Music Commons^™

A Manifestation Of Apollonian Ecumenism In Selected Piano Works Of Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), Svetlana Yashirin

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

The period of 1890-1920, surrounding the Russian October Revolution of 1917, was marked by an unprecedented outburst in all human activities and a tremendous struggle of intellectual forces represented by various personalities and groups. Creativity among poets, artists and musicians soared because of a strong belief in art as a transforming force.

Composer Alexander Tcherepnin was born in 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Tcherepnin’s early exposure to the traditions of the New Russian Music School through his father Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945) and to modern art of the Mir Iskusstva (The World of Art) led to the formation of a unique …

Assessment Of Muscle Activity And Joint Angles In Small-Handed Pianists:, Brenda Wristen, Myung-Chul Jung, A. K. G. Wismer, M. Susan Hallbeck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This pilot study examined whether the use of a 7/8 keyboard contributed to the physical ease of small-handed pianists as compared with the conventional piano keyboard. A secondary research question focused on the progression of physical ease in pianists making the transition from one keyboard to the other. For the purposes of this study, a hand span of 8 inches or less was used to define a "small-handed" pianist. The goal was to measure muscle loading and hand span during performance of a specified musical excerpt. For data collection, each of the two participants was connected to an 8-channel electromyography …

Sight-Reading Versus Repertoire Performance On The Piano: A Case Study Using High-Speed Motion Analysis, Brenda Wristen, Sharon Evfans, Nikolaos Stergiou

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This study was intended to examine whether differences exist in the motions employed by pianists when they are sightreading versus performing repertoire and to determine whether these differences can be quantified using high-speed motion capture technology. A secondary question of interest was whether or not an improvement in the efficiency of motion could be observed between two sight-reading trials of the same musical excerpt. This case study employed one subject and a six-camera digital infrared camera system to capture the motion of the pianist playing two trials of a repertoire piece and two trials of a sight-reading excerpt. Angular displacements …

Demographics And Motivation Of Adult Group Piano Students, Brenda Wristen

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Adults are continuing to pursue a greater quantity and variety of educational opportunities. As evidenced by this study, adults typically have compelling goals from the outset of piano study and maintain clear expectations regarding in¬struction. They found the group environment helpful, underscoring findings from aforementioned studies regarding the success of choir, band, and other group musical activities for adults. More research concerning the social motivation of group music participation is warranted. Further investigation into what factors motivate adults to seek out and continue to pursue music study would help teachers better address the needs and concerns of adult learners. Likewise, …

Cognition And Motor Execution In Piano Sight-Reading: A Review Of Literature, Brenda Wristen

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Sight-reading is an integral part of the musical experience for all musicians. Pianists, in particular, often find themselves confronted with situations that necessitate adequate sightreading skills. The widespread need for sight-reading at the piano may be due to pianists’ widespread participation in collaborative music making. The size of the piano literature also contributes to this need, in that the repertoire is so voluminous that no one player can be familiar with all of the solo and collaborative pieces written for piano, nor do recordings of every piece in the literature exist. This is particularly the case with the pedagogical literature. …

Nordisk Sang: Heiemo Og Nykkjen: A Public-Domain File Of Norwegian Folk Music

Glenn Korff School of Music: Performances

This is a sample text file to accompany the mp3 file of the above music piece. It is essentially the “liner notes” for the above performance. It would give all the pertinent information: dates, performers, critical assessments, instrumentation, conductor, background history of the composition, stories of the composer’s life, great performance stories, superstitions, persons of note who attended, recording personnel, copyright information, etc., etc.

This is a searchable file; it serves in this case as both the abstract and the main document (text) file.

Readers should be instructed to download the mp3 file just below the main document.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (Scherzo), Ludwig Von Beethoven

Glenn Korff School of Music: Performances

This is a sample text file to accompany the audio file of the above music piece. It is essentially the “liner notes” for the above performance. It would give all the pertinent information: dates, performers, critical assessments, instrumentation, conductor, background history of the composition, stories of the composer’s life, great performance stories, superstitions, persons of note who attended, recording personnel, copyright information, etc., etc.

This is a searchable file; it serves in this case as both the abstract and the main document (text) file.

Readers should be instructed to download the supplemental ".wma" file just below the main document.

