Refereed Journal Articles by Sarah Marlowe
Dreams Realized: Expression and Polystylism in the Art Song Settings of Langston Hughes's "Dream Variation" by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds
Music Theory Online, 2025
This paper presents a side-by-side comparison of Florence Price’s (1887–1953) and Margaret Bonds’... more This paper presents a side-by-side comparison of Florence Price’s (1887–1953) and Margaret Bonds’s (1913–1972) settings of Langston Hughes’s (1902–1967) poem, “Dream Variation.” Both composers completed advanced degrees in music and had remarkable careers in performance and composition despite facing numerous race- and gender-based social barriers. Crossing paths with many notable artists, writers, and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance and later the Chicago Renaissance, they both knew Langston Hughes personally and incorporated his texts into many of their art-song settings. Their settings of “Dream Variation” combine elements from their classical compositional training with characteristic features of African American musical traditions. Both songs, in turn, highlight Hughes’s themes of toil and rest, day and night, and dreams of freedom and repose through the use of Signifyin’. As analysis reveals, the songs’ key-area associations, pitch collections, and harmonies, as well as alterations of the original text, reflect the composers’ expressive formal and phrase-structural choices for enhancing the poem’s message.
"Resolving Tensions between Outer Form and Inner Form in Fugue: A Comparative Analysis of J. S. Bach’s Fugue in D minor (WTC I)" https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.3/mto.20.26.3.marlowe.html
Music Theory Online 26 (3), 2020
Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, 2019
BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 49/2, 2018
s pedagogical legacy has been widely discussed and examined. 1 What is worthy of further examinat... more s pedagogical legacy has been widely discussed and examined. 1 What is worthy of further examination is how his instructional methods are relevant to current thinking in higher education, particularly in the undergraduate music theory classroom. At least two aspects of Bach's teaching are still applicable today. First, Bach taught new concepts through the study of complete compositions, aligning with current trends toward teaching directly from repertoire over extensive practice with acontextual exercises. 2 Second, Bach presented new material in a systematic fashion, gradually progressing from simple to more complex concepts. 3 Efforts to reconstruct Bach's practices as a teacher will necessarily require some modification, since there is not a direct correlation between what Bach probably taught in his private I would like to thank Christina Fuhrmann, Philip Stoecker, and the anonymous reviewers, for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.
Theory & Practice, 2014
William Renwick’s subject-answer paradigms provide an important means of examining the r... more William Renwick’s subject-answer paradigms provide an important means of examining the role linear progressions play within fugal structures and have significant theoretical and pedagogical value. However, his paradigms raise important theoretical issues when one applies them in analysis, particularly where tonal answers are involved. The paper focuses on Renwick’s paradigms 1 and 2a, as they are the most frequently occurring paradigms in J.S. Bach’s fugues and both require tonal answers. An in-depth discussion of Paradigm 1 serves to illustrate the three main analytical problems with his paradigms: first, isolating the opening subject-answer statements de-emphasizes the answer’s prolongational function in the fugal exposition; second, the paradigms are not always consistently applied between different structural levels; and third, the tonal answer paradigms do not adequately reflect those answers’ resemblance to their subjects. Two revised paradigms are then introduced that offer more middleground specificity, stronger emphasis on the answer’s function within the fugal exposition, and more accurate representation of the foreground similarities between subjects and tonal answers. These new paradigms are intended to serve as a model, which can then in principle be applied to Renwick’s other paradigms as well.
Book Chapters by Sarah Marlowe
Integrating Schenkerian Concepts with the Undergraduate Theory Curriculum
The Norton Guide to Teaching Music Theory, edited by Rachel Lumsden and Jeffrey Swinkin. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018
Invited Articles by Sarah Marlowe
Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, 2016
Conference Presentations by Sarah Marlowe
Lofthouse, Charity and Sarah Marlowe."Pushing the Boundaries: Mismatch and Overlap in Shostakovich's 'Classical' Structures" Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) Session, Society for Music Theory (SMT) Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, November 2016.
"A Schenkerian View of Shostakovich's 'Modal-Tonal' Language." AMS/SMT Rocky Mountain and SEM Southwestern Regional Conference, April 22–23, 2016.
"Harmonic Ambiguity as Narrative in J.S. Bach's Fugue in D major (WTC II)." Keele Music Analysis Conference, July 8–10, 2015.
"On the Subject of Tonal Answers: A Closer Look at William Renwick's Paradigms." Music Theory Society of New York State, April 6–7, 2013.
Papers by Sarah Marlowe
Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 2013
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Refereed Journal Articles by Sarah Marlowe
Book Chapters by Sarah Marlowe
Invited Articles by Sarah Marlowe
Conference Presentations by Sarah Marlowe
Papers by Sarah Marlowe