Music Commons^™

Freestyle's Forsaken, Sage D. Rivera

Theses and Dissertations

Freestyle is a genre of music born in the mid-1980s from Latino and Black communities in the urban epicenters of the United States. This project spotlights a freestyle music artist “Corina," and how she suffered a patriarchal construct but finally got the moment of significance she deserved.

Student Voice And Choice: Factors Influencing Student Participation In Secondary Arts Classes In An Urban Public School District, Alan D. Lambert Ed. D.

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

The purpose of this study was to capture the student voice regarding the value, importance, and relevance of visual and performing arts education in public schools. The host institution for the study was an urban school district in the southern central United States serving 75,000 students, with 55% students identified as Hispanic, and 52% of students experiencing poverty. Graduating seniors responded via questionnaires with forced choice and open-ended items regarding several topics, including what they do in their free time, how they perceive the value of arts classes at school, access to arts classes and the match of their interests …

Lawrence T. Odom: Techniques And Commentary On Arranging For The Wind Band, Clinton L. Williams

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Orchestral works transcribed for wind and percussion ensembles have been a standard component of the performance literature throughout the twentieth century to the present. Though an increasing number of composers were beginning to write original works of merit for wind bands during the mid-twentieth century, selections from the orchestral canon remained a staple of secondary school, college, community, and military wind and percussion ensembles.

This study analyzes the textural, rhythmic, and harmonic elements of Lawrence T. Odom’s transcription techniques used arranging masterworks for the United States Air Force Band from 1958 to present day. He transcribed over three hundred orchestral …

African American Opera Singers, 1850-1950: Ambition, Uplift, And Performance, Elena Arredondo Farel

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores African American engagement with opera in the United States between the 1850s—when Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, dubbed the “Black Swan,” drew comparisons to white superstar Jenny Lind—and the 1940s, when Black singers began to access “white” stages such as the Metropolitan. I foreground how musicians who knew they would never receive a fair hearing acted not just as singers, but as entrepreneurs, managers, composers, and collaborators in order to create careers for themselves. In order to do so, these singers navigated a complex set of aspirations and realities. Black opera singers engaged with ideologies of racial uplift, contemporary …

Energy Portraits For Flute, Clarinet In B-Flat, Violin, Cello, Piano, And Percussion, Luis Solis

Music Theses and Dissertations

Energy Portraits is a 25-minute work for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion based on the nine Enneagram personality types. The Enneagram system delves into underlying motivations and thought patterns of different people rather than only external behaviors, so this piece incorporates the typical overall energy of each number as a miniature portrait. The movements are not in the same order as the nine types from the Enneagram but are reordered and renamed for musical reasons. This allows the listeners who are not familiarized with the Enneagram to still understand the theme and energy of each movement.

Flourish is …

A Graduate Recital In Conducting, Noey De Leon

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This thesis serves as a part of Mr. De Leon’s choral conducting recital and program notes. The music selected for this performance creates a tripartite concert structure. The first part will focus on the villancico from Baroque Mexico. The second includes pieces highlighting specific seasons of the Christian liturgical year. The final section is a choral response to the COVID-19 pandemic, music written for, during, and/or in response to the pandemic. These sections will include biographical information for each composer, performance notes, translations of texts, and other important information about each piece.

Community Bands: Creating A More Accessible Community Band Experience Through The Use Of Multi-Level Repertoire, Cooper Neil

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This thesis hypothesizes that the use of multi-level repertoire in community bands will allow ensembles to more directly cater to their community member’s musical expectations while respecting the issue of time commitment for others. In this way, a community ensemble can become more accessible and, ideally, lead to a more diverse and representative group. Creating a volunteer community ensemble that accounts for musician’s available time, skill level, and desire for appropriate level of challenge is what this document seeks to address.

