Igor Stravinsky's neoclassical works have frequently been discussed for their relation to earlier musical styles. While a number of scholars, employing a wide variety of analytical approaches, have examined this aspect of Stravinsky's neoclassical works, only a few have used topic theory to explore the composer's link with music of the past. However, since topic theory is a tool that has most commonly been used to discuss tonal repertoires, some adjustments have to be made when considering non-tonal music. One of the more unique ways in which topics are used in Stravinsky's neoclassical works is in combination with other topics, a process Robert S. Hatten has defined as 'troping.' In his recent article in the Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, Hatten refines many of his earlier discussions of troping, discussing four axes, which he describes as degrees of compatibility, dominance, creativity, and productivity.

In this paper I expand on Hatten's discussion of these axes, and focus on some of the ways in which these axes interact in several of Stravinsky's neoclassical works, focusing primarily on his 1928 ballet Apollon musagete. I will begin by expanding upon Hatten's four tropological axes in order to understand some of the ways in which these axes interact on both local and global levels. I will then present several brief analyses that will demonstrate how these tropological interactions can be used to create more nuanced expressive interpretations in Stravinsky's neoclassical works.

Polystylistic works of the post-1950s offer a challenge for musical understanding. An initial, and superficial, approach is to consider these pieces as chaotic, trivializing the pluralism of their musical environments by considering it mere confusion. Scholars who have examined this repertoire typically have approached it either from a narrative perspective (Dixon, 2007; Tremblay, 2007) afforded by trajectories from one style to another, or by focusing on the techniques involved in these trajectories (Losada, 2008, 2009). However, both these approaches are based on teleological processes and thus can only account for some of the polystylistic repertoire of the post-1950s, a time during which there was growing resistance to grand narratives (Butler, 2003). As a result, these approaches leave aside music that--influenced by postmodernism--relies on plurality and disruption but dismisses any clear trajectories. My intention in this paper is to widen the interpretive possibilities for the polystylistic repertoire of the post-1950s, while also retaining a teleological narrative outlook as one of the possibilities. I suggest five different chimeric environments: (1) trajectory, (2) distortion, (3) coexistence, (4) importation, and (5) camouflage, and exemplify their differences with music by Kagel, Rochberg, Schnittke, and Sciarrino. This paper aims at clarifying the signification processes at play and proposes a classification of these different types of interactions between disparate material. Importantly, this hints on vital problems of music communication in post-1950s music and its permeable boundaries.

Topic theory has rapidly emerged as an invaluable analytical method in the field of music semiotics. In the film soundtrack, however, musical and other sonic signs frequently overlap and even merge to produce an integrative signification. When applying topic analysis in a filmic context, topics may best be understood as a specialized subset of a larger universe of sonic figures, what I call acoustisigns. Acoustisigns are those conventionalized figures of music and/or sound fashioned to represent aural experiences, and they exist on a continuum defined by the poles of musical codes on the one hand and sonic codes on the other. In practice, no such completely musical or sonic sign exists. Rather, we find a continuum based upon the degree of a sound's iconicity, or how closely it aurally resembles its object. Such a model allows a more integrative approach to music's role within a film's soundtrack.

In this paper, I adapt Monelle's (2000) concept of the iconic topic to characterize acoustisigns with special attention to filmic representations of the horse gallop. An acoustisign's placement on the continuum depends on the degree of its sonic iconicity and so my analysis provides examples that tend toward sound effects and others that are more traditionally musical. Crucially, the acoustisign provides a holistic model for analyzing and interpreting a film sound track.

Fifteen years after he first composed his Requiem for male chorus, Liszt revisited the work and adapted it for organ in 1883. This adaptation is practically a carbon copy stylistically retaining the prima prattica texturally unadorned contrapuntal style found in the choral version. However, the length of the work was cut by more than half. The nearly hour long Requiem was abridged to just eighteen minutes.

One of the most significant changes to the work was the overarching tonal plan. With the new (optional) 'Postludium,' the work ends in the key of A-flat major rather than A major. This new overarching tonal plan corresponds with the directional tonality found within the first movement (F minor to A-flat major). However, rather than oppose one another, F minor and A-flat major appear to participate in a more symbiotic relationship, operating at the same hierarchical level through seamless transitions between the two keys.

This paper explores how Liszt's revision of his Requiem invites analysts to consider Bailey's controversial topic of the double-tonic complex. Both F minor and A-flat major operate at the same time through several points in the 'Requiem Aeternam' movement. This contrasts earlier interpretations (and conflations) of the term double-tonic complex with 'tonal pairing.' As an interlude, examples of tonal pairing in the Requiem will be identified.

Classical tonality (as modeled by Schenkerian theory, for example) serves the analysis of Gustav Mahler's music to a degree--but, if we limit ourselves to classical tonality, what features of Mahler's tonal system are we overlooking? And what source of structural coherence can explain these other features? Providing one answer to these questions, this paper demonstrates the pervasive influence of common-tone techniques on Mahler's music.

An introductory survey of Mahler's common-tone harmonies reveals important as-yet-nameless harmonies and introduces a simple and broadly applicable nomenclature for them based on their voice leading. Analyses of brief excerpts then demonstrate these harmonies in the context of local phrase structure (motives, tonic establishment, tonic elaboration, and cadences). We then study modulation and find that common-tone tonality, not classical tonality, is Mahler's primary tonal device for progressing from one local tonic to another. Beyond traditional notions of structure, Mahler's common-tone techniques can create important associative relationships across the tonal structure of a song or movement. This paper explores four such associative techniques: 1) fixed-pitch reinterpretation, 2) ikonic sonorities, 3) tonal pairing, and 4) the 'unfolded follower'? (my coinage for a subspecies of Schenker's unfolding).

Focusing on these varied domains of common-tone influences--from harmony/voice leading to phrase structure to modulation to associative techniques--this paper introduces a framework for hearing common-tone techniques as an integral, and indeed central and pervasive, component of Mahler's musical language.

This paper will revisit Schenker's account of mode mixture in Harmonielehre with particular attention to the problems of a specific kind of double mixture sometimes clouded by enharmonic respelling.  The rare case of bIV is curious because, in Schenker's view, bIV does not qualify as a type of mixture at all, as it is not rooted in the variable scale degrees 3, 6, or 7.  Silent on bIV in his theoretical work--it appears just once in his analyses--Schenker is quick to relegate #IV as a means of tonicizing V rather than a Stufe that can support its own diminutions.

