Musicology Commons^™

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 …

Music: Numbers In Motion, Graziano Gentili, Luisa Simonutti, Daniele C. Struppa

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Music develops and appears as we allow numbers to acquire a dynamical aspect and create, through their growth, the various keys that permit the richness of the musical texture. This idea was simply adumbrated in Plato’s work, but its importance to his philosophical worldview cannot be underestimated. In this paper we begin by discussing what is probably the first written record of an attempt to create a good temperament and then follow the Pythagoreans approach, whose problems forced musicians, over the next several centuries up to the Renaissance and early modern times, to come up with many different variations.

“It’S War That's Cruel”: The Evolution Of Wartime Representation And ‘The Other’ In The American Musical, Leana Sottile

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Musical theater has historically been a venue for Americans to come to terms with our past and present on both a national and an individual level as it stages and restages war mythology on the Broadway Stage. As the nation has won, lost, and abandoned foreign conflicts, the connotation, remembrance, and commemoration of war in American memory has shifted from romanticizing former conflicts to renegotiating their memory. Thus, this project examines how twentieth-century war memory is represented in the American musical, starting in the 1940s and continuing up to the present day. To do so, the phenomenon will be examined …

"In The Sentimental Past": Cultural Identity Through Film Music Before And After The Hong Kong Handover, Kasady Liu

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Hong Kong: a city characterized by Jackie Chan, kung fu, and its surprising “in-betweenness.” Not quite Eastern and not quite Western, Hong Kong has been placed in a unique position due to its recent handover from Great Britain to China. As a result of this handover, the people of Hong Kong have displayed various attitudes towards their previous, foreign system of democratic government and their new, Communist system of government. Hong Kong’s cultural identity is closely tied with the handover, and in this paper, I analyze how the film music of Hong Kong movies have conveyed ideas about their cultural …

“A Flower Which Blossoms And Fades”: Depictions Of Tuberculosis In 19th-Century Opera, Daniel Goldberg

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The romantic period in art and music is a time that focused on the regular person and had a fascination with nature, emotion, and death. One of the most common themes used was disease. One of the more common diseases of the time in both opera and real life was tuberculosis. In opera tuberculosis is always brought upon the same type of person time and time again and is always shown both by the character, and also though a series of metaphors. This character is always a woman and these “tubercular heroines” always are young, beautiful, frail people who need …

From A Chat In The Parlor To Viral Music Videos: An Analysis Of Music As A Social Occasion, Emma Plotnik

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Imagine an intimate room filled with people playing cards and casually chatting, while one of Chopin’s piano sonatas plays elegantly in the background. This scenario is characteristic of the atmosphere surrounding Classical and Romantic European salons. Salons served as havens of musical discourse from the Baroque era to the early twentieth century. However, with the advancement of technology from the mid-twentieth century to the present, there has been a decline, or, arguably, even a cessation of salon life.

The aim of this project was to recreate the salon environment through the generation of the online discussion forum, "Music Soirée." To …

Diva Diversity: National Vocal Schools And Qualities, Emma Plotnik

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Hearing the term “opera singer” for many triggers an image of a German dramatic soprano bearing viking horns and powerfully bursting into a high C. Yet, what is it that perpetuates this stereotype that German singers possess weighty instruments with dark timbres? Why are classically trained North American vocal students told by their teachers to sing lightly and delicately when performing French mélodie, and not any other genre?

Research in vocal pedagogy has demonstrated that singers from particular regions have been typified by their vocal qualities in terms of size and color. These qualities by nation mainly stem from contrasting …

The Voice Of The Motherland: Exploring The Development Of Russian Music Before Mikhail Glinka, Alvin Ly

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

When learning about early western classical music history, the first countries often discussed include England, Germany, France, and Italy beginning around the time of Gregorian chant. It is not until approximately the early Romantic Era that we begin to learn about Russian composers such as Mikhail Glinka, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, or those of the “Mighty Handful” including most notably Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin. The emergence of Russian music into the western classical world is often taken for granted and seldom asked how or why it happened. In this study, I will compare the development of Russian music alongside …

Deconstructing Chaos: The Role Of Pitch Hierarchy In Music Perception, Gabrielle Stetz

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

During the early twentieth century, art music composers pushed Western tonality to the limits and eventually abandoned tonality altogether, creating a system that treated every pitch equally. This atonal system broke down all keys and harmonic progressions that are cornerstones of Western musical pitch hierarchy. Through an extensive review of current literature, this research aims to show that the concept of hierarchy, present in tonal but not atonal music, is central to music perception. This presentation will explore the role hierarchy in music perception through several means: examining the physical nature of sound on a mathematical basis, determining innate structures …

Richard Wallaschek's Nineteenth-Century Contributions To The Psychology Of Music, Amy B. Graziano, Julene K. Johnson

Music Faculty Articles and Research

RICHARD WALLASCHEK (1860-1917) is most widely known for his contributions to comparative musicology; however, he also made significant contributions to the field of music psychology. From 1890 to 1895, Wallaschek pursued interdisciplinary studies at the British Museum in London. During this time Wallaschek proposed theories about the perception and production of music. According to Wallaschek, the perception of music occurs through two types of mental representation: Tonvorstellung (tone representation), which referred to the perception of individual musical elements, and Musikvorstellung (music representation), which referred to the perception of the higher-order structure of music. Wallaschek emphasized Gestalt-like concepts in his discussion …