Musicology Commons^™

Exploring The Mediality Of Live And Studio Composition: The Case Of Computer Music, And Its Implications In “Ambivalence Of Density”, Michael Terren

Theses : Honours

This dissertation attempts to apply the communications theory concept of “mediality,” as described by Jonathan Sterne, to the context of music composition for different mediums, namely the media of the live performance and the studio work (the recording, the concrete work). Mediality denotes the complex “web of practice and reference” between different media—how we interact with and perceive media, and how this affects the content of the medium. The mediality of live and studio composition is posited as cross-referential, non-hierarchical and non-dichotomous—a relationship of “dependence and imbrication” rather than antagonistic binaries.

I investigate the mediality of live and studio composition …

A Monumental Mistake: Newly Discovered Letters To Handel Editor Samuel Arnold, Jeremy Barlow, Todd Gilman

Todd Gilman

Argentine Dances (6 Mvts.)

Dan Rager

A Curriculum Guide To Teaching And Discussing: Stomping The Blues (1976) By Albert Murray, Vincent L. Stephens

Vincent L Stephens

The Curriculum Guide is a comprehensive resource for educators seeking to use Albert Murray’s classic reflection on blues and jazz, Stomping the Blues in a classroom setting. The Guide includes summaries of each individual chapter and a listing of critical themes embedded in the chapter, a list of discussion questions, and a supplemental bibliography featuring reviews and essays on Stomping the Blues, and a resource for Murray’s additional writing on the blues genre. The Guide was funded by a grant awarded to scholar Vincent Stephens by Bucknell University's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (CSREG) in the …

The Orpheus Figure: The Voice In Writing, Music And Media, Jason R. D'Aoust

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study traces a historical trajectory of the voice as it encounters the Orpheus figure in writing, music, and other media. Following a critical discussion of Auerbach’s literary figuration, the author questions certain aspects of phonocentrism in relation to opera and texts using the voice for authoritative or rhetorical purposes. Grounded in the prefiguration of opera’s earlier displacement of the singing voice, the understanding of mass media and digital media then developed is critical of theories of immersion in media. The analyses of the series of works and figures (Orpheus, Ossian, and Tristan) in this study lead the author to …

The Halifax Pop Explosion: Music Scenes, Sloan, And The Case For A Halifax Sound, Danielle Hamel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the early 1990s, the Halifax music scene was catapulted into the limelight as Canada's answer to the Seattle grunge scene. Dubbed the Halifax Pop Explosion, the surge of bands that became popular during this time came of age in an already well-established music scene with nurturing local infrastructure. At the forefront of the city's mainstream success, the band Sloan and their peers had developed a particular style of songwriting and performance that led the media and local audiences to believe that a particular 'Halifax Sound' had emerged, a notion that still reverberates in the local music scene. Using the …

Exodus Concerto For Guitar And Chamber Orchestra, Spencer Joel Kappelman

Masters Theses

Exodus is a four-movement composition for solo guitar accompanied by a chamber orchestra. This piece is composed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Master of Music with a concentration in Music Composition from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Exodus was composed during the 2010-2012 academic years.
This paper provides a narrative analysis of Exodus in terms of its musical content, and relationships to other composers of the last century. Similarities to these composers refer to form, orchestration, melody, harmony, rhythm, and meter.

Studying Britten: The Current Landscape Of Published Britten Scholarship, Jonathan Manton

Jonathan Manton

A Bridge Over Troubled Water: Le Tombeau De Couperin, Anne Morris

Musical Offerings

Le tombeau de Couperin was composed during a turbulent time in the life of Ravel, a time when he had been emotionally scarred from the effects of war and had lost both his mother and many of his close friends. This composition may have served as the only friend whom Ravel felt comfortable enough to share with his innermost feelings. Autobiographical in nature, this piece follows the transition from Ravel’s carefully nurtured childhood and youth to serious maturity in his post-war adult life. There is personal emotional depth found in this piece, although at first it may appear somewhat hidden …

Altered But Not Silenced: How Shostakovich Retained His Voice As An Artist Despite The Demands Of A Dictator, Hope R. Strayer

Musical Offerings

Can music that is regulated and restrained by a dictator still be inspired? This question reveals ideology concerning how music should be created and valued. Does outside control restrict artistic integrity and autonomy? Not all composers have been free to write whatever their soul demands. People in authority have held power and control over artistic processes. Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian composer whose work was subjected to the tastes of a tyrannical ruler and Communist party. Though Shostakovich did not compose in an environment that fostered musical exploration, his work should not be mourned but celebrated. Shostakovich was not a …

Three Kings And The Bright Star Of Fame, Emalyn J. Bullis

Musical Offerings

Many phenomena in music history as well as in American history have helped develop and shape the types of music listened to today, but none have been so fresh as looking back to twentieth-century popular music and the several key individuals that “ruled” in this area. These “rulers” were hailed as “kings” firstly as a media ploy, but the American public did nothing but encourage the titles. This is somewhat confusing considering American’s pride in their democratic political system but history shows that in several key American cultural changes the “Kings” crowned in the music sphere are representative of these …

Sonic Peace: An Antithesis To Sonic Warfare, Tatiana Maria Schnitman Espindola

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sonic Peace: An Antithesis to Sonic Warfare explores certain frequencies that have been associated with various healing qualities, and seeks to bridge the sounds of antiquity and modernity. The piece draws on numerology and symbolism and adopts a cross-cultural approach in an effort to advance a cohesive universal healing message. The text featured in the composition is original, except for the use of an ancient Japanese Shinto chant.