The extraordinary chromatic swerve, F major to A major, in Chopin's Mazurka op. 68/4 will be regarded alongside works of (enharmonically) equivalent relations at various levels, from local chord succession, to formal sections, to inter-movement relations. In some tonics, this relation brings the analyst to the crossroads of III# and bIV. While enharmonic respelling may be convenient for the performer, III and IV are not the same Stufen nor serve the same harmonic function in tonal progression. Close disambiguation of double mixture is important in these cases because of its potentially structural role in voice leading. I will show cases of both #III and bIV in which functional identity follows spelling and in which it contradicts spelling. While bIV can sometimes be understood to prolong tonic enharmonically as #III in special cases bIV supports its own diminutions (with inflected melodic descent) as a true chromatic predominant.

Although Russian composers generally relied on Western instrumental forms, they often subjected them to unconventional modifications. The foundational models for these unusual formal approaches were Glinka's three orchestral fantasias, well known to Russian audiences, but foreign to modern musicology. In this talk, I demonstrate that a better understanding of Glinka's formal innovations in Jota Aragonesa (1845), Kamarinskaia (1848) and Souvenir d'une nuit d'été à Madrid (1851) opens the door to a richer knowledge of later Russian music, from the kuchka to Stravinsky and beyond.

In Anglophone scholarship, Glinka's impact as an instrumental composer has typically been ascribed to the ostinato-variation technique, where a short melody is repeated while the texture around it is varied. In contrast, many nineteenth-century critics emphasized the strikingly different ways in which Glinka achieved structural coherence in each of the three fantasias. Such nineteenth-century perspectives are the starting point for my own exploration of the formal approaches that Glinka pursued in these works.

In Jota, he combines sonata and double variation structures, synthesizes unrelated material in the development, and enacts a process of timbral accumulation and dispersion. In Kamarinskaia, structured as two rotations, he reveals a hidden kinship between two melodies through variational procedures. Whereas contrasting elements are synthesized in Jota and Kamarinskaia, the four themes in Souvenir--an arch form with slow introduction and coda--remain unreconciled for the entirety of the composition. As nineteenth-century critics noted, references to these three models can be seen in many works by later Russian composers.

Implicit in most thematically oriented theories of sonata form is the claim that the central drama of the sonata occurs at the 'signposts.' By this line of thinking, structural normativity is measured by the presence of certain generically mandated landmarks (Primary Theme, Transition, etc), and formal nonconformity occurs when a sonata obscures, omits, delays, reorders, or otherwise modifies these landmarks. While such paradigms have produced much insightful analytical work, they tend to give insufficient emphasis to rich thematic unorthodoxies: interpolations, displacements, superimpositions, etc., that occur between traditional theme-initiating signposts. Such theoretical paradigms become particularly problematic when applied to so-called neoclassical sonata repertories--especially the early works of Prokofiev--in which seemingly unremarkable thematic discontinuities between predictably situated sonata milestones often prove to have far-reaching structural ramifications.

My paper explores the manner in which one branch of these thematic eccentricities, namely Prokofiev's strategy of interpolating motivically unrelated material in the middle of a traditional theme-space ironizes a seemingly normative sonata process in the first movement of his Second Piano Sonata (1912), rendering it an empty frame from which the expected motivic and thematic contents have been hollowed out and replaced. I invoke Russian Formalist Boris Tomashevsky's concepts of 'bound' and 'free' motifs in conjunction with Viktor Shklovsky's larger theory of fabula (story) and syuzhet (plot) as a framework for clarifying and contextualizing the subversive structural function of Prokofiev's interpolations within his larger sonata text.

Shostakovich's sonata movements are noteworthy due to their engagement with historical conceptions form. Shostakovich not only utilized historic forms, his sonata movements have a performative aspect, highlighting their use of the genre.

Recent scholarship has focused on first movement sonata forms of multi-movement Symphonies and Quartets. In first movement sonatas, formal ruptures are rhetorically sutured over such that the basic structure is tentatively held together. Ã? In comparison, I argue the quartet finale sonata forms put on a graphic display of dissolution. In the finale movements, the expositional structure remains straightforward, clearly signaling sonata conventions. The development proceeds towards a climax culminating with a thematic return from an earlier movement. After the completion of the theme the music collapses and fragments. In extreme cases, moments of silence contribute to a seemingly complete musical dissolution. Yet, we know that the movement is not over. Across the quartets, the basic rhetoric of the dissolution and restart remain similar. Through variances in recapitulation procedures and material used to 'restart' the music, the quartets present multiple narrative responses to the dissolution.

The finales' staged dissolution calls into question their role in Shostakovich's works. I argue Shostakovich's finale movements point to historical archetypes for finales, only to challenge their meanings. Shostakovich's finales operate in an expressive realm beyond syntactic space. By doing so, the music functions on a different perceptual plane creating new narratives for a changed world. The result is a revitalized sonata form reflective of the modern context.

The analytical potential of 'GIS 4.1.3' from David Lewin's Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (1987) remains largely unrealized in music-theoretic scholarship. My presentation will redress this neglect specifically in the context of canonic music, and more specifically as applied to the stretto combinations in Contrapuncti V, VI, and VII from J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue. This formalization also affords an opportunity to fortify the rather unremarkable claims that some scholars have made about the absence of stretto reuse in this work. This presentation advocates labeling two instances of stretto as equivalent so long as the transformation of one into the other preserves the capacity for contrapuntal well-formedness. A new 'canonic GIS,' formed by the direct product of Lewin's GIS 4.1.3 and a pitch-based non-commutative GIS, supports this form of equivalence, and shows that some stretto combinations are reused among these three stretto fugues. However, this more rigorous vantage point also reveals something certainly worthy of remark: of the 22 stretti among the 26 entries in Contrapunctus VII, each one is a different member of IVLS in the 'canonic GIS.' A more expediently-minded composer could take advantage of all of the different varietals of entry presentation to obscure the fact that a stretto interval--and its good counterpoint--is being reused, thus covertly reducing the compositional labor. In Contrapunctus VII, Bach is not such a composer.

