My dissertation examines several interconnected binaries in music theory: flat/sharp, subdominant/dominant, and minor/major. Traditional theory positions the marked member of each pair (flat, subdominant, and minor, respectively) conceptually LEFT, DOWN and OUTSIDE of the privileged term (sharp, dominant, and major), leading to further marginalization. In my theoretical, historical, analytical and aesthetic inquiry into the ‘musical left,’ I take on Riemannian dualism, mirroring, flat side transformations, stacked fourths, and the pentatonic scale.

My deconstruction of 19th century major-minor dualism reveals the surprising “Othering” of the minor mode. Mirroring—from fugues to Riemannian dualism—cannot fully integrate with a ground-up, hierarchical practice like tonality; twentieth-century atonal musics constitute better vehicles for sustained, pure inversions.

Unlike ‘structural’ authentic cadences, the subdominant is analyzed by Schenkerians as ‘surface-level’ embellishment, but I assert that composers use autonomous applied plagals to go the ‘wrong way’ around the circle of fifths. In contrast to applied dominants, secondary subdominants—the flatted seventh double plagal, the triple plagal “backdoor” cadence, and the flatted sixth quadruple subdominant—have rarely been studied. For composers of these structures, going flat serves revolutionary ends.

Stacked fourths—commonly misinterpreted as purposeless for their tendency to “plane” non-functionally—are used by McCoy Tyner in “Blues on the Corner” to target the subdominant in what I term a “trapdoor cadence.” My taxonomy of stacked fourth chords leads to an analysis of Paul Hindemith’s ic-5 crossing over in Mathis der Maler. Motion in the flat direction is usually right to left—that is, it represents tracking back to the tonic-in-the-past, but by traveling 23 steps into the flatside, Hindemith transforms the past into the future. Quartals are the ideal vehicle for this kind of time travel, for they represent both the past (rustic antiquity) and the future (technological progress).

Some theorists and composers have treated the ic-5/7 pentatonic scale as ‘incomplete’ or primitive, but I present compositions, such as John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, that use segmented pentatonics as building blocks for ic-5 cyclic completion. Since pentatonic melodies are commonly accompanied by non-pentatonic harmonies (the so-called “melodic-harmonic divorce”), I propose a system of melodic-harmonic differentiation, as practiced by African-American musicians. I believe that this refusal to succumb to organic unity mimics heterophony, in which the individual stands out from the group.

Vanishingly little in the way of scholarly work has been done on the concept of “indie,” a ubiquitous (albeit nebulous) term used across the world to describe and categorize music and film. But unlike other means of artistic classification, “indie” does not easily correspond to any singular style—rather, indie practitioners long sought to avoid “style” as a manner through which they might be rendered disarmingly legible and demystified. My dissertation, Indie: Transformations of “Independent” Music and Film, 1959-2021, rigorously inspects crucial periods along a timeline ranging from this movement’s imagined, economically “independent” origins in the 1950s, to indie’s eventual transformation into a musical/filmic genre consumed by its stylistic codification in the 2000s. This dissertation accomplishes this by crafting what historian Hayden White describes as an “ironic” historical narrative, as well as by supplementing this account with a blend of other research methodologies such as critical analysis, socio-economic analysis, oral histories, and archival work.

My dissertation operates on the following conceit: from the 1980s through the early 2000s, eschewing signifiers rooted in stylistic deviation from the norm, “indie” practitioners primarily defined themselves by their structural relationship to dominant (or, put colloquially, “mainstream”) culture, thriving in a shadowy space between the amateur and the professional. But the indie phenomenon and its systems of subcultural capital were subsumed by official culture in the twenty-first century when they came to be defined by the rapid growth of indie’s once-subversive “twee” branch, in fact becoming more acceptable to the mainstream than “official culture” itself.

