Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

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

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Rediscovering Argentine Repertoire Written In The 1930s: A Performative Study Of Concert Piano Works By Lita Spena And Celia Torrá, Florencia Zuloaga

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

A survey of the piano repertoire written during the decade of 1930 in Argentina reveals the rising number of several works written by women composers. For the first time, the years that followed the inauguration of the National Conservatory of Music and Theater in 1924 witnessed a professionalization of women in the field of music composition, and two figures made great strides in this regard. Celia Torrá and Lita Spena stood out among the first female composition students at the National Conservatory and some of the first to succeed as professional composers. Furthermore, they were among the first women to …

Chasing Expression: Tracing Notated And Performative Devices That Create A Bel Canto Style At The Piano, Paul Zeller

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

Discussions of interpretation and performance practice often address specific historical periods, offering analyses of musical practices within a predetermined set of dates, such as ornamentation in the Baroque period, articulation as applied in the Classical era, and phrasing “the long line” in the Romantic era. Such a sectionalized approach yields many valuable insights on how to perform the music of specific composers, but it fails to consider the development of notational practices and performative idioms across different historical eras. Studying the ways in which musicians of different eras applied the same set of musical devices within a specific style could …

The Role Of The Piano In The 12 Poems Of Emily Dickinson By Aaron Copland, Krista Benesch

Honors Theses

In the song cycle 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson by Aaron Copland, one may observe the interplay between the piano and the narrator. Throughout all twelve songs, the piano plays different roles. In several songs, the piano plays a certain character: in “Nature, the gentlest mother,” the piano is personified as Nature, while in “Dear March, come in!” the piano is March. In other songs, the piano reacts to the narrator—for example, in “Going to Heaven!”, the narrator announces a statement, and the piano follows with fast, tumbling eighth notes that portray the narrator’s scattered thoughts. Every song in the …

From Improvisation To Artistry: A Study Of The Piano’S 12 Sides By Carter Pann, Louis Claussen

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

Intended as a resource for pianists who may analyze or perform Carter Pann’s The Piano’s 12 Sides, this study provides biographical information on the composer and explores his professional relationship with the pianist for whom it was composed, Joel Hastings. Each piece from The Piano’s 12 Sides is discussed in terms of form, melody, harmony, texture and Pann’s approach to the pianistic compositional idiom. The composition is also examined with regard to extra-musical details and programmatic elements as well as inspiration and dedications that influenced Pann’s compositional process.

Correspondence and interviews with the composer reveal the motivation and inspiration behind …

An Underestimated Master: A Critical Analysis Of Carl Czerny's Eleven Piano Sonatas And His Contribution To The Genre, Levi Keith Larson

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

Carl Czerny is unquestionably a well-known figure in the history of nineteenth-century pianism. He was a pupil of the great Beethoven, and later taught young Franz Liszt, thereby initiating a pedagogical lineage that continues to this day. Czerny’s pedagogical material is still relevant to contemporary piano education, and many of his treatises are valuable resources for understanding Classical and early Romantic musical culture. Although Czerny is known for being an accomplished piano teacher, he was also a highly prolific composer. His oeuvre totals 861 opus numbers, many of which contain multiple pieces. Czerny also penned a variety of compositions that …

Tracing The Development Of Vivaldi's "L' Estro Armonico" Concerto No.8 In A Minor Through J.S. Bach And Samuil Feinberg's Keyboard Transcriptions: Exploring The Possibilities Of A Modern Authentic Performance, Andreas Xenopoulos

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

This document explores the development of the Concerto No.8 in A minor from the collection L’Estro Armonico by Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) through the transcriptions by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) and Samuil Feinberg (1890–1962). Feinberg was a Russian and Soviet pianist, composer and piano pedagogue, highly influenced by the teaching of Franz Liszt and the principles of the new, modern ‘piano school’ during the end of the 19^th century. Biographical information about Samuil Feinberg along with the influences Franz Liszt had upon piano education in Russia and the Moscow conservatory in particular is offered. Two comprehensive comparisons between the two …