No phenomenon in tonal music is more widely recognized than the chain of fifths sequence. Yet the ubiquity of fifths chains and their apparent transparency to analysis might deter scholars and teachers from describing the chain of fifths sequence more completely, or asking what its usage reveals about the history of style and texture. Three areas are ripe for research: (1) mapping the family of contrapuntal practices cultivated by various kinds of fifths chains during their ascendancy in the later seventeenth century through the 1720s; (2) understanding the procedures whereby stepwise repetition is abandoned and 'sequence passages' are wound up; and (3) reconstructing the tempo limitations of the fifths chain in the context of applicable genres, and relative to different kinds of sequence or other barometers of harmonic rhythm. This paper advances these topics through a study of all the fifths chains in the keyboard gigues of J. S. Bach, supplemented with analyses of music from other repertories.

Bach's fifths chains are accounted for by three basic methods of contrapuntal construction, subject to various forms of realization and manipulation. Two of the basic methods correspond with patterns that Daniel Harrison (2003) finds in Corelli, and one also corresponds with Robert Gjerdingen's (2007) description of a fleshed-out 'Prinner' among the schemata of galant music. While this study is not alone in recognizing the importance of trio texture or having an expansive notion of 'sequence passage,' it considers the harmonic and metric delineation of sequences more thoroughly than previous work and it addresses much-neglected temporal issues.

Although Baroque ground-bass works are most often variations with a repetitive bass line, there also exists a smaller subset of this repertoire whose structures do not conform to those of their grounds. In these works, the upper voices form phrases that are out of phase with the repetitions of the ground, allowing for large-scale form and goal-oriented structures. While this phenomenon has been noted in the literature on ground bass, this paper is the first to provide an original theory of formal organization of such works. The present theory is concerned with the three following three structures: 1) the anatomy of ground bass, including the classification of grounds as closed (ending on tonic) or open (ending on dominant), the potential for ambiguous endings, and potential internal cadential points; 2) phrase types that result from the interaction between the freely-composed upper voices and the ground, which may be divided into phrases that conform with the structure of the ground and phrases that do not; and 3) the resultant phrase structures and (potentially) large-scale form.

In rock music, it is generally accepted that pitch organization does not always follow common-practice conventions. One well-known scenario is the melodic-harmonic divorce, which Temperley (2007) systematizes as those cases in which non-chord-tones in the melody do not resolve by step. Other authors take a broader stance, viewing the melodic-harmonic divorce as a general stratification of melodic and accompanimental layers. In this paper, I show that a similar type of stratification can be found to exist in rock music between the harmony and the bass.

I group instances of the harmonic-bass divorce into two basic types, according to categories derived from Nobile (2015): 'hierarchy' and 'syntax' divorce. Hierarchy divorce is exemplified by the pedal point, a common feature of Western classical music, although its use in rock music extends beyond the typically-recognized cases of tonic and dominant. In a syntax divorce, the harmony and bass appear to participate in two distinct cadential motions, as exemplified by the 'soul dominant' sonority.

The use of slash notation to label inverted chords in popular music (e.g., C/G) gives further evidence that rock musicians conceptualize the bass and harmony as separate musical elements. Moreover, I show that popular musicians often prefer this slash notation to non-slash alternatives, so as to simplify more complicated harmonic simultaneities. Ultimately, I argue that considering bass and harmony as separate musical streams can help explain how musicians arrange and control seemingly complex chord extensions in rock, as well as offer a new way to hear this music.

Theorists often rely on harmonic progressions to differentiate the verse and the chorus sections in popular songs and to explain why the verse leads to the chorus in such songs. A sample of 402 songs from the top-20 of the Billboard Hot 100 year-end charts from 1990-2009 shows an increasing number of songs, however, in which both the verse and the chorus are based on the same underlying harmonic pattern, or loop, and in which the chorus precedes, rather than follows, the verse. In songs with 'Chorus-Verse' form, the chorus does not have a strong sense of harmonic arrival and therefore there is no one-directional flow from the verse to the chorus but rather that the verse and chorus sections are modular and may be arranged such that the typical order of the sections is reversed. Many of these 'Chorus-Verse' songs are from the hip-hop/rap genre and demonstrate the influence of this particular style on popular song form.

I identify 84 songs that contain only the two sections of verse and chorus. Of these, I show both an increase in the number of songs containing the same harmonic pattern or loop (49 tracks) and an increase in the number of songs where the chorus is placed before the verse (22 tracks). Through harmonic, melodic, and formal analysis of 'I Wanna Love You,' 'Gold Digger,' 'How We Do,' 'Temperature,' 'This is Why I'm Hot,' 'Low,' and 'Slow Jamz,' I demonstrate that songs in 'Chorus-Verse' form have become more common since 1990 and are no longer a rarity.

This paper uses Glenn Gould's discussion of Hans van Meegeren (the painter who gained infamy for his series of fake Vermeers) as a jumping-off point to consider issues of authenticity and ontology in recordings of Western art music. Gould takes the surprising position that a forged Vermeer possesses equal artistic value as an authentic work, applying similar logic for the recorded vs. live debate. In his idiosyncratic way, Gould prompts a question that twenty-first century musicology should consider seriously: are recordings in some ways forgeries of ideal (i.e. live) musical objects?

I engage with ideas developed by Lydia Goehr (the perfect performance of music and the perfect musical performance) and Nicholas Cook (that musical performances lie on a continuum between two poles of product and process). To this largely theoretical discussion, I introduce real-world considerations gathered from interviews with producers and performers regarding the ways in which musical performances are captured and preserved.

By joining these theoretical and practical viewpoints, I am able to inject some new ideas into the discussion. I present my idea of the 'audible brushstroke.' I argue that performers do not in fact wish to produce 'perfect' recordings. These audible brushstrokes function as authentication devices, protecting recordings from the charge of forgery. But they also represent a danger that the ontological status of the musical work will shift from the composer's score to the performer's recording.

