Browsing by Author "Brandt, Anthony"
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Item A concert of works by guest composer SAMUEL ADLER and by PETER LIEUWEN ANTHONY BRANDT LIBBY LARSEN Wednesday, October 30, 2002 8:00 p.m. Lillian H. Duncan Recital Hall(Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, 2002-10-30) Adler, Samuel (guest composer); Lieuwen, Peter; Brandt, Anthony; Larsen, Libby; Ver Meulen, William (horn); Kimura Parker, Jon (piano); Fischer, Norman (cello); Waters, Rodney (piano); Hauschildt, Craig (percussion); Dunham, James (viola); Connelly, Brian (piano); Kong, Jooyeon (violin); Preston, Jeremy (violin); Nolan, Erin (viola); Merritt, Aaron (cello)PROGRAM: Sonata for Horn and Piano (1948) / Samuel Adler -- Nocturne (1993) / Peter Lieuwen -- Handful (2002) (Premiere) / Anthony Brandt -- Sonata for Viola and Piano (2001) / Libby Larsen -- Quintet for Piano and String Quartet (2000) / Samuel AdlerItem A Mouthful of Gravel and Other Predicaments for Chamber Orchestra(2009) Greene, Etan Frederic; Gottschalk, Arthur; Al-Zand, Karim; Brandt, AnthonyA Mouthful of Gravel for chamber orchestra couples a continuous, yet evolving motor rhythm with one large thematic unit, presented "chopped up" throughout the piece with gradually-waning intensity. The harpsichord takes on a prominent role throughout, though the piece is by no means a concerto. Structural signposts appear in the way of verbal mumbling by sections of the orchestra, percussive striking of a metal bowl atop an oven grate, and instrumental mimicry of gravel and speech sounds. The piece is approximately seven minutes long.Item aerial silk roads: for orchestra(2024-04-17) Wu, Sam; Brandt, AnthonyI marvel at the ease with which we traverse continents and oceans today. Trade routes that once took caravans months, over treacherous terrains, are now traveled in a matter of hours; Asia and Europe are linked by one night’s sleep forty-thousand feet in the air. "aerial silk roads" depicts this experience of transcontinental travel. We begin high in the sky, above clouds in the Far East. They soon part, revealing vast sand dunes beneath us. These rolling hills are in turn replaced by the towering mountains of Central Asia, their snow-covered tops glistening underneath a midday sun. Eventually, we begin our descent into clouds once more, as we reflect upon the landscapes we overflew, already anticipating the next time we take to the skies.Item "Be" for orchestra(2022-04-22) Berko, Alex L; Brandt, Anthony“Be” is a work that explores the evolution and interaction of two main motific ideas. Programmatically, those two motives loosely represent two emotional components: thinking and feeling. Throughout the work, these ideas are presented both separately and together, propelling the piece forward. The work is organized into three large sections: The first is a slow, intimate soundscape characterized by heterophonic and soloistic textures. The second is a contrasting, driving, and bombastic section that continues to build and transform as it grows. The final section takes on a static character with sustained, lightly pulsed harmonics in the strings, hushed winds, and flickers of harp. The work has a cyclical form in that it begins and ends with a similar character in a similar register.Item Convergence: Unveiling the Yanyue Modal System of the Tang Dynasty(2021-04-30) Zhu, Zhu; Brandt, AnthonyThere is a dearth of Western scholarly research on ancient Chinese music. Unlike the trajectory of Western music—where the Catholic Church facilitated a linear, centralized, and well-chronicled musicological evolution—ancient Chinese music history is fragmented and incomplete. Dynastic cycles often led to hostile transitions of power and the destruction of the cultural vestiges from the preceding fallen dynasty. As a consequence, the elegant Yanyue twenty-eight-mode system of the Tang dynasty is scarcely known or understood in the West. The musicological history of the Yanyue modal system is disjunct and imprecise. This document will reconstruct the theoretical architecture of the Yanyue twenty-eight modes and unveil them for a Western audience. The Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907) reflect an extended phase of political stability and economic prosperity. The Tang dynasty in particular was a period of renaissance and artistic cultivation. It embraced migration and the blending of disparate cultural traditions. This document will reveal the Yanyue twenty-eight modes to be not merely a musicological artifact, but a sonically ornate and remarkably diverse tonal system whose structural organization reflects the heterogeneity of Tang itself and colors our image of life in ancient China.Item From Analysis to Artistry: Expanding Interpretive Possibilities through Score Study and Artistic Decision-Making(2024-04-18) Geissler, Maxwell; Brandt, AnthonyA crucial skill for the engaging performance of Western music involves dramatizing the form and rhetoric found within a composition. Here, traditional notation is an incomplete guide, leaving elements of tension, motive, structural