Music

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Open Access
A Case Study of Indigenous Representation in Film Music: Smoke Signals and Dances with Wolves
(2020-08-11) D'Amata, Stephanie Anne; Johnson, Sherry
This thesis explores the representation of North American Indigenous cultures through film music of the 1990s. I use two films as case studies: a Hollywood-produced film Dances with Wolves (1990) and an independent film by an Indigenous filmmaker Smoke Signals (1998). My analysis of the films examines elements of film, such as mise-en-scne, cinematography, editing, and form, as well as musical cues, instrumentation and melodic/rhythmic motifs. The combination of these analyses allows me to consider how meanings about Indigenous cultures are communicated to viewers. I consider the following research questions: How are North American Indigenous cultures represented in film? How do Indigenous filmmakers choose to represent Indigenous culture in comparison to non-Indigenous filmmakers? What can be said about agency, representation, commercialization, and cultural expression through each filmmakers visual and musical choices? I find that music is integral to constructing meaning in films, and that representations of Indigenous cultures, through both music and visual cues, differ significantly across time and film genres.
Open Access
A Collection of Afro and Latin-Caribbean Jazz Compositions
(2016-09-20) Lapps-Lewis, Joy; Elmes, Barry
This thesis explores the use of steelpan in the jazz idiom. It includes reflections on the history of the instrument in the jazz context and experiences of steelpan jazz pioneers Othello Molineaux, Andy Narell and Rudy Two Lefts Smith. This thesis also includes scores of seven original compositions for steelpan in the context of a small Afro and Latin-Caribbean jazz ensemble. These compositions have been inspired by the work of the above mentioned 'Pan Jazz' pioneers and practitioners. An analysis is provided for each piece exploring aspects of rhythm, melody, harmony, texture and form.
Open Access
A History of the Royal (Toronto) Conservatory of Music Piano Examinations, 1887-2015: Their Impact and Influence
(2020-05-11) Voitovitch-Camilleri, Tatiana; Dorothy de Val, Dorothy
Since its inception in 1887, the Royal Conservatory of Music has maintained its position as one of the largest and oldest community-based music schools and education centres in North America, with an integrated examination body and a comprehensive graded curriculum, influencing and shaping the Canadian musical landscape. For the past 130 years, the Conservatory has presented a wide-ranging art music repertoire for studying piano and offered a comprehensive system for assessing students progress through its Examinations, recently retitled as The Certificate Program. The Conservatorys internal examinations began in 1887, with the external examinations following in 1898. The latter preserved the format of the former and expanded through increasing the number of the examination centres across Canada for both financial and educational reasons. Despite varying opinions of professionals and amateurs on the efficacy and value of the piano examinations in particular from the beginning, this dissertation, using historical sources and interviews, argues that over the years the structure and content of the piano examinations, while innately conservative on the whole, have kept up with a changing demographic of students across the country, and either countered or taken on the many criticisms that surrounded them over the years despite geographical and financial challenges, and indeed competition from other institutions. Recently they have been hardy enough to enter the American market. Overall, the Conservatorys examination system has created a cultural asset ideal for a country such as Canada, providing, promoting, and disseminating both the branded curriculum and controlled assessment, which contributed to the development and improvement of music education rapidly and effectively. A distinctive part of the dissertation in addition to its detailed history is the interviews with current examiners and teachers, who face a whole new set of challenges and uncharted waters as technology offers new approaches to teaching and evaluation. In this ethnographic approach, their voices add a whole new dimension to the historical survey of the examinations system, arguing that despiteor perhaps because ofthe weight of tradition they still have much to offer.
Open Access
A New Place at the Table: Ancient Cadential Patterns for Modern Improvision and Aural Skills Training
(2023-03-28) Stein, Benjamin Charles; Chambers, Mark K.
