An overview on the author's graduate recital program

Master's Project (M.Mu.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016The following project paper consists of three chapters, examining the works in my Graduate Recital Program. The first chapter analyzes the form, structure and particular interesting elements that Aram Khachaturian uses in his Sonata for Piano. The second chapter gives a brief historical information of the term Fantasy and examines two examples of the genre, Chopin's Fantasy in F minor op. 49 and Carl Vine's Sonata no. 3 "Fantasia". The third chapter covers some biographical information of Elliott Carter and examines the form and structure of his work for solo piano, 90+.An Analysis of Khachaturian's Sonata for Piano -- Two Perspectives on the Fantasy: Chopin Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49 and Vine Piano Sonata No.3 "Fantasia" -- Extended Program Notes of Elliott Carter's 90+ -- References

Two centuries in one: Musical romanticism and the twentieth century

Few twentieth-century composers were considered more untimely than those who persisted in using the “old” tonal and romantic-sounding idioms. However, the best of them contributed many enduring works to the daily repertoire, and now many minor twentieth-century romantics are also proving to be of strong interest, particularly for discerning connoisseurs. Adding to their stature, the once-common progress narrative of musical evolution has been largely abandoned today, and we have reached the point where some of the major romantic figures have been recast as modern or even modernist

The evolution of harmony in the music of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

This article reveals the concept of music encapsulated in the 18th century Enlightenment definition of music that failed to recognize the existence of expressions outside Europe. In 1964, the American anthropologist Alan Merriam (1923-1980), provided a broad-based definition of music according to the substance of Franz Boas’ theory of “Cultural Relativism”, which empowers individual communities to define music within the frame of reference of their own cultural context. In the present article, I argue that there are three types of harmony in the music of the Democratic Republic of Congo reflected in: 1) The linear harmony encapsulated in Ensemble Thematic Cycle (ETC) of traditional music interpreted by drum ensembles, 2) The homophonic harmony of Western genre implemented in chord progressions by urban bands composed of a variety of musical instruments, 3) The parallel harmony of vocal singing as linguistically imposed to maintain the communicative significance of the message in lyric

Compositional trajectories [Medieval music]

Here, to illuminate a small set of issues in respect to style and compositional practice, we will approach the medieval composer via specific repertory, namely, some sacred chants and some two-voice polyphony. A persistent conviction of many relative newcomers to medieval music is that all chant sounds the same - melodically vague, un differentiable, hypnotic and slightly \u27New Age\u27 - and that it is governed by a universal, monolithic, standard medieval \u27theory of the modes\u27. Neither of these points is true, but one needs to gain a broad familiarity with some very large bodies of melodies, and the histories of their genres, to be able to come to grips with chant\u27s diversity in all its dimensions, and it is equally important to learn some individual melodies very well. The plainchant of the medieval Western church was, in fact, highly varied in musical language. There were different dialects, including Roman, Gallican, Mozarabic, Beneventan and Ambrosian, before and after the hegemonic rise of Gregorian chant circa 800. There are strong generic or functional fault lines within the Gregorian core itself (distinguishing prayer and reading tones, antiphonal psalmody, responsorial psalmody), and variant idioms emerged within the later Gregorian universe (e.g. the German chant tradition). On top of that, many different stylistic strands developed in all the newly composed, later medieval plainsong from the ninth century forward - melodies which over time far outdistanced the Gregorian core in sheer numbers

Compositional trajectories [Medieval music]

Here, to illuminate a small set of issues in respect to style and compositional practice, we will approach the medieval composer via specific repertory, namely, some sacred chants and some two-voice polyphony. A persistent conviction of many relative newcomers to medieval music is that all chant sounds the same - melodically vague, un differentiable, hypnotic and slightly \u27New Age\u27 - and that it is governed by a universal, monolithic, standard medieval \u27theory of the modes\u27. Neither of these points is true, but one needs to gain a broad familiarity with some very large bodies of melodies, and the histories of their genres, to be able to come to grips with chant\u27s diversity in all its dimensions, and it is equally important to learn some individual melodies very well. The plainchant of the medieval Western church was, in fact, highly varied in musical language. There were different dialects, including Roman, Gallican, Mozarabic, Beneventan and Ambrosian, before and after the hegemonic rise of Gregorian chant circa 800. There are strong generic or functional fault lines within the Gregorian core itself (distinguishing prayer and reading tones, antiphonal psalmody, responsorial psalmody), and variant idioms emerged within the later Gregorian universe (e.g. the German chant tradition). On top of that, many different stylistic strands developed in all the newly composed, later medieval plainsong from the ninth century forward - melodies which over time far outdistanced the Gregorian core in sheer numbers