The plot of Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe is obscured by a disjunctive narration that complicates a simple tale:a man loves a woman who has married another man. As the plot unfolds, the music provides early clues that the narrated account is not entirely trustworthy. The piano part often appears to be working against the vocal line, particularly in songs where the vocal line ends without a true cadence. Cadential disjunctions, in which the piano part follows normative phrase-structural syntax and the vocal line does not, permeate the cycle. Although many scholars have addressed Dichterliebe, most have focused on unity, particularly musical unity, while de-emphasizing the text and musical disjunctions. In this paper, I will examine the role cadential incongruities play throughout the cycle in establishing the protagonist's unreliable narration. I will then begin to address the issue of unreliable narration in music without text by exploring the potential of instrumental music to project multiple narratives, a key facet of unreliable narration and a topic that has received scant attention in music-theoretical literature. In order to illuminate the specific features required for unreliable narration, I will contrast the two 'stories' required for unreliable narration with other types of multiple narratives, including multi-stranded ('aggregate') and bifurcated narratives (Soldofsky 2006). An examination of these narrative types will add further nuance to our understanding of musical narrativity and the transmission of musical meaning in both art song and instrumental music.

In the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4, the return of the primary theme at the beginning of the recapitulation does not materialize as expected. Rather, it is replaced by a seemingly explicit reference to the composer's First Piano Concerto--specifically, to the central episode of that work's final movement. In the original version of the earlier concerto, the thematic material of this episode returns at the end of the finale as an apotheosis. Though Rachmaninoff excised the apotheosis when he revised the work in 1917, his exploitation of the apotheosis technique in his Second and Third Piano Concertos helped to entrench the lush sounds associated with this procedure as a mainstay of his compositional style in the public's imagination.

In this paper, I propose a reading of the Fourth Piano Concerto in which this reference to the earlier concerto serves as the focal point in a network of structural, textural, and expressive intertextuality between Rachmaninoff's final piano concerto and his earlier compositions in the same genre. In particular, I show how the climax of the first movement can be heard to transform the apotheosis of his First Piano Concerto into a kind of breakthrough-- i.e., a pronounced rupture in the musical discourse that undermines the possibility of a straightforward recapitulation. Ultimately, my goal in this paper is to show how Rachmaninoff's last piano concerto both invokes and problematizes the musical procedures that made his earlier concertos so immensely popular.

Schenker's concept of linkage technique--the carrying over of pitches from the end of one phrase or segment to form the beginning of the next--is applicable to a wide range of music, regardless of tonal implications or the lack thereof. Eric Roseberry (1987) identifies isolated instances of this device in Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice; however, a broad survey reveals linkage as one of the composer's most frequently-employed motivic techniques. Whereas linkage can be found in many genres, opera composers may use this technique to depict certain aspects of a character's thoughts and motivations, either spoken or unspoken, as the drama continues to unfold on stage.

Following a brief discussion of the technique in general, this paper will examine several instances of linkage in Britten's operas and other vocal works. In doing so, I will show that Britten frequently uses linkage technique in the following three ways: (1) linkage between the vocal melody and the instrumental accompaniment, (2) linkage between vocal phrases separated by an intervening instrumental accompaniment, and (3) linkage between the music sung by different characters in an opera. I will show that Britten frequently draws upon enharmonic re-spelling at moments of linkage, sometimes for notational convenience, and other times to specifically portray aspects of poetic meaning in his libretti and song texts. Consideration of linkage has practical implications for performers, directors and choreographers, who may use insights gained through score analysis to craft a staged, gestural interpretation at moments of linkage.

At Carnegie Hall on November 13, 1948, Duke Ellington and His Orchestra premiered The Tattooed Bride, which critic Max Harrison later suggested 'may emerge as Ellington's unacknowledged masterpiece.' Ellington often introduced it as a programmatic composition, but at the premiere he explained the piece's musical logic: a zigzag motive, repeated and transformed throughout the work. Scholars such as Stefano Zenni have noted Ellington's statement and have called attention to the fact that Ellington structures the work in three separately titled parts ('Kitchen Stove,' 'Omaha,' and 'Aberdeen'). Though oft-mentioned, the motivic and formal qualities of the piece remained unexplored by music theorists.

This paper considers the motivic connections Ellington utilizes throughout The Tattooed Bride, which extend beyond the simple zigzag motives that Ellington named. Three additional motives emerge, two of which appear across all sections of the work. The motivic connections show that, although Ellington used 32-bar song forms as the basic structures for each of the piece's three parts, he reworked and developed the same motivic material throughout. The paper also explores Ellington's departures from song forms through contrasting episodes and transitions, which constitute a large portion of the work's formal modules. I identify four types of non-chorus organization, defined by the ways Ellington deploys the piece's motivic content and the role ensemble chord voicing plays within the modules. Finally, I consider the piece's slow introduction, which sets the tone of the piece as a concert work and simultaneously provides an abstract summary of the musical elements guiding its construction.

In this talk, I seek to accomplish two objectives: (1) demonstrate the potential of adopting topic theory into the study of modern jazz and (2) offer topical and narrative analyses of 'One by One'--the opening track on Ugetsu: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers at Birdland' (1963). My analysis frames 'One by One' as a token of hard bop's opposition to cool jazz (between east and west coasts, respectively) in an effort to highlight the performance's stylistic features as artifacts of hard bop's cultural values. The opposition of 'black innovation vs. white popularization' serves as an interpretive filter that links the stylistic suggestions of this specific recording with a broader cultural dialogue.

The vocabulary of topics from the hard bop era (ca. 1955-65) includes references to peripheral styles, most notably the blues. Though jazz has an extensive history of referencing the blues, cool jazz of the late 1940s and early 1950s marks a low point for the salience of its influence. In the mid 50s, black hard bop musicians on the east coast reemphasized the blues as a direct reaction to the white popularization of cool jazz. This analysis of 'One by One' depicts the stylistic confrontation of cool jazz and the blues as the crux of its narrative, ultimately conforming to a comic archetype (Almen). By tracing the rank values of black innovation and white popularization over the course of jazz history, I show the comedy of "One by One" as supporting a multi-modular, intertextual narrative that expresses the romantic archetype.

Joe Harriott and John Mayer's double quintet Indojazz Fusions (1966-68) was the first extended collaboration to fuse modern jazz and Indian classical practices into a new genre. The emerging music, Indojazz, attempted to improvise itself into existence: Mayer's Indian classical quintet and Harriott's jazz ensemble came together to contribute on behalf of their individual cultures. And, in real time, the musicians reciprocally conformed their contributions to Indojazz's sound as it developed. This music-cultural reciprocity meant that no individual (musician, composer, producer, etc.) could be the primary agent of the music's creation. As such, Indojazz stands apart from many hybrid musical genres and begs many basic questions of the mechanisms of its production: How did these musicians reconcile their differing approaches with one another? What features of the composed works facilitated cohesiveness in their improvised performances?

