Digital Commons Network^™

Horned & Hidden Child: The Minotaur & Modern Opera, Mikeila Ashley Mcqueston

Masters Theses

Picture a world in which stories never die. Just down the street is the Halfway House for the Mythically Challenged, where fairytale creatures learn how to prepare for job-interviews. This is the world of Pasiphae, a beautiful sorceress, queen, and former wife of the ancient King Minos. After millennia on her own, she enlists the help of her Greek Chorus to rescue her children from their respective prisons – first Ariadne from the island Naxos, and now the Minotaur from Daedalus’ labyrinth. Horned & Hidden Child is a contemporary opera with music by Mikeila McQueston and libretto by Nicole Yackley. …

An Exploration Of Topical Interaction In Symphony For Wind Band, Paul Royse

Masters Theses

Symphony for Wind Band is a single-movement tonal piece for wind band. It features four overarching sections with numerous changes in key, meter, tempo, and mood. The juxtapositions and contrasts of mood reflect a narrative conflict between two music topics: the pastoral and the city. Each of these topics possess musical signifiers present in the piece as well as extra-musical associations that add levels of significance to a narrative interpretation.

This paper will outline my reasons for composing for wind band and present a topical analysis of the piece. This analysis will include hermeneutic interpretations based on how the topics …

Pinocchio: An Opera In Two Acts, Aaron Lee Hunt

Masters Theses

Pinocchio: An Opera in Two Acts is a work composed for a minimum of ten singers and athirteen piece orchestra (piano reduction available). It consists of two acts, split into a total of nine scenes, lasting approximately seventy minutes in length, before intermission and scene changes. The opera was commissioned by VolOpera, the current undergraduate opera program, at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as well as serving for partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Music Degree with a concentration in Composition from the university. The subject matter of the work is an interpretation of Carlo Collodi’s famous …

Persona, Print, And Propaganda: Orlando Di Lasso And Constructions Of Self In Counter-Reformation Bavaria, Tara Leigh Jordan

Masters Theses

Musicians often regard Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594) as Giovanni de Palestrina’s lesser-known, northern contemporary, with Palestrina standing as the pinnacle of Counter-Reformation sacred music in the current musicological canon. However, this conception of Lasso does not align with his reputation during his own time, where he stood as the most popular and cosmopolitan composer in Europe. In order to cultivate this reputation, Lasso exercised personal agency over his image as represented within his compositions and print publications, fashioning himself into a versatile and widely appealing musician that composed in every genre of both sacred and secular music. However, Lasso simultaneously …

Music And The Monster: Sounding Fear And Mental Illness In Criminal Minds, Andrew James Borecky

Masters Theses

In the post 9/11 world, American media has harnessed social anxieties concerning violence through the negative and antagonistic depiction of social groups seen as the “Other.” During this process, these social groups have become both marginalized and stigmatized. In the contemporary wake of mass violence and a growing public health crisis, mental illness has emerged at the forefront of political debate. Television and film media continually stigmatize representations of mental illness through graphic images enhanced by the strategic uses of music to invoke horror and disgust. Since 2006, Criminal Minds has successfully navigated the post-9/11 media by providing narratives that …

"At First The Attempt To Remember, And Then Remembrance Itself:" A Phenomenological Study Of Alfred Schnittke's Piano Quartet, Harry Lee Ward

Masters Theses

Phenomenology, in its etymological sense, is the activity of giving an account of the way things appear. Thus, a phenomenology of time attempts to account for the way things appear to us as temporal or how we experience time. Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quartet lends itself well to phenomenological analysis due to the anachronistic placement of Gustav Mahler’s unfinished, G-minor scherzo sketch into the subjective, intentional realm of time-consciousness. Schnittke’s meticulous manipulation of Mahler’s theme intentionally creates multi-dimensional objects in time and sound that suggest both small- and large-scale circular-patterns of memory, a musical epitaph for both Mahler and himself.In order …

Extemporizing Pippi, Experimenting Spunk: Community, Temporality, And The Politics Of Free Improvisation, Benjamin Alan Oyler

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the music of the Oslo-based experimental ensemble SPUNK. Maja S.K. Ratkje, Kristin Andersen, Lene Grenager, and Hild Sofie Tafjord have operated at the juncture of site-specific conceptual art and experimentalism since the early 1990s, recording and releasing much of their work for Norway’s Rune Grammofon label. Employing voice, electronics, and acoustic instrumentation in a free improvisational style, the group’s music demonstrates a robust and varied engagement with a range of experimental and avant-garde traditions.