Artificial Intelligence in Music Education: A Critical Review

This paper reviews the principal approaches to using Artificial Intelligence in Music Education. Music is a challenging domain for Artificial Intelligence in Education (AI-ED) because music is, in general, an open-ended domain demanding creativity and problem-seeking on the part of learners and teachers. In addition, Artificial Intelligence theories of music are far from complete, and music education typically emphasises factors other than the communication of ‘knowledge’ to students. This paper reviews critically some of the principal problems and possibilities in a variety of AI-ED approaches to music education. Approaches considered include: Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Music; Music Logo Systems; Cognitive Support Frameworks that employ models of creativity; highly interactive interfaces that employ AI theories; AI-based music tools; and systems to support negotiation and reflection. A wide variety of existing music AI-ED systems are used to illustrate the key issues, techniques and methods associated with these approaches to AI-ED in Music

Toward an Understanding of Contemporary Korean American Piano Music: A Stylistic Analysis of In-transit (1999), Piano Sonata (2006), and Inter-Mez-Zo (2006) by Beata Moon

Beata Moon is a second-generation Korean American musician who is actively involved in the American music field. She is a performing pianist but also serves as a promoter of new music and aesthetic education. As a composer, Moon has developed a distinctive style that is eclectic and accessible to the audience. The focus of the study is a stylistic analysis of Beata Moon\u27s three major solo piano works: In-Transit (1999), Piano Sonata (2006), and Inter-Mez-Zo (2006). The analysis includes examination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm and keyboard usage in each of Beata Moon\u27s three major solo piano works. This study also provides Moon\u27s biographical information and a transcript of a one-on-one interview

ReLyMe: Improving Lyric-to-Melody Generation by Incorporating Lyric-Melody Relationships

Lyric-to-melody generation, which generates melody according to given lyrics, is one of the most important automatic music composition tasks. With the rapid development of deep learning, previous works address this task with end-to-end neural network models. However, deep learning models cannot well capture the strict but subtle relationships between lyrics and melodies, which compromises the harmony between lyrics and generated melodies. In this paper, we propose ReLyMe, a method that incorporates Relationships between Lyrics and Melodies from music theory to ensure the harmony between lyrics and melodies. Specifically, we first introduce several principles that lyrics and melodies should follow in terms of tone, rhythm, and structure relationships. These principles are then integrated into neural network lyric-to-melody models by adding corresponding constraints during the decoding process to improve the harmony between lyrics and melodies. We use a series of objective and subjective metrics to evaluate the generated melodies. Experiments on both English and Chinese song datasets show the effectiveness of ReLyMe, demonstrating the superiority of incorporating lyric-melody relationships from the music domain into neural lyric-to-melody generation.Comment: Accepted by ACMMM 2022, ora

"Emergence": A Piece for Wind Symphony Inspired by the Chant of the Rio Xinane, the Origins of Music, and the Geometry of Harmony

In June of 2014, the Rio Xinane (a formerly isolated tribe) emerged from the jungles of Peru onto Brazilian land to meet with Brazils National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). Their dramatic style of communication includes breaking into song with a reciting tone, as well as body slaps and stylized gestures, and points to the common origins of language, music, and dance in human communication. Summaries of Aniruddh Patels Music, Language, and the Brain and Dmitri Tymoczkos A Geometry of Music show how music, language, and movement are intertwined, and how harmony maximizes the spatial dimensions of sound. Matter in the Universe is composed of vibrations, so the vibrations of music can reflect and affect matter. Consequently, music has a pivotal role to play in education and in health. Inspired by this research, Emergence, a piece for wind symphony, is a response to the beauty of Rio Xinane communication, composed within the framework of traditional Western harmony

SCHUBOT: Machine Learning Tools for the Automated Analysis of Schubert’s Lieder

This paper compares various methods for automated musical analysis, applying machine learning techniques to gain insight about the Lieder (art songs) of com- poser Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Known as a rule-breaking, individualistic, and adventurous composer, Schubert produced hundreds of emotionally-charged songs that have challenged music theorists to this day. The algorithms presented in this paper analyze the harmonies, melodies, and texts of these songs. This paper begins with an exploration of the relevant music theory and ma- chine learning algorithms (Chapter 1), alongside a general discussion of the place Schubert holds within the world of music theory. The focus is then turned to automated harmonic analysis and hierarchical decomposition of MusicXML data, presenting new algorithms for phrase-based analysis in the context of past research (Chapter 2). Melodic analysis is then discussed (Chapter 3), using unsupervised clustering methods as a complement to harmonic analyses. This paper then seeks to analyze the texts Schubert chose for his songs in the context of the songs’ relevant musical features (Chapter 4), combining natural language processing with feature extraction to pinpoint trends in Schubert’s career