Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Media and Communication

While scholars from a wide range of disciplines have analyzed thematic development, iconography, narrative, characterization, and animation style of Japanese anime, the music of anime programs is largely ignored or trivialized. This dissertation fills the gap in critical intercultural communication and media studies research by examining original anime soundtracks and their roles as narrative devices. Anime is explored as a site of global cultural resistance, while maintaining articulations of gender and cultural ideals in their stories and reflected in the lyrics of their theme songs. Employing critical intercultural communication, critical media studies, Affect Theory, with textual analysis and rhetorical criticism, this dissertation analyzes how music is intrinsic to the narrative and an expression of cultural values in anime. Analysis focuses on Hibike! Euphonium (2015-present) by Tatsuya Ishihara and Naoko Yamada, from the studio of Kyoto Animation, a slice-of-life drama involving the coming-of-age stories of high schoolers in a competitive concert band, and Vivi -Furoraito Aizu Songu- (2021) by Tappei Nagatsuki and Eiji Umehara, produced by Wit Studio, which follows an autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI) programmed to entertain humans with her voice, and who discovers her humanity through music while trying to save the world from destruction. Each anime illustrates how musical scores, lyrics, and instrumentation are incorporated into narratives of gender, agency, culture, and humanity. The dissertation also analyzes compositional style, structure, instrumentation, and lyrics encoded with hegemonic messages and constructions of gendered, raced, and cultural distinctions. It provides a critical analysis of how music is used as a narrative tool in media and communication studies involving anime and how the rhetorical messages encoded in texts, via lyrics and instrumentation, are forms of intercultural communication of Japanese anime viewed by a Western aud (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lara Lengel Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Alberto González Ph.D. (Committee Member); Radhika Gajjala Ph.D. (Committee Member); Wendy Watson Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: American Studies; Asian Studies; Communication; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Music; Rhetoric

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2011, College-Conservatory of Music: Voice

John Haribson's choice of literary material for his vocal repertoire has been diverse, ranging from classic poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Emily Dickinson, and Thomas Hardy to modern and even ancient writers, such as Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz, and translations of the fifteenth-century Hindu poet Mirabai. At the same time, Harbison has been drawn to certain poets several times, including Eugenio Montale, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, and the art historian Michael Fried. Despite the fact that Fried is a lesser-known poet, Harbison has been drawn to set his verse repeatedly. Simple Daylight, however, is the only vocal work of Harbison that relies solely on Fried's texts. This thesis explores the reasons why Harbison was inspired to set Fried's poems so many times. In the program note for Simple Daylight, Harbison wrote that his ordering of Fried's poems made “a sequence closer in tone to a Bach cantata text than to a nineteenth-century song cycle” and evoked “a sub-cutaneous narrative very favorable for musical purposes, but no doubt unintended by the poet.” This statement begs the question of how the ordering of the texts made the piece more akin to a Bach cantata than a nineteenth-century song cycle. At first glance, Simple Daylight seems to fit the definition of a song cycle. Harbison himself asserted that the ordering of the poems suggested a “sub-cutaneous narrative”—a thread that drew the pieces into a whole. Might Harbison have employed other cyclic devices as well, such as common musical motives or a reprise of music within the work? In order to answer these questions, I analyzed Simple Daylight to discover why Haribson believed that the piece was textually more akin to a Bach cantata than a song cycle. This analysis involved researching the primary characteristics of Bach's cantata texts and comparing these to the texts of Simple Daylight. Then I examined the musical treatment of the poetry, and, through t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: bruce mcclung PhD (Committee Chair); Joel Hoffman DMA (Committee Member); Robert Zierolf PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Music Theory

