Aaron Pond

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Miles, Stephen

Area of Concentration

Music

Abstract

This paper is a synthesis of musical analysis and philosophy, inspired by the rich, colorful, harmonies of 20th century music, and the writings of phenomenological philosophers. This paper aims to be neither of those things, but instead a source of inspiration for musical and analytical thought about the nature of our reality, the joy of listening, and the fundamental unity of perception and self. Chapter One draws on Merleau-Ponty and the phenomenological lens to generate a theory of perception that would be suited for analyzing music, particularly new music which breaks engrained normative perception. Chapter Two, applies this lens to the interaction between new and old within the self, generating theories of consonance and dissonance, as well as the functionality of atonality. It applies these theories to Henry Cowell’s Tides of Manaunaun and Hasley Stevens’s Sontata for Horn and Piano. Chapter Three builds off these theories to provide an incomplete analysis of the György Ligeti’s Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, introducing concepts that the author aims to build off of for future discussions and works.

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