Isocrates's Place In Postmodern Advertising, Christopher Barkley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study in communication and rhetoric seeks to ascertain constructive applications for distinct advertising practices by examining Isocrates’s work and place in postmodern advertising. The focus uses 5 principles known to Isocrates which are: 1) commonwealths of households, 2) integration of reputation, elegance, substance and style, 3) education and public discourse, 4) phronesis and praxis, and 5) truth and verisimilitude. These 5 principles can form a constructive and practical advertising approach. This study is important. It examines Isocrates through the lens of advertising and extends the research done about him by leading Isocrates scholars who have looked primarily at his …

The Mathematical Foundation Of The Musical Scales And Overtones, Michaela Dubose-Schmitt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the question of mathematical involvement in music, a topic long discussed going all the way back to Plato. It details the mathematical construction of the three main tuning systems (Pythagorean, just intonation, and equal temperament), the methods by which they were built and the mathematics that drives them through the lens of a historical perspective. It also briefly touches on the philosophical aspects of the tuning systems and whether their differences affect listeners. It further details the invention of the Fourier Series and their relation to the sound wave to explain the concept of overtones within the …

Outcast: A Compositional Interpretation Of Lgbtqia+ Members' Self Love Stories In Social Participation, Victor G. Garcia

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

In history, it has been known to the world that the LGBT community has been facing challenges in this society, and where struggles occur, love must prevail. To numerically determine these 4 qualifying people, a behavioral survey was released for them to answer. The interpretation process was done by arranging the ideas from the interview transcription, planning the song themes ahead of time, and using creative figurative languages. After creating the songs, another survey was sent to the four participants for evaluation and subjective criticisms. Results show that all participants have agreed that the songs created can positively influence the …

White Dashes: A Research And Music Compilation On How Songwriters Harness And Understand The Concept Of Writing Based On Foreign Experiences., Stephanie Ann D. Lavoie

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

Music is part of more than we realize, without music in movies, advertisements, video games, films, and many other types of media, it would change how we immerse ourselves in these other worlds. This research focuses on writing music based on foreign experiences, meaning working with others and meeting their needs while maintaining creative liberty. A survey was conducted where songwriters and composers answered questions about differences between writing based on personal and foreign experiences, along with their opinions on how to write music for others. After the survey, interviews were conducted with some of those who answered the google …

Three Etudes For Marimba And Pandeiro: Contemporary Marimba Music As A New Setting For The Brazilian Pandeiro, Eduardo Marques Do Prado

Doctoral Projects

The history of frame drums and idiophones has thousands of years. The modern versions of the pandeiro and the marimba are relatively new to those families of instruments. While the marimba found its niche in contemporary music, the pandeiro has been mostly used in Brazilian traditional music. The current project brings those two instruments together, allowing the pandeiro to express its versatility. Executing the intricate rhythms, uneven patterns, and alternating time signatures from within the Three Etudes for Marimba and Pandeiro is an example of what can be done with this amazing frame drum. These three pieces provide the pandeiro …

'Ahora Estamos Más Unidos': Claiming Resilience In The Musical And Visual Aftermath Of The El Paso Mass Shooting, Eduardo Garcia

Music ETDs

The El Paso Wal-Mart Mass Shooting on August 3, 2019, prompted swift response from the local community to create artistic spaces of remembrance. This study examines the musical (mariachi and corrido) and visual (altares, murals, and memorials) manifestations present at makeshift and formal memorials for the victims. I analyze how members of the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez borderland situated their artistic work in the aftermath of the shooting. I argue that these artists responded to the attack with symbolic acts of resilience rooted in cultural and collective memory, embodiment of trauma, and the lived experience of corporeal …

A Poet's Voice: Music In Service To Poetry: Elements Of Text Painting In Juliana Hall's Song Cycle "How Do I Love Thee?", Hayley Z. Coughin

Dissertations, 2020-current

American composer Juliana Hall has established a reputation as one of the leading composers of contemporary American art songs, having composed over 60 song cycles, totaling over 300 works for the voice. Hall’s song cycle How Do I Love Thee? expresses a narrative arc told through five selections from Victorian-era poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems selected include Sonnet 3: “Unlike,” Sonnet 43: “How Do I Love Thee?,” Sonnet 37: “Pardon,” Sonnet 21: “Say Over,” and Sonnet 41: “Thank You.” Hall’s cycle describes the relationship between the lover and the object of their love, including …

