaphysical worldview. C major appears repeatedly as a stable tonic that is eventually transformed into a flat submediant through a Le-Sol-Fi-Sol schema (Byros, 2012). In this fashion, C major –paired with the pastoral topic – becomes a transitional space that leads to E major – paired with the ‘sacred hymn topic’ (McKee, 2007)–, providing a musical analogy to the transience of earthly matters and their subordination to the domain of spirit.

The revisions of 1814 indicate a potential transformation in Beethoven’s conception of the drama, emphasizing the spiritual component and downplaying its political implications. Although Fidelio is traditionally considered a quintessentially heroic work, I suggest that the last version functions as an evolutionary link between Beethoven’s middle and late styles, participating in tonal strategies for the expression of spirituality and transcendence found in the late works.

Among the many underappreciated differences between two-reprise forms in the early and late eighteenth century is the rarity, in the former period, of the feature of a tonic recapitulation: while “rounded binary” is the signature short form of the Classical era, it occurs only seldom in the Baroque. When it does occur in Baroque contexts, then, we might assume that its underlying structural impulse is similar to that which gives rise to the Classical rounded binary form: harmonic interruption. In this paper I analyze three keyboard movements by J. S. Bach in order to argue to the contrary. I show that, instead, tonic recapitulations in these works can be understood as stemming from two standard types of Baroque binary form—two- and three-rotational—or from the interplay between them.

At the most conventional end of the spectrum, represented here by the Sarabande from the C minor French Suite, the tonic recapitulation can be understood as a tonal adjustment of the usual nontonic third phrase in three-rotational binary form. The Sarabande from the D major Partita uses its recapitulation to compensate for the thematic incompletion of its middle rotation: two iterations of the head motive are needed in the second reprise to fully restate the thematic material of the first reprise. The Corrente from the E minor Partita uses a very sophisticated version of the same technique, in which the recapitulation “interrupts” a single-rotational second reprise, creating ambiguity between two- and three-rotational interpretations of the movement.

This analysis examines the second movement of Beethoven’s Op. 127 String Quartet, one of many innovative variation-form slow movements from the composer’s late period. These movements eschew diminutional, “decorative” variations in favor of a more internally-focused, discursive approach. The Adagio of the Op. 127 quartet is characterized by an expansive drive on both the small and large scale that creates a flexible, elastic musical object. In order to account for the elasticity that pervades multiple domains of the movement, I will combine Samarotto’s theory of temporal plasticity with Schenkerian and narrative analysis. I will also suggest that this highly expressive flexible musical structure is one of the key features of the late works as a group.

Musical meaning is a growing area of interest within music theory, and in recent years, theorists have fruitfully engaged New Musicology’s critical and hermeneutic project by bringing an assortment of disciplinary perspectives—cognitive, semiotic, philosophical, even kinesthetic—to bear on its study. Yet the very concept of musical meaning has been tacitly (if understandably) been taken as a given by many who have theorized its workings. Thus, even as our investigation into how music begets, manifests, and conveys meaning reaps an increasingly rich harvest, we risk overly deferring the question: what indeed—if anything—does it actually mean for music to mean?

In this presentation, I play with the concept of musical meaning within a more general philosophical context, with special reference to the thinking of C. S. Peirce—the most influential philosopher to have come from North America, and the key figure in the particular semiotic system that has shaped many music theorists’ ways of thinking about meaning. As will be suggested, recent shifts in Peirce scholarship, best exemplified by the work of philosopher T. L. Short, raise questions about the semiotic framework assumed by many music theorists, with far-reaching implications for the concepts of meaning thereby implied. Additionally, to suggest a possible result of experimentation with one’s own concept of musical meaning, I use several musical examples to probe at a quality I call meaningfulness: arguably, a hypostatization of meaning itself.