Browsing by Author "Jalbert, Pierre"
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Item Abstract No. 1 for Orchestra(2007) Blench, Karl Eric; Jalbert, PierreAbstract No. 1 is motivated by the study of orchestral colors and solo instrumental timbres. The work is based on the idea of a bell. The first and last sounds of the piece are bell sounds and the large scale formal plan is based on the word "bell." There are two divisions of the piece, a slow lyrical section, and a fast aggressive section. The first part explores bell sounds, various soloistic colors, and the sonorous properties of tone clusters. The second part focuses on the sound of drums and the study of articulations. The timpani, tom-toms, and temple blocks are featured playing a melody based upon themes from the opening. Following the percussive opening the brass enter stating a three note motive that the percussion lines are based on. The development focuses on the opening timpani line, this time in the winds, strings, and brass. These melodic fragments are then finally set against the opening theme that leads to a brief return of the brass three note motives, which proceeds directly to the coda.Item An Oboe and Oboe d'Amore Concerto from the Cape of Africa: A Biographical and Analytical Perspective(2011) Behr, Erik Patrick; Jalbert, PierreDue to the lack of quality contemporary concertos for the oboe and, especially, the oboe d'amore, this dissertation presents two works from South African composers that provide excellent additions to the concerto repertoire. Allan Stephenson wrote Concerto for Oboe and Strings in 1978 and Peter Louis Van Dijk wrote ElegyDance- Elegy in 1984. The outstanding quality and idiomatic nature of these works assuages the practical concerns today's oboists have when undertaking a contemporary concerto. Along with their high artistic merit, these concerti are both audience-friendly and financially feasible to present on an international stage. In addition to briefly examining the post-apartheid musical climate that exists in South Africa today, the dissertation thoroughly analyzes the works and includes biographical background of the composers.Item Between Shades(2024-04-19) Sandridge, Jacob; Jalbert, Pierre“Between Shades” is a musical composition for orchestra with an approximate duration of 8 minutes. The instrumentation for the piece is 3 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets in B-flat, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, 2 percussionists, harp, and strings. Inspired by photographer Jurek Wajdowicz’s “Liminal Spaces” series, “Between Shades” employs a number of composition and orchestration techniques intended to suggest and parallel the haziness and visual shifts in color found in Wajdowicz’s photography series. The primary composition techniques that unify the work include ambiguity in tonal center and overlapping and blending of orchestral textures.Item Cages of Jade(2024-04-18) Gonzalez Soledad, Ethan; Jalbert, PierreAs a result of the Chinese exclusion act, San Francisco Bay’s Angel Island acted as an immigration station for mostly Chinese immigrants in the beginning of the 20th century. Those held at the station would spend weeks, months, and even years on the island in horrible living conditions before being released or sent back to their origins. There are many poems written on the walls describing the sense of despair, loneliness, anxiety, and boredom which people faced during their stay. The title of my orchestral piece, “Cages of Jade,” comes from one of these poems. Through my piece for full symphony orchestra, I sought to portray the journey of this author from their arrival at the station to their eventual release into the US.Item Chopin's Études, Op. 10: Historical Context, Musical Analysis, Kinesthetic Insight, and Practice Strategies(2024-04-19) Jeong, Seolyeong; Jalbert, PierreThe study provides a comprehensive guide for improving the performance of Chopin’s Études, Op. 10, revered as the seminal concert études in nineteenth-century piano literature. Chapter 1 delves into the historical evolution of piano études, contextualizing the emergence of Chopin’s compositions within the broader context of keyboard literature and mechanical advancements in piano. This exploration reveals the influence of early nineteenth-century piano études on Chopin, particularly through similar motifs that highlight the unique technical challenges of each étude. Chapter 2 analyzes Chopin’s Études, Op. 10. It commences with a concise overview of the historical context surrounding the composition of Chopin’s études, followed by an exploration of their structural framework. This chapter thoroughly examines the formal, motivic, and harmonic elements in the études. This analysis demonstrates how Chopin innovatively adapted the ternary form to articulate his unique musical narratives, thereby illustrating the potential for musical depth and complexity within the constraints of the étude genre. The comprehensive analysis in Chapter 2 lays the groundwork for the following performance insights. Chapter 3 focuses on practical approaches, recommending ways to refine the execution of Chopin’s