The complexity of atonal musical structures has led theorists to offer varying analyses of atonal works. This ambiguity stems from the intricacies of human perception: Is it possible to state a definitive analysis when perceptions differ? In order to justify a segmentation, the analyst must provide supporting evidence in the music. Due to the wide range of perception, this evidence yields analyses that are more or less persuasive, but neither correct nor incorrect. David S. Lefkowitz and Kristin Taavola, however, propose a mathematical model that defines a correct segmentation. This thesis briefly compares Lefkowitz and Taavola's mathematical theory to James Tenney and Larry Polansky's perception-based theory. Tenney and Polansky's theory is rooted in visual Gestalt perception and provides the foundation for Dora A. Hanninen's segmentation theory. I then employ Hanninen's analytical framework to identify segmentational boundaries that support published analyses of two atonal works: the fourth of Anton Webern's Funf Satze, Op. 5 and an excerpt from Arnold Schoenberg's Klavierstucke, Op. 11, No. 1. I apply two of Hanninen's three segmentational criteria: the sonic, which refers to acoustical properties, and the contextual, which refers to categorizations, such as set-classes. Lefkowitz and Taavola note that Tenney and Polansky's theory cannot be applied to polyphony. Although Tenney and Polansky concede this point, Hanninen encourages the use of her theory for polyphonic segmentation. She does not, however, provide a method for addressing polyphony. Thus, I combine aspects from Lefkowitz and Taavola's simultaneous analysis with Hanninen's theory in order to formulate a basic method for segmenting polyphonic music. I find that sonic and contextual criteria in the music strongly support the analyses by George Perle, Allen Forte, Gary Wittlich, and Charles Burkhart. Due to the emphasis of set-class theory for atonal analysis, there is an inherent reliance on contextual c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Per F. Broman PhD (Committee Chair); Gene Trantham PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1964, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Music

This dissertation presents empirical investigations of the cognitive linguistics of musical instrument timbre qualia and explores applications of these results to musical analysis. First, interviews and rating tasks, based on imagined instrument timbres, are used to build a 20-dimensional model of timbre qualia. The final model includes the dimensions airy/breathy, brassy/metallic, direct/loud, focused/compact, hollow, muted/veiled, nasal/reedy, open, percussive, pure/clear, raspy/grainy, resonant/vibrant, ringing/long decay, rumbling/low, shrill/noisy, soft/singing, sparkling/brilliant, sustained/even, watery/fluid, and woody. Further analysis of the interview transcripts and comparison with previous studies in timbre semantics suggests five primary response strategies for describing timbre: Adjectival description, Qualia-metaphor, Onomatopoeia, Mimesis, and Association. Next, the 20-dimensional model is used in a rating task to generate Timbre Trait Profiles for 34 Western orchestral instruments. These profiles contain ratings for each of the 20 dimensions and are intended for use in musical analysis. Timbre varies not only from instrument to instrument, but also within instruments due to the manipulation of parameters such as pitch, intensity, and articulation. Accordingly, timbral variations with pitch/register and dynamics are mapped for two instruments, the oboe and the French horn, using rating tasks. While some shared trends in dimension variance are observed between the two instruments (e.g. ratings of rumbling/low increase as pitch decreases), much of the timbral variation is apparently idiosyncratic, as is the amount of variation for each instrument on a given dimension. Next, three studies are reported investigating the relationship between timbre linguistics and cross-modal matching of instrumental timbre to color. Participants' ratings of timbres on the cross-modal terms high, low, bright, dark, small, big, light (in weight), heavy, happy, and sad (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Shanahan (Advisor); David Huron (Committee Member); Zachary Wallmark (Committee Member); Anna Gawboy (Committee Member); David Clampitt (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

PHD, Kent State University, 2019, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

Part I of this dissertation is a large-scale composition for orchestra and mixed choir entitled The Forgotten Child of Zeal. This is a programmatic work inspired by the classic 1995 role-playing game Chrono Trigger. The piece chronicles the story of an enigmatic young boy named Janus, who possesses innate magical powers, and his terrifying transformation into Magus, the dark sorcerer who terrorizes the world. The composition is organized into two contrasting movements, Premonition and Degeneration, which vary greatly in style, but are unified through a recurring 4-note “mystic motive.” There are also key quotations of Scriabin's Prometheus: The Poem of Fire and Prefatory Action within the piece, creating a bridge between the musical and programmatic content of all three works. The Forgotten Child of Zeal lasts approximately 22 minutes in performance. Part II of this dissertation is a theoretical paper that analyzes the pitch organization of the first movement of Alexander Nemtin's realization of Scriabin's unfinished masterpiece, Prefatory Action. Prefatory Action is a programmatic work written for orchestra, mixed choir, vocal soloists, and tastiera per luce (light keyboard), lasting roughly two and a half hours in length. The piece is divided into three massive movements entitled Universe, Humanity, and Transfiguration. Scriabin originally began writing Prefatory Action as a prelude to the Mysterium, which he envisioned as a divine musical ceremony that would transfigure the human race and end the universe. More than half a century later, Nemtin spent 26 years of his life completing the piece, using the literary text and musical sketches that Scriabin left behind as a guide. This paper is organized into six chapters – the first two chapters discuss the genesis of Prefatory Action and its subsequent realization, the middle two chapters explore Scriabin's post-tonal style, and the final two chapters offer an in-depth analysis of Universe.

