Musicology Commons^™

Memorizing Music: A Problem That A Pianist Has To Face, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

As we all know, now the piano is usually an instrument that needs to be played by memory. Except piano ensemble pieces, most solo piano pieces are required to be performed by memory, even including piano concerto works. For a long time, many pianists have had mixed attitudes towards memorizing music.

The Awakening Of Islamic Pop Music, Jonas Otterbeck

Music & Performance in Muslim Contexts

Awakening – an Islamic media company formed in London – has created the soundtrack to many Muslim lives during the last two decades. It has produced three superstars (Sami Yusuf, Maher Zain and Harris J.) among a host of other artists. As the company celebrates their first 20 years in the industry, Jonas Otterbeck examines their remarkable rise to success and their established reputation as one of the most important global enterprises producing pop music inspired by Islam.

Otterbeck thoroughly describes the history and development of new Islamic popular music genres, in particular pop-nashid and Islamic pop, for the first …

Making The Violin Fashionable: Gender And Virtuosity In The Life Of Camilla Urso, Maeve Nagel-Frazel, Petra Meyer Frazier, Antonia Banducci

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

In the late nineteenth century, the violinist Camilla Urso (1840-1902) was widely recognized as the preeminent female violinist in the United States. As a nationally famous celebrity, Urso became a pedagogue and role model to subsequent generations of female violinists. Both the wide-ranging geographic spread of Urso’s career and her direct advocacy for women violinists played a pivotal role in changing cultural ideals of violin performance from a militant and masculine bravura tradition into a fashionable pursuit for young women. A classmate of HenrykWieniawski (1835-1880) and a concert rival of the Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull (1810-1880), Urso’s career rested on …

Correlations In Acquiring Musician’S Dystonia Amongst Professional Musicians: Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

Dystonia happens at a remarkable rate amongst musicians. The definition of acquired dystonia are types of dystonia that develop from other factors that cause damage or degenerate to the body the brain. Dystonia is a disease that is not fully understood by science and requires more research to uncover the disease’s abundance in professional musicians. Many medical studies have been done in regards to dystonia in the general population but there is still large questions about why dystonia is a crisis in the musical world. It is a topic misunderstood by most musicians and largely mysterious to the majority of …

Bollywood Production: Cultural Values And Studio Decisions: Annotated Bibliography, Tyler Thom

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

As India’s popular music, Bollywood has been used to discuss cultural representation and diffusion of ideas throughout India and the world. Musical, video, and pop culture analysis have widely been conducted but far less research has been done on the recording methods applied. Studio “magic” has been credited for the correction and production of modern music but editing decisions and mixing techniques are consciously chosen by an engineer and thus can be studied as an artistic endeavor. How are recording and mixing methods influenced and reflective of the cultural audience? While many techniques of music production originated in the West, …

Voiced Gender Signifiers Within ‘As One’ A Chamber Opera: Annotated Bibliography, Samuel Sherman

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

‘As One’, a popular modern chamber opera by composer Laura Kaminsky, presents the transition of transgender woman, Hannah. Hannah, however, is casted and composed as two separate voices, a baritone and mezzo-soprano, thus creating “Hannah before” and “Hannah after”. In doing so, a dichotomy of thought surrounding the attributes of a binary based practice of vocalization and character representation is created. Through the analysis of gender theory, voiced gender theory, and the ‘As One’ chamber opera, storytelling of complex gender-based characters may be solidified within biased gender compositional and musical tools. In discovering these repetitive actions through socially constructed stereotypes …

Narrative In Debussy’S Sonata For Flute, Viola And Harp: Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

An annotated bibliography to a proposed paper on narrative in Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp.

Relationship Between Vocal Technique, Classification, And Appropriate Repertoire For The Tenor Voice, Joan Sebastian Marquez Unda

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

Within the training and career of a lyrical singer, it is necessary to approach a question: Why is it important to know the vocal classification and the technique for the correct assignment of the repertoire? Although the answer forces us to delve a little deeper into the history of the classification of voices by sex, we will also focus on characteristics that section lyrical voices by their tessitura, timbre and intensity, with a special emphasis on the tenor voice.

The Jingwei Bird Sings Performative Resistance: Music And Arts Programming As Catharsis, Acculturation, And Cultural Remembrance For Refugees In U.S. Immigration Detention Centers, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

Scholarship on immigration detention centers as sites for musical exchange and identity formation remain largely unresearched. Adelaida Reyes in her groundbreaking work, Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free, offers insight into the “heterogeneity” of resettlement camps and their ambiguous sovereignty. Her work, however, does not examine the musical environments and ecologies of modern large-scale immigrant detention centers, nor these center’s specific musical identities. Significant analyses of music programming in detention centers include musicologists Donna Weston and Caroline Lenette’s article, “Performing Freedom: The Role of Music-Making in Creating a Community in Asylum Seeker Detention Centres” and ethnomusicologist Julia Morris’s …

Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

An Annotated Bibliography discussing how the music education forum could further diversify.