Christian Creativity In A Post-Christian Ethos, Quentin Faulkner

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The ideas I want to explore in this essay begin with the experience of some works of art that have recently been created for St. Mark’s-on-the-Campus Episcopal Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, the church of which I’m a member. All of the art you will experience has been created by active and faithful members of this church. Let me hasten to say that although I’ve been involved in various ways in fostering this art, I’m in no way responsible for it. That responsibility lies primarily with an insightful priest, Father Donald Hanway, who has vigorously championed the cause of the arts …

Muscular Forces And Joint Angles In Small-Handed Pianists: A Pilot Study On The 7/8 Size Keyboard Versus The Full Size Keyboard, Brenda Wristen, Alexis Kathleen Wismer, Myung-Chul Jung, M. Susan Hallbeck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Conference Presentations

This pilot study examined whether the use of a 7/8 keyboard contributed to the physical ease of small-handed pianists in comparison with the conventional piano keyboard. A secondary research question focused on the transition from one keyboard to the other. For the purposes of this study, we adopted David Steinbuhler’s postulated hand span of 8 inches or less as defining a “small-handed” pianist. The goal was to measure muscle loading and hand span during performance of the excerpt. Data collection included each participant being monitored using electromyography via surface electrodes, which were attached to the upper back/shoulder, parts of the …

Using Three Dimensional Motion Capture Technology To Describe And Assess Piano Technique: A Case Study, Brenda Wristen, Nikolaos Stergiou, Sharon Evans

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Conference Presentations

The purpose of the study was to examine any differences that exist in the quality of motions employed by pianists when they are sight-reading versus performing repertoire. A secondary question of interest was whether or not an improvement in the efficiency of motion could be observed between two sight-reading trials of the same musical excerpt. While data analysis for the full study is ongoing, the following results from a case study are illustrative.

A Sound Theology: The Vital Position Of Sound And Music To Hildegard Of Bingen's Theology And Public Identity, Geraldine E. Henderson

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

The twelfth-century nun Hildegard of Bingen heard God's voice as a child and developed a sensitivity to all sounds that led her to an increasing conviction of the power of sound. Later this sensitivity to sound issued in a body of religious writing about sound that this dissertation views as systematic, as an implicit "Theology of Sound" that can be legitimately extrapolated from the work. To trace how this theology emerged, Chapter One of this dissertation will give a brief biography and an overview of the chronology and context of Hildegard's work. In preparing for a construction of the theology, …

On The Influence Of Jazz Rhythm In The Music Of Aaron Copland, Stanley V. Kleppinger

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Surveys scholarly views of jazz's rhythmic and metrical structures in the 1920s (at the outset of Copland's career) focusing especially on Copland's own writings on the subject. Analyses of selected passages from Copland's piano concerto, the second piece of Four piano blues, the Piano variations, the piano sonata, the clarinet concerto, and Appalachian spring help to assess the ambiguity surrounding the identification of jazz-based rhythmic influences in Copland's music.

Review Of Gareth Curtis, Ed. Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, Iv: Early Masses And Mass-Pairs, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The volume under review is the latest entry in a slowly unfolding series, entitled Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, within the larger Early English Church Music (EECM) enterprise. It follows three previous volumes, namely I: Antiphons and Music for Holy Week and Easter (EECM 8, 1969, ed. Andrew Hughes), II: Four Anonymous Masses (EECM 22, 1979, ed. Margaret Bent) and III: The Brussels Masses (EECM 34, 1989, ed. Gareth Curtis). However, in his Foreword to the present volume, John Caldwell, General Editor of the Early English Church Music Committee of the British Academy, announces that this book heralds a new initiative, inaugurating …

Starlata, Princess Of Mars: A Space Operetta In One Act, Randall Snyder

Randall Snyder Compositions

Starlata, Princess of Mars: a space operetta in one actStarlata, Princess of Mars a space operetta in one act Randall Snyder (2003)Randall Snyder (2003)

synopsis

Two Americans attempt the first landing on Mars. After escaping a meteor shower, they crash on the Red Planet and are captured by a hostile band of Children led by Ergo, the Grand Vizier. They are brought to the palace of Starlata, Princess of Mars, the last female of her dying species. After an intensive and humiliating interrogation, Starlata, in order to ensure the survival of her race, eventually decides to mate with …

Music As Concept And Practice In The Late Middle Ages (Review), Peter Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

A review of Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, edited by Reinhard Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn. The New Oxford History of Music, 2d Edition. Vol. 3, Pt. 1. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). xxxii, 460 p. ISBN 0-198-16205-7. $115. Music examples, illustrations, maps, bibliography, index.