This dissertation examines a group of four musical Passion settings, commissioned by the International Bachakademie Stuttgart to mark the 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s death in 2000. The terms of the commission, titled “Passion 2000,” called for each composer to choose one of the canonic Gospels and write a setting in his or her own language. They were Wolfgang Rihm, German; Sofia Gubaidulina, Russian; Osvaldo Golijov, Spanish; and Tan Dun, English.

I consider these four Passions against the backdrop of two historical turning points: the end of the Cold War and the turn of the millennium. I look at the impact of these turns on the production and reception of new music, considering tensions between the rapid globalization of the post-Cold War period and the simultaneous struggles to renegotiate the terms of local or regional identities. Accordingly, I address issues of nationalism and postnationalism, globalization, and multiculturalism, while also situating the Passions within music-historical lineages and networks of influence. While the end of the Cold War put ideas about the “end of history” into wide circulation, the approach of the millennium also carried eschatological implications, as well as hopes for global, historical redemption from the brutalities of the twentieth century.

This dissertation is one of the first studies to consider the end of the Cold War as a turning point for musical culture, and to address the millennial turn in new music. It is divided into two parts: Post-Cold War and Pre-Millennium, each part addressing two of the Passions. This dissertation brings necessary attention to the pluralism of 1990s new music, and offers an alternative interpretation to the widespread understanding of late twentieth century concert music as reflecting primarily a “postmodern” condition. Instead, I argue that the historical grandeur of the Cold War’s end and the millennial turn created a unique set of conditions in which music-historical narratives were questioned and the boundaries of new music redrawn.

Timbre is crucial to the generation of musical affect and meaning. But despite its well-acknowledged importance, musicology remains largely "tone deaf"--timbre is in the peculiar position of being both vital to ordinary experience and invisible to analysis. In approaching timbre through the lens of embodied cognition, this dissertation aims to loosen the analytical impasse by advancing a flexible and dynamic model for understanding the material and affective dimensions of sound. I explore how timbral reactions and appraisals work in connection with the embodied mind to shape musical experience, particularly in the context of American popular music and jazz. Methodologically situated between the "two cultures" of the humanities and sciences--and drawing on results from original empirical studies using behavioral psychology, cognitive linguistic, and neuroimaging methods--I claim that timbre perception is a motor mimetic process; we covertly mirror the bodily actions implied in the production of timbre when we listen. The larger implication of this finding is that cognition of timbre is a fundamentally social act. The dissertation is concerned, then, with the perceptual, social, and symbolic dynamics of timbre as experienced, and to best exemplify this linkage, I focus on contexts in which "musical" timbres bleed into "noise," both acoustically and epistemologically. As case studies, the dissertation considers musical contexts with visceral, polarized reception histories: the screaming saxophone in mid-1960s free jazz (as exemplified by "late" John Coltrane), and the highly distorted electric guitar and vocal timbres of contemporary extreme heavy metal.

The current, relatively amorphous job description for the music supervisor—the individual generally responsible for overseeing all music-related elements of film and television projects, as well as advertising campaigns, video games, and other forms of audio-visual projects—has shifted since the role’s emergence. What began as mostly an administrative position has become one of the trendiest, most sought after roles in the contemporary entertainment industry. This dissertation, the first monograph-length academic study of music supervision, seeks to map this transition, exploring its complexities, identifying affected industry players, and examining critical issues that have ensued. I draw on methodologies from musicology, ethnomusicology, media studies, popular culture studies, cultural and social theory, and business strategy and management. I also incorporate fieldwork experience, as well as material from interviews I conducted with key individuals working in sync.