Contemporary efforts to integrate improvisation practice into institutional music education are many and varied, but lack of improvisatory skill remains an ongoing problem, especially in classical music instruction. Drawing on artisanal training, in which a corpus of memorized repertoire becomes a stylistic knowledge base, source of cognitive schemata and raw material for creative variation, a useful set of historically-derived “standards” can be found in the three introductory cadences used in the Neapolitan conservatory partimento tradition (It. Cadenza Semplice, Cadenza Composta, Cadenza Doppia) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Referencing music cognition research, music theory sources and improvisation discourse, this paper argues that intervallic suspensions in these schemata (4-3, 7-6) can be seen as a simple demonstration of error perception and correction, a cognitive process that can be deployed to develop and strengthen both aural and creative skills. Integration of these cadences into beginner training also suggests a reassessment of the order of introduction of musical elements found in formal music instruction, which privileges the chord as a discrete entity, and relegates intervallic suspension, schemata and counterpoint to intermediate, advanced, or supplementary study. These cadences concisely synthesize and demonstrate contrapuntal interplay and voice leading between bass and treble voices, basic syncopation and rhythmic division, and the concept of dissonance/consonance within linear parameters as an integral aspect of musical form. A series of beginner to intermediate exercises for use in vocal and instrumental training are presented. The dissertation recommends that intervallic suspensions be given a renewed “place at the table,” once again taking their former role as primal examples of compositional structure and aesthetic possibility.
Open Access
A System Model for Subjective Wellbeing: Implications for the Industrialization of Creativity
(2017-07-27) Shields, Robert Brian; Coghlan, Michael
In the early 21st century, the industrialization of creativity is a defining framework of economic and creative life in the global market. It drives policies and decisions in national and local governments, in workplace and educational administrative departments, in communities and in the private creative lives of individuals. The creative economy is based on GDP as an indicator of economic wellbeing and of individual and group welfare. However, harnessing creativity to meet such metric goals necessitates a constrained, fragmented and prescriptive conception of creativity that seemed, in practice, to have paradoxically negative effects on both creativity and wellbeing. In response, the work in this dissertation suggests a conception of creativity that accounts for the intrinsic and reciprocal relationship between creativity and human-centred quality of life. It also reveals specific weaknesses in the objective metric model. Trans-disciplinary research identifies salient intersections between wellbeing and creativity and leads to a proposed systems model of Subjective Creative Wellbeing (SCWB). The permeable subsystems of the model attempt to account for interdependent psychophysiological and socio-environmental forces, states, and behaviours that occur in and facilitate SCWB. The framework assumes that creative domains are analogous to cultures; thus both individuals and creative domains can be positioned as the self-system of the model. Findings suggest that the contingent assemblage of economics-politics-technology-creativity aligned with neoliberal creative and knowledge economies is detrimental the temporal, physical, social, motivational, and self-regulatory subsystems of the SCWB model, thereby contributing to dysfunction in the self-system. The model and associated research can better inform policy and institutional decision-making, and can assist in advocating for, fostering, and facilitating the creative wellbeing of individuals, cultures and creative domains.
Open Access
Afro-Cuban and Latin Jazz Compositions
(2018-03-01) Vazquez, Ruben; Coghlan, Michael
This thesis examines the challenges in musical compositions in Latin jazz styles. The challenges include writing music with different Afro-Cuban rhythms as well as the use of the clave as a backbeat to the melodic ideas. Also, it explores different harmonic and melodic approaches used in a composition and stylistic ideas reflected in jazz styles. For each piece, the composer makes use of different instrumentations and ensemble types. The methodology was to compose seven original songs for small jazz ensembles, and also to analyze the results. For each composition, the author describes his melodic and harmonic approach and the different rhythmic accompaniments. The result of this work is the creation of songs that provide a practical illustration of the different rhythmic patterns and compositional techniques.
Open Access
Always Out of Sight, Just Below the Surface: Steve Davis and the Problems of Researching Jazz Musicians
(2017-07-27) Dimech, Joseph R.; Bliek, Rob van der
This thesis has two goals, documenting the life of the jazz bassist Steve Davis, who is remembered for being the bassist in John Coltranes 1960 quartet and his appearances on the albums My Favorite Things, Coltrane Plays The Blues, and Coltranes Sound, as well as exploring the difficulties inherent in researching obscure jazz figures such as Steve Davis. Using Davis life as a case study, this thesis will examine the difficulties in conducting genealogical research on an African-American figure; the coverage of jazz in the Philadelphia black press throughout the late 1940s and 1950s; the coverage of lesser known figures in jazz magazines such as Down Beat and Coda throughout the 1960s; and the challenges of researching the jazz scene in a smaller city such as Rochester, New York during the 1970s. This thesis will also provide new insights into the Coltrane Quartet from the perspective of Steve Davis.