This is a valuable book, in which senior scholars approach topics with which they have been closely associated for many years. While its essays vary in their mix of original material and synthesis--and achieve varied success at the subordination of fact to generalization--they are without a doubt the best …

What Are Some Of The Problems Faced By Small-Handed Pianists?, Lora Deahl, Brenda Wristen

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Small handedness is a complex problem that cannot be solved in the space of a few paragraphs. Moreover, the severity of this problem has increased over time. Since the invention of the piano circa 1700, the keys have increased not only in width but also in length. The height of the ebonies over the whites and the depth of the keystroke have also increased, along with the heaviness of the action. Because these developments present formidable challenges for small-handed players, there is a need for heightened awareness concerning their specialized technical problems.

Most of the repertoire written for elementary and …

Small Hands, Sos! : Circumventing Injury And Succeeding At The Piano, Brenda Wristen, Lora Deahl

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Conference Presentations

Recommendations: Detach notes as needed—join with pedal. Release bass and inner voices early as needed. Insert dynamic fluctuations within a long fortissimo passage. Maximize the bass through long pedals. Use stronger fingers. Supplement action of the fingers with a forward and upward motion of the forearm. Use the thumb and fifth finger exclusively for octave passages. Omit notes from successive large chords. Use staccato touch for selected notes in arpeggio. Keep hand compact. Use “rebounding” motion. Insert moment of rest between every chord. Use the damper pedal to create a legato sound. Keep the hand pliable. Control shape and size …

Metrical Issues In John Adams's Short Ride In A Fast Machine, Stanley V. Kleppinger

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Employs several potential rebarrings of this fanfare's opening measures to represent the ways in which a listener might apprehend the music's complex metrical features. Meter is manipulated by this music in such a way as to make its very presence uncertain at best, though enough regularity (i.e., periodicity) is present at multiple hierarchical levels to tease the listener into making constant attempts to discover and latch on to a metered surface. The resulting aural sensation reflects that of wrestling to keep control over a powerful machine, as the work's title suggests. Concludes with a consideration of the music's potential metrical …

Deceptive Pivot Points In J.S. Bach’S Orgelbüchlein, Quentin Faulkner

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This brief essay is about “hitting the right notes.” Among the many technical difficulties players encounter in performing Bach’s organ music, some of the most treacherous are those passages that are very similar (sometimes almost identical) to each other. They may differ by only one note or one accidental, but that difference sends the music in an entirely new direction.

Avoiding Piano-Related Injury: A Proposed Theoretical Procedure For Biomechanical Analysis Of Piano Technique, Brenda Wristen

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Several biomechanical studies have been done with regard to the fingertip, hand, wrist, and upper arm in pianists. However, these studies have generally focused either on one isolated part of the anatomy, or on one specific motion. It is notable that none of the studies conducted to date examines the execution of a technical skill at the piano, such as a scale or arpeggio, in terms of the cooperative work done by all involved parts of the anatomy. Drawing upon established quantitative data, this study took a qualitative approach in describing and analyzing the execution of selected piano technical tasks. …

Information Vs. Formation In The Training Of Church Musicians, Quentin Faulkner

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The inexorable erosion of purpose in the formation of United States clergy—which is of course a reflection of the current malaise in US religious life—is both well established and well-documented. An article by Paul Wilkes in The Atlantic Monthly reveals the uneasy situation in US seminaries of all denominational stripes:

The issue of personal spirituality of Protestant clergy has traditionally hardly ever been addressed in seminaries, and has not until recently been considered especially relevant. …faculty appointments are often made on the basis not only of scholarship but also of outlook. Religious beliefs are hardly considered. As for religious practice—attending …

Technical Exercises: Use Them Or Lose Them?, Brenda Wristen

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Piano pedagogues disagree about whether piano technique should be developed through practicing exercises or by isolating a musical passage which requires that a select technical motion be employed. Exercises are purely mechanical note patterns of varying length, usually only a few measures long. They are divorced from any musical content, and are devoted to only one technical skill. Like exercises, etudes usually concentrate upon developing one technical skill. However, etudes are fully developed pieces of some length which allow the player to build skill within a musical context. The essential difference between the practice of exercises versus isolating and conquering …

Gothic Pillars And Blue Notes: Art As A Reflection Of The Conflict Of Religions, Part Iii, Quentin Faulkner

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

A number of years ago the BBC aired a series of television programs entitled Civilization, produced and narrated by the distinguished historian Kenneth Clark. Clark opened that series with a quote from John Ruskin:
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only trustworthy one is the last.