Exploring Maximalism In Music, Comparing The Selected Works Of Richard Strauss And Kanye West: Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

In the realm of music theory, many terms are used to simplify characteristics of musical compositions. Many of these terms become “ism’s” as a way to easily group many characteristics or techniques that composers implement. A well known ‘ism’ that is taught often in American music theory/history courses is minimalism, where composers made music with techniques like repetition, simplification, etc. This paper seeks to define another emerging ‘ism’ in music theory, Maximalism. This term broadly refers to the over exaggeration of compositional techniques in music, and their effects. I propose that in many ways the composers Richard Strauss and Kanye …

Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

This is a twelve source annotated bibliography with sources regarding the clarinet pedagogy of professors Yehuda Gilad and Howard Klug. It features dictionary articles, dissertations, journal articles, musical scores, and video and audio sources.

Fear And Death In Schubert’S Lieder: Annotated Bibliography, Michaela Hertrich

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

The themes of death are common throughout the genre of German Lied. However, fear is a much more subjective emotion that is often overlooked in textual and musical analysis of death. Schubert’s works “Erlkönig” and “Der Tod und das Mӓdchen” both illustrate situations of death, but they also include a deep permeation of fear. However, fear is dealt with differently between these two works, both in terms of historical context and importance as well as in general harmonic setting. This annotated bibliography includes sources that describe in detail Schubert’s compositional style, his approach to both the text and musical setting …

Einstein On The Beat: Transcribing Electronic Dance Music Using Methods Of Minimalist Analysis, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

This paper focuses on the transcription and methods of analysis for the modern musical genre of EDM, or electronic dance music. It takes a historical look at the origins of EDM in the early 1970s and explores how the compositional techniques of 21st century EDM producers are in fact similar to those of minimalist composers from the 1960s and 70s. By first establishing a common vocabulary to discuss the two genres, the paper will then examine compositions from both genres and attempt to provide a useful framework that can be used to analyze future catalogues of EDM.

How Have Classical Composers Written For And Adjusted Their View Of Viola Over Time? Annotated Bibliography, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

An annotated bibliography of a future research paper for MUAC 4000.

An Annotated Bibliography For Debating The ‘Authentic’ Use Of Vibrato In Early Bowed String Performance Practice, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

Musicians debate daily the authentic execution of pretty much any music, especially historical styles, even among non-specialist performers. To be considered authentic, there is little consensus among musicians deciding upon a unified vision of accuracy. Maybe the idea of a strict authenticity threatens a musician’s fundamental understanding of musical expression. That discussion, alone, can become very personal in nature. For decades, semantic and philosophical discourses have driven the impetus to debate of what ‘authentic’ music is, and the answer is (mostly) clarified when you start to investigate minute and critical musical details.

Especially among period performance specialists, there tends to …

Same Old Song: An Analysis Of Adaptation And The Orpheus Myth In Musical Theatre, Aaron J. Wulf

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

This bibliography is a brief examination of various adaptations of the myth of Orpheus and Euridice throughout the history of musical theatre and opera, specifically through comparative textual analysis of the scripts and libretti. In this examination, additions to or retractions from the original story, whether common to several adaptations or unique to a single source, will be analyzed. From these findings it will be possible to speculate on historical and contextual reasons for the unique shape taken by each adaptation, and to add to the conversation about the nature and purpose of adaptation in general as well as the …

Golan V Holder’S Impact On Orchestra Performance Programming: Annotated Bibliography, Craig M. Winston

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

This project will examine how changes in copyright law enacted with the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision on Golan v Holder affect the performance programming of American symphony orchestras. The court’s decision brought many previously public-domain, foreign works under copyright protections in accordance with the Uruguay Rounds Agreement Act; among the musical works were frequently performed pieces by composers such as Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky. The result is that previously free or low-cost works would now have to be licensed or rented for performance at great expense to the performing group. I will seek to test a hypothesis proposed by legal …

Entropy In Music: An Analysis Of Shape Note Music In Terms Of Information Entropy, Kyle Major

Honors Program Theses

This paper will be centered on a case study designed to probe a possible objective method for analyzing music that has already proven itself in the analysis computational systems: information theory. More specifically, this study has been conducted through the collection of data on information entropy in the genre of shape note music. The genre of shape note music has been chosen for its relative simplicity compared to other genres such as the classical symphony, which will render it significantly easier to analyze objectively. Information entropy as proposed by Claude Shannon, makes an excellent method for objective analysis because it …

Bass Is My Religion: Syncretic Spirituality And Navigating The Potential For Misappropriation Among Participants In Electronic Dance Music Culture, Daniel Backfish-White

Graduate Thesis Collection

At electronic dance music events in the United States, artists and attendees tend to appropriate religious and spiritual sounds, images, and dress, especially from India but also from elsewhere, to varying degrees. This project explicates the effects of adopting religious symbology, ethos, and atmosphere in the music and culture of EDM, specifically in bass music culture. It argues that although individual participants may adopt aspects of religious traditions in ways they perceive as authentic, the potential for misappropriation still exists. In other words, EDM culture creates opportunities for misappropriation that individual participants navigate in order to construct their own individual …