Master of Music (MM), Ohio University, 2021, Music Theory (Fine Arts)

This thesis proposes an alternative explanation for the melodic-harmonic divorce cited in the blues-based examples from David Temperley's “The Melodic-Harmonic `Divorce' in Rock” and Drew Nobile's “Counterpoint in Rock Music: Unpacking the `Melodic-Harmonic Divorce.'” To support this argument, I will synthesize, adapt, and expand the work of Gerhard Kubik, Peter Van Der Merwe, Jeff Todd Titon, and Nicholas Stoia in order to define the basic tenets of blue tonality. I will then contrast those principles with those of Western common practice tonality (Bach to Brahms) in order to develop a system that demonstrates when a blue tonality shift becomes the more appropriate model for a musical passage rather than melodic-harmonic divorce. I will conclude by presenting analyses of the following blues-based songs using the blue tonality shift system: 1. “Jumpin' Jack Flash” by The Rolling Stones 2. “Rockin' Me Baby” by The Steve Miller Band 3. “Takin' Care of Business” by Bachman Turner Overdrive 4. “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge 5. “Rollin' & Tumblin” by Muddy Waters 6. “Baby, You Can Drive My Car” by The Beatles

Committee: Ciro Scotto PhD (Advisor); Allyn Reilly PhD (Committee Member); Richard Wetzel PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Music

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2021, Journalism (Communication)

This study conducts a quantitative content analysis of the Boeing 737 MAX crisis, in which 346 people lost their lives due to crashes that grounded Boeing's newest and most important aircraft from March 2019 to the end of 2020. The study focuses on the coverage of the five U.S. newspapers New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Seattle Times. In the process, 692 articles are examined concerning their use of generic news frames, attribution of responsibility, tone of voice, and intellectualization. The examined newspapers most frequently use the attribution of responsibility frame, followed by the conflict frame and the economic (consequences) frame. Of lesser importance in the coverage are the human interest frame and the morality frame. The study finds that the Boeing Company is primarily presented as responsible. The Federal Aviation Administration, which through negligence, certified an unsafe aircraft in the first place, is held far less responsible. Moreover, the study is able to show that the tone of voice is primarily neutral, with a slight tendency toward the negative. Only toward Boeing's management do the newspapers strike a predominantly negative tone. An intellectualization of the coverage throughout the crisis can only be partially confirmed.

Committee: Hans Meyer (Committee Chair); Rosanna Planer (Committee Member); Jatin Srivastava (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media

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

Music perception is influenced by implicit knowledge of musical structures acquired through exposure to music in everyday contexts. The present studied focused on the ways in which music environments provide infants with information about how music is organized and from which they might learn. A 15-month-old infant wore a portable recording device throughout two entire days. The device collected continuous audio data from the infant's perspective for a total of 32 hours. The purpose of the study was to describe the song melodies performed by adults throughout the two days in order to explore the music information presented to the infant in everyday situations in his natural environment. The analyses focused specifically on the structural pitch properties of the song melodies, the contexts in which they were sung, and the characteristics of the song performances. All live, unaccompanied song melodies performed by the parents—the only adults who sang song melodies around the infant—were transcribed into musical notation by two independent transcribers and then analyzed with acoustic analysis software to collect pitch estimates for all notes that were sung. The results showed that the infant heard approximately 15 minutes of adult singing of song melodies on the first day and 10.5 minutes on the second day. Almost 89% of the singing was produced by the parents in infant-oriented contexts, in which the infant was the sole focus of the singing. Over the two days, the infant heard 27 unique song melodies in 47 different instances of singing. Of the 27 unique song melodies, 19 were melodies of repertoire that is usually sung for or sung by children in the family's culture group. The song melodies heard by the infant contained pitch regularities that reflected typical patterns of pitch structures in Western tonal music. For example, the frequency of occurrence of tones perceived as most stable—scale degrees 1, 3, and 5—and the frequency of melodic movements between to (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Eugenia Costa-Giomi (Advisor); Daryl Kinney (Committee Member); Daniel Shanahan (Committee Member) Subjects: Developmental Psychology; Music; Music Education

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, College-Conservatory of Music: Theory