Committee: Richard Devore Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Frank Wiley D.M.A. (Committee Co-Chair); Adam Roberts Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mary Hricko Ph.D. (Committee Member); Gustav Medicus Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Music

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Music

This document engages music analysis toward the aim of describing the experience of listening to a piece of music, specifically Franz Liszt's “Il Penseroso.” In this analysis, music is considered strictly as an aural experience, an object that exists in its hearer's brain. The document therefore takes a critical approach to descriptive analysis by combining Schenkerian reduction, tonal and neo-Riemannian harmonic analysis, phenomenology, and empirical participant-based musicology to describe the experience of listening to “Il Penseroso.” The term descriptive analysis, taken from David Temperley (1999), refers to the description of how a piece of music is experienced; Temperley opposes this to suggestive analysis, which instead provides a new way of hearing a piece. An analysis is thus given based on the analyst's perceived experience of listening to “Il Penseroso,” with focus on the role that harmony and melody play in that experience. Next, a study is carried out to gather phenomenological accounts of “Il Penseroso” from expert listeners. Their verbal descriptions are categorized using qualitative content analysis and the occurrences of the resulting categories are compared to the initial, score-based analysis. Liszt's emotionally complex “Il Penseroso” highlights inherent differences between listeners' experience of affect. The results demonstrate that an analysis can be, and often is, both descriptive and suggestive, as it may accurately describe one listener's experience while suggesting a new way of hearing the music to another listener.

Committee: David Clampitt PhD (Advisor); David Huron PhD (Committee Member); Eugenia Costa-Giomi PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1997, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1992, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1986, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1985, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1983, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1979, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Music

This dissertation describes the motivation, methodology, structure and content of a new symbolic corpus of rap vocal transcriptions known as the Musical Corpus of Flow (MCFlow). This corpus is intended to afford and inform research into the sonic organization of rapped vocals. An operational music theory of rap is presented, identifying the most artistically important features of rapped vocals and their most basic organizational structures. This theory informs and motivates the sampling and encoding scheme of MCFlow, which is described in detail. The content of the current MCFlow dataset is described as well: the current dataset includes transcriptions of 124 hip-hop songs by 47 artists, comprising 6,107 measures of music which contain 54,248 rapped words. Several preliminary descriptive analyses of the current dataset are presented as illustrations of MCFlow's usefulness for: (1) identifying normative structures in rap; (2) comparing the styles of different artists; (3) studying the historical evolution of rap artistry. Information regarding access to MCFlow data and tools for analyzing the data are presented and the MCFlow online Graphical User Interface---usable by any user with no special software requirements---is described.

Committee: David Huron (Advisor); Graeme Boone (Committee Member); Johanna Devaney (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Music

In March 2015, a jury awarded Marvin Gaye's estate nearly $7.4 million, finding that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams infringed on Gaye's 1977 song, “Got to Give It Up,” with their own 2013 hit, “Blurred Lines.” The highly publicized federal copyright lawsuit has raised concerns about the ramifications of this outcome for the legal protection of music and the future of artistic creativity. The question underlying this case, as in much of federal copyright litigation, involves negotiating the putative similarities and differences between expressive works. Although the court system has developed methods designed to assist triers of fact in such legal analysis, the unpredictable outcomes of these cases illuminate the problematics of this task. Triers of fact may hear testimony from expert witnesses, whose specialized knowledge, skill, and experience is intended to inform the decision-making process. The results of such testimony, however, are not only insistently variable, but they also reflect unsettled debates over how, and by whom, musical identity can best be defined. Given this situation, how should we understand the historical and contemporary role of the musical expert witness in American music copyright litigation? Drawing on research methods from musicological and legal scholarship, the present dissertation examines extant court records and judicial opinions of prominent cases chronologically from their origins in the mid-nineteenth century through to recently-decided lawsuits. In situating the role of the musical expert in the context of the legal similarity inquiry and considering their contributions to it, the study reveals the essential role that experts have historically played. It then recasts contemporary problems with case outcomes as a result of the similarity inquiry itself and looks to expert testimony as one potential area of reform. Such study of musical expertise sheds light on the courtroom as a forum for musical experts, particularly co (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Graeme Boone PhD (Advisor); Charles Atkinson PhD (Committee Member); Guy Rub SJD (Committee Member); Mark Rudoff MM (Committee Member) Subjects: Law; Music

