MTSMA 2025 Abstracts

L’étrangeté du son: Deconstructed Voices in Gérard Grisey’s Student Works

Nathan Cobb (Shenandoah University)

Gérard Grisey is widely recognized as an early innovator of French spectralism, a practice closely linked with emerging research in psychoacoustics and spectrographic analysis (Cagney 2024). Less well-known is how Grisey’s interest in acoustics was partly spurred by his study of phonetics and interest in composing for the human voice. This paper examines unpublished student works and reference books from Grisey’s personal library at the Paul Sacher Foundation to complicate the narrative that spectralism developed primarily from a scientific engagement with the acoustic properties of sound (Grisey 1982). It suggests that the human voice was central to Grisey’s early compositional work, both theoretically, as a frame for acoustic principles, and aesthetically, as a source of affective resonance, especially in non- linguistic contexts.

Of the twelve works Grisey composed after enrolling at the Paris Conservatoire in 1965, seven include vocal parts. This paper focuses on Répons (1969), in which Grisey explores the liminal perceptual space between transitional vowel phonemes, as well as his annotated copy of Bertil Malmberg’s La phonétique (1973), which reveals a relatively rudimentary understanding of acoustics that influenced his later, more systematic approach in works like Les Chants de l’Amour (1982–84). By tracing Grisey’s early fascination with the human voice, this paper uncovers a novel facet of the spectral aesthetic (Morrison 2022), in which composers explore the boundaries of humanism by pushing on the limits of vocal mimesis––defining the human through the exploration of the incomprehensible, the extra-human, the “étrangeté du son” (Grisey 1993).

Twelve-Tone as Topic: Satire, Politics, and Postwar American Concert Music

Jacob Eichhorn (Eastman School of Music)

Johnson (2017) argues that tonality becomes topic in early modernist concert music. Building upon his claim and the scholarship on twentieth-century musical topics (Frymoyer 2017; Donaldson 2021), I argue that twelve-tone technique becomes topic in postwar American concert music. Tonalist composers—Barber, Fine, Piston, Wilder, Bernstein—deploy twelve-tone melody amidst a tonal landscape for the purpose of topical signification. In this paper, I use two of Bernstein’s staged works—Candide (1956/74) and West Side Story (1957)—as case studies, and I provide an adaptation of Mirka’s semiotic model (2014), which accounts for the topic’s markedness within a new context and an emergent social meaning (Figure 1). I posit that Bernstein implements a set of overlapping similarities (Wittgenstein 1953), which coalesce into an iconic association and communicate reference to a Schoenbergian melodic sensibility. Bernstein’s “Quiet” and “Cool” are emblematic of serial procedures implemented by American tonalists, who (1) often treat the twelve-tone series as motivic (not harmonic) source material, (2) rarely transform the series by anything more than transposition, and (3) maintain an overarching tonality despite the serial chromatic procedure. Ultimately, the twelve-tone topic points to a shift in political and cultural sentiment toward nationalist music during the Cold War: Hubbs (2000) observes at the midcentury a “bursting of Coplandian tonality and ascent of university-based complexity music…[due to] a new positioning of serial composition as emblematic of artistic freedom” (169). 

George Russell and the Metaphysics of Spacetime

Mark Micchelli (University of Pittsburgh)

The fourth and final edition of George Russell’s magnum opus The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization has a markedly different focus than previous editions: to foster each reader’s “intellectual brilliance, intuitive perception, emotional fire, and spiritual depth” (2001: 98). According to LCCOTO’s lead editorial assistant Andy Wasserman, this development can be traced to Russell’s engagement with the esoteric spiritualist tradition known as the “Fourth Way,” specifically as represented in texts by G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, and Maurice Nicoll. This paper investigates the relationships between these spiritualist texts and Russell’s musical and music-theoretical output, highlighting an influence on Russell’s work largely ignored by previous scholars.

Russell was particularly influenced by Nicoll’s Living Time and the Integration of the Life (1952), which conceptualizes time as a multidimensional unity. In addition to “passing time”—i.e., time as conventionally understood—Nicoll argued that time contained two further dimensions: the “eternal present” and “unity.” Using excerpts from Russell’s albums Living Time (1972), Vertical Form VI (1981), It’s About Time (1997), I illustrate how Russell represents the “eternal present” via multilayered, polytonal compositions in which instrumental groups simultaneously perform unrelated grooves in unrelated keys, with musical material recurring in different guises throughout different movements. I also draw parallels between “unity” as used in Fourth Way cosmology and “unity” as used in Russell’s chord-scale theory, demonstrating how Russell’s preferred way of analyzing chords arises from his multidimensional conception of time.

