Music Theory Department, Eastman School of Music

2007-2008	2006-2007	2005-2006	2004-2005	2003-2004
2002-2003	2001-2002	2000-2001	1999-2000	1998-1999

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2007-2008

Jean-Jacques Nattiez
Professor of Music, University of Montreal

Thursday, October 25, 2007
OSL 101 3:30

"A General Model of Music Semiology with a Case Study: Kazuo Fukushima's Mei"

Friday, October 26, 2007
Eastman Main Building, Room 305 3:30

"Semiology and Ethnomusicology: Music Analysis of an African Marriage-Initiation Dance (the Mbaga Dance of the Ugandan Bagandas)"

Saturday, October 27, 2007
OSL 101 1:00

"Is Timbre a Secondary Parameter?"

also

"Music Semiology in the Mind of the Musician"

Jonathan Dunsby
Professor of Music Theory, Eastman School of Music

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2006-2007

Roy Howat

Thursday October 19, 2006
ESM 209 10:30-11:30
TH 531 Seminar

"Aspects of Performing French"

ESM 320 3:30-5:00

"Russian Imprints on French Piano Music"

Thursday October 20, 2006
HHH 11:30-1:30

Master Class

Tim Riley

Friday October 20, 2006
ESM 320 2:30-3:30

"Tell Me Why: The Beatles Storm the Academy"

Jonathan Dunsby

Tuesday October 24 2006
ESM 209 10:30-11:30
TH 531 Seminar

Thursday October 26, 2006
ESM 404 10:00-11:30
TH 531 Seminar

ESM 305 3:30-5:00

TBA

Elaine Chew

Viterbi Early Career Chair Assistant Professor in the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Area Director in the Integrated Media Systems Center

Friday November 10, 2006
ESM 320 2:30-3:45

"Interactive Music Systems Based on Analysis of Music and Its Performance"

Dirk Povel

Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information

ESM 320 3:45-5:00

"A Computer Model of Melody Generation"

Eugene Narmour

Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor of Music University of Pennsylvania

Thursday November 30, 2006
OSL101 10:30-11:50

TH 531 Seminar Presentation: "Analysis and Performance"

Friday December 1, 2006
ESM 320 3:30-5:00

"Scaled Harmonic Implication and its Realization: Searching for a Unified Cognitive Theory of Music"

Ciminelli Lounge Student Living Center, 2:00-5:00

ESM/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium

"The Cortical Structures for Duration and Pitch: An fMRI Study" (break with refreshments)

"Musical Structuring, Affective Structuring, and Memory"

Abstracts

Elaine Chew
Interactive Music Systems Based on Analysis of Music and Its Performance

Mathematical modeling of music, and more recently, systematic analyses of its performance have existed for some time. Such approaches to the study and better understanding of music lend themselves readily to computer implementation in the digital age. With the rapid increase in processing power, real-time interactive applications are within reach today with personal computers. This talk will begin with an overview of some of the music and computing projects conducted at the Music Computation and Cognition Laboratory, with special emphases on two examples of interactive music systems that are rooted in music analysis and music performance analysis. The first, MuSA.RT, is a real-time interactive system for computer analysis and visualization of tonal structures. Its underlying algorithms for pitch spelling, key finding, and chord recognition are based on Chew’s Spiral Array, a 3D representation for tonality. The second, ESP, dubbed the Expression Synthesis Proj ect, is an interactive system for creating expressive performances from a deadpan MIDI file. ESP takes the driving metaphor for music performance literally to create a driving (wheel and pedals) interface for expression synthesis. MuSA.RT and ESP were created jointly with Alexandre François using his Software Architecture for Immersipresence, Jie Liu is a key collaborator in the design of the ESP interface.

Dirk Povel, A computer Model of Melody Generation

In this talk, I will discuss a computer program called Melody Generator that aims at generating tonal melodies.

The program started from the consideration that it should be instructive and revealing to develop a music generation system based on the presently available knowledge collected in theoretical and experimental research. The rationale behind the project is that if we truly understand music we should be able to recreate it from its basic elements (sounds differing in frequency and duration), at least in some elementary fashion.

