Music

In its Honors Program the Music Department awards Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors to student research projects. The projects listed below have been defended successfully, and a copy of the thesis deposited in Swem Library.

Key:

• Student, "Thesis" (Honors level)
  Committee Chair + Other Committee Members

2012-13

• Taylor Ann Ashlock, "New Music to the Very Ears of God: Heloise the Composer" (High Honors) 
  Thomas Payne + James Armstrong, George Greenia, Monica Potkay
• Fiona Agnes Balestrieri, "Searching for a Voice in Bongo-land: Bongo Fleva Music and the Global Imagination in Neoliberal Tanzania" (Highest Honors) 
  Anne Rasmussen + Max Katz, Brad Weiss, Jonathan Glasser
• Kevin Daniel Deisz, "Musically Understanding the Emotional Content of Speech" (High Honors)
  Greg Bowers + Timothy Mauthe, Paul Bhasin, Evgenia Smirni
• Patrick Connor Benedict Dittamo, "The Harrowing of Hell, a Paschal Oratorio" (High Honors) 
  Brian Hulse + Thomas Payne, Monica Brzezinski
• Matthew Frerking Reese, "Dvorak and James: Pragmatism and the Music of America's Fin de Siecle" (High Honors) 
  James Armstrong + Tuska Benes, Chandos Brown, Katherine Preston 

2010-11

• Jean-Paul Wallace, "Study in Microtonality and Lutherie" (Honors)
  Sophia Serghi + Ruth Griffioen, J.C. Poutsma, Gene Tracy
• David Witkowsky, "An Experimental Analysis of the Role of Harmony in Musical Memory and the Categorization of Genre" (High Honors)
  Greg Bowers + Brian Hulse, Gayle Murchison, Peter Vishton

2009-10

• No Honors students this year.

2008-09

• Jacob Charron, "'Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours': How Music and Musicians Propelled Barack Obama to the Presidency in 2008" (Highest Honors)
  Anne Rasmussen + Brian Hulse, Arthur Knight
• Michael Johnson, " 'The Fall of the House of Usher': Making the Muscial" (High Honors)
  Sophia Serghi + Greg Bowers, Nancy Schoenberger
• Daniel Siepmann, "The Ethereal System: Ambience as a New Musical Identity" (High Honors)
  Brian Hulse + Sophia Serghi, Rob Leventhal
  

2007-08

• Olivia Rose Lucas, "Creating Time: Rhythmic Processes and Metrical Forming in Schoenberg's Opus 22" (High Honors)
  Brian Hulse + James Armstrong, Jamie Bartlett, Rob Leventhal

2006-07

• Drew VanDyke Colby, "In the Footsteps of Nathaniel Dett: Composing An American Mass, An Original Composition Based on African-American Spirituals" (High Honors)
• John Richard Muniz, "Yin-Yang for 'Pierrot plus percussion'" (Highest Honors)
  Sophia Serghi + Thomas Payne, Chris Bailey, Kevin Vose
• Laura Elizabeth Smith, "Meghrebi Music Culture in Southern Spain: Nostalgia, Conflict, and Exchange" (High Honors)
  Anne Rasmussen + Tom Payne, George Greenia, Francie Cate-Arries

2005-06

• Cong (Tony) Sun, "Four Chinese Music Demigods and Chinese Romanticism of the Twentieth Century" (High Honors)
  Anne Rasmussen and Sophia Serghi + Christine Niehaus, Yanfang Tang

2004-05

• Derek Power
  James Armstrong + Sophia Serghi, Julie Galambush
• Bryan Wright
  Katherine Preston + Chris Scales, Anne Rasmussen, John Morreall