Publications of Nicholas Stoia
%% Books
@book{fds355130,
Author = {Stoia, N},
Title = {Sweet thing: The history and musical structure of a shared
american vernacular form},
Pages = {1-266},
Publisher = {Oxford University Press, USA},
Year = {2021},
Month = {January},
ISBN = {9780190881993},
Abstract = {Sweet Thing: The History and Musical Structure of a Shared
American Vernacular Form is a historical and analytical
study of one of the most productive and enduring shared
musical resources in North American vernacular music. Many
of us learn the form as children, when we sing "If you're
happy and you know it clap your hands," and we hear it
frequently in popular music, but usually without realizing
that this poetic and rhythmic pattern has been penetrating
the minds of musicians and listeners for centuries. The
antecedents of the form date back to sixteenth-century
Scotland and England, and appear in seventeenth-century
English popular music; eighteenth-century English and
American broadside balladry; nineteenth-century American
folk hymnody, popular song, gospel hymnody, and ragtime; and
American folk repertoire collected in the early twentieth
century. It continued to generate many songs in early
twentieth-century popular genres, including blues, country,
and gospel music, through which it entered into many postwar
popular genres like rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul,
country pop, the folk revival, and rock music. This book
offers the most comprehensive examination to date of the
centuries-long history of the scheme, and defines its
musical parameters in twentieth-century popular
music.},
Doi = {10.1093/oso/9780190881979.001.0001},
Key = {fds355130}
}
%% Articles
@article{fds355120,
Author = {Stoia, N},
Title = {Blues Lyric Formulas in Early Country Music, Rhythm and
Blues, and Rock and Roll},
Journal = {Music Theory Online},
Volume = {26},
Number = {4},
Publisher = {Society for Music Theory},
Year = {2020},
Month = {December},
Abstract = {<jats:p>This article briefly recounts recent work
identifying the most common lyric formulas in early blues
and then demonstrates the prevalence of these formulas in
early country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll.
The study shows how the preference for certain formulas in
prewar country music—like the preference for the same
formulas in prewar blues—reflects the social instability
of the time, and how the de-emphasis of these same formulas
in rhythm and blues and rock and roll reflects the relative
affluence of the early postwar period. This shift in textual
content is the lyrical counterpart to the electrification,
urbanization, and growing formal complexity that mark the
transformation of prewar blues and country music into
postwar rhythm and blues and rock and roll.</jats:p>},
Doi = {10.30535/mto.26.4.8},
Key = {fds355120}
}
@article{fds349052,
Author = {Stoia, N},
Title = {The Tour-of-Keys Model and the Prolongational Structure in
Sonata-Form Movements by Haydn and Mozart},
Journal = {Journal of Schenkerian Studies},
Volume = {12},
Pages = {79-123},
Year = {2019},
Key = {fds349052}
}
@article{fds323612,
Author = {Stoia, N and Adams, K and Drakulich, K},
Title = {Rap Lyrics as Evidence: What Can Music Theory Tell
Us?},
Journal = {Race and Justice},
Year = {2017},
Month = {January},
Abstract = {Recent scholarship has shed light on the troubling use of
rap lyrics in criminal trials. Prosecutors have interpreted
defendants’ rap lyrics as accurate descriptions of past
behavior or in some cases as real threats of violence. There
are at least two problems with this practice: One concerns
the interpretation of art in a legalistic context and the
second involves the targeting of rap over other genres and
the role of racism therein. The goal of the present work is
translational, to demonstrate the relevance of music
scholarship on this topic to criminologists and legal
experts. We highlight the usage of lyric formulas, stock
lyrical topics understood by musicians and their audiences,
many of which make sense only in the context of a given
genre. The popularity of particular lyric formulas at
particular times appears connected to contemporaneous social
conditions. In African American music, these formulas have a
long history, from blues, through rock and roll, to
contemporary rap music. The work illustrates this through
textual analyses of lyrics identifying common formulas and
connecting them to relevant social factors, in order to
demonstrate that fictionalized accounts of violence form the
stock-in-trade of rap and should not be interpreted
literally.},
Key = {fds323612}
}
@article{fds303565,
Author = {Stoia, N},
Title = {Triple Counterpoint and Six-Four Chords in J.S. Bach’s
Sinfonia in F Minor},
Journal = {Music Analysis},
Volume = {34},
Number = {3},
Pages = {305-334},
Publisher = {WILEY},
Year = {2015},
Month = {October},
Doi = {10.1111/musa.12041},
Key = {fds303565}
}
@article{fds303564,
Author = {Stoia, N},
Title = {The Common Stock of Schemes in Early Blues and Country
Music},
Journal = {Music Theory Spectrum},
Volume = {35},
Number = {2},
Pages = {194-234},
Publisher = {Oxford University Press (OUP)},
Year = {2013},
Doi = {10.1525/mts.2013.35.2.194},
Key = {fds303564}
}
@article{fds303563,
Author = {Stoia, N},
Title = {Mode, Harmony, and Dissonance Treatment in American Folk and
Popular Music, c. 1920-1945},
Journal = {Music Theory Online},
Volume = {16},
Number = {3},
Publisher = {Society for Music Theory},
Year = {2010},
Month = {August},
Abstract = {In American folk and popular music, dissonance frequently
functions in ways that cannot be explained by conventional
tonal theory. Two types of dissonance—the dropping and
hanging thirds—function outside of classical norms, and
within the framework of a mode built around the tonic triad
that either transposes or remains in place with changes of
harmony. The interaction between the mode and harmony
influences the large-scale structure of a strophe or other
section and the perception of its tension and
resolution.},
Key = {fds303563}
}