Was That A Song?, Donald J. Herzog

Articles

Jazz constantly spins off new possibilities, seizing on fusion with rock, new rhythms from Brazil and then "world music," astringent harmonies and atonal combinations from "new" music or twentieth-century "classical," and more. [...]jazz musicians have been relaxing constraints since the beginning. Piano players might keep "comping" or accompanying the soloists with well-chosen chords, but they might roam free or just stop playing.\n Again you can wonder how much of this was deliberately plotted out before the trio hit the stage, how much developed on the spot.

Pierrots Fâchés Avec La Lune: Debussy, Fauré And Ravel During World War 1, Arun Rao

Dissertations

This dissertation proposes to consider the music of French composers Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel written during the Great War, under tremendous professional, personal and cultural pressures. These pressures are examined largely through these composers’ correspondence and the writings of contemporary critics, composers and artists in the first two chapters; a selection of their output from the war years, in particular their piano works and their chamber music, is the subject of the third chapter. The aim of the dissertation is to reveal certain aspirations common to all three, aspirations that were motivated, dictated even, by the political …

""A Suitable Soloist For My Piano Concerto": Teresa CarreñO As A Promoter Of Edvard Grieg's Music." Notes. 70.1 (2013): 37-58., Anna E. Kijas

Published Works

Teresa Carreño (1853–1917) first performed Edvard Grieg’s (1843– 1907) Pictures from Folk Life, op. 19 [Folkelivsbilleder] and Piano Concerto in A Minor, op. 16, during her tours in the United States in the early 1880s. She continued to perform his works in the United States and abroad through 1914. Previously overlooked correspondence, reviews, and other primary sources, such as concert programs, housed in the Edvard Grieg Collection in the Bergen Offentlige Bibliothek, and the Teresa Carreño Collection in Archives and Special Collections of the Vassar College Libraries, are examined in this article in order to provide fresh …

Performing Jonathan Newman's "Symphony No. 1: My Hands Are A City", Joseph Corey Francis

Dissertations

The purpose of this document is to provide analysis for interpretation of and rehearsal suggestions for Jonathan Newman’s Symphony No. 1: My Hands Are a City (2009). This document serves as the first significant scholarly work on the entire composition and is intended to be a resource for musicians seeking to gain information about the work. Included in the document is a biography of Jonathan Newman, as well as history concerning the commissioning of Symphony No. 1, a formal analysis of the work, and insight to conducting concerns. Information was gathered through formal interviews with Jonathan Newman, Jeff Gershman (Associate …

The Influence Of Plainchant On French Organ Music After The Revolution, David Connolly

Doctoral

The period after the 1789 French Revolution was one of turbulence, musically, socially, culturally and politically. The violence against both people and property meant that the nineteenth century was a time of renewal and regrowth. At all times this was uncertain as numerous political upheavals took place as the French attempted to define their future direction. As with all aspects of culture, organ music experienced a slow regrowth over the course of the long nineteenth century, perhaps being at a particular disadvantage due to its role in the church, an institution which also went through a period of difficulty from …

Redesigning A Performance Practice: Synergising Woodwind Improvisation With Bespoke Software Technology., Seán Mac Erlaine

Doctoral

This research examines how the designing of a new performance practice based on the incorporation of custom digital signal processing software impacts on solo improvised woodwind performance. Through the development of bespoke software, I investigate how these new technologies can be integrated into solo woodwind performance practice. This research presents a new improvised music practice as well as a suite of new software tools and performance techniques. Through a workshop and performance-­‐based research process, a suite of software processors are developed which respond, and are complementary, to a personalised style of improvised performance. This electronic augmentation of the woodwind instrument …

Disruptive Voices In The American Musical Discourse: Comic Song Performance In The American Parlor, 1865-1917, Kevin Steven O'Brien

Masters Theses

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American song sheet industry vastly increased in size. This mass mediated form reached a broad number of consumers, who performed this music in their homes, identified with it, and shaped the new discourse on their identity as they did so. Simultaneously, Americans were re-shaping their cultural conceptions of music, in a process Lawrence Levine chronicled as the emergence of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” distinctions. Performing music in the culturally sacralized space of the parlor was meant to be an edifying experience and a display of genteel, “highbrow” identities. Performing comic songs (comic …

Brundibár: Confronting The Misrepresentation Of Resistance In Theresienstadt, Anna Catherine Greer

Masters Theses

Brundibár, a children’s opera written by Czech composer Hans Krása (1899-1944), routinely appears in Holocaust musical scholarship as a depiction of “thriving” Jewish cultural activity during the Holocaust. First performed clandestinely in a Prague orphanage in 1942, the work was ultimately co-opted by Nazi authorities in Theresienstadt. Under the jurisdiction of the Freizeitgestaltung (Leisure Time Activities), the opera came under control of the camp administration and became part of several propaganda schemes, including the 1944 Nazi propaganda film, Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives a City to the Jews). In preparation for the International Red …