Theories on the structural properties of scales have predominated studies of Western art music, yet little is known about how scales function in the context of non-Western music. Such knowledge would help broaden our understanding of scales as a somewhat universal organizing principle, as well as provide insight into appreciation of musical cultures otherwise thought to be too “exotic.” This paper focuses on Turkish classical music, the musical structure of which is based on makam, or modes. As in Western tonality, Turkish makam involves defining a particular pitch of a scale as tonic and then completing a process of concluding on that pitch by means of stepwise scalar descent. While scalar stepwise melodies may occur in the more local contexts of musical phrases, this structural stepwise descent occurs over the course of entire pieces, logically connecting the music of one section of a composition to another. Along the way, pitches of the structural makam scale may be subjected to prolongation during the course of which expressive formal techniques—such as brief modulations to other makam—may occur. The approach in this paper is inspired by the treatises of Ottoman Turkish theorists, composers, and performers, Dmitrie Cantemir (1673–1723) and Abdul-Baki Nasr Dede (1765–1820).

Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983) is often described as an eclectic composer because his music includes everything from traditional tonality—including characteristically Argentine melodies and rhythms—through deeply chromatic post-tonality. In the second movement of his Sonata para piano (1952), a 12-tone row functions audibly as the primary melody, but does so within Ginastera’s trademark malambo style, and even co-exists with the “guitar chord.” Further, melodic motives are drawn from the row and are featured throughout the movement. These motives serve to fully integrate the modernist technique of serialism with the nationalistically Argentine features for which Ginastera is known. This analysis is meant to demonstrate not just the diversity of composers who worked with 12-tone rows, but also the diversity of ways in which 12-tone rows can serve as the basis of a composition.

In Summer Walker’s music, diminished sevenths and augmented triads are used frequently as diatonic dominant functioning chords and as applied dominants. However, the ambiguity created by the chords’ symmetrical makeup faces an added level of complexity through her occasional use of V7-flat-9 chords since it could be viewed as containing and expressing two dominant functioning chords: V7 and viio7. While both harmonies typically resolve to the tonic, the conception of the upper viio7 portion of the V7-flat-9 means that it is possible to also view this harmony as potentially enigmatic as well, specifically when inverted. In this project, I analyze three songs by Walker to demonstrate how these wandering tonicizations serve to reinforce sentiments of woe and uncertainty expressed in the lyrics.

The increased use of timpani in chamber and soloistic works in the latter half of the twentieth century caused composers to consider not only its rhythmic capabilities, but its melodic possibilities. In this project, I explore the ways in which these characteristics manifest in Eric Rodis’s concerto for timpani, Colossus. To show the interaction between these aspects, I trace the development of two motives, representative of melody and rhythm, respectively. By the end of the piece, these motives undergo transformations in both the soloist’s and accompanists’ parts, symbolizing the timpani coming to terms with their dual nature.

Some of the music of the famed country brother duo the Louvin Brothers can be jarring to contemporary music listeners—especially those on US college campuses, which skew to the left. The conservative Baptist fervor of Ira Louvin’s song, “Broad Minded” (rec. 1952, rel. 1953) appears in a relatively early recording by the duo. By examining the song’s form, text-melody relationships, and invocation of Black musical practices, this project argues that what is potentially shocking about the song for contemporary, liberal-minded listeners is as much musical and sonic as it is a matter of linguistics. But musical analysis also allows us to attend to the song’s communicative contradictions: the fire-and-brimstone message of “Broad Minded” is often undermined by its musical setting.

The “March of the Israelites” from R. Nathaniel Dett’s oratorio, The Ordering of Moses (1937), depicts the flight of the Jews from Egypt through the Red Sea. It poses some baffling features that “regular” analysis cannot illuminate. For one, the orchestra suddenly evokes a strong sense of Ravel’s Bolero (1929), departing starkly from the remainder of the work. Additionally, it is not danceable for reasons that are not immediately apparent. Further, the chorus sings only on one syllable, “Ah.” This project demonstrates how investigations of pitch, meter, and other structures serve as initial steps to unlock artistic motives that were central to Dett’s objectives: illuminating the equal stature of Spirituals with the European, Classical tradition. The project demonstrates how to present arguments for the artistic decisions that composers make.

This project demonstrates how one might analytically approach music written in a self-consciously hybridized musical language, in view of its diverse sources and its historical background. I have used as my central case study Inno Meiji, a one-movement orchestral work by the Japanese composer Yamada Kōsaku (1886–1965), written in 1921 in commemoration of the funeral of the Meiji emperor, Japan’s first modern monarch. I discuss how a great many of the piece’s features, both tonal and timbral, can be understood in the context of a very-recently-modernized Japan trying to figure out how to position itself on the world’s stage, including in its artistic products—composers like Yamada were in the midst of experimenting with ways to display both their Western-style erudition and their appreciation for Japan’s traditional culture, and they tried many different strategies, several of which can be found in this single piece.

