Digital Commons Network^™

Adapting J.S. Bach's Solo Violin Sonatas And Partitas For The Marimba: Broken Chord And Arpeggio Performance Practices, Jason Eugene Mathena

Dissertations

This purpose of this study is to provide the keyboard percussionist with information and examples for breaking chords and properly executing arpeggio passages in J. S. Bach’s solo violin Sonatas and Partitas. Primary sources included Baroque treatises on performance practice and recent scholarship of the past one hundred years. Various editions of the Sonatas and Partitas were surveyed for this document but, in the end, only Bach’s autograph manuscript and Gunther Hausswald’s critical edition were used for the musical examples as well as the marimba transcriptions included in appendices.

Topics covered are appropriate places to break chords and the various …

Werner Jaegerhuber's “Messe Folklorique Haitïenne”: A Conductor's Guide, Lauren Michelle Brandon Lindsey

Dissertations

Werner Jaegerhuber (1900-1953), a composer and leading ethnographer from Haiti, lived a life and career committed to bringing the folk music of Haiti to international recognition. His most significant work, Messe Folklorique Haïtienne, the background leading to its composition, performance of the work and a conductor’s analysis is the focus of this study. The folk music of Haiti consists primarily of Vodou melodies which are performed in Vodou ceremonies. Haiti’s long history of colonization, slavery, chronic economic struggle, African roots, and Catholic influence all play unique, but significant roles in the life of Werner Jaegerhuber and his passionate study. …

What Makes Finzi Finzi? The Convergence Of Style And Struggle In The Life Of Gerald Finzi And In His Set Before And After Summer, Op. 16, Trevor Dangerfield Smith

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold: to discuss the nationalistic characteristics in Gerald Finzi’s life and in his mature compositional style, and to discuss both the beliefs he held and the struggles he faced during his life, and how these themes are integrated into his work for voice and piano Before and after Summer, op. 16.

Before and after Summer was not conceived as a cycle, but its songs are tied together by similar poetic themes and emotional impact, so despite the fact they were composed as individual entities they form a coherent collection from beginning to end. …

The Life And Music Of Brian Israel With An Emphasis On His Music For Saxophone, David James Wozniak

Dissertations

Brian Israel (1951-1986), American composer and pianist from New York City, left a wealth of music that has been largely ignored by the musical community. Included in his collection of nearly 200 works are six compositions that prominently feature the saxophone. Composed during the last six years of the composer’s life, Israel’s music for the saxophone represents a cross-section of his larger oeuvre, demonstrating stylistic elements present in nearly all of his music, including contrapuntal textures, the creative use of form, and humor. Furthermore, these saxophone works help illustrate Brian Israel as the epitome of the post-modern composer. The following …

Moral Performances: Melodrama And Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Jeffrey Taylor Pusch

Dissertations

Despite a high number of ticket sales, theater reviews, and innumerable letters and diary entries detailing trips to the theater, the stereotype that theater in nineteenth-century America was almost culturally invisible continued well into the twentieth century. Indeed, a scan of anthologies of American literature fails to yield any examples of nineteenth-century drama, even though figures like Henry James were also theater critics and playwrights. Just as it did in American life, theater exhibits a strong presence in the literature of the time. Considering theater’s pervasiveness, this dissertation seeks to restore it to its proper place in our study of …

Recasting Genre In Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays, Christina Ilona Hunter

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates Tennessee Williams’s earliest full-length plays, also known as the apprentice plays—Candles to the Sun, Fugitive Kind, Not About Nightingales, Spring Storm, and Stairs to the Roof—by comparing, contrasting and contextualizing them in relation to Daniel Chandler’s generic criteria of drama; namely, narrative, characterization, setting, topics, iconography, and staging techniques. The present study also draws upon an extensive body of scholarship pertaining to genre theory, Williams’s cultural contemporaries, and the historical and psychological backdrop of Depression-era America. In these early plays, Williams diverged sharply from the dramatic generic conventions of his day, manipulating them in new …