Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Concerto For Piano Duet, Edgar R. Suski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My Concerto for Piano Duet (ca. 23 minute duration) was born out of my passion for the concerto medium and my love of piano performance. It is composed in eleven miniature movements, joined thematically by use of the 0-3-4 motive. In addition to the solo piano duettists, a number of movements include obligato soloists from various sections of the orchestra. My musical aesthetic in this composition features expressive melodies and horizontal/linear writing with a predilection for harmonic outcomes resulting from independent lines in counterpoint with each other. I chose the piano duet instead of piano solo due to lack of …

Vibes At The Village Vanguard: Hauntings, History, And The Construction Of Jazz Place, Mark Mccorkle

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

There are ghosts that haunt the Village Vanguard. Or at least that’s what people say.

This dissertation examines the role of the contemporary jazz club as a site of heritage and meaning making in jazz cultures. I take New York’s revered jazz club, the Village Vanguard, as a case study, as it is the subject of many fanciful tales. These stories describe the club’s history as alive; the spirits of the legendary musicians from a bygone era of jazz who once performed at the Vanguard are said to haunt the present club’s soundwaves. Often described by writers as the club’s …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Early Twentieth-Century Music Appreciation And Community Music Movements In The United States, Andrew J. Blimke

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The music appreciation and community music movements sought to popularize, democratize, and socialize art music. While technology made it possible for anyone to listen to art music, its full aesthetic and social benefits seemed accessible only to those with talent and education in performance. Music appreciation proponents claimed that teaching active listening made it possible for the less talented, and those who needed to be taught to prefer art music to have a full musical-aesthetic experience without any training in self-performance. Community music proponents argued that music’s full benefits came from music making and worked to find ways to prove …

Changing Minds And Changing Practice: Barriers And Facilitators To The Use Of Methods Associated With Popular Musicianship, And Strategies Music Teachers Use To Navigate Them, Rhiannon Simpson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to identify factors which impede or facilitate teacher initiated changes to practice, and the ways in which these factors were strategically navigated by secondary school music educators employing methods associated with popular music education [PME] and/or informal music pedagogy [IMP]. The research was framed using a theoretical framework informed by Bourdieu’s (2000) concept of ‘hysteresis’ and Schmidt’s (2020) concept of ‘policy knowhow’. This served to highlight the dialectic relationship between the beliefs, values, agency and dispositions of individuals, and the presence of complex policy networks across macro, meso, and micro levels.

The research utilised …

Moments Of Meeting: 'Intersubjective Encounters' And ‘Emancipatory’ Experiences Of Individuals With (Intellectual) Disabilities In Inclusive Musical Contexts, Caroline Blumer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to explore an intersubjective framework to better understand the relational aspects of two inclusive musical programs in London, ON. I focused on mutual recognition moments, called moments of meeting (MoM), researching how they are formed and manifested while music is shared, created, or experienced within these two environments. Approaching such programs as potentially intersubjective spaces, this study investigated the impact of MoM and intersubjective experiences on the participation of individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) in music making as well as on their perceptions of themselves as subjects. Equally significant, this study looked at emerging …

Singing Our Stories: Building Community And Developing Self-Empowerment In The Childless Voices Choir, Laura Curtis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Involuntary childlessness is a complex and identity-shaping experience moulded by parameters of a pronatalist society. For the women who participated in this study, isolation, silence, and shame were experienced as a consequence of their childlessness. Motivated by the idea that singing, particularly in group contexts, might aid in unburdening women whose identities have been stigmatized by their childless circumstances, this ethnographic study examined whether, and in what ways, women experienced community and developed self-empowerment through participation in the Childless Voices Choir.

Framed by theories of community (Delanty, 2018) and empowerment (Adams, 2008; McLaughlin, 2016), this research explored how meaningful engagement …

The Effect Of Coping Verses Mastery Models On The Level Of Self-Efficacy For Self-Regulated Music Learning, Self-Efficacy For Classical Guitar Playing And Guitar Achievement For Undergraduate Non-Music Majors, Patrick K. Feely Mr

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of learning via mastery versus coping models on self-efficacy for self-regulated music learning, self-efficacy for classical guitar performance, and achievement in classical guitar performance. A secondary purpose of this study addressed the extent to which these three variables were correlated. The sample consisted of 86 undergraduate non-music majors recruited from two beginning guitar courses at a large Canadian university who reported limited previous experience with playing the guitar. Achievement in classical guitar performance was measured using the researcher-constructed Classical Guitar Performance Rating Scale. Data regarding participants’ self-efficacy for self-regulated music …

Canadians Redefining R&B: The Online Marketing Of Drake, Justin Bieber, And Jessie Reyez, Amara Pope Ms.

