Musicology Commons^™

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

Pitch Identification In Musical Dyads That Vary In Harmonic Quality And Pitch Register, Edward E. Smith

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Seror and Neill (2015) found that consonant dyads are processed more fluently than dissonant dyads. Their finding suggested that this advantage in fluency accounts for the generalized preference for these chords. Recently, Eerola and Lahdelma (2021) found that the pitch register of the chord also affects consonance judgements of musical chords. This may suggest that chords in higher registers are processed less fluently than chords in the middle register. The present study combines these two studies by investigating processing fluency for musical dyads that vary in harmonic quality and pitch register. Participants were tasked with identifying whether an initially presented …

La Valse And The Parisian Salon: Nostalgic Continuities And Sonorous Modernisms, Claire Weydt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Immediately following World War I and the death of prominent French composer Claude Debussy, French composers and music critics were concerned that the war created an unbridgeable chasm between generations of composers who, through their various aesthetic allegiances, worked to define musical sounds as undeniably French. Numerous scholars have characterized this process as an aesthetic rupture brought on by the World Wars. French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), however, seems to have bridged this gap, at least for some influential critics. My project challenges notions of wartime rupture by resituating musical modernism within a framework of aesthetic continuity. Ravel’s choreographic poem …

Commissioning And Recording Project Of New Works For Saxophone Focused On Promoting Mexican Composers And Educating Future Commissioning Saxophonists, Andres Efrain Santana

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This document chronicles my process of commissioning and recording five new works by Mexican composers. To contextualize this experience, I provide a brief introduction of Mexican contemporary music history, an overview of second-hand accounts of the commissioning process, my personal experience of this process, and my assessment of the impact these works could have on the classical saxophone repertoire. As I have reflected on my own experience with historical and contemporary accounts of the commissioning process, it has become clear that personal connections between composers and performers and the patronage or funding linked to those relationships are just as important …

The Effects Of Operatic Voice Type On Singer Identity, Adelaide J. Mcdonald

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Within Western art music, voices are typically classified using the Fach system, which is based upon vocal characteristics and separates singers into the categories of soprano, mezzo soprano, contralto, counter tenor, tenor, bass, and baritone. Over time, these categories have become embedded with social and cultural meaning within the operatic world, leading to the development of stereotypes and expectations surrounding singers, as well as social categories and identities, referred to in this study as “sociocultural vocal categories” and “sociocultural vocal identity,” respectively. Currently, there are limited explorations of the sociocultural vocal categories and their associated stereotypes, with research on singer …

Cultural Immersion And Practices: Ellie Mannette’S Steel Pan Building Processes In Morgantown, West Virginia., Timothy Clark Friedhaber

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Ellie Mannette, among others, was one of the first builders of the modern steel pan. Born and raised in Trinidad, Mannette started building steel pans at a young age. Eventually, he gained employment with the United States Naval Steel Band, which opened opportunities for him to grow in his field. Through these opportunities and connections, Mannette arrived in the United States permanently in 1967. In the later part of his life, he moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where he continued building, teaching his building processes, and tuning steel pans. The study aims to serve as an aid for other scholars …

Spiral Historiography. A Balanced Alternative To Teaching Jazz History, Josiah Boornazian

The IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research

Jazz history is often presented in collegiate textbooks and classrooms as a linear, teleological, and chronological progression from one style to another. Some scholars have recently reacted against this pattern and have instead focused heavily on viewing jazz history through the lens of one or a few narrow perspectives such as race, economics, politics, gender, or similar topics. This paper argues that both of these approaches, taken separately, are flawed, and that therefore a more effective methodology might be to integrate the two by utilizing the abstract concept of a spiral. A spiral is a shape that, in three spatial …

Playing Proverbs With Madame De Genlis, Rebecca Cypess

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The theatrical genre known as the proverbe dramatique, which flourished as a pastime of French high society during the late eighteenth century, has often been understood through the written exemplars left by the author and artist Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle. Yet Carmontelle’s literary contributions to the genre have obscured the vast range of activities known as jouer des proverbes (playing proverbs)—activities associated especially with women—which included conversational games, pantomime, poetry, dance, and music making. Attending to the many descriptions of jouer des proverbes left by Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint-Aubin, the Com­tesse de Genlis, reveals that the literary …

Enfilade And Variations: Interpreting Salon Music Through Residential Architecture In Eighteenth-Century Paris, Nicole Vilkner

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In eighteenth-century Parisian salons, theme and variations on popular melodies proliferated. Elaine Sisman’s seminal study of variation form provides a foundational approach for understanding variations as rhetorical exercises that persuade through differences in syntax and expression. In this vein, scholars have comprehensively affirmed the ways that salon music reflects the dialogic and sociable practices of Enlightenment receptions (Hanning, Sutcliffe, and Zohn). I suggest that theme and variation form is not only connected to the rhetoric of the salon, but that the concept of sequential elaboration is a principle that was also prized in residential architecture.

Drawing from theoretical writings of …

Who Is Allowed To Compose Catholic Church Music? Ferdinand Hiller's Insightful Report On The Sacred-Music Competition In Louvain (1866), Jürgen Thym, Ralph P. Locke

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1866, a competition was held in Louvain (Belgium) for a new setting of the Latin Mass text; the aim was that the winning piece be accessible in style and require only choir and organ. The jury included, among others, the composers Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, and Ferdinand Hiller; the lexicographer Fétis; and Joseph d’Ortigue, music critic for the Journal des débats, editor of Le Ménestrel, and a prominent advocate for the regeneration of Catholic church music.

