Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“What Sort Of Communists Are You?” The Struggle Between Nationalism And Ideology In Poland Between 1944 And 1956, Jan Ryszard Kozdra

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The period between 1944 and 1956, also known as the “Stalinist period”, is one of the most controversial and turbulent in Polish history. The Polish communist party launched the project of restructuring Polish society, whose historically wellestablished national identity seemed incompatible with the communist project. Firstly, the communists effected a demographic change that resulted in a near monoethnic state. Simultaneously, they introduced a centrally planned economy, transformed state symbolism, initiated a national education system, attempted to reshape popular attitudes to religion, and launched a massive propaganda campaign to reinforce and popularize their objectives.

This study seeks to investigate the communists’ …

Ronald Stevenson, Composer-Pianist : An Exegetical Critique From A Pianistic Perspective, Mark Gasser

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This exegetical critique makes a conceptual summation of Ronald Stevenson’s life’s work for the piano and his contributions as a composer‐pianist. Chapters one and two provide a profile of Stevenson as a pianist, examining the aesthetic and musical concerns that defined his long career, as well as precedents and antecedents of his pianism. Of particular interest are the ways that Stevenson coalesces aspects of the ‘grand manner’ and his obsession with a pianistic bel canto style. Chapter three examines Stevenson’s remarkable output in terms of piano transcriptions. His conceptualization of this as ‘capturing the essence’ of the original composer is …