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a country that long failed to accept, include, and institutionalize R&B music as part of Canadian culture, musical artists Justin Bieber, Drake, and Jessie Reyez have successfully broken-down barriers by having successful careers as racially diverse Canadian R&B artists. This qualitative study surveys the literature on classifications of the R&B genre and of Canadian identities in popular media. The theoretical framework of discourse analysis is used to conduct a brief episodic history of Canadian R&B and to evaluate how the music genre “R&B,” is traditionally associated with people who have "Black" and "American" identities, and how a “Canadian” identity …

"That's The Way I Am, Heaven Help Me": The Role Of Pronunciation In Billy Bragg's Music, Mary Blake Bonn

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

British singers do not always sound British. Indeed, it is common—and sometimes expected—for singers in a variety of styles and genres to sing with accents that do not match their speech. The specific phenomenon of British (or more precisely, English) popular musicians singing with Americanized pronunciation is so common that it was the point of departure for an entire subfield of sociolinguistics that is focused on the ‘singing accent’ in popular music: the pronunciation patterns that singers use in their singing and how these differ from the pronunciation patterns these singers use in speech (e.g., Trudgill 1983). Nevertheless, some English …

Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon On Hip-Hop, Resistance And Surviving The Music Industry By Rollie Pemberton (Book), Duncan Mccallum

Music Research and Composition Works

No abstract provided.

Music Making In Elderly Community Program For Korean Immigrants In Canada, H. Elisha Jo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated-article dissertation explores music making in a community program for Korean older adult immigrants in Canada. Drawing upon WHO’s active aging framework and theoretical concepts of active aging, Erickson’s 8^th stage, and lifelong learning, this research investigates social participation and engagement through music making among seniors.

The first article uses ethnographic research tools to explore a culturally specific community program for Korean elderly immigrants called Canada Enoch Seniors’ College. Through engaging musically in familiar songs in their mother tongue, participants re-defined/claimed identity and group membership. Music plays an important role as participants collectively remember their shared culture.

The …

Musical Behaviours, Dispositions, And Tendencies: Exploring Church Music-Making Through A Theory Of Practice, Laura E. Benjamins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to examine two churches’ music-making practices and their reflection of, and response to, the musical and theological fields in which they are located. Using central concepts from Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice (1977) including habitus, capital, and field in connection with religion, the study considered how worship leaders and musicians strategized their musical behaviours and “disrupted” or affirmed traditional norms of music-making in each contemporary worship music-making setting. The study further explored whether such musical behaviours reflected and shaped habitus both institutionally and individually, and if so, the ways in which the process occurred.

This …

Non-Directed Time, Danial Derakhshan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Non-Directed Time is a sixteen-minute composition for mixed septet and soundtracks. Its two movements are entitled Brainwash and Introduction. The piece aims to challenge listeners' perception of passing time through gradual transformations between timeless, non-directional musical textures to moments of textural clarity and directionality. The musical material in my composition repeats at both large-scale and micro-scale levels, developing an alternative musical time structure and a sense of familiarity. Thus, changes in repeating material affect the experience of this time structure, in which time seems to expand and contract. Because these changes are gradual and their goals are unpredictable, listeners may …

The Maker - A Multi-Media Opera In Two Acts, Aaron Lee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Maker is an electro-acoustic and multi-media opera in two acts that seeks to expand upon the use of pre-recorded audio and video in the operatic genre as well as explores musical representations of classical Greek dramatic elements in the context of a re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Based on a libretto by Dr. Monika Lee, The Maker utilizes a harmonic system focused on managing common-tones to reinforce and augment dramatic tension. Additionally, The Maker uses concepts from classical Greek tragedies as the foundation of musical materials. In particular, it explores how the use of recurring musical motifs can be …

Transference Music: For Electric Guitar Soloist And Amplified Orchestra, Andrew Noseworthy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Transference Music: for Electric Guitar Soloist and Amplified Orchestra is a concertante work with an approximate duration of 25 minutes. The work is inspired by my experiences as a composer-electric guitarist. Its musical parameters are constructed via the act transferring those experiences between the typically separate designations of ‘performer’ and ‘composer.’ These experiences involve aspects of style and genre, electric guitar-specific performance gestures and various timbral or textural ideas, as well as concepts of electronic sound production. These experiences are then used as the basis for the work’s form, motivic relationships and orchestration. As the electric guitar is somewhat of …