Open Access
An Investigation into Children's Opera: A Historical Survey, Its Nature and Condition in Canada Today
(2021-05-19) Tehrani, Afarin Mansouri; Coghlan, Michael
Opera is a unique collaboration of music, dance, literature, theatre, and visual arts which some observers believe is the greatest of all art forms. From its origins in Florence, opera has existed as a significant source of cultural and national identity through sharing stories from different nations, addressing social and political issues, and creating new meanings and trends through the combination of old and new. In parallel with contemporary globalization developments, opera continually attempts to reinvent itself by becoming ever more communal, more accessible, and cross-culturally adaptable. This dissertation considers the involvement of children in the merging of music and drama as part of the unbroken tradition dating back to ancient Greece. Opera is capable of entertaining and educating younger generations either as active participants or audience members. It offers the potential to reveal new ideas, illustrate aspects of diverse cultures, support intellectual progress, and facilitate educational and artistic creativity. As a composer and a teaching artist with many years of experience working with children and youth, my teaching philosophy encompasses informing the younger generation about their own cultural values in addition to those of others. This approach supports educational development and encourages the development of strong creative voices in a more diverse society of the future. Through its history, opera has served as a kinaesthetic pedagogical tool for children to assist them in locating their own unique creative selves and artistic personalities. Unfortunately, there are limited resources and references available to facilitate opera production aimed at children. This dissertation seeks to partially remedy this situation by providing a historical overview and analytical and pedagogical resources for individuals (educators, composers, ensemble directors, producers, etc.) who are interested in creating childrens opera or employing opera as a pedagogical approach for children.
Open Access
"And Then There Was Light": A Group of Compositions Inspired by the Universe's Creation, Its Present State, and Its Possible Fates.
(2015-12-16) Modarresi, Mohammadreza; Coghlan, Michael
The work herein contained strives to express (vocally and musically) the creation of the cosmos; whilst adhering to the most prevalent artistic (philosophical and scientific) notions of the past, present, and future. Due to the complexity of the integral concepts, and my efforts to fashion the final product in a manner that would make it most relatable, the work has become a hybrid of the old and the new, the simple and the complex, and furthermore, macrocosm and microcosm.
Open Access
Artist Growth of a Singer-Songwriter: A Personal Testimonial
(2016-11-25) Romios, Maria Georgina; Coghlan, Michael
This thesis is a study of creativity with attention placed on the personal experience of myself as a songwriter. It contains a personal account of my experiences with relation to music, my chosen artistic medium, in association to concepts discussed. An analysis section of ten songs is included and divided by date created: earlier (2003-2007) and later (2010-2013). I demonstrate the gradual change through time evident in the works I had produced. When in songwriter mode I compose subconsciously without any preconceived compositional goals, other than make what I want and think sounds good. I am limited to my compositional tools of guitar and voice, and am largely influenced by my past encounters with music. All songs are intended to be performed solo. Analysis appears to indicate a clear increase in the complexity of my material over time, with emphasis on differing variables per song, despite not being done consciously.
Open Access
Beginning Band Composition
(2016-09-20) Peter, Matthew David; Thomas, William L.
The purpose of this thesis is to examine common practices in beginning band composition. Research includes analyzing the tendencies of successful beginning band composers to gain greater insight into their compositional techniques and tendencies, accessing scholarly works which focus on beginning band composition, and score study of successful beginning band compositions. To gain greater insight into the compositional process and difficulties in writing for young players, four beginning band pieces were composed during various stages of the research.
Open Access
Beyond Modern Jazz: The Evolution of Postmodern Jazz Performance and Composition from 1969 to the Present
(2018-05-28) Restivo, David Owen; Viswanathan, Sundar
In the following paper, I will address what I perceive to be a gap in scholarship regarding the evolution of African-American classical music (popularly referred to as jazz) following the end of its primary phase of development, which I would refer to as the pre- modern and modern periods, and which I define as stretching roughly from the turn of the last century until the end of the 1960s. To this end, I will borrow from concepts of postmodernism as expressed by Jean-Francois Lyotard, James Morley, and Kenneth Gloag, in order to attempt to define what I feel it means within the context of the jazz lineage. In the process of examining this post-history, I will bring particular focus to the contributions of two key figures, Keith Jarrett and Wynton Marsalis. I will also look at a series of my own compositions and consider where they fit into the postmodern paradigm.
