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Illuminated Scores and the Architectural Design of Musical Form

Alonso, Orlay
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429802524

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Musical Arts, Ohio State University, Music.
The project Illuminated Scores and the Architectural Design of Musical Form is designed as an approach to making scholarly editions for performing artists and educators that will portray the form and structure of a musical composition. It incorporates semiotic tools into the study of musical language intended to make the architectural design visible in a coherent format. This study develops a method of representing music graphically that differs from the established score layout, reorganizing content in a manner that allows one to overcome the constraints within which musical skills are developed under the current model of publishing music. The motivation for such a study grew out of the need to enable students to experience an immediate representation of the overall formal design of a musical composition. Initially thought of as overlaying a Schenkerian analytical sketch over the published work horizontally aligned, the project has developed into a new publishing format containing the researcher's analysis of works by Bach, Mozart and Schoenberg. It is the author's hypothesis that this new perspective will impact the ways we learn and teach musical form and structure. The goal is to present music notation in a format similar to that of poetic verse rather than that of continuous prose, where one measure follows another in no relevant way. Phrase lengths, melodic relationships, harmonic structure, and the number of measures in a system will play a significant role in the visual layout of the work. In addition, diagrams and color-coding illustrate how mathematics and music are combined to explain the concept of balance in musical form, thereby revealing the inherent beauty of a composer's cohesive thought process. The author points out mathematical concepts of numerical sequences, like Mersenne Primes and other patterns in Bach, and the Fibonacci sequence and Golden Proportion in sonata form movements of Mozart. The current stage of this research is that of a scholarly work aiming to develop the representational method, using new engraving software programs capable of digitizing scores in a new format. Once this has been done we can implement the appropriate curriculum materials on a larger scale and measure their effect on students' achievement through individual lessons and piano labs. Through this project, the author hopes to show the intrinsic beauty of form with the objective of impacting performance and music pedagogy. The goal of the Illuminated Scores is to present a practical, holistic method that leaves students excited about the possibility of exploring the fascinating tools employed by the most brilliant minds in the world of music.
Steven Glaser (Advisor)
Charles Atkinson (Committee Member)
David Clampitt (Committee Member)
129 p.
Education; Music; Music Education
Illuminated Scores; Architectural Design; Musical Form; Musical Structure; Mathematics; Golden Ratio; Mersenne Primes; Emily Dickinson; J S Bach, Fugue in C minor, BWV 847; Mozart Piano Sonata No 4 in E-flat major, K 282, III; Schoenberg, Suite Op 25

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Alonso, O. (2015). Illuminated Scores and the Architectural Design of Musical Form [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429802524

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Alonso, Orlay. Illuminated Scores and the Architectural Design of Musical Form. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429802524.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Alonso, Orlay. "Illuminated Scores and the Architectural Design of Musical Form." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429802524

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1429802524
531
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.