Date of Award
5-2024
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Music (MM)
Department
Music
First Advisor
Frank Felice
Second Advisor
Michael Schelle
Third Advisor
Nicholas Johnson
Abstract
A Zipfian Distribution of Sets in Honor of the James Webb Space Telescope is a trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano. The piece aims to celebrate the accomplishments of several international teams responsible for the completion of the JWST, as well as honor the spirit of human space exploration as it works to reveal the universe to us. Each movement is titled after one of the images that NASA released in July 2022. The first is The First Deepfield which captures the broad expanse of space full of speckled galaxies twisting under the effects of gravitational lensing. The second is The Pillars of Creation, whose hand-shaped gas cloud nebula is home to a nursery of new stars and solar systems forming under intense heat and pressure. The piece is structured around the usage of eight pitch-class sets and their relative transpositions and inversions. A specific linguistics law called Zipf’s Law is utilized to determine how many times each set appears in the piece overall. The metaphorical significance of this comes from aligning the usage of sets to the fundamental laws of the universe, and Zipf’s law to humanity as a whole, thus capturing the essence of human space exploration within the very structure of the work.
Recommended Citation
Blaisdell, Timothy D., "A Zipfian Distribution of Sets in Honor of the James Webb Space Telescope" (2024). Music Graduate Theses. 8.
https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/music_grtheses/8