Music Commons^™

A Select Survey Of Choral Arrangements Based On The Songs Of Stephen Foster Tracing Developments In Music And Textual Changes Through The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries, Perry K. Ward

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Stephen Foster is acknowledged as America’s first composer of popular music. His legacy can be seen in the number of songs that are embedded in our cultural heritage – “Oh! Susanna,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” are but a very few of his most popular works. Stephen Foster’s songs have been incorporated into every facet of American culture including both popular and classical musical culture, television, and film. However, his legacy is complicated as it is tainted by connections to blackface minstrelsy in some works. This document seeks to trace the threads of racial sensitivity and cultural appropriation …

An Exploration And Application Of Lieder Performance Practices And Compositional Techniques Towards The Poetic And Musical Structures Of Robert Schumann's Mignon Lieder, Clarissa Noel Lewandowski

Theses and Dissertations

The author has explored the poetic elements and musical settings of “Mignon Lieder” composed by Robert Schumann based on the text from Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. The author has compared the poetic and musical structures of each song from the “Mignon Lieder”, in order to capture the essence of Schumann’s compositional style as well as the performance practice needed specifically for his lieder. These topics are directly linked to the close relationship between text and music and the ability to blend the two for a meaningful performance. Also, an analysis of Mignon, the character of which the “Mignon …

Louden Hugely: The Piano Music Of Percy Grainger, Jackson Carruthers

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) was an Australian pianist and composer. While highly esteemed during his lifetime, Grainger's music has largely fallen into neglect outside the world of the wind band. However, Grainger left a vast quantity of highly idiomatic and meritorious piano music which deserves greater acceptance. To this end, this paper makes a survey of Grainger's output for piano, to show the merit of his music and prove that it remains relevant even today.

NapoléOn Coste: Composer And Guitarist In The Musical Life Of 19th-Century Paris By Ari Van Vliet, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

Napoleon Coste: Composer and Guitarist in the Musical Life of 19th-Century Paris, by Van Vliet, Ari is reviewed.

La Guitare = The Guitar = La Chitarra, Paris, 1650-1950, Addendum, By Daniel Sinier And FrançOise De Ridder, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

La Guitare = The Guitar = La Chitarra, Paris, 1650-1950, Addendum, by Sinier, Daniel and Francoise de Ridder is reviewed.

Finding Home: Creating A Video Game Soundtrack, Samantha Chase

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this lecture recital was to reflect on the characteristics of video game music, how those characteristics were shaped through technological advancements in the industry, and how to apply them to composition. Due to the limitations of early video game technology and memory space, video game composers were extremely limited. Composers worked through these limitations by composing with limited range and timbres, looping, and extensive use of ostinato. Even though modern day composers are not faced with this challenge, many still rely heavily on these techniques as they have become iconic of video game music. Video game composers …

New Voices In Old Bodies: A Study Of “Recycled” Musical Instruments With A Focus On The Hahn Collection In The Deutsches Museum, By Panagiotis Poulopoulos, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

New Voices in Old Bodies: A Study of "Recycled" Musical Instruments with a Focus on the Hahn Collection in the Deutsches Museum, album by Poulopoulos, Panagiotis is reviewed.

The Russian Guitar 1800-1850 (Timofeyev And Schneiderman), Stanley Yates

Soundboard Scholar

The Russian Guitar 1800-1850, album by Oleg Timofeyev and John Schneiderman is reviewed.

A Newly Discovered Letter Of 1827 By Fernando Sor, Erik Stenstadvold

Soundboard Scholar

This article discusses a hitherto unknown letter, written by Sor in Saint Petersburg in April 1827. It provides new insight into the publishing and personal relationship between Sor and his Paris publisher, Antoine Meissonnier, to whom the letter was addressed. We learn about three airs with variations Sor was busy composing at the time; he was particularly pleased with the variations Meissonnier later published as op. 30. The letter also mentions some unknown Sor works, including a book of drafts at Málaga, and it reveals that Meissonnier had published, without Sor’s knowledge, music that he had received from sources other …

Guitar Music In Collections: A New Web-Based Index Is Launched, Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

Is there any really good way to locate specific pieces of guitar music within published collections and anthologies? Might there be already a best way? Anyone who has taught or studied classical guitar is familiar with collections like Das Gitarrespiel or the Noad anthologies. But it is hard to remember with accuracy which pieces are in which of these editions or in dozens of others like them. Library and trade catalogs are not of much help. What is needed for this problem is in-depth indexing rather than traditional cataloging. These print indexes of song anthologies and collections have more recently …

AndréS Segovia’S Unfinished Guitar Method: Placing His “Scales” In Historical Context, Andreas Stevens

Soundboard Scholar

For over sixty years, guitarists of my generation have been familiar with the so-called Segovia Scales—the systematic scale fingerings advocated by the Andalusian maestro. They have been an influential—some might say a definitive—bestseller since their first USA publication in 1953. Countless guitar students have incorporated them into their daily practice routines. For the publisher, Columbia Music, they seem to be the goose that laid the golden egg. Are they everything that Segovia wanted them to be? Two books of recent date on guitar technique attest to their enduring value and relevance. Thomas Offermann wrote in 2015: “The fingerings of the …

Sinfonia Concertante By Luigi Boccherini, Edited By Matanya Ophee, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

Sinfonia concertante (G. 523), by Boccherini, Luigi is reviewed.