Melody Generator incorporates a large amount of parameters associated with the constraints related to the context of tonal melodies: key and meter, and with the rules used for their construction. In the talk I will elaborate on the theoretical background, describe the implementation of the program, and present several examples from its output

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2005-2006

Fred Lerdahl
Columbia University

Friday, September 9, 2005
3:30 pm in ESM 320

"Doing Without (Neo)Riemann"

Abstract

Saturday, September 10, 2005
2:00-5:00 pm in ESM 305
ESM/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium

Recent collaborative Research with Carol Krumhansl

Henry Klumpenhouwer
University of Alberta

Friday October 7, 2005
3:30, ESM 320

"The Nature and Origins of Anti-Cartesianism in Lewin's Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations

Abstract

Jocelyn Neal
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Monday, November 14, 2005
12:30 pm in Howard Hanson Hall
"The Country Songwriter's Paradox: Art vs. Craft"

Eastman Celebration of George Perle's 90th Birthday

Monday, November 28, 2005
Paper sessions: 1:00-5:00 pm in Howard Hanson Hall
Concert: 8:00 pm in Kilbourn Hall

Elliot Antokoletz
University of Texas at Austin

Tuesday November 29, 2005
2:00 pm in ESM 305

"From Berg and Bartok to Perle: A New Tonality and Means of Progression in No. 5 of Perle's Dickinson Songs"

Rolf Rudin

Thursday Feb 23, 2006
10:00 am in Annex 710

"Music Theory in Germany"

Co-sponsored by Conducting and Theory Departments

William Caplin
McGill University

Friday February 24, 2005
3:30 pm in ESM 320

"Schoenberg's 'Second Melody', Or, 'Meyer-ed' in the Bass"

Abstract

Isabelle Peretz
University of Montreal

Saturday March 4
2:00-5:00 in ESM 305

ESM/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium
Prof. Peretz is one of the world's foremost experts on music neuroscience (music and the brain).

Last updated: September 2006
URL: http://theory.esm.rochester.edu
©1996–2006 · University of Rochester

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2004-2005

Thomas Mathiesen
Distinguished Professor and David H. Jacobs Chair in Music
Indiana University

Friday, October 22, 2004
3:30 pm in Howard Hanson Hall

"Hermes or Clio? The Transmission of Ancient Greek Music Theory"

Ancient Greek music theory has intrigued scholars and antiquarians over many centuries. The logic of the system appealed to later music theorists as a model for new theoretical systems, while its metaphysics captivated antiquarians partly as a curiosity and--when reinterpreted by the neo-Platonists--partly as a paradigm for Christian and Islamic theology. These characteristics explain why ancient Greek music theory might have survived to the present. But music theory is a fragile collection of words written on perishable material. How did the treatiuses survive for nearly two millennia, and who was responsible for their survival? These questions can be answered in part by looking at the 300 surviving codices. Such an examination reveals that half of them are either totally or partly in the hand of identifiable scribes, while nearly a third are in the hands of some of the most famous Greek scribes of the Renaissance. These figures, rather like publishers, produced many copies of the same treatises in a variety of combinations and versions. Relationships among many of these manuscripts can be determined, as well as their early owners (including some of the most illustrious figures of the early Renaissance) and the way in which the codices were copied and assembled. This paper presents an illustrated history of the scholar-scribes and their patrons and shows that ancient Greek music theory, as known today, survives as the work of Clio, the Muse of History.

Saturday, October 23, 2004
9:45 am in Howard Hanson Hall

"The Music Library, Past, Present and Future: A Personal Memoir"

Walter Frisch
Columbia University
Monday April 11, 2005
4:30, Howard Hanson Hall (ESM 4th floor)

"Dancing in Chains: Modernist German Music and Its Pasts"

Starting from Nietszsche's striking image of "dancing in chains," whereby artists are urged to impose limits in order to achieve freedom, I will look at the way in which Strauss and Hofmannsthal make their operatic "experiment" of 1912 (revised in 1916) "Ariadne auf Naxos" a multi-layered exploration of conventional formal types and a palimpsest of references to operatic works by Mozart and Wagner. This talk draws on materials from my forthcoming book (summer) German Modernism: Music and the Arts.

