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Musical
Analyses
1.
Rhythmic Games in J.S. Bach's Sinfonia No. 15 for keyboard
Sonus,
Fall 1994. Opening paragraph:
Groups
of threes, presented on many levels of duration, vie
for our attention throughout the last of Bach's three-part
Sinfonien. Though the game of nested threes is the most
engrossing, other striking devices flash out: magnification
of a unit by whole number factors, metric shift and
superimposition, hemiola and palindrome. How are these
games initiated and how do the interrelate?
2.
A Zuni Squaw Dance: When language and time change roles.
Sonus,
Fall 1995.
Transcription
of a recorded Squaw Dance, revealing very complex metric
patterns, and a cogent large-scale structure.
Presented
at Wheaton College and New England Conservatory.
3.
Inroads for analysis: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Boom'd by Roger Sessions.
Sonus.
Fall 1998.
The
Lilacs cantata, finished in 1970, "may prove to
be the essential American requiem of the 20th century".
Analysis of temporal proportions reveals "Sessions'
masterful hand in laying out his cantata's divisions".
Pitch analysis shows a surprising "trinity of serial
technique, the harmonic fragrance of the whole-tone
collection and acceptance of the memories of tonal implications".
"For
its premiere in 1971, I was involved in the auditions,
rehearsals and performances of the work. . .as the
performances were given, there was the sensation of
eloquent mastery; that all the difficulties were deliberate
and necessary".
Presented
at a joint conference of the Roger Sessions Society
and The College Music Society, North Carolina, 1996.
Please
contact me for information or
reprints of these papers.
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