This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of the harmonic theories of German composer and music theorist Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1887–1933), whose two major treatises date from the early 1930s. The dissertation's subtitle highlights the four principal components of Karg-Elert's theoretical project: its three-dimensional just intonation pitch space, and its acoustic derivation; its expansion of Hugo Riemann's function theory, encompassing a variety of fifth-, third- and seventh-based chord relationships; its complete and consistent system of common-tone transformations, which operates independently from harmonic function; and finally, its ultimate presentation of the entire system as a model of harmonic perception. The appendix to the dissertation is a complete annotated German-English edition of Karg-Elert's 1930 treatise Akustische Ton- Klang- und Funktionsbestimmung (“Acoustic Determination of Pitch, Chord and Function”), translated here for the first time. Karg-Elert's treatises synthesize three strains of thought in late nineteenth-century German theory that were previously somewhat self-contained: a model of pitch and harmonic space derived from the pure intervals of just intonation; major-minor dualism (which Karg-Elert termed polarity), shaped especially by the work of Arthur von Oettingen; and the concept of harmonic function, first presented in Riemann's Harmony Simplified of 1893. Building on that scholarly foundation, Karg-Elert introduces several innovative ideas, including the addition of a third dimension to the pitch space, based on the pure or concordant seventh (4:7); a network of direct major and minor third transformations; and transformations involving the concordant seventh, which enable direct connections among dominant and half-diminished seventh chords. In total, Karg-Elert proposes 23 transformations among triads and seventh chords, all of which retain at least one common tone (conceived as a unique location in the three-dimension (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Steven Cahn Ph.D. (Committee Chair); David Carson Berry Ph.D. (Committee Member); Cristina Losada Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

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

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

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

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1984, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1984, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1981, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1977, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1977, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Music

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2001, College-Conservatory of Music : Music (Musicology)

This study is an investigation into the nature of the polyphonic Magnificat of the sixteenth century. The inquiry proceeds on the premise that the Magnificat forms an ideal subject for a study of polyphonic tonal structure in one of the most widely-composed forms of vocal music during this era. One of the aims of this study is to identify and examine those particular elements of sixteenth-century Magnificat composition that may be appropriately employed to assess the nature of these works. Recent years have witnessed increasing efforts by scholars to seek out valid methods by which to evaluate early music. Although these efforts are not without serious difficulties, the search for the organizational underpinnings of early music continues to engage us. Chapter One provides an account of the origin of the Magnificat text. Chapter Two surveys the writings of Renaissance commentators who considered the relationships of counterpoint and modal theory to polyphonic composition. Chapter Three focuses on the poetic and musical structure of the Magnificat. Chapter Four presents a design for analysis. Chapter Five introduces the 365 Magnificats included in this study. Chapter Six is an introduction to the procedures of evaluation and a guide to the database. Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine present evaluations of the Magnificats from several different perspectives. The central thesis of this investigation is that, as a collection, the polyphonic Magnificats of the sixteenth century do indeed exhibit specific, identifiable, and describable tonal structures. These structures emerge out of the interaction of a number of critical elements, including the constituent parts of the individual canticle tone, the notion of leading and following voice pairs, the presence of complementary vocal ranges, the melodic motion of voices according to species of fifths and fourths, characteristic clef combinations, distinctive cadence patterns, and final sonorities. This thesis proceeds from the d (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Edward Nowacki (Advisor) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Music

The most common method for measuring melodic expectancy is the “probe-tone” design, which relies on a retrospective report of expectancy. Here a direct measure of expectancy is introduced, one that uses a speeded, serial categorization task. An analysis of the reaction time data showed that “Implication-Realization” contour models of melodic expectancy provide a good fit. Further analysis suggests that some assumptions of these contour models may not be valid. The traditional “key profile” model of tonality was not found to contribute significantly to the model. Following Krumhansl's (1990) argument that tonality is learned from the statistical distribution of scale degrees, a tonality model based on the actual probability of scale degrees did significantly improve the fit of the model. It is proposed that the probe-tone method for measuring key profiles encourages listeners to treat the probe tone as being in phrase-final position. Indeed, the key profile was found to be much more similar to the distribution of phrase-final notes than to the distribution of all melodic notes. A second experiment measured reaction times to notes that subjects expected to be phrase-final. In this experiment the key profile contributed significantly to the fit of the model. It is concluded that the probe-tone design creates a task demand to hear the tone as a phrase-final note, and the key profile reflects a learned sensitivity to the distribution of notes at ends of melodies. The “key profile” produced by the new reaction-time design is apparently related to the general distribution of notes in melodies. The results of this study indicate that the relationship between melodic structure and melodic expectation is more straightforward than has been previously demonstrated. Melodic expectation appears to be related directly to the structure and distribution of events in the music.

Committee: David Huron (Advisor) Subjects: Music; Psychology, Cognitive