Grant and Kim (2023) write that compositions by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven dominate sonata-form examples found in leading textbooks, which has the benefit of producing a “consistent set of norms” and presumably enabling students to gain fluency with these norms. We suggest a slightly different approach, influenced by “scuba diving” (Alegant 2014): studying fewer examples, and prioritizing critical thinking about dialogic form instead of mastery of eighteenth-century sonata norms. With this method in mind, my poster offers one possible example. First, it illustrates how Hensel’s “Sonata o Fantasia” (1829) dialogues with the sonata. It then describes how this composition and analysis can be incorporated into three different undergraduate contexts: (1) a two-week unit on sonata form, (2) a single lesson within an analysis- and/or writing-focused music class, and (3) a full-semester course on sonata form.

clipping. is an American experimental hip-hop group from Los Angeles, California, consisting of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. Their 2014 debut album contains “story 2,” a song about an arsonist who tries to change his ways but his past comes to haunt him. The ordering of events in the song is different from how it might occur in real time which is highlighted by the musical elements that help to tell the story. In this project, I discuss the intersection between flow and storytelling through the examination of form, meter, grouping, and syllabic stress. Drawing upon Bal’s theory of narratology, Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s preference rules, Duinker’s theory of segmentation, and Freytag’s plot structure pyramid, I argue that the ways in which musical characteristics interact with the lyrics highlights the storytelling aspects of the song.

When a phrase is delivered in a way that defies its cultural and stylistic expectations, the result can be humorous, witty, or sarcastic. Building on YouTube channel Wisecrack’s comedic formula, Stephen Rodgers’ phonetic analysis of songs, and Harald Krebs’ works on compositional distortions, this project explores how sung phrases subvert expected intonation and stress patterns for comedic effect. The compositional distortion in “Ladies in Their Sensitivities” from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street exposes the protagonists’ immorality. The performative distortion in “Shpadoinkle” from Cannibal! The Musical conveys light-heartedness. In both examples, the contradictions between expected and sung phrases lessen the horror of the plot while foreshadowing the protagonists’ later denouement.

Marius Petipa and George Balanchine each held reputations for being among the most significant and most musical ballet choreographers of their eras. In this project, I show how the choreomusical styles of these choreographers can be compared by examining how they set patterns in music to patterns in their dances. The “Berceuse, a variation for Columbine,” from Act II of Riccardo Drigo’s Harlequinade (1900), offers a special instance in which Petipa and Balanchine choreographed to the same score, Petipa for the original production and Balanchine for a new production sixty-five years later. An exceptionally detailed Stepanov-notation dance score preserves Petipa’s choreography for modern-day reconstruction. My analysis takes advantage of a recording of the performance staged by Doug Fullington at the Guggenheim museum in 2015. Focusing on the opening eight-measure period of the Berceuse, I examine patterns of movement as they relate to patterns of melody, harmony, and phrase. The analysis shows how Petipa set close-range musical repetitions to choreographic repetitions, while Balanchine set select elements of music to select aspects of movement. The different choreographies visually highlight different facets of the music, creating unique audiovisual experiences for the viewer. My close reading of the music and two settings in dance demonstrates for students how to apply music-analytic tools to the study of musical multimedia, especially dance. Furthermore, my annotated video examples suggest ways students also might use video editing to clarify their arguments when writing about audiovisual art forms.

The focus of this analytical project is on the use of the score-stop technique in movie trailers, also known as the “sudden soundtrack stop” (TV Tropes), “music stop” (Film Editing Pro), or “stopdowns” (Lieu, 2020). As its name indicates, the score-stop technique is “the stopping of the music to undermine, highlight or draw attention to a particular line of dialogue, joke, or visual” (Film Editing Pro). The movie trailers discussed in this project include: Cruella (2021), CODA (2021), Kimi (2022), Prey (2022), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). The analytical remarks and observations made in the project focus on how textural cues, metrical context, and silence contribute to the making of a score-stop moment. From the perspective of a student, this project models how one might answer the question “Wow, that one moment in the movie trailer sounded so cool! Why is that?”

Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2 has never been among his popular works, perhaps in part because it does not exhibit the dazzling, extroverted virtuosity traditionally expected of concertos. However, despite its introverted nature, an exploration of this work using motivic, formal, tonal, and intertextual analysis reveals a narrative of transcendent victory through perseverance.

HWANG Yau-Tai 黃友棣 (1911-2010) was a prolific Chinese composer who has composed over two thousand vocal works. Widely considered as one of HWANG’s most beloved choral works, the four-part choral piece Oblivion (遺忘) was composed in 1968, set to the text by the Taiwanese author CHUNG Mei-Yun 鍾梅音. In this project, I will analyze HWANG’s usage of metrical dissonances and phrase groupings in Oblivion, showing how his compositional choices enhance the musical setting of Oblivion, in which the protagonist repeatedly expresses her desire to forget her lover, even as her lingering feelings will not subside.

One night in 1897, in a swanky libertine Buenos Aires night spot, house pianist Rosendo Mendizábal premiered his new tango, “El Entrerriano,” to great success. The composition would achieve immortality as the first representative of the incipient genre known as “tangos criollos” in what became the tango songbook. Generations of tango musicians performed and recorded this standard, including the premiere orchestras of the genre’s golden age. The questions that guide my analysis of “El Entrerriano” are grounded in the context in which this tango was composed, performed, and received. Thus, as the title of this project hints, I frame my discussion in terms of the tango’s original function: stimulating revelling dancers in nocturnal environments. I analyze the form of the tango as presented in sheet music and elaborated in 30 recordings by celebrated tango ensembles. My analysis then shifts to a close reading of the A section, focusing on motivic, harmonic, and rhythmic features. Finally, and circling back to the choreographic motivation of this tango, I analyze how celebrated dancers interpret these musical features in a scene from a historic film.