Warren Darcy
Oberlin College

Thursday April 14, 2005
4:30 to 6:30 pm in NSL 404
Guest seminar on Sonata Theory

Friday April 15, 2005
3:30 pm in ESM 320
Lecture: "What Lies Buried Under the Linden Tree? Form, Tonal Process, and Meaning in the Funeral March of Mahler's First Symphony".

Ever since its 1889 premiere, the Funeral March of Mahler's First Symphony has provided fertile ground for hermeneutic speculation. However, although various interpretations have been advanced, few have been grounded in anything resembling rigorous musical analysis. In fact, this movement has traditionally resisted close analytical treatment, perhaps because its canonic entrances and long stretches of static harmony seem almost too straightforward and self-evident to warrant intense analytical scrutiny. By contrast, this paper proceeds from the conviction that only through a close analysis of the work's form and thematic/tonal process can we arrive at a responsible interpretive reading of what Mahler was trying to say, both in this movement and in the symphony as a whole.

In order to lay the conceptual groundwork for this interpretation, it is necessary first to review Mahler s changing titles and programs for the work. Then we will examine the tonal structure and narrative content of Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, for not only does the concluding strophe of the final song furnish the musical substance of the movement's central Trio, but the cycle's large-scale harmonic relationships regulate the tonal progress of the Funeral March in ways that have not previously been recognized. Next we will consider how the movement fits into the rotational structure and narrative plan of the symphony as a whole. Finally we will examine the formal/tonal structure of the movement itself, utilizing the principles of rotational form, Schenkerian analysis, scalar collections, and transformational theory. These various analytic lenses will be employed to formulate a hermeneutic interpretation of the movement that is fully consonant with Mahler's own remarks about the piece, and that seeks to uncover exactly what it is that is being laid to rest and buried.

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2003-2004

Matthew Brown
Eastman School of Music
Friday, December 5, 2003
2:30 in Rm 320
"The Lodovico Method"

Caroline Palmer
McGill University
January 23, 2004

Kofi Agawu
Princeton University
Rhythmic Topoi in West-African Music
April 1, 2004
(Sponsored jointly with the Musicology Department)

Dr. Lawrence Zbikowski
University of Chicago
Modeling the Groove: Conceptual Structure and Popular Music
April 9, 2004

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2002-2003

Dirk Povel
Nijmegen Institute for Information & Cognition, The Netherlands
'The Perception of Tonal Melodies: Experimental findings and a model'
Friday, November 8, 2002 3:30 p.m., ESM 320

Douglas Jay Rahn
York University
'Tempo, Scansion, and Perception in Traditional English-Language Songs'
Friday, December 13, 2002 2:30 p.m., ESM 320

Dmitri Tymoczko
Princeton University
'Scale Networks in Debussy'
Friday, January 24, 2003 3:30 p.m., ESM 320

Lawrence Zbikowski
University of Chicago
'Conceptual Blending and Music Theory'
Friday, May 2, 2003 3:30 p.m., ESM 320

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2001-2002

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 2000-2001

David Cohen
Harvard University
'The First Foundations of Song': The Concept of the Note as the Element of Music.
Friday, October 20, 2000

Wayne Slawson
University of California, Davis
The Phenomenology of a Color Class/Pitch Class Isomorphism
Tuesday, November 7, 2000

John Roeder
University of British Columbia
Second Thoughts: Protension and Form in Faure's Prelude Op. 103, No. 9
Friday, December 1, 2000

Sandra Trehub*
University of Toronto
Are Infants Musical?
Friday, December 8, 2000

Brian Alegant
Oberlin College
A Major Event(s)
Friday, January 26, 2001

Jonathan Bernard
University of Washington
Literal and Metaphorical Space in Two Movements from Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta"
Friday, February 23, 2001

Franz Krieger**
Institute for Jazz Research, University of Music and Dramatic Arts, Graz, Austria
Miles Davis
April 9, 2001

* Co-Sponsored by the Music Education Department, Eastman School of Music, and the Brain and Cognitive Science Department, the University of Rochester"