Drawing from ethnographic, theoretical, and historical methodologies, as well as my own experiences as a free improvisor and listener, I situate SPUNK’s work …

Paths Of Friction: Kvæðamannafélagið, Geography And Identity In 21st-Century Iceland, Konstantine A. Vlasis

Masters Theses

Originating in the 14th century, rímur continues to remain a significant tradition in Iceland. Rímur melodies, together with the texts of Icelandic Edda and Saga poetry, were the main form of household entertainment in Iceland for almost six centuries until modern, global technologies cultivated new interests. In the early 20th century, rímur enthusiasts gathered together to form the Iðunn Society of Intoners and Versifiers in Reykjavík, to preserve the singing traditions of their ancestors. Since then, numerous other societies have organized, many within the past decade. In this way, intoning societies have become a medium through which a national Icelandic …

“Get Your Geek On”: Online And Offline Representations Of Audiotopia Within The Geekycon Community, Sarah Frances Holder

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the musical community of GeekyCon, a convention centered around popular media, such as Harry Potter, Broadway, and Disney. The GeekyCon community results from the connection between the unofficial convention Facebook group and the yearly physical event. This interconnectivity allows both the live and mediated space of GeekyCon to function as a heterotopia, a concept first conceived by Foucault (1967) as a separate space outside of the dominant society in which ideas and identities can be freely explored. Through ethnographic research, including participant observation as well as interviews, I present the music of GeekyCon as an audiotopia, a …

Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg

Masters Theses

Standup comedy actively performs and engages with constructions of self and social identity, especially in terms of ethnic difference and the negotiation of American race relations. Musical comedy, wherein standup comedians perform song onstage, represents one facet of this expression that configures musical texts and expectations in the service of cultural observation and critique. Bo Burnham and Reggie Watts characterize two disparate approaches to the practice based on their aesthetic tastes, existential anxieties, and racial experiences. The two present their respective identities onstage in relation to a changing American political landscape of the early 21st century that has seen widespread …

A Proposal For The Inclusion Of Jazz Theory Topics In The Undergraduate Music Theory Curriculum, Alexis Joy Smerdon

Masters Theses

The demands of the twenty-first century require musicians to be more stylistically versatile since there are more opportunities for performance when musicians are familiar with not only classical but also jazz and popular music. Understanding the theory behind jazz and pop styles will help prepare the musicians for these opportunities. Since all music students take music theory, it is in the students’ best interest for teachers of theory to include jazz theory topics in the classical music theory curriculum. The purpose of this thesis is to propose the inclusion of jazz theory topics in the undergraduate music theory curriculum. To …

Music Student Satisfaction: The Relationship Between Learning Style Preferences And Major Satisfaction, Cora Marie Powers

Masters Theses

Based on Holland’s (1997) theory of person-environment fit, the primary purpose of this study was to examine learning style preferences of college music students utilizing the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory and VARK Learning Styles Inventory (Kolb, 1976, 1984 ; Fleming & Mills, 1992). These preferences were also explored relative to music students’satisfaction with their major. A tendency to prefer the Aural, Kinesthetic, and Active Experimentation learning styles was observed in the 134 music majors sampled. Among the music students sampled, those who most prefer the Active Experimentation learning style are most satisfied with their major. Some differences in learning style …

Symphony No. 1, Robert Alden Clark

Masters Theses

Symphony No. 1 is a three-movement composition for full orchestra. This piece is composed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Master of Music with a concentration in Composition from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The symphony was composed during the 2015-2016 academic year and is roughly twenty-two minutes in length. The first movement is written in sonata form with prefacing material that encapsulates the essence of an Adagio as well. The second movement is a lighthearted scherzo and trio with elements of sonata form. The final movement is an Allegro in modified rondo form that recapitulates previous …

The Efficacy Of Discerning Musical Parts Within The Context Of An Instrumental Ensemble, Brady Glenn Mcneil

Masters Theses

The goal of this study was to determine whether students could aurally identify the less dominant inner musical lines of instrumental pieces. An assessment was created through Qualtrics to test this hypothesis with collegiate music majors at the University of Tennessee. In the assessment, students were required to discern a single part from chamber pieces to large symphonies or wind ensemble works by selecting one of four different lines notated from the piece. These lines were transposed to the key and clef of the instrument students were asked to identify. Results were taken from Qualtrics and analyzed through SPSS. The …