As a starting point for answering these questions, I explore rhythmic organization, a central challenge forearly Indojazz performances. Through a comparative discussion of modern jazz rhythm, Hindustani tal theory, and tabla pedagogy, I posit a preliminary framework for a theory of Indojazz meter. In a close analysis of 'Overture,' from Indo-Jazz Suite (1966), I investigate how individual musicians from various Indian classical and jazz traditions navigate this framework.

The objective of this paper is twofold: first, it illustrates characteristics of Ginastera's compositional language that remained consistent as he shifted to twelve-tone composition; and second, it demonstrates how these characteristics were repurposed to form the basis of twelve- tone organizational strategies in the variation sets of the Piano and Violin Concertos. More specifically, this paper illustrates how (0167) and (0369) frequently form surface-level motives that are also composed-out over larger spans of music, where they emerge as part of the music's structural middleground. Echoing Ginastera's pre-serial works, these motives often appear as parts of sequential patterns that complete one of two octachordal collections, which correspond, respectively, to the abstract complements of (0369) and (0167): the familiar octatonic collection and what this paper calls the '8-note' collection, comprised of tritone-related chromatic tetrachords. In the context of the concertos, these octachordal collections interact with transpositions of themselves to complete the aggregate on different structural levels and in ways that articulate the variation form.

The precompositional array structures of Babbitt's music, which present twelve-tone series fixed in narrow registers, seem static and impersonal. Nevertheless, numerous commentators on Babbitt's music, including Mead, Dubiel, Sandow, and Leong and McNutt have celebrated the sense of motion the music inspires, describing it in vividly gestural terms. This paper will explore the dialectical tension between the music's static precompositional structures and the dynamic surfaces these authors experience. The static precursor is posited as a field from which the dynamic realization may emerge or against which the dynamic realization may struggle.

This exploration of gestural dialectics sheds light on four topics to be discussed in the paper: the all-partition array, Babbitt's primary contrapuntal device after 1965, whose partitional variety facilitates gestural experimentation; Babbitt's later practice of creating small-scale periodicity by filling in time-point intervals with strings of even note values; text-setting; and serial anomalies' deviations from array expectations, which occasionally seem to be motivated by gestural considerations. In several examples to be discussed, gesturally motivated anomalies are used to effect a sense of closure.

Babbittâ??s music creates gestures in an environment that seems hostile to embodied energetics. As Peles says of Schoenberg, Babbitt â??give[s] a body to something that in its native form has none.â?

Milton Babbitt's Soli e Duettini, three works written for two guitars, flute and guitar, and violin and viola, respectively, provide an opportunity to analyze the role played by instrumentation in shaping a composition. Each of the duets has the same title and form, and each is governed by the same superarray. Yet, each piece is individual in its projection of the superarray, most audibly through the interplay between the two instruments. From this analytical vantage, the two-guitar duet poses special challenges: the two instruments have the same timbre, range, and dynamic capabilities. Moreover, erratic rhythms and disjunct contours often prevent one from using texture or range to distinguish the instruments. While individuated instrumental-timbral voices do emerge during solo sections, such individuation is complicated and even dissolved in the sections where both instruments play. This ambiguity and the analytical and interpretive consequences that follow are specific to the two-guitar duet, and my paper will suggest that the ambiguity is essential for understanding the music's organization. The works for violin and viola or flute and guitar cannot convey such an indeterminate relationship, no matter how similar their pitch structure, phrasing, or dynamics. The two guitars engage in a musical dialogue in which the perceptible presence of two participants moves in and out of the texture; one is seldom certain to whom a particular voice is speaking.

Every twelve-tone row realized in pitch is a contour row; the tone-row is the ordering of pitch- classes in time, while the contour row is the ordering in register. Because each contour row is made up of 12 discrete C-pitches (contour-pitches), contour rows enjoy the same 12-tone operations, transformations, permutations, partitions, and relationships as traditional tone-rows. My paper will explore some of the abstract relationships between 12-tone rows and contour rows, demonstrate analytical applications for the music of Schoenberg, Webern, and Babbitt, and explore the compositional constraints involving contour in 12-tone music. While contour theory has been discussed at length by a number of theorists, contour in 12-tone music is under- represented. Pitch and contour form a significant component of our understanding and interpretation of twelve-tone music, as well as twelve-tone composition. By examining contour from abstract, analytical, and compositional perspectives, my paper will help to further our understanding of this aspect of twelve-tone music, and, hopefully, inspire more research in this area.

The musical sketches for Boulez's Eclat (1965) are a goldmine of information for the music scholar. Minute annotations scribbled between the staves and in the margins of a score for Don (1st. version, piano, voice, 1960), when properly deciphered, clarify every stage of the compositional process that led to Eclat. However, the characteristically numerous stages of Boulez's generative procedures problematize the issue of their perceptual connotations and salience as structural markers within the final musical product. Many authors (Cone 1960, Lerdahl 1988, Guldbransen 1997, Meston 2001, Goldman 2011 and Salem 2014) have, in fact, claimed that Boulez's generative techniques do not have implications in the realm of perception.

This paper will demonstrate how the annotations at the very top of Boulez's sketches for Don (Example 1) outline the skeleton (background scheme) for the entire opening piano Cadenza of Eclat. Analyzing the sketch by delving beyond the question of how the foreground material was generated to why these processes were used, demonstrates that the cadenza is structured in a manner highly analogous to a traditional concerto cadenza, consisting of an expansion of four germinal chords. Furthermore, it shows that the isomorphic relationships underlying the generative techniques have structural and musical repercussions that are taken maximum advantage of in the transfer from sketch to final musical product. Ultimately, the analysis produces a graph that compiles the various stages of process shown in the sketches and illustrates how they elucidate a perceptible middleground organization.

This paper examines the unusual case of Ligeti's original Piano Etude No. 11, L'arrache-coeur, which was withdrawn by the composer immediately after its premiere performance in 1994. My study is based on an extensive study of the composer's sketches at the Paul Sacher Stiftung which reveals that Ligeti devoted a striking amount of energy to this work, only to discard it after a single performance. What makes this case more remarkable is that this is the only extant piece included in Ligeti's post-1964 sketches that was completed and then withdrawn. This begs the question, why did Ligeti withdraw a work to which he devoted so much energy?

