Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Select Survey Of Choral Arrangements Based On The Songs Of Stephen Foster Tracing Developments In Music And Textual Changes Through The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries, Perry K. Ward

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Stephen Foster is acknowledged as America’s first composer of popular music. His legacy can be seen in the number of songs that are embedded in our cultural heritage – “Oh! Susanna,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” are but a very few of his most popular works. Stephen Foster’s songs have been incorporated into every facet of American culture including both popular and classical musical culture, television, and film. However, his legacy is complicated as it is tainted by connections to blackface minstrelsy in some works. This document seeks to trace the threads of racial sensitivity and cultural appropriation …

The Cadenzas Of The First Modern Guitar Concertos, Carlos Ricardo Saeb Valenzuela

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This research project explores the resources employed in the cadenzas of the first four distinguished guitar concertos of the twentieth-century. The purpose of this research is to establish the influence and impact of these works in the development of a new idiomatic guitar language. Although the first known twentieth-century guitar concerto is Rafael Adame’s Concierto Clásico (1930), it has been largely ignored and has had no significant influence on subsequent generations. Therefore, the focus of this study is on the following concertos: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Concerto in Re for Guitar and Orchestra Op. 99 (1939), Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (1939), …

The First Three Guitar Sonatas Of David Del Puerto, Jeremy Andrew Bass

Theses and Dissertations--Music

David del Puerto’s first three sonatas for solo guitar are large-scale, multi-movement works in a style that is at once strongly guitaristic, and highly refined with regard to harmony, melody, rhythm, and form. Del Puerto completed all three sonatas in 2015, a considerable milestone for a composer who had never before published works in this form for solo guitar. The sonatas represent a consolidation of the composer's recent style: the synthesis of modal, pandiatonic, and twelve-tone harmony; references to folkloric, popular, and classical musics; and a lucid, immediate approach to both surface rhythm and larger formal structures.

Since the development …

A Performer's Guide To Works For Trumpet And Synthesizer By Meg Bowles, Steven Siegel

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The trumpet and electronics genre of music has been in existence since 1965. While various dissertations have discussed other composers and their works in this field, there is still a need for a treatise exploring appropriate performance practice for the electroacoustic trumpet music of Meg Bowles. There has been no study of the compositional process nor trumpet techniques required for performance of these works and other electronic compositions.

This dissertation will study the compositions for trumpet and electronics by Bowles, develop strategies for performing these works, and explore compositional techniques used to create them. Interviews have been conducted between the …

The Search For Consistent Intonation: An Exploration And Guide For Violoncellists, Daniel Hoppe

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This paper provides a system that helps diagnose and address the specific challenge to cellists of intonation in any passage. Learning to play consistently in tune is essential for every cellist. In the over three hundred years of cello history, teachers have tried approaching the topic from a variety of perspectives. While each technique is useful in its own right, there is scant attention to how they work together. Viewing intonation through its component sub-skills is the first step toward integrating existing exercises and paving the way for further advances in pedagogy. The following paper categorizes training techniques according to …

A History, Analysis, And Performance Guide To Samuel Barber’S Canzonetta For Oboe And String Orchestra, Angela C. Sallas

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This dissertation examines Samuel Barber’s Canzonetta for Oboe and String Orchestra, which was intended to be the central movement of an oboe concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. The Canzonetta for Oboe and String Orchestra is representative of Barber’s tendency towards vocal lyricism and neo-romantic tonality, serving as a representation of his compositional style. This document will explore the technical and expressive demands found in Barber’s writing for the oboe and will offer solutions for any problematic elements—including those specific to the oboe itself. It will also suggest practice techniques for the execution of these difficulties. This dissertation …

Duende: Four Preludes For Symphonic Wind Ensemble By Luis Serrano Alarcón: Conductor’S Guide, Spanish Historical Background And Influence, Kenneth Javier Iyescas

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Luis Serrano Alarcón is one of the most important and relevant composers of our time. He is sought after as a composer, lecturer, and conductor throughout the world. His works have been performed in over 30 countries worldwide by some of the leading musical ensembles in the United States, Europe, and Asia, as well as being highly decorated by winning many prestigious composition contests including the International Band Competition Contest of Corciano, Italy.

Born in Valencia, Spain, Alarcón is relatively self-taught in composition, which is a testament to his natural-born gift for composition. His compositional output ranges from the traditional …

Harvest Festival By Yann-Jong Hwang: A Piano Duet Inspired By Taiwanese Folk Tunes, Wei-Sian Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The purpose of this study is to provide an introduction and analysis of Harvest Festival, a work for piano four hands by Taiwanese composer Yann-Jong Hwang. This work incorporates elements of traditional Taiwanese music that is largely unfamiliar to performers and listeners beyond the border of Taiwan.

With the exception of Professor Hwang’s own journal article on this piece, this project is the only study of Harvest Festival available in the United States or Taiwan. This research will be meaningful to both performers and piano teachers as an encouragement to include Yann-Jong Hwang’s work within their concert repertory.

This …

Earl Kim 12 Caprices For Solo Violin: Survey Of His Innovative Solo Violin Writing Via His Twelve Love Letters, Chi Young Song

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The purpose of this project is to bring Kim’s caprices into the mainstream violin literature through a three-prong approach by examining each caprice via musical analysis, technical analysis, and by investigating its pedagogical merit. After inspecting each caprice through three different lenses mentioned above, the paper will organize the twelve caprices around a tripartite structure; serial, atonal, and free tonal.

