Digital Commons Network^™

Annunciation And The Cross: The Marian Theology Of Incarnation In James Macmillan’S Music And Public Discourse, Joel Clarkson

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Many of Scottish composer James MacMillan’s most essential works are influenced by his Catholic faith, and thematically focused on a theological expression of Incarnation and suffering worked out through a dissonant musical style. MacMillan has developed a robust public discourse that includes statements about his faith and the way it informs his music, and his forthright demeanor has often provoked tension with various figures and groups. This article suggests that these two forms of conflict—discordance in his composition, and elements of conflict in his public dialogue—are both driven by a Marian theology of Incarnation that provides the impetus both for …

Music During Political Unrest: A Look Into Protest Music Of Northern Ireland During The Trouble's, Lauren Blue

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Some of the most influential music and art emerges during civil, social, and political unrest. Music, in particular, is a critical aspect of almost every culture, and protest music is even more influential because it can unify causes. For example, when the Troubles in Northern Ireland gained global attention, many well-known artists released commercially successful songs relating to this phenomenon. Musicians worldwide, including Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Elton John, The Cranberries, and U2, implemented music as a reaction against the social injustice and violence occurring in Northern Ireland. Other songs, like Tina Turner's "Simply the Best," became anthems for the …

The Narrative Composer: Hector Berlioz’S Impact On The Evolution Of Film Scoring In The Twenty-First Century, Enrique Alberti

Honors Program Theses

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, whose literary and musical works have an undeniable effect on the history of Western music. Specifically, Berlioz’s most famous orchestral work, the Symphonie Fantastique, transformed how music could be utilized in an orchestral setting because it was the first programmatic symphony, which is a symphony with music set to a written narrative. The Symphonie would inspire German composer Richard Wagner to create what is now recognized as the leitmotif, a musical phrase used to identify an idea. In modern Hollywood film music, Wagner is credited with establishing the techniques that have become staples …

Hearing Tolkien In Vaughan Williams?, Keri Hui

Journal of Tolkien Research

In recent years, musicians and Tolkien readers alike have associated Ralph Vaughan Williams’ music, particularly Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910), The Lark Ascending (1914), and Fantasia on Greensleeves (1934), with Tolkien’s fantasies. This article explores this tendency to hear Tolkien’s Middle-earth in Vaughan Williams’ musical fantasies, calling attention to the similarities in their shared devotion to the idea of English consciousness, interest in combining ecclesiastical and folk materials, and pastoral vision. A juxtaposition of their approach and philosophies not only helps explain the musical echoes, however, but also confirms an appealing mark of Tolkien’s craft is its …

“800 Years We Have Been Down”: Rebel Songs And The Retrospective Reach Of The Irish Republican Narrative, Seán Ó Cadhla

Articles

From the glamorous, cross-dressing “Rebel, Rebel” of David Bowie, to the righteous Trenchtown “Soul Rebel” of Bob Marley and The Wailers, both varied and various musical articulations of cultural and socio-political rebellion have long enjoyed a ubiquitous presence across multiple soundscapes. As a musicological delineator in Ireland, however, ‘rebel’ conveys a specifically political dynamic due to its consistent deployment as an all-encompassing descriptor for songs detailing events and personalities from the Irish national struggle. This paper sets out to examine the specific musical delineator of “rebel song” from both musicological and politico-ideological perspectives with a view to interrogating its appropriateness …

Travelin' To The Promised Land: Symbolism Of The Jordan River In African Spiritual, English Hymn, And American Folksong Selections, Hope V. Dornfeld

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

These program notes originally accompanied a performance of three vocal pieces: Deep River, On Jordan's Stormy Banks, and Poor Wayfaring Stranger. The notes analyze the role of the Jordan river in each piece, focusing on their historical context, first performances, and issues of authorship. As part of a performing arts research project, the program notes also address the method of expression and creative process that went into preparing the performance of these pieces.

The songs included in this presentation all speak to the journey from earth to heaven. In each piece, the Jordan River is found to symbolize a …

“Beer & Hymns” And Community: Religious Identity And Participatory Sing-Alongs, Andrew Mall

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

As a series of loosely-organized events, “Beer & Hymns” started at the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2006 and migrated to the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina in 2012. Local Beer & Hymns gatherings meet at bars, breweries, clubs, and pubs across the U.K., the U.S., and around the world. Most are not affiliated with a church or Christian denomination, instead relying on the energy of independent local organizers. Some attendees are regular churchgoers, other are not, but all find community in these sing-alongs—congregational singing, that is, outside of traditional congregational contexts. Beer & Hymns is exactly what it …

Palestinian Evangelical Christian Music In Bethlehem, Israel/Palestine, Abby Smith