narrative, and character largely unspecified. As a result, analysis of the score is an essential part of developing an interpretation: just as an actor will study the plot, motivation, and character arc in preparing for a role, score study helps the performer make local decisions with respect to the whole, revealing significant moments for potential expression and artistry. This thesis advocates for an integrated approach towards decision making that deliberately hones musical intuition by drawing connections between the tensions present in sound production and uniting them with aspects of compositional tension. Building on Donald Barra’s book The Dynamic Performance: A Performer's Guide to Musical Expression and Interpretation, this document explores how to use score study to thoughtfully expand the number of artistic choices available to a performer. The thesis posits median energy as a way of describing the general mood and character of a composition, against which deviations – such as harmonic surprises and contrapuntal complexities – are calibrated. Spanning from small-scale to large-scale decisions, this paper stresses the importance of putting technical choices into context to build a cohesive overarching narrative. In essence, it encourages a more robust connection between analytical techniques and instrumental study as a means to sharpen musical intuition.Item Lou Harrison's Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan(2015-03-27) Angkasa, Linda; Loewen, Peter; Connelly, Brian; Brandt, Anthony; Englebretson, RobertLou Harrison’s compositions for Indonesian gamelan and Western instruments have served as representations of Harrison’s distinctive transcultural voice. His Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan represents a fascinating musical synthesis between two great classical traditions. More than blending Eastern and Western instruments within a single composition, hidden beneath this juxtaposition lies a Harrison’s complex creative method. The purpose of this study is to examine Harrison’s method of forging Western and Javanese idioms within a single work. In order to gain a better understanding through musical analysis, I include chapters concerning the development of exoticism in twentieth-century Western music, with brief historical background on traditional Javanese gamelan, and Harrison’s compositional trajectory toward his Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan. In this concerto, I provide critical understanding of his compositional process using both in Eastern and Western elements. The analysis covers both the macrocosmic and microcosmic structures of the musical form in each movement, pitch-class sets, and rhythmic complexity. Through this method, one can see how Lou Harrison synthesizes the piano successfully with the gamelan idiom by blending two distinct musical cultures, while also emphasizing and reconciling their idiosyncrasies.Item Music and early language acquisition(2012-09-11) Brandt, Anthony; Gebrian, Molly; Slevc, L. Robert; Frontiers MediaLanguage is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence. Music, while recognized as a human universal, is often treated as an ancillary ability – one dependent on or derivative of language. In contrast, we argue that it is more productive from a developmental perspective to describe spoken language as a special type of music. A review of existing studies presents a compelling case that musical hearing and ability is essential to language acquisition. In addition, we challenge the prevailing view that music cognition matures more slowly than language and is more difficult; instead, we argue that music learning matches the speed and effort of language acquisition. We conclude that music merits a central place in our understanding of human development.Item ONEness(2015-04-22) Ouyang, Yuxin; Brandt, Anthony; Chen, Shih-Hui; Jalbert, PierreIn this work for chamber orchestra, I hope to convey the idea of growth: a simple element produces something more complex in an on-going process of development. For instance, a human being grows year by year from a naive baby to a person who experiences and learns more and more. For the living, though, that process of growth is not open-ended: as the Bible says, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust"-- life eventually returns to its simple state. "ONEness" begins with a simple motive: two parallel minor 7ths (C and B-flat, D and C) in the strings. These two sevenths are gradually filled with additional pitches that preserve the outward contour but create a richer harmony. A related motive--comprised of the pitches D, E and F#--is also introduced. As the paired sevenths become more harmonically complex, this melody of three pitches develops as well, becoming fragmented, twisted and inverted. The two main motives take turns being in the foreground. At the work's peak, the most complex statement of the sevenths motives is played by the full orchestra. As the music subsides from this climax, the parallel 7ths sink into the cellos and the clarinet echoes the three-pitch motive, creating