This paper traces the evolutionary path of L'arrache-coeur, examines the intertextual connection between the Etude and Boris Vian's eponymous absurdist novel that served as the work's literary inspiration, and considers how compositional concerns that had preoccupied Ligeti in the early 1990s, as evidenced in his contemporaneous sketches, are also evident in L'arrache-coeur. Ã? The paper then provides in-depth analysis of the pitch and rhythmic structure of L'arrache-coeur, alongside comparisons with similar analyses of excerpts from his contemporaneous works, as well as the eventual published version of Etude 11, En Suspens. The comparative analyses reveal crucial differences, both structural and aesthetic, between L'arrache-coeur and the other works examined. Based on the analytic evidence, I conclude by providing a possible rationale for Ligeti's dissatisfaction with, and ultimate withdrawal of, L'arrache-coeur.

Mendelssohn'ss style is traditionally condemned for being conservative or Classical, rather than Romantic. Recent revisionist scholarship on this issue (Vitercik 2004, Taylor 2011, Wingfield & Horton 2012) has attempted to reverse this trend, by drawing attention to Mendelssohn's progressive pursuit of unusual formal schemes. Yet, his conservative reputation persists. My paper investigates why Mendelssohn's innovative use of form has been insufficient to shed this image.

My paper focuses on three typically Romantic components of Mendelssohn's treatment of form: (1) secondary themes in unexpected keys; (2) thematic cyclicity in multi-movement works; and (3) use of codas as solutions to formal problems not solved by recapitulations.

By comparing Mendelssohn'ss use of these features with that of his contemporaries, I identify three crucial differences: (1) Though Mendelssohn's surprising secondary keys are often distant from the tonic, they are nonetheless stable and unambiguous. (2) Whereas Romantic cyclic themes are recollected through significantly altered repetition, Mendelssohn's cyclic themes are merely reprised through near exact repetition. (3) Whereas Romantic codas are summoned or grow, Mendelssohn's codas just happen.

These metaphors have explanatory value, because the limits of Mendelssohn's Romanticism lie in which analogies his musical structures encourage us to draw. I conclude by urging renewed attention to such matters of stylistic categorization. In as much as composers' places in the historical narrative are determined by their assigned roles as 'progressives' or 'conservatives,' constant interrogation of the implicit aesthetic criteria that shape these judgments is an essential component of responsible historiography.

Despite differences in critical alignment, studies of sonata-like structures tend to share one feature in common: they devote the least amount of time to recapitulations. Two theoretical presuppositions may explain this neglect: (1) that the thematic layout of the recapitulation mirrors that of the exposition, and (2) that one obligatory tonal alteration is all that is needed to make a tonic-recapitulating sonata conclude in the key in which it began. The present paper uses examples from Schubert's piano music to complexify the second of these in hopes of painting a more complete, and analytically adequate, picture of the ways tonal alterations are made in practice. Its goal is to reveal the wide range of strategies that was available to composers for enacting a sonata's obligatory tonal adjustment.

The central analytical section of the paper identifies six strategies for performing tonal alterations, each of which is suggestive of different narrative or dramatic situations. Moving from less to more 'involved,' the strategies are:

• Alterations in silence
• Immediate alterations
• Thick alterations
• Multiple alterations
• Impotent alterations, and
• Self-effacing alterations

Tonal alterations may be obligatory in sonatas with on-tonic recapitulations, but they are not for that reason deployed by composers pro forma. Indeed, Schubert (and others) composed tonal alterations in a range of sophisticated and dramatically appropriate ways. A detailed look at this understudied aspect of sonata composition enhances our music-analytic categories, sharpens our interpretive acumen, and invites us to hear recapitulations as sites of robust tonal dramas.

Despite the ever-present interest in Wagnerian form, no scholar has yet addressed a particular formal unit in Wagner's repertoire: a sentence structure with multiple presentation sections. In this paper, I use examples from Die Walk�¼re to show how Wagner opens up multiple rhetorical sentence spaces in order to delay the cadence. These top-heavy sentences create mounting tension and have clear dramatic implications. The paper begins with an overview of the Satz before introducing my notion of the manifold sentence, wherein as many as three presentation sections succeed each other and extend the sentential form, either in the presentation, continuation, or both. In doing so, I situate myself within recent work on sentence form, distinguishing the manifold sentence from BaileyShea's (2004) Fortspinnungstypus while connecting it to Satzkette like those found in BaileyShea (2003) and Vande Moortele (2011). I consider a Beethovenian precedent before concluding with a look at the dramatic implications of the form, addressing similar work found in Rodgers (2014).

In a path-breaking 2009 article, Ulrich Kaiser described a prototypical transition-pattern in Mozartâ??s music, in which a descending bass tetrachord (from ^1 to ^5 of the home key) harmonized according to the rule of the octave is followed by diskantierender Halbschluss.

Though Kaiser was not then aware of the connection, his description corresponds approximately to a template made up of two of Robert Gjerdingen's schemata: a Prinner followed by a converging half cadence. The novelty of Kaiser's formulation, though, lies in his having seeing how these two patterns can be characteristically combined and in his having tied the resultant structure to the expression of a particular formal function. Still, Kaiser's comparative neglect of surface voice leading on the one hand and Auskomponierung on the other leads him at once to overgeneralize his model and, paradoxically, to limit it unduly. This paper aims to remedy these two deficiencies by proposing a revised model of the 'Prinner transition,' illustrated with examples from the widest possible range of Mozart's instrumental and vocal music.

Much insight into the workings of humor in Classical instrumental music--a key ingredient of the style--is afforded by the concept of 'script opposition' (Attardo and Raskin 1991). Script opposition forms a central feature of humorology studies and currently is considered 'synonymous with an instance of humor' in linguistic theory (Triezenberg 2004). It describes how two opposed 'chunk[s] of semantic information' (Raskin 1985) clash with one another to produce a disjunction or incongruity that can result in humor. I deploy script opposition to highlight Classical composers' incongruous deployments of semantic and syntactic forces (topics and formal functions) and define and discuss two strategies used to create musical humor: excess and semantic conflict.

Excess projects a sense of redundancy and vacuity through the successive repetition of musical material that appears to have 'gone on for too long' (Huron 2004). Excessive material opposes logical phrase construction and is perpetrated most prominently by small-scale repetition and harmonic stasis.

