This thesis brings together writings of the critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno, and asks questions about the nature of mechanics and robotics within contemporary music. This is primarily situated in a standing collaboration I have with the composer and instrument-inventor Bryan Jacobs, in which we have developed a series of mechanical clarinets. Through readings of Adorno's Philosophy of New Music, Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait, The Form of the Phonograph, and Vers un musique informelle, I explore what the act of composing is with regards to these instruments, and how formerly a singular locus of composition has become articulated across multiple material locations. I explore different aspects of musical "writing" within the ecology of these instruments and their performing practice, I unpack the implications of the reckoning between a subjective breath and mechanical operation, and a subsequent antinomy of organic/mechanic that these instruments and the emergent vocabulary around these instruments imply. This thesis closes with two compositions of my own, that through rigorous and simple processes actuated over the course of three hours, ask in their own right questions about the human body mediated through a compositional mechanics.

This dissertation is in two parts: a detailed examination of the life, working processes, and cultural influences of Teiji Ito, and the analysis of a live film soundtrack performance project aiming to recreate these works on-stage together with 16mm film projection. The information in this dissertation was drawn from, among other sources, an extensive series of interviews with Teiji Ito’s surviving friends and family, and careful examination of the Teiji Ito Archives, which are housed at the New York Public Library.

This dissertation is in three parts: the audio recording of a new revised version of Horatiu Radulescu's Capricorn's Nostalgic Crickets (for seven identical woodwinds); an overview of Radulescu's compositional style through the analysis of both his 1974 composition treatise / booklet Sound Plasma - Music of the Future Sign and the work-cycle Fountains of My Sky; and a detailed discussion of the revision process by which I arrived at my new version of Capricorn.

Here I present a portfolio of three projects completed during my degree at UCSD. In "Timbre: Metaphors, Negatives, and Catch-alls" I provide an overview of the development of an aesthetic discussion of timbre in the 18th and 19th centuries. Next, in "Multiphonic Production on the Clarinet," I present a project detailing the acoustic underpinnings of playing multiple pitches simultaneously on the clarinet and practical pedagogical uses for exercises designed to assist in playing them. Finally I present the content and impetus of a long term performance project in which I interpreted several pages of Cornelius Cardew's epic graphic score Treatise.

Coping Mechanisms is a one act chamber opera by Bonnie Lander commissioned by Rhymes With Opera in 2015 for their 2017 spring main stage production. The piece is written specifically for the Rhymes With Opera singers, including Lander, Elisabeth Halliday, and Robert Maril with the intent of teaching Halliday and Maril how to perform free improvisation. Two experiments were being explored from this work: 1) how does one combine free improvisation with classical opera 2) how does one teach opera singers to improvise?

These two questions marked the beginning of a two year workshopping process that culminated with the premier of this eerie, abstract, and engaging opera. This paper describes the narrative and conceptual structures that gave this piece shape, the style of improvisation that resulted, as well as information about the process and success of the piece.

This dissertation is a biography of the California E.A.R. Unit (1981-2012), a contemporary music ensemble founded by graduate students at the California Institute of the Arts. Arguably one of the first of its kind in Los Angeles, the EAR Unit gained international recognition for its eclectic programming and versatility in a wide range of avant-garde styles. I examine its career in the context of expanding institutional support for contemporary music in Los Angeles throughout the 1980s, as well as increased national focus on composition in academia. To begin, I show that CalArts made the EAR Unit’s cohort the central focus of its new graduate curriculum in contemporary music, offering the students unlimited access to dozens of internationally recognized composers at the yearly Contemporary Music Festivals. My writing follows the EAR Unit through its other institutional affiliations, which included the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Monday Evening Concerts, Music in Motion, and the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Combining interviews and archival research, this biography highlights strategies musicians used to navigate the growing infrastructure for contemporary classical concert music on an increasingly globalized stage. I attend to the texture of these experiences, and how this type of institutionalized creative work was both exciting and motivating. In doing so, I offer biography as a powerful tool for understanding the historical precursors to modern iterations of the contemporary music ensemble.