Composing Millennial Nostalgia: Microtonal Techniques as Tools to Express a Twenty-first Century Malady in Tonal Music

This portfolio consists of seven musical works ranging in scope from solo to orchestral, with a commentary examining how the pieces express the concept of millennial nostalgia. The commentary details specific microtonal techniques used in a tonal context—microtonal voice-leading, aleatoric microtonality, microtonal bending, and harmonic-series microtonality. As a whole, the portfolio demonstrates that millennial nostalgia is a significant and complex phenomenon, and that this can be sensitively reflected in musical composition.