Music Theory

Interactions of Folk Melody and Transformational (Dis)continuities in Chen Yi’s Ba Ban

Author: Roeder, John Publication details: Presented at the Society for Music Theory 40th Annual Meeting in Arlington, Virginia, 3 November 2017 Weblink: https://societymusictheory.org Abstract: Chen Yi’s Ba Ban (1999) for solo piano, like many works of Western-trained Chinese composers, situates fragments of evocative traditional folk melody within a post-tonal discourse that is well described by […]

How to Create Meter and Why

Author: Roeder, John Publication details: Presented at the Society for Music Theory 40th Annual Meeting in Arlington, Virginia, 3 November 2017 Weblink: https://societymusictheory.org

Superposition in Kaija Saariaho’s ‘The claw of the magnolia….’

Author: Roeder, John Publication details: Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music from 1960-2000, edited by Laurel Parsons, and Brenda Ravenscroft, 156-175. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2016. Weblink: https://global.oup.com Abstract: Kaija Saariaho’s From the Grammar of Dreams, for two solo female singers, elegantly articulates the poetic structure of Sylvia Plath’s […]

Defining temporal multiplicity in American popular music, 1950-2000: A case study in macroanalysis using multiple bibliographic databases

Author: Poudrier, Ève & Castonguay, Rémi Presentation details: Current Musicology 50th Anniversary Conference, Columbia University, New York City, New York, 29 March 2015 Weblink: http://columbia.edu Abstract: This presentation explores the challenges of assembling a corpus of secondary literature for the purpose of computational analysis working across multiple bibliographic databases. Our multi-tiered search methodology will be described, and […]

Bartók’s Grooves: Metrical Processes in the Fourth String Quartet

Author: Roeder, John Publication details: Bartók’s String Quartets: Tradition and Legacy, edited by Harald Krebs and Daniel Biro, 81-107.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2014 Weblink: http://www.oupcanada.com Abstract: Many passages in Bela Bartók’s string quartets resemble the repeated pattern, or grooves, of popular and world music. The fourth quartet, for instance, exposes extended periodicities near the beginning of […]

Transformation in Post-Tonal Music

Author: Roeder, John Publication details: Oxford Handbooks Online in Music, ed. Alexander Rehding.  New York: Oxford University Press Weblink: http://oxfordhandbooks.com Abstract: Post-tonal music (loosely, most Western art-music compositions since the turn of the 20th century) manifests many organizational techniques but not the processes of harmony and counterpoint that direct and articulate time in tonal music. Of the diverse […]

A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice

Author: Roeder, John Publication details: Journal of Music Theory 57, no. 1 (2013): 159–191 Weblink: https://dukeupress.edu

Can musicians track two different beats simultaneously?

Author: Poudrier, Ève, Repp, B.H. Publication details: Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 30, no. 4 (2013): 369-90. Weblink: http://cogsys.ubc.ca Abstract: The simultaneous presence of different meters is not uncommon in Western art music and the music of various non-Western cultures. However, it is unclear how listeners and performers deal with this situation, and whether it is […]