études through Body Mapping, a concept that Barbara and William Conable developed. This method emphasizes kinesthetic awareness and leverages the detailed analyses from Chapter 2 to offer practical advice tailored for pianists. It aims to improve both technical execution and the depth of interpretation, enabling performers to approach these challenging pieces with greater understanding and physical awareness. Thus, this study illuminates the historical and analytical aspects of Chopin’s Études, Op. 10, and connects these findings with concrete performance techniques, promoting a comprehensive method for mastering these essential works in the piano repertoire.Item Dream Collage(2014-04-22) Lee, Joungbum; Jalbert, Pierre; Al-Zand, Karim; Stallmann, KurtAll dreams are unique, yet they share commonality in reflecting the human subconscious. People in the field of music, especially composers, often write music in reaction to a dream. I had this experience, and I became more interested in how strangely my subconscious unfolds the stream of scenes than in the music that I heard in the dream. After waking up, I realized that even though there is no correlation between the first and the last scenes in the dream, there has always been an inevitability from one scene to another. I was inspired by this illogical progression which is a reflection of our subconscious, and this is reflected in the very free formal structure of this work. I put more emphasis on directionality, going from one stream of sound to another, so that the piece could portray the ambiguous boundary of the dreamer who is both creator and the observer of the scene at the same time.Item Emerald Night Sky(2022-04-25) Lee, Grace Ann Jung Yoon; Jalbert, PierreThe inspiration behind the piece, “Emerald Night Sky” is the Northern Lights in Alaska. The piece is driven by two contrasting imageries. The first is the bombastic excitement one feels when encountering the intense, strongly luminous aurora for the first time. The second is the calmness and the static feature of the celestial, wondrous green lights in sky. The work is organized in an overall A-B-A form. The beginning A section is characterized by the fast busy 16ths in the strings punctuated with chords played by percussions, winds, and brass. The contrasting B section, marked in a slower tempo, features a static pedal tone on the pitch ‘A’ and ‘G#’ hovering around the ensemble. Lyrical solos in the bass clarinet and solo cello are featured in a conversational tone. The final A brings back the fast pace of the opening, leading to a high energy conclusion.Item Grand Variations for large orchestra(2012-09-05) Zajicek, Daniel; Gottschalk, Arthur W.; Jalbert, Pierre; Loewen, Peter; Sperandio, ChristopherGrand Variations is a work for large orchestra built on an original theme and six variations. My primary concerns when composing were communication, continuity, and distortion. To musically communicate an idea repetition is essential, and the type of repetition presented in theme and variations provided what I was looking for. In addition, the fact that the theme will be repeated over and over leads to a built in continuity. The final concern, distortion, may be achieved by pulling away from a more straightforward presentation of the thematic material. Two additional elements played a large role in the work—cyclic forms, and quantum physics. The composition Déserts by Edgard Varese, and the jazz work Nefertiti by Wayne Shorter, both contain strong cyclic features. Nefertiti uses the same melody repeated over and over, while Déserts, on the other hand, repeatedly presents the same musical gestures, and sound objects, but with slight changes to achieve its own cyclic sound world. These two works framed the way that I approached variations, yet are at odds with each other. Through my reading of quantum physics, I found a way to join the two into a working structure, and the book, The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, helped me to do it. Because of this, I decided early on to honor that influence, and the title Grand Variations reflect that.Item Henri Dutilleux’s Piano Sonata: The revival of French modernism(2021-05-03) Cho, Jun; Jalbert, PierreHenri Dutilleux developed a unique voice by synthesizing traditional, modern, nationalistic, and foreign elements in his compositions. In this document, I explore these elements in Dutilleux’s piano sonata with a thorough analysis, and search for its inspiration by looking into his formative years. Also, this document will illuminate how Dutilleux was able to formulate and maintain a distinct creative process during a period when diverse compositional styles, such as neoclassicism and serialism, were prevalent in Europe. To this end, this study will discuss such musical styles concurrent in Europe, and their influence on Dutilleux’s compositional process.Item His Body Lies, His Soul Marches(2021-04-30) Chandler, Theo; Jalbert, PierreThis dissertation is a new work for orchestra, eight minutes in duration, scored for triple woodwinds, full brass, percussion, piano, and strings (2+picc,2,2+b.cl,2+cbsn – 4,3,3,1 – pno – timp+3 – str). The work