Musicology Commons^™

Jean-François Beaudin: Borrowing From The Old World And The New, Wendell B. Dobbs

Music Faculty Research

The modern flute world is full of innovation. Every year brings a new assortment of changes intended to improve the design or functioning of the modern flute—a new head-joint or a new material, a design innovation such as the vertical flute or a new contrabass flute. Much more subtle are changes to the design of 18thcentury style flutes. Generally, modern makers of these instruments take careful measurements of particular antique flutes that are recognized for ease of playing and copy them. The innovations are most likely subtle—a new wood, gentle tweaking of the embouchure or a tone hole, or cosmetic …

Guido Of Arezzo And His Influence On Music Learning, Anna J. Reisenweaver

B.A. in Music Senior Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Germaine Tailleferre's Film Score To Les Grandes Personnes, Jenna E. Moghadam

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Creative Work, and Performance

French female composer, Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) is well-known for her small chamber music compositions, but less known for her film score compositions, and her elusive film scores have not been a topic of discussion in music scholarship at the time of this writing. The aim of this thesis is to analyze one of thirty-eight films for which Tailleferre composed a score, Les Grandes Personnes (1961), and the information will be presented in three chapters. Chapter 1 provides information on Tailleferre’s life and compositional career, her inclusion in and the aesthetic endeavors of Les Six, and a background on French …

Agencies At War: Marshaling Places, Objects, And Sonorities In The Alta California Missions, Naomi R. Sussman

History Honors Projects

1769, Spanish Franciscan Junípero Serra initiated the missionization of Alta California. To transform California into a Spanish territory, Franciscan missions evangelized indigenous peoples. While traditional Alta California mission histories emphasize either Franciscan abuses or saintliness, reifying Native American subordination, most contemporary scholarship accentuates mutual hybridization but minimizes colonial power dynamics. Through archival and secondary research, this thesis argues that spatial interplay expressed neither syncretization nor unadulterated domination, but instead competing agencies within a physical and social “contact zone.” In this Alta Californian “contact zone,” material and sonic culture reinforced the continuous struggle for authority in the missions.

Illuminating The Infelice: Defiance And Transcendence In The 19th Century Operatic Madwoman, Claire Biringer

Music Honors Projects

The female protagonist’s mad scene, since coming into true vogue in the early nineteenth-century Italian opera tradition, has been prized for its dramatic and poignant emotive qualities. This project explores four nineteenth-century mad scenes; Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), Bellini’s I Puritani (1835), Meyerbeer’s Dinorah (1859), and Verdi’s Macbeth (1847), surveying the literature of each scene and providing formal analysis of musical attributes such as harmony, melodic structure, and formal design, all in comparison to generic operatic conventions. Musical elements generally associated with the operatic madwoman include the orchestral recollection of significant past themes, virtuosic coloratura lines, and the presence …

Illuminating The Infelice: Defiance And Transcendence In The 19th Century Operatic Madwoman, Claire Biringer

Music Honors Projects

The female protagonist’s mad scene, since coming into true vogue in the early nineteenth-century Italian opera tradition, has been prized for its dramatic and poignant emotive qualities. This project explores four nineteenth-century mad scenes; Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), Bellini’s I Puritani (1835), Meyerbeer’s Dinorah (1859), and Verdi’s Macbeth (1847), surveying the literature of each scene and providing formal analysis of musical attributes such as harmony, melodic structure, and formal design, all in comparison to generic operatic conventions. Musical elements generally associated with the operatic madwoman include the orchestral recollection of significant past themes, virtuosic coloratura lines, and the presence …

"A Music Unquestionably Italian In Idiom": Nationalism As An Evolutionary Process In The Music Of Alfredo Casella, Corinne M. Salada

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Little scholarship exists about the extent of musical nationalism in the works of twentieth-century Italian composer Alfredo Casella (1883-1947). Casella’s output, which is divided into three stylistic periods – 1902-1913, 1914-1920, and 1921-1946 – display varying styles and influences, such as an extension of French, German, and Russian romanticism and Schoenbergian atonality. Yet nationalistic expression simultaneously pervades each stylistic period: The first period portrays nationalism through the use of folk material and forms, as does the second, which also uses programmatic elements in an atonal context. The third stylistic period, to which previous scholars have given the most attention, expresses …

