Archived entries for
Doctoral Dissertation
I am very happy to announce that my doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University School of Music has been approved earlier today. I included the abstract in this post (please contact me if you would like to read more and I would be glad to send you a complete document).
Yours truly,
Dr. Nagy (!)
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De Harmonia Anmiæ – Harmony Within Sound: A Spiritual Quest
ABSTRACT
De Harmonia Animæ, a multi-movement cycle of etudes for pipe organ solo and this accompanying dissertation offer an overview of my personal quest as a composer for the reciprocity of musical and inner, spiritual harmony. This project document describes the musical, historical, scientific, philosophical, and spiritual influences on my compositional aesthetic and technique, whereby the fundamental premise of my newly discovered sonance composition is explained and discussed. The numerous references to corresponding extra-musical domains are meant to emphasize my profound interest in the arts and humanities, and to offer a number of discussions on a journey that will, I hope, continue to explore my ongoing interest in musical harmony in relation to our inner, spiritual harmony.
Besides a concise overview of noteworthy historical developments in musical harmony and composition, this paper describes a few recent writings from music psychology, perception, and cognitive neuroscience of music, and their implications on my compositional aesthetics and technique. I also discuss the influence of a number of twentieth- and twenty-first century composers with a strong inclination toward spirituality and mysticism in their music. In alluding to their oeuvre, I was particularly interested in how these composers have influenced my own work as a musician, and what analogies I was able to draw between their compositional techniques and my own compositions. As result of this study, I attempted to reconcile the notions of our inner self and musical harmony that has been to a large extent inspired by the studies in psychoacoustics of harmony and music psychology.
In my work as a composer, I have been particularly interested in the relationships between musical sound and musical structures, especially in the perceptual attributes of sound and their metaphysical analogy to spirituality and mysticism. As a consequence of these two perhaps very inclusive phenomena, I hope to have arrived at some idiosyncratic, albeit persuasive means of organizing musical syntax. Hence, this dissertation describes my newly discovered sonance compositional technique and its conceptual resemblance to process structures, as well as the procedural techniques of similarity and invariance in relation to the transformation of musical material. As an outcome of this study, I conclude the project document by delivering an analysis of my organ work, De Harmonia Animæ, a commentary on its style, structure and performance.
Agora Organ Explorations at St. Eustache
This is an invitation [for anyone wondering the streets of Paris] to stop by for a fantastic recital of contemporary organ music. While simply a unique opportunity to hear not only two premieres by young organist-composers (Philipp Maintz ferner, und immer ferner; Hyun-Hwa Cho (musical creation) and Raphaël Thibault (video creation) Vox Humana), this event will also feature two performances of some of the most important works in the twentieth century organ repertoire: György Ligeti’s Omaggio a G. Frescobaldi and Coulée, and Iannis Xenakis’ Gmeeoorh.
The organ recital will take place at the Church of St. Eustache in Paris on June 16 at 9 p.m. with Francesco Filidei playing the Van den Heuvel organ. For more information, please visit Agora Concerts.
Unique performance… wish I could be there…