In 1880, Hiller—longtime director of the Cologne Conservatory—published an essay describing the competition in detail. His essay, never before translated or discussed, forms …

Secular Formations Of Sacred Music: Schleiermacher, Romanticism, And Devotional Media In Germany, Desmond Sheehan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Theologians and musicologists alike have often disregarded the material and technical facets of devotional scenes such as the one meticulously described in Schleiermacher’s Christmas Eve Celebration: A Dialogue (1806). More recent musicologists have highlighted more concealed technologies that helped to facilitate Romantic aesthetic experiences – a form of methodological unmasking that at once denies and reclaims a Schillerian notion of disenchantment. This essay argues that both types of studies perpetuate secularization narratives that displace a Christian religiosity into public artforms and social practices in Romanticism, and secular modernity by extension. As a proposed alternative, a media history of sacred music …

The Vagina Dentata: A Case For Unlocking Mouths, Loosing Hips, And Spreading The Gospel Of Healing Women's Sexual Performance Anxiety, Alisha Lola Jones

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article explores how vagina dentata folklore—stories and imagery about a mythical "toothed vagina"—connects to the ways Black religious communities often cultivate silence around women’s sexual lives, particularly within the “Worth the Wait” and Word of Faith movements. Ignited by womanist religious ethnographer Monique Moultrie’s scholarship on sexual silence in these movement, I take seriously the musicological chasm by exploring how these ministries influence Black women’s sexual agency and moral decision-making through inequitable theological procedures and discourses. The vagina dentata metaphor emerges as a symbol of constrained appetites—respiratory (larynx), digestive (intestine, anus), and reproductive (uterus, vagina)—reflecting broader sociocultural and religious …

Dedicated: “Me. I Am Lambily… And The Elusive Chanteuse” (Podcast; Episode 1), Vincent A. Barbato

Capstones

In this podcast, “DEDICATED,” music writer Vincent Anthony speaks with the most devoted fans of the most divine divas. This inaugural episode, “Me. I Am Lambily… and the Elusive Chanteuse,” is about Mariah Carey, her Lambs, and how they react to a flop album.

Carey's album “Me. I Am Mariah … The Elusive Chanteuse,” turned in May 2024. A decade later, the Lambs, like "Why Mariah Carey Matters" author Andrew Chan, still listen to it. So, what do fans appreciate about these lesser-known albums that the masses couldn’t connect with?

Chan and three other Lambs, whom Vincent met at a …

Yes, It Was My Song: The Cultural And Personal Significance Of Frank Sinatra’S “My Way”, Maren Dattomo '28

Best First-Year Seminar Writing

Regarded as one of the greatest singers of his lifetime, Frank Sinatra embodies the voice of America and of our hearts. Among his many highly recognizable songs, from “Strangers in the Night” to “You Make Me Feel So Young”, none are as popular and as embedded in the minds of those around the world as “My Way” is. This timeless song, released in 1969, tells of a man’s pride in his life as he looks back on it retrospectively. What makes the song so special to so many people is its relatable lyrics, mighty crescendo of orchestral sounds, and Sinatra's …

Introduction By Kurt Ellenberger And Wouter Turkenburg, Kurt Ellenberger, Wouter Turkenburg

The IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research

Introduction Volume 2 of the IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research with an overview of the articles.

Resurrecting The Muse: Kithara And Lyric Poetry Performance Practice In Greco-Roman Antiquity, Abigail Petersen

Honors Projects

Both students and pedagogues of classical studies are familiar with the inherent musicality of Greek and Latin poetry, and they also widely accept the idea that poets sang their works to accompaniment on a kithara, or large lyre. However, little work has been done to perform works of poetry according to this tradition, and thus many modern attempts at oral recitation feature a forced and pedantic rhythm that bores the listener and fails to do justice to the revered art of Greco-Roman poetry. Through a review of primary and secondary sources, I examine the construction of the kithara, the context …

How Is Music History Important And How Can Music History Be Included Into Our Regular Music Curriculum?, Abby Michalak

Honors Projects

From a music education major's perspective, music history is rarely taught in high school and middle schools today. Music history can teach so much to students, including context, style, and even why pieces were written. Through this paper, we explore why music history is an important topic to be taught in schools and how music programs across the country can include it into their curriculums through smaller sized lesson plans. This paper includes a sample curriculum that goes through the different period of music and a unit for "spotlights" for countries that are rarely represented in high school and middle …

The Grateful Dead: An Imperfect Symbol Of The Hippie Movement, Vanessa Sharfe

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The emergence of the band, the Grateful Dead, took San Francisco by storm in the 1960s as the hippie counterculture movement increased in popularity in the United States. The Grateful Dead’s career spanned thirty years from 1965 to the passing of their lead singer, Jerry Garcia in 1995. My work will focus on the political and social context of the 1960s and 1970s because the time period was shaped by major political issues and events that influenced the ideologies of the various protest movements such the Free Speech Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and controversial topics such as the Hell’s …

Predictors Of Mystical Experiences In The Electronic Dance Music Scene, Cody Edward Lesniak

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the nature and frequency of reported mystical experiences within the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) scene and the roles psychedelic and psychedelic-like substances, set, and setting play in facilitating these experiences. Participants were recruited using posts on a variety of EDM-related Facebook groups (EDM, EDM Universal, EDM Festivals and Raves, etc.) and Reddit threads (bonaroo, electricdaisycarnival, RavesAndRavers, etc.). Participants completed a self-report survey consisting of questions pertaining to their involvement in the EDM scene, motives for attendance at EDM events, motives for drug use, importance of the values of peace, love, unity, and respect (PLUR), the proportion …

The Songs Of Jean Sibelius: Poetry, Music, Performance, By Gustav Djupsjöbacka, Lina Sheahan

Library Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.