incorporates the song “John Brown’s Body,” which memorializes the radical abolitionist John Brown, famous for his involvement in Bleeding Kansas and the Harper’s Ferry Raid. While the subtitle “Variations on a Union Army Hymn,” conveys the episodic structure of the piece, the variations subvert the traditional theme-and-variations procedure, in which repetitions of a static harmonic structure support a melodic line of increasing complexity. Instead, each episode progressively fragments the theme into its constituent motives, and this fragmentation eventually allows the theme to assimilate into the language of the surrounding music. The piece begins with a collision of two types of music in stark contrast: a pointillistic texture of diffuse, low-register sounds, against a solo violin struggling to sing the “John Brown’s Body” tune. The piece ends with a climactic rush to the double bar line, and by this point, only remnants of the theme catch the listener’s ear. “John Brown’s Body” was the product of spontaneous creativity, composed collectively by a battalion of Union soldiers in 1861. From here the song spread rapidly; it was popular with the military and civilians. Upon hearing the rousing melody, Julia Ward Howe was inspired to elevate the lyrics, reworking the unrefined text into the more poetic “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In doing so, Howe stripped the song of its references to contemporaneous political figures, replacing them with imagery and biblical allusions. The more accessible lyrics of the “Battle Hymn” have allowed the melody of “John Brown’s Body” to be appropriated for unforeseen purposes, some non-political and some actively challenging principles John Brown held. The fragmentation and assimilation of the tune in His Body Lies, His Soul Marches follows a similar trajectory – having its detail gradually stripped away, the theme finds itself in unexpected circumstances, far removed from its original context.Item Increase(2019-04-18) Graham, Erin; Jalbert, PierreIncrease, written for orchestra, is a study in various methods of escalating dramatic tension. The piece features three principle motives which serve drastically different functions. Consequently, each of these motives requires a different strategy for intensification. I sought to construct a narrative in which these motives and their respective processes work together to convey a sense of large-scale augmentation.Item Interruptions(2007) Namir, Florie; Jalbert, PierreThe meaning of the title Interruptions derives from a procedure in which musical ideas are interrupted throughout the work. The piece begins with a drone in the lower strings. Over this drone interruptions occur, first in the timpani, then in the brass and finally in the woodwinds. Similarly, in the middle section, motives presented earlier in the piece begin to interrupt one another. The pitch material utilized in the piece is presented in the introduction. There are three principal motives: a repeated 32th note figure, an ascending major 7th and a descending minor 3rd. The piece has a unique structure: A-B-C-D-A. The different sections are linked through their motives. A varied form of the A section returns at the end creating a modified arch form.Item Jishin(2011) Nishikawa, Andrew Hiroaki; Jalbert, PierreJishin (earthquake) is a musical composition written for full orchestra, based on a twelve-tone row. The twelve-tone row is structured such that it contains only two musical intervals (perfect 5 th , major 3 rd ). Due to the nature of the row, various transpositions of the row can be used to form what seems to be a never ending cycle of pitches. Throughout the composition the material of the row is fragmented and used motivically to develop larger structures within the whole of the piece. Like an earthquake, Jishin strives to create an enormous amount of tension and aggressive energy. At the end, the moment of strongest tension, the original row is set against itself in retrograde, metaphorically representing the friction caused by plate tectonics.Item Musical Momennts(2012-09-05) Savitski, Aleks; Jalbert, Pierre; Gottschalk, Arthur W.; Stallmann, KurtMusical Moments abstract The inspiration for this piece came largely from my encounters with Miles Davis’s composition “Flamenco Sketches” from his album “Kind of Blue”. Initially, I wanted to write a piece that would have a highly dramatic emotional content with some influences drawn from flamenco music. The only thing that I drew from flamenco is a progression of chords that loosely hint at Phrygian mode (often used in flamenco). Other elements of the music and the development of musical material are not related to flamenco or to Davis’s “Flamenco Sketches”. “Musical Moments” presents four different moods: calm but anxious, joyous and assertive, indecisive and contemplative, restless and explosive. Each of these moods creates a separate section of the piece which when combined shape a single movement work.Item Musical resistance against cultural repression in the Soviet Union: a comparative study of the Prokofiev Violin Sonata in F minor Op.80 and Shostakovich Violin Sonata in G major