William Byrd: Political And Recusant Composer, Ariel Foshay Bacon

Musical Offerings

Amidst the pendulum of political and religious upheaval that pervaded England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century, William Byrd stands as one of the best loved and lauded composers. Byrd succeeded in the secular and sacred realms, contributing great works to the Anglican Church, popularizing the English madrigal and producing prolific amounts of sacred music. However, in a time where one’s religious beliefs were often linked with political loyalty, Byrd defied his monarch’s established and enforced Protestant religion, composing politically charged music for recusant use in clandestine Catholic Church services. His themes were aligned with the Jesuit mission and his …

Nielsen's Arcadia: The Case Of The Flute Concerto, Ryan M. Ross

College of Education Publications and Scholarship

In this essay I suggest that there are distinct patterns pertaining to the Flute Concerto involving the idea of ‘Arcadia’ as it contrasts an idyllic past with a troubled present. In my analysis, I argue that his positioning of simple themes with relation to their surroundings in the concerto’s two movements suggests a process-driven search for an Arcadian ideal. As such, and far from simply being merely an interesting work with several beautiful moments, the concerto is an important access point both for further understanding Nielsen’s creative approach to form and his late-period preoccupation with the idea of simplicity

A Christmas Eve To Remember: William Henry Fry's "Santa Claus" Symphony, Laura Moore Pruett

Visual & Performing Arts Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Polychoral Performance Practice And "Maestro Di Cappella" Conducting, Florian Bassani

Performance Practice Review

This article disputes some basic questions concerning the coordination of seventeenth century sacred music, approaching the phenomenon through a musical species of particular interest, though largely unstudied from a performance practice point of view. Roman polychorality with its specific performing conditions offers an illuminating perspective on principles of musical direction and interaction which differ significantly from our modern access path towards these topics. The inquiry ranges from basics of performance (such as sheet music, rehearsals, direction technics, models and stylistic conditioning of the performers) over the concrete role of the maestro di cappella as well as the tactus as cornerstones …

From The Directors, Linda B. Fairtile, Francesco Izzo

Verdi Forum

No abstract provided.

Verdi, The Theater, And Risorgimento Nationalism, John A. Davis

Verdi Forum

No abstract provided.

Verdi Biography Via Film, Charlotte Greenspan

Verdi Forum

No abstract provided.

Review: "Verdi's 'Il Trovatore': The Quintessential Italian Melodramma" By Martin Chusid, David Lawton

Verdi Forum

No abstract provided.

Cornell University Verdi Study Day 2013: Overview, David B. Rosen, Francesco Izzo, Alessandra Campana, Mary Ann Smart

Verdi Forum

Includes abstracts by Francesco Izzo ("'Quel vecchio': Some Thoughts on Old Age and Aging in Verdi"), Alessandra Campana ("Otello, Falstaff, and the Scene of Spectatorship"), David B. Rosen ("How Verdi's Minor-Mode Set Pieces End -- i, I, or X? -- and Why"), and Mary Ann Smart ("Art and Revolution Italian Style: Ambivalence and Absolutism in Verdi's Early Operas")

Review: "The Life And Operas Of Verdi" By Robert Greenberg, David B. Rosen

Verdi Forum

No abstract provided.

A Footnote To Harold Powers' 'La Dama Velata' (On Un Ballo In Maschera, Act Ii), William Rothstein

Verdi Forum

No abstract provided.

New Tools In Improvised Music Performance., Seán Mac Erlaine

Articles

This paper looks at the synthesis of computer technology and instrumental practice in improvised music performance. The emerging field of performers who use real-time signal processing as a technological extension of their instrument is discussed. How do new tools affect musical practice? Does the use of computers impose an associated aesthetic?

A number of key players are scrutinised including Evan Parker, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Jon Hassell, Miles Davis, Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman. The research provides a historical context to these practices and explores how pre- and post-digital technologies have shaped their work.

This article identifies an innovative and …

Questions Of Authorship In Josquin, Monteverdi, And Mozart: Documentary Versus Stylistic Evidence, Jillian Andersen

Summer Research

No abstract provided.