Research Area

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 […]

Meditations on Objective Aesthetics in World Music

Author: Tenzer, Michael Publications details: Ethnomusicology 59, no. 1 (2015): 1-30. Weblink: https://music.ubc.ca Abstract: This essay opens a dialogue between ethnomusicology and neo- Darwinism as promulgated by biologist Richard Dawkins and others. The first half engages quantum physicist David Deutsch’s much-discussed The Beginning of Infinity (2011), which integrates neo-Darwinism with the epistemology of objective knowledge developed […]

Early Voices in SamulNori’s Historical Record

Early Voices in SamulNori’s Historical Record

Author: Hesselink, Nathan Publication details: SamulNori: Korean Percussion for a Contemporary World, by Keith Howard, 76-86. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Weblink: https://routledge.com Abstract: SamulNori is a percussion quartet which has given rise to a genre, of the same name, that is arguably Korea’s most successful ’traditional’ music of recent times. Today, there are dozens of amateur and […]

Thesaurus litaniarium: The Symbolism and Practice of Musical Litanies in Counter-Reformation Germany

Thesaurus litaniarium: The Symbolism and Practice of Musical Litanies in Counter-Reformation Germany

Author: Fisher, Alexander Publication details: Early Music History 34 (2015): 45-95. Weblink: https://cambridge.org Abstract: A venerable form of petitionary prayer, the litany emerged as a key aural expression of Counter-Reformation Catholicism around the turn of the seventeenth century, particularly in the confessionally contested borderlands of the Holy Roman Empire. Its explicit projection of the dogma of sanctoral […]

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 […]

Rhythmic Play, Compositional Intent, and Communication in Rock Music

Author: Hesselink, Nathan Publication details: Popular Music 33, no. 1 (2014): 69-90. Weblink: https://www.cambridge.org Abstract: This paper focuses on the use of rhythmic play in the compositional strategies of rock musicians. Such play is seen as both embodying an attitude on the part of the performer-composer in which music as pure structure tests one’s skill and imagination in […]

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 […]