Op.134(2021-04-30) Lee, Yena; Jalbert, PierreThis study presents how music was affected during the political climate of the Soviet Union from Josef Stalin’s 1932 Resolution through the cultural “Thaw” of the 1960s. The two great titans of Russian music, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, were persecuted and branded as enemies of the people due to accusations of propagating decadent formalist concepts and writings under several oppressive political regimes. Chapter 1 discusses the pre-Stalin and post-Stalin resolutions issued by the Communist Party and its impact on both composers, a history of both composers’ denunciations, and circumstances surrounding the compositions of the two violin sonatas. Chapter 2 examines the unique compositional methods exercised in both violin sonatas: “chromatic displacement” and “free” dodecaphony. Chapter 3 provides comparative analyses of the Prokofiev sonata op.80 and Shostakovich sonata op.134 and their use of structural forms, characteristics, and styles in relation to the methods demonstrated in the previous chapter. Lastly, Chapter 4 reviews the contribution of both sonatas to the twentieth-century violin repertoire. Considering that the works are highly personal and introspective, an original interpretation is required from all violinists. Chapter 4 also examines interpretative possibilities of both sonatas by live performance recordings of David Oistrakh, the dedicatee of both sonatas, as well as my personal interpretative suggestions.Item Night Ghost(2018-04-20) Guo, Moni; Jalbert, PierreNight Ghost Night Ghost (夜魅 Ye Mei) is an orchestral transcription of an imaginary myth. In Chinese, Mei 【魅】means a ghost of the mountain. For this piece, I was imagining how the mountain that’s ruled by a ghost would look like at night. The music focuses on two elements: the loud chordal passages and the quiet wind music passage. My musical background was largely influenced by both Western music (German and Russian) and Eastern music (Chinese, Japanese and Korean). In this piece, the chordal passages are from what I leaned through Western tradition. The wind passage and the percussion passage, each representing the sound of nature and the sound of celebration, are from my Eastern background.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 Pathways: for Chamber Orchestra(2014-11-21) Krause, Benjamin Alan; Jalbert, Pierre; Gottschalk, Arthur; Bailey, Walter; Fischer-Baum, SimonPathways is scored for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets in Bflat, two bassoons, two horns in F, two trumpets in C, percussion (two players), harp, piano/celesta, and strings. It presents a progression of primary musical ideas and then explores various "pathways" by which they may be connected. The initial idea is characterized by a rapid ascending arpeggio followed by a gradual, syncopated registral descent punctated throughout the orchestra. This then culminates with a climactic outburst of rapid repeated notes, in turn giving way to a declamatory series of chorale-like harmonies. The following music, characterized by both the ebulliance of a scherzo and the propulsion of a toccata, develops the opening material without ever fully reiterating it. When a sense of recapitulation finally does arrive, the main ideas appear in reverse order, their functions altered. A peaceful coda supplies the harmonic progression "missing" from the recapitulated material and provides a sense of respite and reflection to balance the energy of the preceding music. An experience of the piece may be compared to a walk along a winding, looping path in which one perceives the journey as linear but sees the same objects from different perspectives and in varying sequences. The music moves very quickly but tends to "circle back" on itself. The title "Pathways" also relates to my working process, in which I first constructed and then connected the structural pillars, as well as to a specific voice-leading technique in which melodic lines trace varying paths through two alternating harmonies.Item Point Ninety-Nine(2024-04-19) Qin, Tian; Jalbert, PierreMy thesis, Point Ninety-Nine is an orchestral work that contemplates the beauty of ‘missing the mark’. It is about being almost there point ninety-nine, not one hundred percent. We live in an environment that demands perfection. How can we learn to embrace the imperfections and celebrate the unexpected outcome after we do our best? The music will focus on drastic timbral contrasts and cyclic thematic elements.Item Rothko Echoes for Orchestra(2024-04-19) Zlatkin, Daniel; Jalbert, PierreRothko Echoes represents my reflections from repeated visits to the Rothko Chapel. The Chapel's atmosphere is ethereally calm, stasis-like, and the room seems to breathe as clouds and sunlight shift and change. An undercurrent is always present. What initially appears as a void gradually becomes warmer, brighter, more colorful and calm, even animated. Various figures, faces, objects, the sea and sky begin to appear, amidst endlessly layers rectangles and squares. Rothko Chapel is both ominous and inviting, a place of darkness and light. Fundamentally it is a place which heals.