Semantic conflicts, conversely, create the impression of a sudden pull in a different direction due to unexpected contrast between successive musical ideas. Such conflicts usually foreground a local clash between topics with opposed social status associations and are further emphasized by music-syntactic parameters (i.e. formal functions, harmony, meter). Since incongruities between successive formal functions and/or topics arise from incongruities between constituent parameters (melody, harmony, texture, etc.), I also account for the incongruous interactions between these lower-level parameters.

Charles Ives's compositional revision process has recently been the subject of scholarly scrutiny. Critics such as Maynard Solomon have portrayed this process as a systematic pattern of falsification, claiming that Ives added dissonances into his completed scores years after they were composed. Ives scholars have denied these charges; however, in this paper I verify them. My claims are supported by accounts of witnesses, such as Elliot Carter, who saw Ives adding dissonances into his completed scores, and by manuscript evidence, which shows that dissonances were in fact added into later drafts of many of Ives's works.

I offer a new explanation for this dissonance addition, showing that it may have resulted from Ives's negative associations between consonance and 19^th-century German musical theories and culture. This association can be traced from the earliest stages of Ives's career to its peak in October 1914 with the German invasion and 'rape' of Belgium, reflecting the climate of American hostility towards Germany during World War I. Using evidence from Ives's writings, diary entries, recordings, and unpublished sketches and marginalia, I demonstrate that, to Ives, 'German' consonance at this time was sometimes associated with autocratic unscrupulousness, while excessive dissonance usage represented democratic righteousness.

After 1914, Ives's dissonance additions were especially prominent in passages with tonal musical borrowings set in dissonant musical soundscapes. A modern listener can engage with such music by hearing his post-tonally set musical borrowings dialogically with tonal recompositions, which can be derived in several ways as I demonstrate. Understanding such passages in this manner results in hermeneutic gain, especially when such analyses are paired with Ives's associations and historical context. For example, one could hear these dissonances as 'democratic'--positive enhancements that dissociate his music with German musical culture.

The opening theme in the final movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata in D
major, D. 850, presents a metrically ambiguous scenario for its listeners.
Rothstein (1989, 62) identifies the hypermetrical downbeat to be on the first
beat of measure 3, but Sutcliffe (1991, 390) disagrees with Rothstein and he
argues that the hypermetrical downbeat is in fact on the third beat of measure
2. Similar to the unfolding of the mysterious tonic in Edward T. Cone's analysis
of Brahms' Intermezzo Op.118 No.1, this ambiguous placement of the
hypermetrical downbeat thus creates a mystery that will only be revealed towards
the end of the movement. In this paper, I will trace the unfolding and the evolution
of this metrically ambiguous theme throughout the movement, discuss rhythmic
techniques that Schubert uses to preserve or to abandon the ambiguity of the
phrase, and examine how the formal design of the movement is influenced by
this narrative of the metrically ambiguous theme. My analysis will show that
hypermeter is an essential compositional strategy that Schubert manipulates
frequently to create interest and cohesion in the movement, and that each
formal sections of the Rondo display their own hypermetrical character as
much as their tonal and thematic characters.

In Cat Stevens' 1970s songwriting, lyrical themes are highlighted by irregularities in his metric construction. One compelling example is his song 'Time,' from Mona Bone Jakon (1970), the titular theme of which is explored through changing measure durations, signalled by patterns of accent and grouping in the guitar strumming. Yet Stevens' characteristic lyrical expression is manifested through rhythmic groupings so flexible that they cannot be reconciled with a conception of meter based on regularity and hierarchy. When grouped according to a metric grid, these cues yield non-isochronous measures in transcription, with the number of beats never persisting for more than a few bars at a time.

By instead conceiving of meter in 'Time' as process - as expounded in Christopher Hasty's Meter as Rhythm -Ã??Ã? we can describe and find purpose for the flexible durations between guitar accents. This process-based reading allows us to hear timing differences between durations, while spanning longer durational projections, without the need for isochronous beat subdivisions. The rising and falling of projective and projected durations illustrate the temporal changes - the 'rise' and 'fall' of time - in the narrative of Stevens' lyrics. In eschewing metric regularity, Stevens prevents the listener from orienting to musical time, creating a temporal disorientation that reflects the lyrical theme.

Many analyses of progressive rock illustrate the music's 'progressiveness' by comparing it to European classical music, particularly with respect to formal complexity, tonal structure, and motivic development. Without rejecting these approaches, I seek to evaluate the genre's progressiveness from within rock culture, focusing on embodied rhythmic feeling. Durell Bowman, in his study of the band Rush, refers to a 'metrical constructedness' characteristic of progressive rock, but he does not define this sensation or explain how it occurs, besides identifying 'asymmetrical' meters in many Rush songs. I theorize rhythmic and metrical constructedness more generally as an embodied feeling which develops in response to rhythmic expansions and alterations of riffs or riff-like motives, by which progressive rock and metal bands manipulate listeners' rhythmic expectations. I ground my exploration in the context of rock and metal listening culture by framing it within Susan Fast's theory of riffs and embodiment. Fans deploy processes of rhythmic interpretation and metering in real time, navigating music's temporal unfolding through participatory movement. These practices of physical reception are an integral part of the horizon of expectations engaged by listening to rock music as rock music. In addition to my own analyses, I incorporate the alteration of riff-like motives observed by Pieslak 2007 and the changes of meter observed in Durrell 2004 and McCandless 2013 to demonstrate rhythmic or metrical constructedness in the music of Yes, Dream Theater, and Meshuggah.

In 2015, MTMW published the abstracts from twenty-five years of conferences and made the contents searchable online. In this study, I have taken the contents of this database and used various text-analysis tools to gain a broader perspective of trends and patterns in music theory. Word clouds, such as those created by Wordle, can help us to see overall proportions and emphases ("theory" and "analysis" were unsurprisingly the two most common terms.) Trends can also be evaluated by dividing the data into five-year periods. For example, the word "form" barely registers in 2000-2004, but is one of the most prominent topics in 2010-2015. Closer examination reveals the emergence of interest in new fields such as "transformation" and "gesture." A database listing specific word counts was also created, making it possible to parse the data for particular types of information, such as gender language, most-commonly used verbs, composers most frequently studied, theorists most frequently cited, and so on. One particularly interesting observation is that 45% of the 13161 unique words found in MTMW abstracts occur only once in the entire 25-year span. This suggests a great deal of creativity in word use overall.

