These are the notes I took on one of my three copies of this score in the two weeks leading up to my exam yesterday. (Music theory-minded readers may note that this copy of the score was the one on which I worked with transformational approaches such as inversions/transpositions and Klumpenhouwer Networks, neither of which was very persuasive.) I reproduced much of this, in much cleaner form, in the version I handed in. I also made some mildly impressive-looking geometrical representations of pitch-class set relationships:
Again, this technique wasn't the most fruitful analytically, and I wouldn't blame my committee if they wonder, as they grade the test, why I used it. The answer is at least in part that it was described in an article added to my bibliography by one of the committee members, and it's a terribly written article, and I had to read it so many times, and in my determination to learn what was going on, I tried to apply it to this piece, even when it clearly wasn't going to be very helpful. I don't know if they'll be sympathetic to that, but we'll see!
In general, the test went quite well. The first half, in particular, seemed almost easy: I was given four questions on the history of music theory and asked to answer two, and honestly I could have written for a long time on all four. Then the tonal analysis question was exactly what I'd been given two weeks before, and I had (I think) some pretty good insights on the questions asked. So on my lunch break, I felt great.
The afternoon was less good, but still decent. In the first question, on the piece pictured above, as I mentioned, I used some techniques that show my understanding of the material but maybe aren't the most applicable to the piece. And for the second question, I felt my answer wasn't sufficiently in depth. But I anticipate that I will pass, and just have to pursue those matters further for my aural exam--the last stage before I become ABD! I'll hear for sure in about 3 weeks.
4 comments:
OK, now that your brain is so big, could you off-load some of your knowledge to your struggling father? I'm going to have to study these sample pages for many hours before I understand slightly the insights you are notating; and even then I'll only be at square two. It looks very impressive!
Congratulations on having this over, Tim. We'll hope, with you, for good news in a few weeks. And we look forward to talking on the phone to hear more.
Much love,
Dad
Perhaps you should consider becoming a visual artist, Tim, with analytical scores as your medium! It does look very impressive. Hope you can explain some of those things to me...
We're happy for you and anticipate that you will have some "down" time now to make up for all that intense studying.
Are you sure that's not a 3-bit hypercube? I think I saw Nate doodling one last night. To the outsider (or maybe the insider) I might mistake music and math graphs for each other.
Congratulations on making it through this step! We look forward to hearing good news in a few weeks.
Indeed, your diagram does bear some resemblance to doodles I've been drawing recently. (Which, by the way, haven't led to much progress on my end.) Looks like pretty heavy stuff!
Congrats on finishing the test, Tim!
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