Prokofiev And The Soviet Dilemma: Censorship, Autonomy, And The Piano Transcriptions, Connor O'Kane

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This monograph presents a study of Sergei Prokofiev’s piano transcriptions connected with the ballets Romeo and Juliet (1935-36) and Cinderella (1940-44). It is primarily concerned with the ways in which Prokofiev’s circumstances as an artist working in the Soviet Union inhibited his creative freedom, particularly with respect to his late ballets, and how these circumstances motivated him to compose piano transcriptions as an alternate outlet for his work. To fully explore this idea, this thesis analyzes four particular transcriptions and the ways in which they are musically distinct from their ballet counterparts. Chapter 1 focuses on Prokofiev’s 1936 return to …

Soundcurrents: Exploring Sound’S Potential To Catalyze Creative Critical Consciousness In Adolescent Music Students And Undergraduate Music Education Majors, Jashen I. Edwards

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to examine how and in what ways a reorientation towards sound could catalyze creative critical consciousness in high school music students and university music undergraduates. Specifically, this study sought to uncover how and in what ways sonic lifeworlds: everyday sound currents streaming in/out/through participants’ lived experiences at school, home, neighborhood, park, playground, street, alleyway, train station, cyberspace could potentially excite creative aspects of knowing and being via “cultural production” (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2011) and also elicit critical ways of thinking about and responding to the world as “cultural citizens” (Benedict & Schmidt, 2014). This study stems …

Sound Judgements: Music Education Framework For Guiding Digital Mixing Practice, Artur Kapron

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Mixing is an intermediary process within audio production wherein the aesthetic and technical qualities of musical compositions are further enhanced and refined. Most music perceived via audio-playback devices is mixed to sound a certain way. By understanding why recordings ‘sound’ how they do, musicians, music educators, and novice mixers can acquire a greater appreciation for mixing while considering how this process might affect their own performance practices (Hodgson 2019; Fisher, 1998). Knowing how and what to listen for when mixing is highly subjective, as people experience and describe sounds differently. Indeed, mixing is illusory as listeners are presented with an …

Exploring Musical Knowledge Within One Canadian School Of Music: Ideology, Pedagogy, And Identity, Kyle Zavitz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to understand how the distribution and transmission of musical knowledges impacted the identities and consciousness of agents within one Canadian school of music which was given the pseudonym Eastern Urban School of Music (EUSM). The project was framed using Basil Bernstein’s (2000) theory of the Pedagogic Device, offering a language of description to examine how forms of regulation differentially distributed various identities and forms of consciousness. Specifically, this study explored how varying modalities of classification and framing revealed competing values about what counts as legitimate and ‘excellent’ music education and who is seen as …

Gesture In Steve Reich's Music And Its Signification: A Referential Approach To His Process, Stylistic, And Postminimalist Works, Martin Ross

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

When listening to minimalist music, one will more than likely notice the scarcity of materials. Small motifs and repetition pervade the surface, and one might be inclined to interpret such scarcity as mere redundancy of materials with seemingly few meaningful layers underneath the surface. When analyzing minimalist music, one will notice a similar pattern of scarcity. Music-theoretical scholarship on minimalist music, especially formalist analyses, primarily investigates the rhythmic and melodic connections spanning the entire work. The analytical uncovering of such scarcity through formal means has resulted in few novel analytical approaches and, consequently, an attitude that minimalist music itself is …

Non:Wa: Navigating Indigenous Modernity Through Female Artists' Perspectives, Nicole Bussey

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This article examines the relationship between tradition and modern elements of Indigenous music through a cyclical perspective, and challenges colonial concepts of Indigenous modernity. Indigenous culture is often portrayed in mainstream culture as a relic of the past, which renders it incompatible with modernity. With a special focus on Indigenous female artists’ perspectives, I examine the ways in which women placed in this unique intersection challenge the binaries of past/present and tradition/modern.

