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Date Available
3-25-2026
Year of Publication
2026
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College
Fine Arts
Department/School/Program
Music
Faculty
Michael Baker
Faculty
Martina Vasil
Abstract
In this thesis, I apply a multifaceted analytical approach to examine a niche category of music called calendar music. In chapter one, I discuss Gregor Joseph Werner’s composition, the New and Very Curious Musical Calendar, and specifically address the minuets found within this work. Werner composes irregular measure groupings in his binary minuets and did so to represent the number of hours in day and night. This irregularity of measure groupings might superficially suggest that Werner’s pieces are stylized minuets only, unintended to accompany physical dancing and far removed from any actual choreographic influence of embodied performance. Werner, however, manipulates the metric organization in a way that unexpectedly aligns with eighteenth-century minuet dance practice. In this chapter, I look closely at the relationship between phrase structure and hypermeter, known as phrase rhythm, and overlay the dance steps onto my analysis, revealing that the phrase rhythm of the dance and the music intertwine. In chapter two, I focus on the pictorialism of calendar music. I draw upon the work of semiotic music theorists, specifically Ratner, Monelle, Allanbrook, Agawu, and Hatten, to form a theoretical framework that I apply to select movements found within calendar pieces written by Werner and Vivaldi. I compare the treatment of certain months and explore how these two composers draw upon similar ideas to portray the given month musically. I argue that when musical topics are used to create the “sound” of a specific month, these topics are often combined to create a trope of that month.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.21
Archival?
Archival
Recommended Citation
Shaw, Braden, "Structuring the Musical Year: Dance, Topic, and Semiosis in Eighteenth-Century Calendar Music" (2026). Theses and Dissertations--Music. 289.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/music_etds/289