Open Access
Calypso: Tradition and Creativity
(2016-09-20) Barrett, Collin Andrew; Coghlan, Michael
In this thesis, I will research the history of calypso music from the early origins to present times with an emphasis on form and structure, melodic shape and line, textural energy, instrumentation, and various other relevant components. I will also consider the aspects of the tradition as realized by selected artists who previously and successfully fused elements of calypso with various sub-genres to create a new fresh sound. Included in this research will be famous artists such as Lord Kitchener, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Andy Narell who offer impressive models for inspiration and study. My research will inform the creation of a collection of original compositions containing relevant aspects of several styles with a clear focus and emphasis on the melding of calypso and jazz traditions above other sources of inspiration. Audio recordings of my newly created compositions will also be an aspect of the creative component.
Open Access
Chamber Jazz Concepts and Techniques as Applied to Six Original Compositions
(2015-08-28) Monis, Timothy Hugh; Elmes, Barry
Chamber jazz was introduced in the 1950s with artists like Ahmad Jamal and the Modern Jazz Quartet leading the way in this new genre. It is a fusion of elements from both Western Art Music and Jazz, combining to form a unique style and sound. Chamber jazz composers and arrangers utilize many of the formal characteristics of jazz such as vamps, introductions, endings, and interludes to focus the sound of the ensemble. This is done to distinguish chamber jazz from conventional small group jazz, which tends to focus more upon long improvisatory sections. This paper will look at the musical practices important to the sound of chamber jazz through a detailed analysis of these conventions as they appear in the six compositions presented herein. This study will be aided by references to musical texts, musical manuals, scores, and recordings where appropriate.
Open Access
Chamber Music Explorations for Meditation
(2017-07-27) Imre, Janos Zsolt; Henderson, Alan E.
The thesis presents and examines my compositional process and creative methodology in producing three compositions for meditation purposes. The purpose was to compose three original pieces of chamber music that created a subjective musical picture that captured a mood and a depictive sound. For each work the author describes his intention for the composition and analyses the compositional elements such as melody, harmony, and thematic construction. A brief history and an overview of meditation is included, followed by an illustration on music and its elemental effect on meditation. This work examines the concepts of, and serves as an exercise in exploring, a variety of compositional techniques.
Open Access
Change of the "Guard": Charlie Rouse, Steve Lacy, and the Music of Thelonious Monk
(2014-07-09) Bruce, Ryan David; Van Der Bliek, Robert Thomas
The word “Monkian” is frequently used in jazz discourse to describe the music of pianist Thelonious Monk. This study consolidates literature on Monk’s music to define the Monkian aesthetic as an integration of the following musical elements: unorthodox jazz harmony, rhythmic displacement, principles of economy, an emphasis on thematic repetition, and technical experimentation. These elements appear in his compositions, which jazz musicians find difficult to perform. The Monkian aesthetic may be apparent in music by other jazz performers who integrate these elements during improvisation. An analysis of selected improvisations by Charlie Rouse and Steve Lacy, two saxophonists who performed Monk’s music extensively, demonstrates this aesthetic. Analyses are conducted on two solos by Rouse in the post-bop style—“Evidence” (1960) and “Rhythm-A-Ning” (1964)—and three recordings by Lacy in the free jazz style: two versions of “Evidence” (1961 and 1985) and “Pannonica” (1963). The Monkian aesthetic is prominent in their music, and is demonstrated through narrative description with the aid of formulaic, schematic, and reduction analysis techniques. Group interaction is shown to play a significant role in their interpretations. I argue that Monk, Rouse, and Lacy were avant-garde jazz musicians. They represent a change in the notion of “avant-garde” in jazz according to the musical analyses and a critical evaluation of their social environment. Monk’s performances, recordings, and public image were avant-garde for the 1940s and 1950s. Rouse followed Monk’s musical conception closely, and by extension, is considered an avant-gardist in jazz. Lacy’s music and his community of musicians helped define the 1960s avant-garde movement in jazz. Both saxophonists contributed to Monk’s legacy in these conceptions of avant-gardism.