** Co-Sponsored by the Jazz and Contemporary Media Department, Eastman School of Music

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 1999-2000

Robert Sherlaw-Johnson
Oxford University
Structure and Cohesion in "Catalogue d'Oiseaux" by Olivier Messiaen
Friday, September 25, 1998 3:30 p.m. - Formal Lounge
(Co-sponsored with Musicology and Keyboard)

David Lewin
Harvard University
'Die Schwestern': Brahms as Brechtian dramaturg
Friday, October 15, 1999 3:00 p.m. - ESM 320

Lori Burns
University of Ottawa
Courtney Love negotiates violence and agency: Music/text relations in Hole's "Violet" and "Asking For It"
Friday, December 3, 1999 3:30 p.m. ESM 320

David Huron
Ohio State University
Cognitive Foundations of Voice-Leading
Friday, January 21, 2000 3:30 p.m. ESM 320
(Co-sponsored with Brain and Cognitive Science, UR)

Thomas Delio
University of Maryland
A QUESTION OF ORDER with a subtext on diversity
Friday, March 3, 2000 3:30 p.m. ESM 320
(Co-sponsored with Composition)

Harold Danko
Eastman School of Music
Theory at Close Range: the Jazz Improviser
Friday, April 7, 2000 3:30 p.m. ESM 320
(Co-sponsored with JCM)

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 1998-1999

Joel Lester
Mannes College of Music
On Analyzing Bach's Music
Friday, October 16, 1998
3:30 p.m. - OSL 101

Robert Hatten
Pennsylvania State University
Gesture as Premise: Interpreting Form and Meaning
in Schubert's Piano Sonata in A Minor, D. 784
Friday, November 20, 1998
3:30 p.m. - OSL 101

Janet Schmalfeldt
Tufts University
On Performance, Analysis, and Schubert
Friday, January 22, 1999
3:30 p.m. - OSL 101

Marianne Kielian-Gilbert
Indiana University
Getting Under the Skin:
Music and the Associations of Gendered Imagery
Friday, February 26, 1999
3:30 p.m. - OSL 101

Andrew Mead
University of Michigan
The Structure and Perception of Tempo Relations
Friday, April 9, 1999
3:30 p.m. - OSL 101
(Co-sponsored with Composition Dept.)

Music Theory Lectures at Eastman 1997-1998

Sarah Fuller*
SUNY Stony Brook
Early Music Analysis, Early Music Theory, and Historical Fictions
Thursday, September 18, 1997; 4:30 p.m. - Room 320

Milton Babbitt
Princeton University
A Conversation with Milton Babbitt
Friday, September 26, 1997; 3:30 p.m. - Howard Hanson Hall

Henry Martin**
The New School
Charlie Parker: Thematic Improvisation
Friday, October 3, l997; 4:00 p.m. - ESM 320

David Epstein
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Some Reflections on Analysis and Performance
Friday, November 7, 1997; 3:00 p.m. - Room 320

Gregory Sandell***
Parmly Hearing Institute, Loyola University
Recent Timbre Research
Thursday, November 20, 1997; 4:00 p.m. - ESM 70

Cristle Collins Judd*
University of Pennsylvania
Historically-Influenced Analysis: Labels, Limitations, Liberations
Thursday, December 4, 1997; 4:30 p.m. - Room320

Carol Krumhansl****
Cornell University
Musical Tension: Cognitive, Motional and Emotional Aspects
Friday, January 16, 1998; 4:00 pm - Room 320

Robert Bailey*
New York University
Sketches and Analysis: Problems in Tristan and Meistersinger
Thursday, April 2, 1998; 4:30 - Room 320

Carl Schachter
CUNY Grad Center, Mannes College, Queens College-CUNY
Chopin's F# Major Impromptu, Op. 36: Analysis and Performance
Thursday, April 9, 1998 Time - Room TBA

* Jointly sponsored by Musicology and Theory Departments
** Jointly sponsored by Theory, JCM, Composition, and Piano Departments
*** Jointly Sponsored by the Theory Department and the Arts Leadership Program
**** Jointly sponsored by the Theory and Music Education Departments