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Abstract
Four “Pop Songs” is a suite of acousmatic musical works which utilizes elements of musical process inspired by similar compositional techniques in the work of Steve Reich and Hans Abrahamsen. This document seeks to investigate the ways that Four “Pop Songs” borrows and adapts elements of process from the work of these two composers, using Part 1 of Drumming by Reich and Schnee by Abrahamsen as representative examples of these techniques. Abrahamsen’s approach to canon is analyzed in each movement of Schnee, along with an analysis of the ways that musical symmetry appears throughout the work. Reich’s approach to phasing and additive process in Part 1 of Drumming is analyzed, followed by a look at the ways that these processes inform the overall development of the movement. Following this, the process elements in Four “Pop Songs” are analyzed using the same methods previously applied to Reich and Abrahamsen. Finally, analytical frameworks from Joseph Straus and Kevin Korsyn—which adapt Harold Bloom’s theory of the “Anxiety of Influence” for the analysis of music—are applied to Four “Pop Songs” in order to investigate the ways that its use of musical process constitutes a Bloomian “misreading” of the two previous works. Broadly speaking, this document serves as a case study for reflexive analysis of musical influence in a composer’s own work.