A Rosary of Tears: Tonal Indeterminacy in the Music of Frank Sinatra

Cameron J Gwynn (Florida State University)

Efficient voice-leading is one of the fundamental tenets of both jazz composition and neo-Riemannian analysis. Jazz composers and performers often employ voicings that maximize voice-leading efficiency, prioritizing and even substituting harmonies that minimize movement between voices. In this paper, I describe moments of tonal indeterminacy in the introductions and key changes of jazz-orchestral arrangements through a Neo-Riemannian lens, connecting transformational labels to the aural experience of these moments and considering their musical effect in context.

Drawing from four songs recorded by Frank Sinatra, I demonstrate how the arrangers used moments of tonal uncertainty to enhance each song’s overall meaning and affect. I first analyze key changes in Nelson Riddle’s arrangement of Eubie Blake’s “Memories of You” and in Billy May’s 1958 arrangement of Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn’s “Moonlight in Vermont.” Then, I consider similar techniques in two song introductions: Nelson Riddle’s 1957 arrangement of David Raksin’s “Laura,” and his 1958 arrangement of Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn’s “Only the Lonely.” To address extended harmonies in these passages, I use a few approaches to transformational analysis: 1) Triadic analysis across multiple independently functioning harmonic lines, 2) Triadic analysis of concurrent transformations, and 3) General analysis of higher cardinality chords following Douthett and Steinbach (1998).

Through these analyses, I demonstrate how some jazz-orchestral arrangers have used passages of tonal indeterminacy to reflect lyrical content. Transformational analysis provides further insight into how these effects are created and may be applied to a larger body of jazz-orchestral arrangements.

Hearing Hybridity: Jason Moran’s version of Brahms’s intermezzo op. 118, no. 2

Jonathon Crompton (Columbia University)

Occasionally, jazz musicians interact with classical music, enacting a form of musical hybridism. But the challenges of characterizing this hybridity in music theoretic terms are manifold. Which properties of the music might be heard as common to both worlds, and which as not? How might we describe features of the music through two stylistic-conceptual lenses?

This paper proposes an approach for analyses of genre hybridity. Inspired by philosophy concerning concepts in music perception, especially the work of Mark DeBellis (1995) and Christopher Peacocke (1992), I unpack relevant concepts from each genre, showing how they touch. I take as a case study for this approach Jason Moran’s version of Brahms’s intermezzo op. 118, no. 2, through two analytic vignettes centered on sites of potential multi-genre valency.

The first centers on the intermezzo’s harmony in mm. 31–34, containing Brahms’s use of the “D–F#–A–B chord,” repeated by Moran into an anthem-like solo section. The chord has properties in common with Rameau’s ‘chord of the larger sixth’ and with jazz’s tonic-sixth-chord concept. I unpack both these concepts and demonstrate how Brahms’s use of the chord, while not quite exemplifying either concept, is ripe for an intervention from a jazz perspective.

The second unpacks the concept of a voice exchange. Moran, in his improvised introduction, opts not to employ any voice exchanges, but enacts genre hybridity by employing one of the voice exchange’s sub-concepts: the stepwise third. I show the parallels between his Brahms’ use of stepwise thirds and Moran’s, evincing Moran’s canny sensitivity to the original in his enacting of hybridity.

Semiosis is Always an Option: Categorical Music Experience in Untitled Goose Game

Martin Ross (University of Western Ontario)

In Untitled Goose Game (House House 2019, henceforth UGG), one plays as a goose who journeys through a small English village to obtain a grand prize, all the while disrupting the everyday lives of the town’s inhabitants. Dan Golding’s score adapts several of Claude Debussy’s Préludes into fragments triggered by the goose’s interaction with humans. Golding’s “dynamic music” (2021) represents the actions taken to form interpretive events, but the types of events will vary based on the interpretive subject.