Open Access
Compositions for Guitar Quartet: Suite For 24 Strings The Canadian Landmarks Suite
(2019-07-02) McColl, Malcolm Daron; Coghlan, Michael
This thesis combines the score of an original work by Daron McColl for Guitar Quartet entitled The Canadian Landmarks Suite, for guitar quartet, plus a written analysis including process, intent, and methodology behind the works. In my analysis I will explore my personal process and challenges in completing this project. The suite was written to fill a gap in the guitar quartet repertoire and features themes that are based on a Canadian context and the celebration of the arts within Canada. The themes in the suite represent my personal experiences with places and nature that have impacted me, as well the composition is modeled after many of my musical influences. The score is a collection of works intended for a modern guitar player, who is experienced playing in both, commercial music and jazz settings, as well as having some knowledge of classical guitar repertoire. This collection of works is intended to be a departure from the conventional guitar quartet because, it is written specifically for steel string guitar rather then nylon string. The works also include parts that explore the extended techniques and timbres specific to the guitar.
Open Access
Compositions Inspired By David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
(2015-08-28) Cheeseman, Bradley; Henderson, Alan E.
This thesis is a collection of seven jazz compositions that are based on, or otherwise inspired by, David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest. The compositions attempt to engage the novel in a way that makes use of the text, themes, characters and events to inform the melodies, harmonic progressions, instrumentation and structural elements of the music. While not intended to be a definitive musical interpretation of Infinite Jest, these pieces offer insight into one reader's experience with the novel. In addition to the analyses of each composition, a cursory overview is provided of both Wallace's work and the plots, characters and themes in Infinite Jest. This is followed by an examination of the various compositional techniques used in these compositions, including the use of text-based melodies, alphabetic pitch series, leitmotifs and programmatic instrumentation. Appendices provide additional information regarding notational and stylistic considerations in the music.
Open Access
Compositions Inspired by Shotokan Karate Katas
(2017-07-27) McGill, Richard Thomas; Henderson, Alan
This compositional thesis consists of six works inspired by the katas or forms of the Shotokan karate style. A kata is a fixed sequence of karate movements with an embedded natural rhythm. The Origins of Shotokan section reviews the history of martial arts in Asia and introduces some of the underlying inspirational elements such as techniques based on animal predatory movements and the katas unique names. The Kata Common Elements section expands on the meaning and structure of a kata. The traditional documentation of the natural rhythm ignores the move to move time interval. This thesis introduces the use of Western music notation to capture the timing relationships and to explain the katas natural rhythm. Four composition sections use a melodic line that is influenced by the physical movement of the karate technique. Picture examples are used to clarify the linkage to the melody. The later sections describe the history of the six inspirational katas. The compositional decisions associated with each is described with respect to their origin, katas name, natural rhythm, orchestration and melodic lines. The musical score accompanies the respective descriptions.
Open Access
Considering Schubert and Nature: A Romantic Ecology
(2014-07-09) Donovan, Michael Francis; Coghlan, Michael
Franz Schubert’s preoccupation with the nature-centric poetry of his day yielded a large body of musical landscapes and depictions of the human experience of nature. And while his songs are often associated with the “Volkstümlichkeit” of the 18th century, an aesthetic in which nature occupied a secondary role, this study underlines how Schubert would develop an idiosyncratic musical vocabulary conveying the inherently ecological nature of the texts, casting nature as a central subject in his poetic settings. The discourse of deep-ecology has reassessed the shallowness or quaintness traditionally ascribed to the Romantic view of nature, looking to the holistic view of nature in Romanticism as a template for the formulation of a contemporary deep-ecological worldview. Using experiential models of deep-ecology, namely phenomenology, embodied meaning and indigenous animism, this study revisits the archetypal Romantic wanderer’s experience of nature in Schubert’s poetic settings as an encounter between the individual and the natural world. Citing human-centric interpretations in musicological discourse, this study illustrates the need to reconsider the pivotal role of nature in seminal works of Schubert. Analyses of the choral setting of Gesang der Geister über den Wassern (D714), numerous Lieder, and the song cycle Die Winterreise uncovers the depth of Schubert’s commitment to the most forward-looking ideas on nature reflected in the philosophies of Goethe, Schiller, Schelling and Spinoza, fulfilling Friedrich Schiller’s vision for the formulation and expression of man’s place in nature in art. Deep-seated structural and harmonic characteristics of the Lieder are shown to be inexorably tied to Schubert’s need to express the wanderer’s direct experience of the outer world. Schubert’s extensive use of mediant and submediant tonalities emerges as an innovation partly born out of Schubert’s preoccupation with landscape and nature, constituting a lateral alternative to the Cartesian, mechanistic view of nature reflected in the diatonic musical vocabulary of the 18th century.