Afro-Caribbean Stylistic Elements As Topics In The Music Of Silvestre Revueltas: Conveying A Political Discourse In Caminando, No Sé Por Qué Piensas Tú, And Sensemayá, Elsy M. Gallardo-Diaz

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Although the music of Silvestre Revueltas has often been categorized as merely Mexicanist, this paper aims to demonstrate that not all of his music falls squarely within that classification. Among his brief but significant artistic output, three pieces for voice and small instrumental ensemble incorporate Afro-Caribbean stylistic elements drawn from popular and religious Afro-Cuban music. Composed in early 1937, Caminando, No sé que piensas tú soldado, and Sensemayá were based on poems by the Cuban Nicolás Guillén, the foremost representative of Afrocubanismo and, like Revueltas, an ardent believer in art as a tool for political protest and for …

Soundboard Scholar No. 2: Editor's Letter, Thomas Heck

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of this issue.

Soundboard Scholar No. 2: Cover

Soundboard Scholar

The painting Home Ranch, by Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), executed in 1892, visually captures some of the atmosphere that must have prevailed in Henry Worrall’s frontier world. The singing guitarist has been identified as Franklin Schenck. Might he have been singing Home on the Range, first published in Kansas in 1873? His friend Samuel Murray sits on the right. Now part of the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Home Ranch was donated by the artist’s widow and by Miss Mary Adeline Williams in 1929. This reproduction is in the public domain, according to the Wikimedia Foundation. …

Soundboard Scholar No. 2 (Complete)

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

“A Flower Which Blossoms And Fades”: Depictions Of Tuberculosis In 19th-Century Opera, Daniel Goldberg

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The romantic period in art and music is a time that focused on the regular person and had a fascination with nature, emotion, and death. One of the most common themes used was disease. One of the more common diseases of the time in both opera and real life was tuberculosis. In opera tuberculosis is always brought upon the same type of person time and time again and is always shown both by the character, and also though a series of metaphors. This character is always a woman and these “tubercular heroines” always are young, beautiful, frail people who need …

An Introduction To Serbian Piano Music: Musical And Cultural Influences On Three Selected Composers, Jelena Djukic

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

Serbia is a country that has survived many political and religious conflicts. Perhaps the best way to describe Serbian culture and tradition would be a country whose inhabitants struggled for many years, yet managed to incorporate the best elements of its conquerors’ cultures. Serbian musical identity is an amalgam of local and international influences and styles.

Different foreign authorities occupied this country for centuries. The Danube River was the main border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, located in the north, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire, situated south of the Danube. The Austro-Hungarian influences on Serbian music are most evident in piano …

"Manuscripts And Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context" By Helen Deeming And Elizabeth Leach, Timothy Mcgee

Performance Practice Review

Timothy McGee reviews and discusses Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Leach's 2015 work. Deeming, Helen and Elizabeth Leach. Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN: 1107062632.

The Rhythm And Blues (R&B) Protest Songs Of The Civil Rights Movement: Outlining The Natural Alignment Between The Foundational R&B Recordings Artists And The African-American Church During The Movement, Michelee Jones

Masters Theses

This study examines the R&B protest songs performed during the Civil Rights Movement and outlines their stories and musical characteristics for the purposes of highlighting a natural alignment that existed between several of the R&B recording artists that laid the foundations of R&B music and the agendas of the African-American church during the Civil Rights Movement. This study includes lyric and music analyses of some of the more popular R&B songs released during the Civil Rights Movement between 1960-1968 in which these analyses are compared with one another to form some general themes as to how these songs outlined the …

Edwin Fischer And Bach Performance Practice Of The Weimar Republic, Bradley V. Brookshire

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Edwin Fischer (1886-1960) provided a synthesis of approaches to Bach pianism that resolved dialectical tensions of long standing between schools that opposed one another throughout the nineteenth century. I argue that Fischer’s synthesis––which permits exegetical interpretation while maintaining a preservationist stance toward the integrity of the text––resembles both Felix Mendelssohn’s bifurcated approach to Bach’s music and Moses Mendelssohn’s description of a similar duality within modern Judaism. Such resemblance may not be coincidental or superficial, given that Fischer married into the Mendelssohn family at the height of its cultural influence in Weimar-Era Berlin. Although pieces of the Mendelssohnian construct were in …