 In this paper, I examine how Charles Sanders Peirce’s categorical phaneron—firstness, secondness, and thirdness (CP 8.327–331)—are realized through acts of semiosis in UGG. The qualities in each musical fragment—including dynamics, tempo, and articulation—correspond to every type of action taken, rendering the score an indication of the player’s agency. The player thus creates their own “score” based on intentional actions. A player unfamiliar with the Préludes is likely to intuit the musical qualities as they are initially presented. A player familiar with the Préludes can additionally understand the Debussy fragments and their potential to be adapted to their experiences. Both players recognize the score’s correspondence to their actions.

 The unfamiliar represents Peirce’s categorial “firstness” and the familiar his “thirdness.” Players’ actions and their respective musical representations are grounded in Peirce’s “secondness” (Ibid.). What makes UGG unique is that while the music is grounded in Debussy, the score is dynamic, and serves as the culmination of singularities actualized by the player representing the hijinks of the feathered protagonist.

Music’s Role in Signifying the Progression of Difficulty in Survival Rogue-like and Sandbox Adventure Games

Brian Junttila (Florida State University)

In survival roguelike and sandbox video games, players progress quasi-linearly to achieve a goal imposed by the game or themselves. Regions become more difficult upon advancing, necessitating accompanying changes in musical design to relay this shift to the player. Many authors have elucidated signifiers for individual environments, like the winter topic (Lavengood & Williams 2023), soaring topic (Atkinson 2019), and god-slayer trope (Yee 2020), which assist in connecting similar areas of disparate games through musical meaning. Musical signifiers that connect a diverse world of topics within a single game, however, have received little attention. This presentation argues that the progression of difficulty in these games is associated with changes of signification in environmental music, and when soundtracks are compared between games, signifiers form a larger topic of increasing musical difficulty. To show this, each track from a selection of games (incl. Minecraft (2011), Stardew Valley (2016), and Core Keeper (2024)) is assigned a rating of 1-5 correlating to its mechanical difficulty. Upon analyzing all tracks in a single rating, a set of signifiers forms, helpful for comparing different ratings. To elucidate those signifiers, I adopt Frymoyer’s (2017) hierarchy of characteristics that states certain signifiers are essential, frequent, stylistically particular, or idiosyncratic. Additions, subtractions, or other changes of musical features between ratings receive the most focus as signifiers of increasing musical difficulty. Notably, timbre and texture manifest as the core features in changing difficulty. This knowledge grants the player the ability to know how the music is embracing the game’s progression.  

Analyzing Fan Authorship in Vocaloid Music

Brandon Qi

In the past two decades, the Japanese popular music scene saw the meteoric rise of Vocaloid music, a vocal synthesis database and software used by originally amateur musicians. One Vocaloid in particular, Hatsune Miku, has come to lend her voice to over 100,000 songs, many of which have garnered tens of millions of views across different international video-streaming platforms. In this paper, I examine how Vocaloid music and its community aspects allow for a distinct form of fan-authorship and a multifaceted conception of the musical text, and propose an analytical model that addresses these concerns by evaluating the entire cyberspace within which a Vocaloid song presides.

 Drawing from Jenkins (2006), Auslander (2006), Zaborowski (2016, 2019), and Yamada (2017), I begin by framing the socio-cultural context around Vocaloid music and fandom, focusing on the net-culture of nijisousaku (“secondary creation”) and the unique level of authorship it affords fans at different levels of Vocaloid community. I then argue for the importance of considering these kinds of fan-authorship in the analysis of Vocaloid music. Through my case study of the 2021 Hatsune Miku song “kamippoina” (“God-ish”) by Vocaloid producer PinocchioP, I propose three nested forms of fan-authorship: the producer-as-author, the cover-artist-as-author, and finally the commenter-as-author. Through evaluation of lyrical content, form, timbre, and the unique style of audiovisual danmaku (“barrage subtitling”) commenting on the Japanese video-sharing platform Nico Nico Douga, I illustrate the variety of methods through which members of the Vocaloid community perform authoring activities.