an ethereal ending.Item Şekeroğlan for Orchestra(2020-04-23) Eryilmaz, Erberk; Brandt, AnthonyŞekeroğlan for Orchestra is a 7-minute orchestral work based on a popular folk song from the Central Anatolian Region of Turkey, with the same name, “Şekeroğlan”. The folk song is a love song from the side of a girl, calling her lover “Şekeroğlan”, meaning sweet boy. More important than the poetry of the folk song, the work is inspired by the common qualities of the region’s music such as using a 2/4 meter, an upbeat and danceable character with surprise accents, and obsessive and catchy motivic patterns. The distinct instrumentational colors of region’s music was also an orchestration source. Some commonly used instruments of the region are Bağlama, a plucked string instrument, which is also used in the recording that is included in the work, Davul, a double-headed Turkish folk bass drum, Wooden Spoons, a Turkish folk musical instrument, Folk Violin, tuned in fourths, and G Clarinet, with bright and flexible pitch. In the work, Davul and Wooden Spoons are used in the percussion section, and the wind and string writing often imitates the folk styles of playing with vibrato, embellishments, pressed tone quality, and use of the open strings. The most important aim of the work is to expand and exaggerate on both motivic and instrumentation ideas from this particular folk song and the typical qualities of the folk music of the region, to create an energetic free piece that experiences this folk song in extremes.Item sound.field(2019-04-19) Yamamoto, Nicholas; Brandt, AnthonyOrchestral performance is dedicated space and time for a ritual of concentrated listening and the execution of physical actions on sounding objects. In composing the work sound.field, I wish to guide a hypothetic listening experience through several layers of time and resonant spaces. I consider the work an aural environment partitioned by time. The temporal experience of it imagined as listening to a microphone moved through a vibrant aural space that is “amplified” through an orchestra.Item The Music of Language(2019-04-15) Keller, Andrew Joseph; Brandt, AnthonySpoken languages are musical. Tonal languages from East Asia and Africa use pitch to convey meaning. Clicking languages from southern Africa use percussive consonants not found in other languages. Constructed languages such as whistled languages from the Canary Islands, and drumming and xylophone languages from Africa are musical-surrogate representations of spoken languages. After a comparison of the musical qualities of these languages, this document will examine how twentieth-century composers have explored the music of language in a way previous Western composers had not. This includes natural languages in the works of Ernst Toch, John Cage, Steve Reich, Vinko Globokar and Georges Aperghis, as well as constructed languages in the music of Kurt Schwitters, Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Cathy Berberian, Stuart Saunders Smith, Adriano Celentano, and Eduard Khil. Unlike previous research of language-inspired music that has focused on individual composers and their works, this document aims to create connections between twentieth-century compositional techniques and to create categories of differentiation between spoken language music.Item The Violin Concerti of Béla Bartók(2016-04-20) Kim, SoJin; Brandt, AnthonyThere are two violin concertos in Béla Bartók’s body of compositions. The first concerto written in 1907 is obscure and rarely heard, while the second, completed in 1939, is widely performed and generally regarded as a twentieth-century masterwork. Bartók had contrasting relationships with the violinists for whom the works were written: the first, for Stefi Geyer; and the second, for Zoltán Székely. My thesis will compare the two concerti, illustrating how the second refines, expands and more fully develops the compositional approach of the first, as well as the working relationship and influence the performers had on the ultimate outcome of the concerti. This comparison of two works with very different outcomes offers insights into Bartók’s compositional methods and development.Item Three Scenes for Symphony Orchestra(2017-04-24) Tennikova-Satral, Daria Mikhailovna; Brandt, Anthony; Lavenda, RichardThree Scenes for Symphony Orchestra is a triptych of character pieces, each of which my personal vision of the three popular genres: a march, a song and a dance. Each of the movements also has a connection to a specific national character. The march represents the Ancient Rome during the glorious times of Julius Caesar’s s rule. It portrays a triumphant procession of Caesar and his legions. The second movement is a vision of Russian serfs singing while performing labor in the fields or rowing a boat. The melancholy nature of the melody refers to the protyazhnaja genre in Russian folk tradition. The third movement represents a sunny nation of Ukraine. Its cheerful character and strong national flavor is expressed though the fast-paced rhythms and particular accent patterns of this famous national dance- Gopak.