This poster presents a systematic investigation of content in four top-tier theory journals in order to enumerate and analyze the representation of various music theory topics over a 35-year period. The findings address the following questions: why are certain topics preferred over others? Are specific composers favored equally in the academy and the concert hall? If not, why? And how does the leading theory research relate to what is taught in core undergraduate curriculums?

The journals considered were chosen for their topic breadth (i.e. not specialty journals), reputation, and Anglophone content, and include Journal of Music Theory, Music Analysis, Music Theory Online, and Music Theory Spectrum. The time period under consideration is 1979-2014, which yields approximately 1000 articles from the four journals. Essays, responses, research reports, reviews, and other shorter writings were omitted. Titles, keywords, and abstracts for each article were procured from the journals or, when unavailable, from the RILM Abstracts of Music Literature database. Using this information, each article was classified according to topic, era/genre of repertoire discussed (if any), and composers exemplified.

This study speaks to several pertinent issues in contemporary music theory scholarship: the preference of certain topics and neglect of others, the discrepancies between attention given to composers in the academy and concert hall, and the relationship between what is researched and what is taught. Consideration and discussion of these issues is paramount for a self-appraisal of the music theory discipline and rumination on its future direction.

Despite steady progress in improving aural skills classes over the past decade, there often remains a disconnect between the goals that we want students to achieve, the activities and techniques we use to meet those goals, and the methods and strategies students use to complete the activities. Consequently, many students struggle to apply their acquired skills to outside listening experiences and to retain learning beyond their time in the theory core. In response, we endeavored to rebuild the Aural Skills sequence at our institution from the ground up, starting with a set of pedagogical assumptions and methodological goals inspired by backwards design: (1) focusing almost exclusively on real pieces of music from different styles/genres, (2) developing active listening in which students make music as a means of understanding music that is heard, (3) developing musical fluency through regular improvisation exercises before sight-singing and dictation, (4) simplifying and retooling dictation to increase practical application and musical relevance, and (5) using group work and problem-based learning to engage students in real-world application and critical thinking. In this poster presentation, we provide a sequential pathway through a first-year Aural Skills course, sharing some of the unique challenges involved in using real pieces to teach fundamental listening skills. Scaling our Aural Skills curriculum to real music has invigorated every aspect of teaching and learning, helping students understand the relevance of improvisation and careful listening to all their musical activities.

In the 1730s, the Parisian elite was enchanted with experimental philosophy. Though French philosophes had performed experiments in their research for decades, the arrival of a French translation of Newton's Opticks in 1720 sparked a new interest in philosophie experimentale and philosophie naturelle among the educated public. Perhaps hoping to capitalize on this new enthusiasm for empirical observation, Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) included a series of propositions and experiments in his 1737 treatise Generation harmonique. These experiments draw readers into Rameau's observational scientific method and were meant to support his theory of the corps sonore, or 'vibrating body.' Rameau's experiments aligned his treatise with Newtonianism, a cultural phenomenon that in France included enthusiasm for experimental science and advocacy for Newtonian physics and cosmology. It was during this period of intellectual tension that Rameau published Generation harmonique.

Scholars including Thomas Christensen have suggested a connection between the experiments in this treatise and those in Newton's Opticks. In this paper I argue that, while Rameau's experiments resemble Newton's in certain ways, the differences between them indicate that Newtonianism, rather than Newton's works as such, shaped Rameau's thinking. Yet in the context of cultural Newtonianism, we can see that these experiments connected Rameau with a body of controversial work and the most en vogue intellectual trend. By viewing Rameau's experiments in this context, we can see how his theory reflects Newtonianism as a cultural movement, trending toward empiricism, broader accessibility, and other issues seemingly removed from music theory.

In this paper, I explore a two-part Galant phrase-schema that I call the Volta. The schema is defined chiefly by its melodic cross relation: the first stage charges up the dominant via #4, while the second releases to the tonic through natural 4. The Volta served as a gesture of culmination, pulling listeners out of the on-going flow of the musical phrase with its stark cross-relations to signal the approaching cadential progression. While the Volta's popularity peaked in the 1730s, it remained an important part of the musical language through the end of the century. I illustrate the Volta's role in eighteenth-century style with representative excerpts from Beethoven, Galuppi, Gluck, Hasse, Haydn, Mozart, Pergolesi, Sammartini, Stoelzel, Terradellas, Vinci, and Venturini.

Stravinsky's Pulcinella of 1920, widely considered his first neoclassical work, features reorchestrations and recompositions of numerous works from the galant era (1720-1780). Since its premiere, critics have debated the extent of Stravinsky's authorial contribution in Pulcinella, looking for evidence of the composer's modernist past (Carr 2014, Hyde 2003, Straus 1990).

In this paper, I investigate the manner in which Stravinsky intermixes historical source material with his own ideas and style in Pulcinella. I will use Robert Gjerdingen's galant schema theory from his Music in the Galant Style (2007) to analyze all 21 movements of Pulcinella alongside their 21 galant models to elucidate Stravinsky's reproduction, distortion, and creation of material and schemata in Pulcinella. This galant analytical perspective provides a more complete demonstration of Stravinsky's contribution in the work, and reveals a carefully crafted process of stylistic transformation in Pulcinella in which Stravinsky's personal neoclassical style subtly and gradually emerges from historical material.

To demonstrate this process of stylistic emergence, I will focus on his treatment of two of the galant era's most common schemata: the Prinner and the Ponte. At Pulcinella's outset, Stravinsky allows the full expression of these two schemata by accurately reproducing the scale-degree and bass patterns of these schemata from Pulcinella's galant models. As Pulcinella progresses, Stravinsky increasingly distorts instances of these two schemata, altering their idiomatic scale-degree and bass patterns, and blending them with unique material. Pulcinella concludes with unique, modern compositional plans constructed with galant materials.

Ellyn Spragin's 2008 book, What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, provides a starting point for this talk that reflects on my personal experiences in 30 years of music theory teaching. For roughly 20 of those years, I have taught a music theory pedagogy course: a fertile field for my own learning as I observe young teachers hone their craft.  I present some 'punchlines' of that course, and demonstrate how what I learned through trial-and-error, experimentation, and observation of others has a body of pedagogical and cognitive literature behind it.  I conclude with a letter to my younger self.