Modernizing And Diversifying Western's Audio Engineering Curriculum: First Stage, Kyle Haddad

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This was the first stage in a much larger study designed to update the audio engineering curriculum at Western University, to reflect modern trends and to diversify beyond the UK 1970s prog rock bias of traditional curriculum. An undergraduate student was hired from within the Popular Music Studies program here at Western University to work in the studio for the summer, and to provide recommendations for change in studio design at the end fo the summer based on that work. The student worked on his own material, and engineered record sessions for a PhD candidate currently at work on a …

Musical Signification In Biber's Rosary Sonatas, Frangel Lopez Cesena

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This monograph examines musical signification in Heinrich Biber’s Rosary Sonatas (ca. 1678), a set of sixteen pieces for violin and continuo. The sonatas are mostly known for their striking use of scordatura (altered tuning) and the copper-engraved illustrations in the original manuscript that reference the Mysteries of the Rosary, a meditative Marian practice that originated in the Middle Ages. Musical signification and meaning in the Rosary Sonatas have been widely discussed in recent years. The sonatas have been studied in terms of programmaticism and rhetoric, and scholars have proposed the application of broader analytical views that encompass aspects of …

"A Gesture Of Solidarity Through Music": Local And International Community In Canadian Benefit Concerts For Ukraine, Charlotte M. Lilley

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

In the months following Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Canadian music community responded by hosting a number of benefit concerts. In contrast to the precedents set by well-known, large-scale benefit concerts such as 1985's "Live Aid", these concerts were strongly rooted in the local context of the events' hosts and centred the voices and experiences of members of their beneficiary community. Combined with the potential of these events to allow individuals and groups to combat feelings of helplessness and to serve as forms of resistance against the Russian regime, this has allowed these concerts to create and …

Creating A Commercial Classical Music Recording, Winnie Zheng

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

An outline of the process to create a classical music recording for commercial use in the style of a “how-to” guide. The guide aims to present the three main steps of creating a commercial classical music recording, which includes recording, editing, and creating post-mastering materials such as an album cover. The purpose of this guide is to make classical music-making more accessible to a variety of audiences and provide a behind the scenes view on how classical music recordings are created.

Collection Of Violin Technique Fundamentals, Patricio Flores Esquivel

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This book provides a sampling of exercises and studies for violin playing. It serves as both a collection of useful materials and a reference to other studies and exercises aimed at the playing level of an average incoming violin student at Western University. This compilation of exercises is sorted according to the fundamental aspect of violin technique that each exercise addresses.

Much of the book is made up of patterns and variations on studies and exercises that are sorted by skill and designed to be reusable and useful for other studies beyond this book, as well as violin repertoire. It …

The Ghosts Of Madwomen Past: Historical And Psychiatric Madness On The Late Twentieth-Century Opera Stage, Diana Wu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Insanity has been important to opera since the genre’s inception. For four hundred years, operas have featured characters driven mad by love, jealousy, and shame. In this same time period, however, cultural understandings of what it means to be insane have changed many times. This dissertation explores nine post-1945 British and American operas with mad characters: Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, Dominick Argento’s The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe and Miss Havisham’s Fire, …

The Contrabass Tuned In Fifths: Towards An Understanding Of Past And Present Applications., Stephen T. Bright

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the historical and contemporary practices of the contrabass tuned in fifths. Two descriptions of the tuning appear in the late eighteenth century: the three-string tuning, A2, D2, G1 (ADG), and its four-string counterpart, A2, D2, G1, C1 (ADGC). The ADG tuning was officially taught in the Conservatoire de Paris’s contrabass class from 1827 until 1832, when it was superseded by the four-string G2, D2, A1, E1 (GDAE) tuning in fourths for two major reasons: first, the additional whole-tone between open strings compelled contrabassists to shift more frequently; second the tuning’s limited depth (G1) forced contrabassists to use …

Seeing Thro The Musical Eye: Santo Daime, Fuke-Shū, 1960s Psychedelia, And The Antipodes Of Musical Experience, Forest Anthony-Muran

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis investigates the relationships between altered states of consciousness and the musical experience in religious tradition and practice. A common accompaniment to religious worship and ceremony, music is often used as a way of attempting to capture something of the ineffable and to help bring about a mystical experience. In this thesis, I make use of three contrasting case studies – the Brazilian syncretic religion Santo Daime, the historical branch of Zen Buddhism Fuke-shū, and the psychedelic rock of 1960s counterculture – to paint a portrait of the variety of ways that music has been used in different musical …

The Tale Of Rowan O'Shera (A Musical Drama), Emma T.L. Verdonk

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Tale of Rowan O’Shera is a musical drama for solo violin, chamber ensemble (percussion, harp, classical guitar, viola, cello, double bass), choir (including solo alto and solo tenor), and sound files. The libretto was written by the composer with the exception of the text in Angus Dei (Movement 7), which uses the traditional Latin text. This drama is divided into eight movements with each being a different step on the journey of the main character, Rowan O’Shera, who is represented by the solo violin. The narrative follows Rowan as he leaves his hometown of Dunlea (a fictional town invented …