Senior Honors Theses

Often the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is portrayed as Jewish vs. Muslim, Hebrew vs. Arab. There is little room in the international dialogue for minorities such as Arab Christians. Though Palestinians have a rich culture of Arabic musical and poetic heritage, they are unable to produce their own new songs. In this study I interviewed three members of Immanuel Evangelical Church on their experiences and opinions on local Christian worship. The findings show that Palestinian Christians may feel unable to write worship music because of a prevalent feeling of inadequacy and a lack of musical training. I propose several …

From Prop To Partner: The Evolution Of Female Roles In American Opera, Mariah J. Berryman

Honors Theses

For many years, women in opera have been in service to their plots. They have always been present but have either been relegated to passive roles in their own stories or actively considered societal outcasts. They were dramatically stereotyped as either airheads or witches, mothers or daughters, love interests or foes to be conquered. And, along with the character stereotypes came typically associated vocal stereotypes. Lighter and higher voices were assigned to roles that portrayed virtue, innocence, and other general characteristics of the “feminine ideal.” Conversely, lower voices were assigned to sinful, outcast, “fallen women.” These vocal stereotypes are especially …

Songs And The Soil, Mark Garry, Louise Reddy

Books/Book Chapters

Published in conjuction with an exhibition. The exhibition engages with the subjects of landscape and music/sound—exploring each element from historical, social and culturally associative perspectives; where landscape is recognised as a fluid term articulating physical space, idealised space and social space that reflects a convergence of physical processes and cultural meaning, and where song act as a response to, or archive, of personal, historical or socio-political instances. Several works engage landscape and musical sound intersect. The exhibition integrates a broad range of media,positions and responses to these research subjects; including two film works, a six-hour soundtrack for a room, sonic …

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

A Story Of Feminine Sacrifice: The Music, Text, And Biographical Connections In Amy Beach's Concert Aria Jephthah's Daughter, Clarissa E. Aaron

Honors Projects

Jephthah’s Daughter (Op. 53), a concert aria for soprano and orchestra written by Amy Beach (1867-1944) in 1903, has long suffered neglect due to the fate of its manuscript and the fate of Beach’s work in general. This investigation seeks to probe how Beach engaged the Biblical subject matter and mid-1800s French text in her setting. I discuss this engagement through stylistic comparison with the musical traits of her other work, translation comparison between the literal meanings of the original poem and Beach’s English rendition, and contextualization of Beach’s setting within the history of how this story has been interpreted. …

Enduring Music: Migrant Appalachian Communities And The Shenandoah National Park, Madeline Marsh

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper is an archival study of the displaced children of families formerly living in the Shenandoah National Park which spans from Strasburg to Waynesboro, Virginia. The study looks at interviews, from the JMU Special Collections archives, of these children in the 1970-80s, nearly fifty years after their forced migration from the 197,438 acres that comprised the park. Change and pressure during the 1930s-40s combined with national policy began the nostalgic preservation and veneration of the culture of these people of the Blue Ridge Mountains; through the archives, a clear and diverse picture of the perspectives and lifestyles of people …

The Flutists Of The John Philip Sousa’S Band: A Study Of The Flute Section And Soloists, Ramon Da Silva Moraes

Dissertations

The Sousa Band is widely known because of its leader and his compositions. Although it was one of the most successful ensembles in history, most of the instrumentalists and individuals who contributed to its success have had their legacies forgotten. The flute section of the Sousa Band is an example of a group of musicians who were recognized as some of the best in the United States during their time, but are neglected by the present flute community.

My research focused on gathering data about the flute section and the individuals who were instrumental for the creation and development of …

Louden Hugely: The Piano Music Of Percy Grainger, Jackson Carruthers

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) was an Australian pianist and composer. While highly esteemed during his lifetime, Grainger's music has largely fallen into neglect outside the world of the wind band. However, Grainger left a vast quantity of highly idiomatic and meritorious piano music which deserves greater acceptance. To this end, this paper makes a survey of Grainger's output for piano, to show the merit of his music and prove that it remains relevant even today.

Cultural Subtexts And Social Functions Of Domestic Music-Making In Jane Austen’S England, Lidia A. Chang

Masters Theses

Barring a few notable exceptions, English music between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries earns scant notice in music history textbooks, despite overwhelming evidence that England enjoyed a vibrant musical culture, especially during the Georgian era. However, I will argue that the English of this period were, in many respects, even more committed to music than their continental counterparts. The problem, for England, was not that it made no music during this period, but that it made the wrong kind of music, and enjoyed it in the wrong ways. At a time when Germanic critics like E.T.A. Hoffmann and A.B. Marx …

Publishing The James Goodman Irish Music Manuscript Collection: How Modern Technology Facilitated The Editors' Task, Lisa Shields

Papers

The paper gives a description of an important mid nineteenth-century manuscript Irish music collection. It outlines the history of the edition and the work involved. The use of modern technology in the editorial process is considered. Undoubtedly these technological advances have been very helpful. However, they have also enlarged the scope of the project, creating new kinds of work which are seen as adding value to the product.