On The Appearance Of The Comedy Lp, 1957–1973, David Michael Mccarthy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many observers of contemporary comedy in the United States during the 1960s referred to musical aspects of extra-musical performances. Comedy LP records furnish important artifacts for the study of the musical appearances these observers produced for themselves. Where contemporaries described appearances characterized by printable words and polemics as “satirical,” the musical appearances discussed in this dissertation can instead be described as “comic”: instead of mocking persons or ideas, they show people and things becoming involved with one another in absurdly triumphant ways. These two different sorts of appearances correspond to two different uses for comedy in a class society, one …

Puccini’S Love Duets And The Unfolding Of Time, Kae Fujisawa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the twenty love duets of Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). It analyzes the ways in which Puccini manipulates poetic-dramatic and musical elements to represent the naturalistic ebb and flow of emotions, reflecting changing cultural approaches to time and the closely related moral controversy between “respectability” and “free passion.” My analysis draws upon two models: the solita forma de’ duetti and Henri Bergson’s philosophy of time. The solita forma principles provide the structural framework for assessing Puccini’s creativity in historical context. Bergson’s philosophy of time provides an aesthetic and experiential framework for illuminating Puccini’s constant quest for a naturalistic emotional …

Ten Etudes For Solo Cello By Sofia Gubaidulina, Julia A. Biber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sofia Gubaidulina is regarded as one of the most original and highly respected voices in contemporary music today. Her use of the Fibonacci and its related series to structure her compositions has become a defining feature of her music and, therefore, most analysis has focused on pieces that incorporate this method, which she calls “rhythm of form.” Consequently, works written prior to her adoption of this method have garnered much less analytical attention. However, in her earlier works­––from the late 1960s through the early 80s––Gubaidulina not only explores new sounds and colors, but also found creative ways to structure these …

Crossing Paths: Musical And Ritual Interactivity Between The Ḥamadsha And Gnawa In Sidi Ali, Morocco, Christopher J. Witulski

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The processions occurring in Moroccan pilgrimages--such as those in Sidi Ali, a small town situated in the mountains outside of Meknes and Fez--are important sites that instigate an aesthetic negotiation within nearby possession ceremonies. The many musical groups that punctuate the cacophonous atmosphere during the annual pilgrimage are affiliated with a many of the country’s diverse mystical brotherhoods, including the gnawa, ḥamadsha, and ʿīsāwa. Through a detailed ethnographic description of processions and rituals from two of these groups, this article outlines ways in which musical tastes flow between the different events, informing the aesthetics of both outdoor …

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

Relics, Processions And The Sounding Of Affections: Barbara Strozzi, The Archduchess Of Innsbruck, And Saint Anthony Of Padua, Sara M. Pecknold

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1655, Barbara Strozzi issued her fifth and only sacred opus, the Sacri musicali affetti, a print comprising fourteen passionately religious motets for solo voice and continuo. This article demonstrates how Strozzi's final motet to Saint Anthony reflects a surge in trans-Alpine Antonine devotion--a devotional trend in which both Strozzi's dedicatee, Anna de' Medici, and possibly the composer herself, participated. This essay examines two particular events: a procession of Saint Anthony’s relics from Venice to Padua in 1652, and the founding of a Antonine confraternity at the court of Innsbruck in the same year. When these phenomena are examined …

The Rogationtide Processions Of Wilton Abbey, Alison N. Altstatt

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The Benedictine convent of Wilton Abbey was among the wealthiest women’s religious communities in medieval England and home to an elite school for noble women. Until recently, a late thirteenth-century manuscript processional from Wilton was known only from a hand copy made circa 1860 at the Abbey of St. Pierre de Solesmes. The original manuscript was presumed lost. The recent identification of thirty-seven leaves of the original manuscript processional offers primary sources for the study of Wilton’s liturgy, and offers a means by which to assess the reliability of the nineteenth-century copy. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct …

"Werke Für Klavier Zu Vier Händen" By Franz Schubert, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2013, Su Yin Mak

Performance Practice Review

Su Yin Mak discusses Bärenreiter's 2013 edition of Schubert's work.

Schubert, Franz. Werke für Klavier zu vier Händen, Band III, ed. Walburga Litschauer (Nos. 2-5) and Werner Aderhold (No. 1); Urtext of the New Schubert Edition, BA 9645. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2013.

ISMN: 9790006539871.

Exploring Three Colombian-Andean Folk Style (Danza, Pasillo, And Bambuco): An Analysis And Arrangement Of Three Colombian Pieces For Flute And Piano, Jesus Castro Turriago

Dissertations

This dissertation contains an analysis, comparison, and transcription of three Colombian pieces for flute and piano, written by composers of three different styles of folk music: pasillo, bambuco, and danza. An understanding of the historical context of these Colombian musical genres, and comparison of these instrumental pieces for flute and piano to those of other Colombian composers, informed my subsequent transcription and edition. The selected musical material comprises Bandolita, a pasillo composed by Luis Uribe Bueno, Bambuquísimo, a bambuco by Leon Cardona, and Adiós a Bogotá, a danza by Luis Antonio Calvo.