Chapter One provides a brief history of the profession and field, which serves as the foundation for an examination of technological, structural, procedural, and relational changes affecting cultural intermediaries and other individuals involved in sync. I argue that hierarchical shifts in the music supervision supply and value chains, as well as the impact of neoliberalism, have given rise to the need for what I call “spry intermediation,” which one-stop music licensing shops can offer, and I propose a multifaceted understanding of the chains’ hierarchical infrastructure to illustrate diffuse power and shared decision-making authority in the culture of sync. Chapter Two offers analysis of descriptive language and musical, financial, and legal trends in contemporary music supervision in order to deepen understanding of the field and its influence on “syncable music.” Chapter Three examines some of the critical issues relevant to the profession, such as power dynamics, creative freedom, compensation and employment, professional ethics, and gender representation, within the context of neoliberal capitalism. Chapter Four explores the past and present function of the Guild of Music Supervisors and related professional organizations in addressing the critical issues presented in previous chapters. Chapter Five offers concluding thoughts on issues in music supervision and implications for further research.

This dissertation investigates musical expressions of temporal alterities in works created by popular music artists, identifying their aesthetic responses as their bodies become ill, disabled, and they become more aware of mortality. I propose a critical, hermeneutic, and theoretical method drawn from Edward Said’s appropriation of Adorno’s expression “late style” that I have designated ill style, a form of creativity within a temporality of illness. Late style is discernable in works produced, paradigmatically, at the end of one’s career in “old age,” but late style may also be understood as an influence on artistic output at any stage of life if the subject is experiencing untimeliness and a disruption in access to the communal understanding of futurity and time, a possible consequence of factors other than age. I contend that late style, accelerated by illness, disrupts Western cultural attempts at ignoring precarious and finite nature of existence; the resulting expressions of lateness ask audiences to do the same. I offer a way in which to think more critically about what scholars consider late style, how it functions in popular music studies and society, and how it intersects with the fields of disability, gender, queer, and critical race studies, and the social sciences.

This work critiques and expands late style as a critical construct, and brings popular music into the lineage of musical traditions where late style has historically been examined. This study focuses on artists for whom late style is contingent upon illness and illness-induced disability, rather than the accepted path of aging and resulting bodily decline. The value of recognizing ill style and the temporality of illness lies in its potential to expand listeners’ understanding of illness as a state inherent to the human condition. If a listener can hear these sounds of illness or suffering in musical works, it helps integrate disability and illness into our concept of normative human experience.

Prior to the 1980s it was uncommon for marketers to incorporate pre-existing popular music into television commercials. But following the rise of MTV as an innovative commercial endeavor and Pepsi-Cola's groundbreaking 1984 "Choice of a New Generation" campaign featuring Michael Jackson, musicians and corporations began to realize the benefits of incorporating new songs into commercials. Once considered taboo by many musicians and fans, television commercials have now become such a lucrative medium for the dissemination of new popular music that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, performing songs in them has become commonplace. Despite the fact that discussions about the use of popular music in commercial culture have proliferated among music critics and trade press publications for three decades, music scholars largely continue to overlook this phenomenon. This dissertation contributes to the small amount of academic literature available on this topic and engages with recent publications by ethno/musicologist Timothy D. Taylor and sociologist Bethany Klein that warn that the convergence of popular music and corporate brands will have detrimental consequences for future of cultural production and reception. I hypothesize that what Taylor has termed as advertising's "conquest of culture" is a result of the industry's attempt at appropriating and reforming musical texts by manipulating their structures and signifiers in commercials to change their meanings and serve branding imperatives. This dissertation focuses on Pepsi's attempts to inscribe itself into music history, using its 2011-12 X Factor commercials as bookends for historicizing the corporation's pioneering transition from jingles to the use of new popular music in its 1980s television commercials. More specifically, the project analyzes the aesthetic effects of rearranging songs to fit branded environments, examining how advertising forges new contexts for familiar songs by focusing on 1980s spots that borrow MTV tropes and "re-present" musical and visual signifiers from the biggest pop stars of the day, Michael Jackson and Madonna. I integrate interdisciplinary methodologies that combine formal musical analyses, historical research, archival work, and ethnographic interviews. This dissertation draws from musicological studies on musical meaning and cultural and social theories about popular culture, music, advertising, and media.