Delights Of Posillipo, Terrors Of Vesuvius: Music, Spectacle, And Identity In Early Modern Naples, Nathan Kent Reeves

Masters Theses

This thesis examines musico-dramatic activities centered at the Spanish viceregal court of Naples during the years 1608-1630 and positions them as reflective of shifting socio-political practices occurring in the cultural milieu of the city in the seventeenth century. I argue that three spectacles written by the writer and courtier Giambattista Basile expose emergent Neapolitan identities within the colonial society of Spanish-occupied Naples. Utilizing Mary Louise Pratt’s (1991) concept of the contact zone, I read these works as instances of autoethnography, a medium involving a conscious blending of forms and idioms, necessitating both negotiation and collaboration between cultures of the occupant …

Augmentation Of Delusion, Christopher Lynn Adams

Masters Theses

Augmentation of Delusion is a single-movement piece for chamber orchestra composed by Chris L. Adams. The piece was originally written for a four-person percussion ensemble in 2013 and orchestrated in 2014. This document will analyze the major musical elements of form, harmony, melody, rhythm and meter, and genre of the piece, as well as compare and contrast these variables with other composers’ works.

Music theory terminology and figures will be applied in this document as follows:

1. Set theory functions will be expressed as:
a. Normal order indicated by brackets – [2367]
b. Prime form indicated by parentheses – (0145) …

Music Performance Anxiety And Dispositional Flow In Predicting Audition Success In Amateur Percussionists, Benjamin Hyun Stocking

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine personal characteristics of adolescent/young adult percussionists who were successful in their audition for a highly competitive, performing arts unit (i.e. a World-Class junior drum & bugle corps). We were particularly interested in investigating the predictive influence of daily practice time and two psychological variables related to optimal performance (i.e., dispositional flow and musical performance anxiety-MPA).

Suite For Chamber Orchestra, Liahna R. Guy

Masters Theses

Suite for Chamber Orchestra is a three-movement composition for an orchestra of reduced size. Over the course of the three movements, a variety of influences can be seen from the 19th and 20th centuries in regard to harmony and rhythmic practices. This Suite is scored for flute, oboe, Bb clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet in C, timpani, violin (I and II), viola, cello, and double bass, and utilizes a moderate level of dissonance, harmonies consisting of perfect fourths and fifths, as well as a high level rhythmic activity.

This paper provides an analysis of the Suite in terms of musical …

"You're Pretty Good For A Girl": Roles Of Women In Bluegrass Music, Jenna Michele Lawson

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the past and current roles that female bluegrass musicians achieve within the music industry in the United States. Using sociological concepts by Judith Butler, Simon Frith, Mavis Bayton, and, importantly, Thomas Turino’s ideas of participatory and communal versus performative and individual, I demonstrate women’s complex musical, social, and cultural positions in bluegrass culture.

While women continue to make strides in achieving recognition in the bluegrass genre, society still hinders them from finding complete acceptance alongside male musicians. As bluegrass music is based on patriarchal foundations set by its creator, Bill Monroe of the Blue Grass Boys, female …

Seasons For A Cynic: A Compositional Process Utilizable For A Program Symphony, David Anthony Pegel

Masters Theses

The technique of symphonic composition requires a deliberate and methodical process by the composer; when the symphony is intended to aesthetically convey a specific subject matter, the compositional process must become even more deliberate. First a subject must be chosen and examined in a contemporary standpoint. Then the composer must determine how to reflect this subject through his or her composing. Ideally, the end result of this composition should encompass the subject matter as thoroughly as possible.

While the great majority of textbooks on music theory and composition centralize themselves on elements of pitch in music, the composer has many …

Architectural Sampling: The Integration And Manipulation Of Meaning, Jacob Stafford Thomas

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation into the appropriation and assimilation of meaning by examining the relationship between the technique and meaning of the musical sample and meaning and memory in architecture. As a previously recorded sound integrated into a new work, the sample has a dual identity as both detail and artifact. It is a detail of two or more wholes: an original condition and the new condition, and an artifact from the context of the work from which it was taken. In architectural design, each recognizable form and spatial arrangement is a sample from a prototype with its own …