The reason our society may find it difficult to understand fully what Ruskin meant may well …

Gothic Pillars And Blue Notes: Art As A Reflection Of The Conflict Of Religions, Part Ii, Quentin Faulkner

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The existence of an intense and vital artistic activity is the most unmistakable indicator of the new religion, but it is not the only one. Three of the most commonly identified manifestations of religion are cult (public worship), myth (salvation history, doctrine), and ethics (right behavior, morals). Secular culture exhibits each of these aspects of religion.

Cult is in some measure synonymous with public worship. (The modern English- language use of the term "cult" is a distortion that wholly obscures its original meaning.) The difference between the two is one of degree rather than kind. Cult in its fullest sense …

Gothic Pillars And Blue Notes: Art As A Reflection Of The Conflict Of Religions, Part I, Quentin Faulkner

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Candlelight reflecting off the clutter of wall plaques and massive Baroque monuments makes a feeble attempt to dispel the gloom of a late evening in December 1705. The light, radiating from the multiple galleries surrounding the great organ, reveals a large crowd, elegantly dressed, filling the vast nave and spilling over into the side aisles of St. Mary's Church in Lubeck, Germany. Most of these people have already endured the winter chill during three long hours of worship, but they are now eagerly anticipating the musical feast that will occupy the coming hour. Some 40 musicians, both singers and instrumentalists, …

Chapel Royal (Royal Household Chapel), Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The household chapel of the English kings, a special group of personnel always in attendance on the ruler whose principal responsibility was to perform the divine service. The Chapel Royal is to be distinguished from two other major royal chapels of fixed abode founded by Edward III, the royal chapels of St. Stephen's at Westminster and St. George's at Windsor; its clerks and their duties are further to be distinguished from the King's Chaplains (a position emerging in the 1390s). There had always been chaplains at court who served the king, holding a variety of administrative responsibilities and functioning in …

Caput Mass, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

One of the most popular masses of the 15th century, surviving complete or in part in seven known English and continental sources, the Missa Caput is now thought to be the work of an unnamed English composer writing in the later 1430s or early 1440s. It is a cyclic mass whose five movements are unified both by a motto beginning and by the use of the same melody as structural cantus firmus in the tenor voice. Its name is taken from that cantus firmus, which is derived from a lengthy melisma on the word "caput" at the end of the …

Faburden, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

A distinctive English musical technique in which a simple form of three-voice polyphony is created by the addition of two extemporized voices to a preexistent plainsong. The term may also refer to the whole complex of voices, or simply to the faburden proper, the lowest voice, from which the technique takes its name. In this technique the plainsong voice, or mean (because musically it is in the middle), is doubled at the fourth above by the treble. The bass part, or faburden, proceeds mainly at the third below the chant, singing a fifth beneath at the beginning and end, and …

Music For Holy Week And Easter, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The later medieval church celebrated Holy Week and Easter with many unique liturgical forms and ceremonies, often of an intrinsically dramatic character. These included major processions on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday; the singing of the passions during mass as the New Testament Gospel on Palm Sunday (St. Matthew Passion), Wednesday (St. Luke Passion), and Good Friday (St. John Passion); and in many locales in northern France and England, the performance of two Latin liturgical dramas—the Visitatio sepulchre performed at the end of Matins on Easter Sunday morning, and the Officium peregrinorum, performed at Vespers that …

Godric's Songs, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Three monophonic religious songs of the mid-12th century ("Sainte marie viergene," "Kirieleison: Crist and sainte marie," and "Sainte Nicholas Godes druth") that are the earliest English-language lyrics to survive with their melodies; found in a number of manuscript sources, including three with music, they are also known as Godric's Hymns. Their composer, St. Godric (ca. 1070/80–1170), wrote them some time after he retired to a hermitage at Finchale, north of Durham, following a career as a merchant trader and ship's captain. Godric's life as a hermit was one of ascetic hardship, punctuated by visions in which the songs were taught …