The work opens with a six-measure Motto. While the relationship between the Motto and the rest of the work is not immediately clear, thorough musical and formal analysis will provide insight into the work’s cohesion.

This project will also …

The Fall Of The Tenor With The Rise Of The Larynx, Gregory Turay

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The range and use of the tenor voice in classical music has long been established since the late 19^th century. It is widely accepted among pedagogues that the range is C3-C5 (with obvious exceptions depending on the fach). However, with the advent and development of the American Musical as a genre since the early 20^th century, the ‘tenor’ has taken on an entirely new direction and range altogether. Several well-known sources have stated that the ‘Broadway tenor’ has a range of A2-A4. This is (as it widely accepted in the classical profession) the range of a baritone. The …

March Performance Practices Of Henry Fillmore With Style Guides And Historical Editions Of Selected Works, James Robert Daughters

Theses and Dissertations--Music

With a career spanning over four decades, Henry Fillmore earned wide recognition as an important and prolific composer of marches and trombone smears in the wind band medium. While he contributed significantly to chamber music, solo literature, vocal settings, and arrangements for band, his compositions for wind band have arguably provided his most universal acclaim. Fillmore’s published marches are unique in that scores rarely had performance markings and contained little more than notes and repeat signs. Fillmore conducted most of his marches and altered march strains, changed orchestration, and added stylistic markings that were not indicated in the original printed …

When Unexpected Beauty Burns Like Sunlight On The Sea: Songs Of Wintter Watts, Composer And Sara Teasdale, Poet, Casey A. Huggins

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This document is an overview of Wintter Watts’ song settings of Sara Teasdale poems. Watts set 15 Teasdale poems as a part of his repertoire of approximately 200 art songs, both published and unpublished. Included are a thorough investigation of the culture of the period of American history of which Watts and Teasdale emerged as artists, biographies of each artist, with particular emphasis placed on Watts’ life and work, and theoretical and poetic analyses of each piece. Additionally, teachers of singing will find the appendix useful to explore options for student repertoire.

Redefining The Performance Degree Curriculum For The Crossover Saxophonist, Ian M. Cruz

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Many collegiate saxophone performance degree programs are overwhelmingly classical, adopting from other performance programs in the Western music tradition. However, there is a growing number of saxophone compositions that are “crossover” in nature. Crossover is a term used to describe the fusion of popular music styles in a classical setting. There is also evidence that collegiate music education as a whole is moving towards a more diverse curriculum, which emphasizes ethnomusicology. Due to this trend in composition and education, it is becoming increasingly important that saxophonists have the training of both classical and jazz disciplines.

The problem is that while …

The Wind Music Of Steve Danyew: A Discussion And Analysis Of Three Significant Wind Compositions, Michael C. Black

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Despite being active as a composer for a little less than a decade, Steve Danyew has established himself as a successful composer of wind music. Danyew has produced a surprisingly large amount of significant works for various music ensembles in a relatively short span of time. Danyew’s compositions for winds are some of his most frequently performed for any medium.

Three of Danyew’s compositions for winds stand out as artistically significant, namely Lauda, Alcott Songs, and Magnolia Star. One of his first compositions for wind band, Lauda, is an award-winning work that has been performed by …

Synchrony Of The Sublime: A Performer's Guide To Duke Ellington's Wordless Melodies For Soprano, Lisa M. Clark

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This monograph provides an in-depth examination of the background, musical, and performance issues related to Duke Ellington’s wordless melodies, as well as epigrammatic biographies of Ellington and three female vocalists whose voices he employed as instruments: Adelaide Hall, Kay Davis, and Alice Babs. As early as the twenties, Ellington innovatively used the voice as a wordless instrumental color—an idea he extended into both his secular and sacred works. His iconoclastic instrumentalization of the soprano voice in compositions such as “Creole Love Call”, “Minnehaha”, “Transblucency”, “On a Turquoise Cloud”, and “T.G.G.T.” merits consideration by scholars and performers alike; these artistically complex …

A Conductor’S Analysis Of Veljo Tormis’ Looduspildid, John David Frizzell

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (1930-2017) is one of the most prolific in his country’s history. A significant portion of his writing has been for choirs. Tormis composed most of his works under Soviet rule. During this communist reign of Estonia, Tormis turned to using traditional music. The source material for a large portion of Tormis’ choral output is regilaul, a type of ancient Estonian folk song. In 1991, Estonia gained their independence, thereby allowing Tormis’ compositions to be more easily seen, heard, and performed around the world.

This dissertation presents a conductor’s analysis of a set of choral cycles …

Singing Portuguese Nasal Vowels: Practical Strategies For Managing Nasality In Brazilian Art Songs, André Campelo

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The articulation of Portuguese nasalized vowels poses some articulatory problems accompanied by negative acoustic effects for the performance of Brazilian art songs. The main objective was to find strategies that permit the singer to conciliate an idiomatic pronunciation of these vowels with a well-balanced resonance, a desirable quality in classical singing. In order to devise these strategies, the author examined sources dealing with nasalized vowels from varied perspectives: acoustic properties of vowel nasalization, phonetic and phonological aspects ofBrazilian Portuguese (BP), historical views on nasality in singing, and recent vocal pedagogy research. In addition to the overall loss of sonority, the …