Master of Music, University of Akron, 2015, Music-Theory

Summary, Data Conclusion: The purpose of the analyses explained in Chapter III was to recognize the relationship, if one exists, between the overlying emotion/purpose of the song and its intervallic complexity. Similarly to classical operatic structure, rock ballads, like arias, often stop time to further explore a singular emotion. The rock musical version of aria's counterpart, recitative, is the rock anthem which is inordinately trying to send a message - often one of passion, angst, or revolt. With a message as powerful as this, the music may fall prey to the text so as not to distract from the persistence of revolution. The Total Average Interval (TAI) data of Tables 5 and 6 indeed shows that the vast majority of songs classified as ballads or anthems lie on opposite ends of the spectrum, with ballads containing the largest intervallic totals and anthems the smallest. Another interesting correlation arose among songs that had repetitive texts. As aforementioned in the background of the study, Leonard Bernstein (famous for both the melodic tritone and the melodic minor seventh in his songs from West Side Story, "Maria" and "Somewhere," respectively), attended a production of Hair when it premiered on Broadway and was said to have walked out at intermission. His objection was that the lyrics reminded him of mere "laundry lists" which is an analysis not lacking in accuracy. Of the songs from Hair analyzed here, three stand out as having a majority of lyrics that incorporate the recitation of a series of nouns: the title song, "Hair," "I Got Life," and "Ain't Got No." "Hair" boasts forty different styles/types of hair, including, "polka-dotted," "confettied," and "spaghettied." In the same fashion, "I Got Life" specifies thirty-five "things we've got," the majority of which are body parts, while "Ain't Got No" spells out thirty-six "things we ain't got," including, "culture," "schoolin'," and a "draft card." When consulting Table 5, it seems that th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nikola Resanovic (Advisor); Brooks Toliver (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2001, Allied Health Sciences : Communication Sciences and Disorders

Defining the Broadway belt voice has been the subject of debate by voice teachers and other professionals for over sixty years. Unlike the classical voice, which has a significant literature base supporting scientific definition as well as pedagogical methodology, research on the belt voice is limited. Previous research on belting has provided limited and conflicting results as to its definition, nature, and production. The present study was two-fold in nature. The initial portion required casting directors to evaluate the belt voice quality of 20 musical theater majors who were trained in belting. Two specified vocalizes and six short excerpts from the belting repertoire were used for rating purposes. The raters assessed the belters on seven perceptual parameters (loudness, vibrato, ring, timbre, focus, nasality, and registration breaks) and reported an overall score. The four highest and four lowest average overall scores were used to establish elite and average belters for the second portion of the study. The second phase of the investigation evaluated unique acoustical, aerodynamic, and spectral differences between elite and average belters based on previously specified parameters. Results of the comparisons indicated specific perceptual, acoustic, spectral, and aerodynamic differences between groups. One of the recurring terms used to define belting is perceived loudness. However, the present study indicated vibrato and ring to be the perceptual judgements most highly correlated with overall score. Vibrato and ring also correlated strongly with perceived loudness. Objective analyses revealed group differences in the magnitude of the vibrato rate, spectral characteristics, and increased noise at high frequencies. Significant differences were also found between vowels. Elite belters showed an increase in the magnitude of vibrato rate in comparison to average belters. Findings regarding the strength of the harmonics and the interaction of the harmonics with the fo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Linda Lee (Advisor) Subjects: Health Sciences, Speech Pathology