2018 Program

South Central Society for Music Theory Conference
March 23–24, 2018

University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, Mississippi

All papers, refreshments, and registrations will take place in the Fine Arts building (Marsh Hall).


FRIDAY, MARCH 23


8:00-9:00 a.m. Registration (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)

9:00 a.m. Opening Remarks

Session 1 (9:15-10:15 a.m.) Learning Methods (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)
Wesley Bradford, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, chair

  • The Effectiveness of the Urlinie in First-Semester Melodic-Dictation Drills Through Melodic Fluency
    Alexander Amato (Stephen F. Austin State University)

  • Machine Learning Models of Isolated Pitch Sets
    Lewis Jeter (Florida State University)

10:15-10:30 a.m. Coffee Break

Session 2 (10:30-11:30 a.m.) Corpus Studies (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)
Thomas Robinson, University of Alabama, chair

  • Expressive Timing and its Histories
    Daniel Shanahan (Louisiana State University) and Stephen Ai (Williams College)

  • A Corpus Analysis of Harmony in Country Music
    Trevor deClercq (Middle Tennessee State University)

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Lunch Break (nearby restaurants listed in conference packet)

Session 3 (1:30-3:00 p.m.) Concurrent Sessions

Popular Music (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)
Robert Komaniecki, Indiana University, chair

  • Digital Sampling, Signifyin’, and Style in the Music of DJ Screw
    John Mattessich (Indiana University)

  • “Where Do We Go Now?”: Harmonic Departure and Return in the Guitar Solos of Guns N’ Roses
    Zachary Cairns (University of Missouri-St. Louis)

  • Root Interval Schemas in Rock Music
    Jacob Gran (Louisiana State University) and David John Baker (Louisiana State University)

Structures and Fragments (Fine Arts Building–Room 214)
Joe Brumbeloe, University of Southern Mississippi, chair

  • Illumination of a Musical Ideogram in Dallapiccola’s “Fregi”
    Joe Argentino (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

  • Ferneyhough’s “Fragment”: Silence in the Second String Quartet (1980)
    Anna Rose Nelson (University of Michigan)

  • Formal Function in Electroacoustic Music: A Spectromorphological Approach
    Andrew Selle (Florida State University)

3:00-3:15 p.m. Break

Session 4 (3:15-3:45 p.m.) Beyond the Score (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)
Jeff Yunek, Kennesaw State University, chair

  • Changing the Understanding of Robert Schumann’s Psyche: A Reintroduction to Florestan and Eusebius
    Andrew Perkins (University of Kentucky)

Session 5 (3:45-4:45 p.m.) Meaningful Music (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)
Jeremy Orosz, University of Memphis, chair

  • “As If with Lightning Bolts”: The Ombra and Tempesta in Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten
    Jessica Narum (Baldwin Wallace University, Conservatory of Music)
  • The Vader System, or, the Evil in the Imperial March
    Miklós Veszprémi (Yale University)

4:45-5:00 p.m. Break

Short Piano Recital: (5:00-5:30pm) Miklós Veszprémi (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)

  • Solo piano arrangements of Interstellar and Star Wars

SATURDAY, MARCH 24


Graduate Student Workshop (9:00 am – 11:00)
“Theorizing Categorically: Film Music and Beyond” (Fine Arts Building, Room 214)
Scott Murphy (Professor of Music Theory, University of Kansas)

9:00 a.m. – 9:30 Coffee Reception

Session 6 (9:30-11 a.m.) Form (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)
Angela Ripley, University of Alabama, chair

  • A Minor Diversion: Post-Medial Caesura Insertions in Early Classical Sonata Forms
    Rebecca Long (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

  • Exploring the IAC as Terminal Cadence: Melodic Deferral and Cadential Function in Selected Late Classical Sonata-Form Movements
    James MacKay (Loyola University, New Orleans)

  • Rachmaninoff’s Nostalgic “Second” Movement of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
    Gillian Robertson (University of North Texas)

11 a.m.-11:15 a.m. Coffee Break

11:15 a.m.-12:15 a.m. Keynote: Different Theory for Diverse Musicians (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)
Daniel Harrison (Allen Forte Professor of Music Theory, Yale University)

12:15-12:30 p.m. Break

12:30-1:30 p.m. SCSMT Business Meeting (Intermezzo at Woods Gallery)