Proceedings Of The 6th International Workshop On Folk Music Analysis, 15-17 June, 2016, Pierre Beauguitte, Bryan Duggan, John D. Kelleher

Papers

The Folk Music Analysis Workshop brings together computational music analysis and ethnomusicology. Both symbolic and audio representations of music are considered, with a broad range of scientific approaches being applied (signal processing, graph theory, deep learning). The workshop features a range of interesting talks from international researchers in areas such as Indian classical music, Iranian singing, Ottoman-Turkish Makam music scores, Flamenco singing, Irish traditional music, Georgian traditional music and Dutch folk songs. Invited guest speakers were Anja Volk, Utrecht University and Peter Browne, Technological University Dublin.

Frederick May Songs, Mark Fitzgerald

Compositions/Arrangements

This volume gathers together Frederick May's surviving songs in a new performing edition with a commentary by the editor. Individual string parts for the Four Romantic Songs are available from the editor.

Joyce's Musical Doublespeak, James May

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

The Microtonal Guitars Of Harry Partch, John Schneider

Soundboard Scholar

Known as an "American Maverick," Harry Partch (1901–1974) was surely one of the United States's most colorful composers. His dissatisfaction with the scales and instruments of Western music inspired him to design and build an orchestra of over two dozen handcrafted "microtonal" instruments that were tuned to his notorious "monophonic" scale of forty-three tones per octave. Between 1934 and 1952, Partch created four different adapted guitars, using them in fifteen compositions ranging from solo song cycles (Barstow, December 1942, U.S. Highball, Three Intrusions) to chamber music, dances, and four of his five major …

Blue Mountain: A Chamber Opera For Winds And Voices By Justin Dello Joio: A Unique Contribution For Wind Band Literature, Armando Saldarini

Dissertations

Blue Mountain is an opera in one act scored for four voices, and thirty-three instruments, commissioned by Det Norske Blaseensemble. Under the direction of Kenneth Jean, the premiere took place on October 8, 2007, at Kanonhalen in Oslo, Norway, as part of the Edvard Grieg Centennial celebrations and the 2007 Ultima contemporary Music Festival. The opera takes place in Troldhaugen, Norway, during the last days of Edvard Grieg’s life. Suffering from emphysema, Grieg was being treated by his doctor with morphine that created great anxiety, fear, and mental torment. A visit from his friend, Percy Grainger, gave Grieg great …

New Leaves On Old Trees: A Synthesis Of Early American Music Through Contemporary Composition, Leslie A. Robinson

Selected Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the hymnody and choral music of 17th, 18th, and early 19th century Protestant communities in America with the goal of creating a historically informed composition that articulates musical and theological ideas of the past with a fresh voice. It will emphasize unique characteristics of the musical communities and connections between the communities. It will also focus on two relationships within individual communities: the association between the community’s music and its texts, and the connection between its theology and musical identity. The thesis and composition should reveal an understanding of early American musical …

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

Todd Gilman

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 …

“The Future Is Medieval”: Orality And Musical Borrowing In The Middle Ages And Online Remix Culture, Claire E. Mcleish

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis re-situates sampling and the mashup in a broader tradition of musical borrowing and oral practice. Musical creators in the West borrowed throughout history; the variety and quantity of this borrowing remains dependent on the proprietary status of music. Copyright was first applied to music to protect printed scores, and is thus ill equipped to accommodate works that borrow recorded elements. Taking Ong’s concept of “secondary orality” as applied to hip hop by Tricia Rose, this thesis connects techniques of musical borrowing in the Middle Ages with those in the late-20^th and 21^st centuries through several close …

Voice Recitals At The Unl School Of Music: Compilation Study, Audrey M. Nicholson

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Creative Work, and Performance

An informative compilation of Voice Recitals at the UNL School of Music categorized by Masters, DMA, and Faculty recitals from 1988-2012. Information includes: composer, work title, song title, performer, performance date, instrumentation, audio availability, and online program link.

"Download" button links to pdf version of file. Spreadsheet version (.xls) is attached below as "Related file." ".xlr" files are spreadsheets and can be opened from MS Excel.

"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 …

Bluegrass Nation: A Historical And Cultural Analysis Of America's Truest Music, Leslie Blake Price

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Encyclopedia Of Music In Ireland: Deirdre Gribbin, Adrian Smith

Articles

Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland entry on the Irish composer Deirdre Gribbin