ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH

My analysis and research interests are highly varied, but generally gravitate towards the analysis of pre-tonal or post-tonal music. Below, I have included a few sample PDFs of analytical papers which I am comfortable with enough to share. Enjoy!



"One Step Forward, Three Steps Back: Continuity Through Interruption in Debussy's Feux d' Artifice"
This essay looks at Debussy's final piano prelude within the context of narrative-through-gesture. There are also some suggestions (perhaps over-zealous) of the piece's role in other 20th century composers' reconceptualization of musical form.


"A Comparative Analysis of Cavalieri's and Peri's Contributions to La Pellegrina"
There's a lot of musicological conjecture on the dynamic relationships between composers of the 1589 Florentine Intermedii at the Medici wedding. My approach for this essay was to pit composers against eachother, primarily from a theoretical standpoint, using the music itself as the evidence for an argument on the heavily-debated conception of the stile rappresentivo and the revolution of musical drama.

"The Evolution of Paraphrase: Procedure and Structure in the Masses of Josquin"
This essay deals with mathematical procedures in Josquin's sacred music. The analytical approach builds off of Irving Godt's contributions to the quantitative study of paraphrase procedures of 15th and 16th Centuries. Focusing heavily on Josquin's Missa Pange Lingua, I also apply the procedure to the music of Dufay and Palestrina, hopefully clarifying some development of compositional techniques over 3 generations of Renaissance composers.


"A Structural Analysis of Bartók's Sixth String Quartet, Mvt. IV"
This breif analysis outlines the role of the quartet's fourth movement and the culmination of various musical processes throughout the piece. If I were to write this paper again, I would have much more to say on my favorite string quartet of the 20th century.

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CONCERT REVIEWS

I semi-regularly contribute concert reviews to The Boston Musical Intelligencer, a boston-based blog for the classical scene that has become immensely successful over the past few years, as the concert reviewing endeavors of printed journals and newspapers has been in steady decline.

For a list of my recent contributions to BMint, click here.