Screaming forms and formal screaming, Timbral Transformations in Extreme Metal Verse-Choruses

Avinoam Foonberg (University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music)

As defined by Hillier (2020), extreme metal music is noted for its proliferation of sub-genres, use of harsh vocals, and extreme guitar distortion and downtuning. While metal studies often use pitch and rhythm to describe extreme metal musical forms, they often highlight timbral elements for their semiotic, emotional, aesthetic, and paratextual contributions (Smialek 2015, Myannet 2016, Hillier 2018, Hillier 2020, Hudson 2021). Although these contributions are significant, they only reveal a portion of timbre’s function in extreme metal genres. Confining timbre to these focal points overshadows the relationship between harsh vocal techniques and distorted sounds with verse-chorus teleology and energetic build-up. 

This paper argues that in addition to timbre’s aesthetic and paratextual contributions, extreme metal music incorporates harsh vocals, distortions, and hyper-realism to shape and manipulate verse-chorus structures. It identifies such influences on verse-chorus structures by comparing timbral transformations (McAdams, Godchild, and Soden 2021) in extreme metal songs using Izotope RX9 “music rebalance” rendering within the formal trajectory of the verse-chorus cycles (Nobile 2020). It uses this analytical framework to analyze examples of metal bands using timbral transformations to establish and undermine verse-chorus structures. Consequently, extreme metal manipulation of timbre presents salient examples of timbral transformations that inform the listener about the music’s formal unfolding and energetic build-up. By reconsidering timbre’s role in extreme metal genres, this paper provides opportunities to enrich our understanding of timbre in genre and musical form.  

The Arrested Ending: Exploring Death Through Silence in Popular Music

Brittney Pflanz (Florida State University) 

Popular music is no stranger to the topic of death. From death metal to emo, various popular youth-focused genres have made space for discussions surrounding the idea of mortality (Partridge 2015). Popular music’s main interaction with the idea of death is expressed through lyrics and instruments that are associated with themes of violence and rebellion (Partridge 2015). However, aspects beyond lyrical content and instrumentation can communicate death to a listener. In this paper, I argue that a formal device I will refer to as an “arrested ending” is used in popular music as an auditory indicator of the death of a narrator. 

The arrested ending is a two-part device defined by a musical preparation phase that is marked by a build in energy through changes in harmony, rhythm, texture, and timbre before abrupt silence, which terminates the song early. In addition to representing biological death, this device also serves to indicate a death of a narrative identity (Tomasini 2017). Its use spans a multitude of genres, cultures and musical eras, and has precedent in other forms of media such as film and written literature. I position the arrested ending in the context of other terminal forms already identified in popular music (Osborn 2013, Simonds 2024) as a separate, but not mutually exclusive, terminal device before exploring the device in the three songs “Reckless Driving” (Lizzy McAlpine and Ben Kessler), “Snow Angel” (Reneé Rapp), and “Omerta” (Katatonia) that serve as examples of the different ways the arrested ending manifests in pop music.

A new quantitative approach to headbanging at the frontiers of groove

Calder Hannan (Columbia University)

Progressive and extreme metal is unique for its confluence of heady, self-consciously complex rhythms with groove-based embodied audience participation. This paper presents a novel quantitative method for analyzing movement to this music in order to tease out these ostensibly contradictory shaping forces, drawing on recent research in embodied cognition, meter and rhythm. Using animation and computer vision, I analyze the headbanging motions of fans to a section of Car Bomb’s song “Lights Out.” I argue for the potential of this new quantitative approach, which benefits from both the rigor of lab-based motion capture methods and the ecological validity by being applicable to actual concerts. I conclude, from the data, that ruptures in a steady tactus, rather than promoting a confused stasis, actually enhance audience members’ kinetic response to the tactus. 

Analyzing Counterpoint in Josquin’s Extended and Unaccompanied Strict Canons

David Geary (Wake Forest University)

In historical treatises and modern scholarship, Renaissance strict canons are recognized as having an underlying contrapuntal structure. But while these sources provide the justification and a foundation for analyzing the contrapuntal structure of strict canons, there has yet to be a systematic description of the analytical process, including how to discern the rhythmic value of a canon’s unit and how to approach passages where more than one pitch can seemingly function as part of the underlying counterpoint. These and other analytical questions arise in the ten extended and unaccompanied strict canons in Josquin des Prez’s masses, and this paper concludes with an analysis of the “Pleni sunt celi” from his Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie. Before the analysis, I first review the mechanics of strict canons by summarizing Francisco de Montaños’ section on canons in his Arte de musica theorica y pratica (1592). Then, I outline the process for and many of the variables associated with analyzing a canon’s contrapuntal structure. This overview aims to ground my analytical decisions for the “Pleni sunt celi” and to serve as a model for analyzing the contrapuntal structure of other Renaissance strict canons.

