Research

Boyer College Graduand Student Forum, 24 April 2016. This paper investigates the phenomenological model of subjectivity that undergirds the theoretical descriptions of melody, harmony, and form in G. W. F. Hegel’s Aesthetics. While scholars such as Philip Alperson and Martin Donougho have denounced the Aesthetics for uninformedly devaluing instrumental music, the text’s explicit references to instrumental sonata form provide evidence to the contrary. For Hegel, music “sounds out” the subject, reverberating within the catacombs of the mind to illuminate the depths of the inner self. Considering Hegel invites us to reconsider music in terms of how it organizes events and demarcates the flow of time. ...

Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, 8 April 2016. University of Michigan Graduate Music Research Conference, 20 March 2016. This study explores the hermeneutic efficacy of topic theory in the context of 20th-century American music by theorizing Paul Creston’s adaptation of contemporary plainchant practice as a recurring topic in his compositions. The paper considers the definitions of “topic” offered by Leonard Ratner, Robert Hatten, Raymond Monelle, Michael Klein, and Danuta Mirka. In doing so, it frames Creston’s indexing of chant first as a generative style—furnishing the textural and thematic content of homogeneous works—and second as a topic that injects this style into distinct spaces of Creston’s larger, heterogeneous compositions. Interpreting Creston’s chant as a topic per se is justified according to Hatten because of its productivity, and to Lawrence Kramer because it opens hermeneutic windows and topical fields that construct interpretive frameworks for narrative. ...