Decolonizing And Enriching Opera: A Nigerian Folktale One Act Opera, Miracle O. Amah

Dissertations, 2020-current

Aligned with the decolonial aims of this project, this English and Yoruba language opera promotes an international understanding of African operatic styles which reflect literary, musical, instrumental and dance cultural traditions. This paper addresses some of the issues faced by people of color in the opera world, ways that people of color have been resilient in this genre and ways to enrich the opera world with the aim of decolonizing and deframing the white racial structure. This opera was first performed on March 29th, 2022 and was created as a workshop for performances in high schools, colleges, music institutions, and …

An Investigation Of The Violin Teaching Method Of Lin Yaoji From A Personal Perspective, Mo Zhou

Dissertations, 2020-current

As a Western musical instrument, the Violin has a history spanning more than three hundred years. Contemporary approaches to its performance and pedagogy have been developed and influenced by the Russian, the Franco-Belgian, and the German Violin Schools. It was not until the 1920s and '30s, that the violin entered the public realm of Chinese society.

From the 1980s until today, several generations of violinists have emerged as Violin Educators in China. Among them, Lin Yaoji was the most famous. This study will research and examine Lin Yaoji’s violin teaching method. Specifically, this document will consist of five chapters discussing …

A Poet's Voice: Music In Service To Poetry: Elements Of Text Painting In Juliana Hall's Song Cycle "How Do I Love Thee?", Hayley Z. Coughin

Dissertations, 2020-current

American composer Juliana Hall has established a reputation as one of the leading composers of contemporary American art songs, having composed over 60 song cycles, totaling over 300 works for the voice. Hall’s song cycle How Do I Love Thee? expresses a narrative arc told through five selections from Victorian-era poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems selected include Sonnet 3: “Unlike,” Sonnet 43: “How Do I Love Thee?,” Sonnet 37: “Pardon,” Sonnet 21: “Say Over,” and Sonnet 41: “Thank You.” Hall’s cycle describes the relationship between the lover and the object of their love, including …

Early Career Music Teachers And Trauma: A Mixed Methods Study, Tiffany N. Sitton

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Existing research rarely directly addresses individual trauma experiences of early career music teachers, despite copious research on adjacent areas such as stress and burnout. Early career music teachers have seldom had the opportunity to share stories of their trauma in the literature. Following an explanatory-sequential mixed method (Creswell, 2015), the researcher surveyed 250 music educators about their self-reported trauma experiences and then interviewed six of those participants to gain explanation of the survey data and to further illuminate their stories. Participants evaluated their own experiences using the definition of individual trauma from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration …

Shape-Note Music Traditions Of The Shenandoah Valley, Tyler Brinkerhoff

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Though over the years documents about shape-note music from Joseph Funk and Sons and the Ruebush-Kieffer companies have been spread throughout many archives, they are now being brought back together online in one digital archive. Interpreting the information contained in these documents and the ledger book of subscribers for The Southern Musical Advocate and Singer’s Friend magazine through graphs and maps makes the information contained in them easier to access for researchers. The collaboration between a physical museum site, a website, and a Omeka site allow for multiple ways to learn about the history of shape-note music in the Shenandoah …

Making Band Class Rock!: Incorporating Modern Band Into A Traditional Band Class, Melissa Harper

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to explore the use of informal music and Modern Band practices in the contexts of secondary music ensemble classrooms. Primary data collection was comprised of semi-structured interviews with teachers who used informal music learning practices and/or Modern Band programs at the secondary level. Results indicated that the inclusion of informal learning practices and/or Modern Band within the traditional music ensemble promotes the development of music individualism among students. Students and teachers together create environments that promote creativity, composition, and peer collaboration. Popular music and/or socially and culturally relevant genres are incorporated.