Theorizing Dynamics Added to Baroque Slow Movements by Twentieth-Century Editors

Jenine Brown (Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University)

Baroque slow movements such as the largo are especially ripe for the study of musical expression, given their loose-knit structure and irregular hypermetric phrasing. Yet, specific rationale for shaping musical phrases in these movements remains at the level of intuition, often passed from teacher to pupil. Motivated by scholars who have argued that dynamics are fundamental to musical meaning and structure, this project shares a study of marked dynamics in these movements. Of course, interpretive markings such as dynamics are not present in Baroque manuscripts, but we can learn from studying dynamic markings present in early twentieth-century editions.

To facilitate an understanding of phrasing in slow movements, this project operationalized the question as to what governed editorial dynamic markings by gathering well-known largos that are staples in violin pedagogical books, identifying editions most encountered by intermediate/advanced students. This research ultimately puts forth a theory of dynamic markings added to Baroque largo movements by twentieth-century editors.

Analysis reveals that in all of these works, the peak dynamic occurs in the final few measures and never occurs on structural tonic/dominant. Instead, it coincides with the pre-dominant arrival. In the absence of a regular hypermeter, this peak helps to cue that the final cadence is imminent, employing the pre-dominant to signal cadential function (Caplin 1998). Following this peak dynamic on the pre-dominant, all movements end with a diminuendo into the final tonic harmony. This project has implications for violin pedagogy and suggests further avenues for theoretical scholarship that dialogues with performance practice.

How much does it “Hurt”? Assessing Listener Perception of Similarity Across Musical Covers

Richard Drehoff Jr. (Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University)

Musical similarity has been thoroughly discussed throughout the literature, often beginning with an examination of musical structure within a single work. When studies or analyses do focus on different sonic realizations of a common musical impulse, these typically occur as comparisons of performances of a single Western classical composition, variation, moment, or arrangement; even when non-classical works are studied, very rarely are approaches and sonorities considered outside of a single musical practice. In an increasingly post-genre contemporary musical community, relatively little empirical research has been conducted on the perceptual role of musical variables in our understandings of approaches by artists across genre. Using a variety of renditions of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt,” first released on Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral (1994) and rekindled in 2002 by Johnny Cash on American IV: The Man Comes Around, this study explores which elements listeners prioritize when determining similarity between musical excerpts. Through the manipulation of and the cross-pollination across audio stems from covers by artists of a diverse set of genres, identities, and musical approaches, listeners rate similarity across chimeric combinations of excerpts from multiple versions of the song. In particular, we analyze the impacts of key, harmony, vocal timbre, tempo, melody, and instrumentation upon our perception of sonic proximity.

Listening To See: Voice and Agency in Jeremy Dutcher’s “Sakomawit”

Judith Ofcarcik (James Madison University)

Jeremy Dutcher’s song “Sakomawit” from the album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa raises complex issues of voice, agency and authorship. Throughout the album Dutcher, a Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation, and producer BUFFLO sample wax-cylinder recordings of Maliseet songs held in a Canadian archive. Theories of agency can address components of voice, but they also seek to situate agency outside of an actual human performer/composer. This can simplify the analytical process, especially when artists collaborate (as is often the case in popular music), but what of situations in which it feels important to highlight the actual people involved beyond simply acknowledging their authorship? In this presentation, I explore three primary voices–-the sample, Dutcher, and BUFFLO–and trace how they emerge and interact throughout the piece. By “voice” I refer to the sounding presence of a real or imagined source, similar but not identical to agents and personas. Analyzing voice allows us to better see the actual creators and acknowledge their work, rather than attributing it to an imaginary actor. This re-insertion of the actual, historical creator as an intentional participant in the creative process is particularly important when creators belong to populations that are often overlooked or suppressed. Alongside this analysis, I explore how to ethically incorporate my own (white settler colonial) voice by following the guidelines suggested by Hardman (2022), privileging the Indigenous voices who created the song, engaging in self-reflection, and presenting my analysis graphically. This last is accomplished through a crankie box, a novel way of engaging listeners.