Manufacturing Expectation and Predictiviness in Orchestral Music with Respect to My Own Compositional Practice

Abstract

This thesis concerns the examination of compositional practices used in service of predictiveness within musical form and presentation as it pertains to orchestral music of the past eighty years. This document seeks to bridge the gap between the musical languages of contemporary compositions and classical formal structures. By highlighting the compositional techniques that some composers use to convey their concept, or “perceptual lens,” the music may be understood. These techniques will be derived through purely musical means, as opposed to strict reliance and reference to programmatic explanation, to create a key (as in a map) or guiding principles. The compositional techniques will be grouped into three categories: the consistency of melody and time, the consistency of process and timbre, and the consistency of macro-structure, which prepare the basis for predictiveness in music. Musical expectation is clearly defined and parsed out into hierarchies of cognition, allowing for contextual analysis of the pieces. This understanding of music cognition (expectation) coupled with an understanding of compositional technique (prediction) creates the end result for the listener/analyst/musician/composer of analytical conclusion.

This thesis will focus primarily on the aspects created through these specific compositional techniques of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony (1946-48), Silvestrov’s 6th Symphony (1994-95), Penderecki’s De Natura Sonoris No.1 (1966), and my own work; Subversion on Archimedes’ Constant for Symphonic Orchestra (2022).