Musicology Commons^™

Here Comes The Sun: A Diachronic Study Of The Role Of Music In The Amarna Period, Waleed Hawatky

Theses and Dissertations

Music has and continues to play a prominent role in the lives of individuals and in society, hardwired into the human experience and integral to our understanding of the world in both its tangible and intangible manifestations. This was no different in dynastic Egypt, where abundant iconographic and physical evidence from the Old Kingdom onward shows music performed in many diverse contexts at every social level.

Music appears not only to gain prominence during the reign of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (c. 1353–1335), also known as the Amarna Period, but also to develop innovations, including new kinds of instruments and musical ensembles, …

Beethoven, Caspar Peucer’S Commentarius, And Enchanted Nature, Nicholas Chong

The Beethoven Journal

The posthumous inventory of Beethoven’s library includes a late Renaissance treatise by Caspar Peucer (1525–1602) entitled Commentarius de præcipuis generibus divinationum (Commentary on the main types of divination). Peucer’s text is concerned mainly with methods of predicting the future through such practices as magic, astrology, and the reading of oracles. Neither Peucer nor his treatise is mentioned in any other source associated with Beethoven. The composer also had a limited knowledge of Latin and his copy of Peucer’s text was more than two centuries old.

Previous scholarship has not explored Beethoven’s ownership of this book in any detail, except to …

The Influence Of Gustav Holst's The Planets On The Music Of John Williams, Kara Lewis

Senior Honors Theses

Throughout his six-decade career in film music, John Williams has achieved incredible success. Yet, one of the most prominent criticisms of Williams’ work is that it borrows heavily from classical repertoire. It is common to read that Williams stole from composers such as Gustav Holst. This paper examines in what aspects and to what extent the music of Williams takes inspiration specifically from Holst’s The Planets. Overall style and specific excerpts will be compared to demonstrate that, while the two share some characteristics, there is not an overall sameness of style. It shall also be demonstrated that certain excerpts …

Conga Santiaguera: A Century Of Innovation And Competition, Nick Herman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Santiago de Cuba is home to the island’s biggest, oldest, and most famous carnival.  Any local resident will confirm that “sin conga no hay carnaval (without conga there is no carnival).” In Santiago, conga refers to a vibrant street procession, the music that drives it, and the ensemble that makes the music.  Conga Santiaguera: A Century of Innovation and Competition presents a musical history of the conga from roughly 1910 to 2010.  This project, https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/conga employs an eBook, musical analysis, oral histories, and audiovisual media to show how the conga has been constantly reinvigorated by innovation, competition, and Afro-Diasporic …

Contesting The Sacred: Ideology And Church Music Reform In Spain, 1850–1900, Francisco J. Legasa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that sacred-music reform in Spain between 1850 and 1900 was not a unified movement culminating in the 1903 Motu proprio, but a contest between two distinct and contemporaneous programs. The first, associated with Hilarión Eslava, affirmed musical expression and artistic progress, embraced stylistic eclecticism, and sought to rebuild musical institutions, modernize pedagogy, and forge alliances with civic life. It drew on Romantic thought that attributed to music a distinctive capacity to mediate religious experience. The second, aligned with Roman ultramontanism, held that Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony were the only legitimate models for sacred music and that …

A Description Of Zhao Zhang’S Nature No. 2 And Xiaoxuan Xu’S An Unusual Feast Of East, Sicheng He

Dissertations, 2020-current

This research presents a new path in the development of Chinese music by aiming to incorporate both modern Western and ancient Chinese influences in form, texture, tonality, topic, and other dimensions of style and structure. Two Chinese composers whose recent compositions for the piano share similar characteristics: Zhao Zhang (b. 1964; Nature no. 2, 2013) and Xiaoxuan Xu (b. 1990; An Unusual Feast of East, 2022). The research will discuss how Zhao Zhang and Xiaoxuan Xu accomplish this fusion of old and new in their recent piano works Nature no. 2, (2013) and An Unusual Feast of East, 2022. …

The Influence Of Giovanni Gabrieli On The Music Of Heinrich Schütz, Caleb Taylor

Student Scholar Symposium

Teachers often have a profound influence on their students. The influence of Giovanni Gabrieli on the music of his student Heinrich Schütz is particularly evident: Gabrieli and Schütz’s pieces are so similar that a listener may observe parallels even without the use of scores. The use of specific melodic and rhythmic patterns during cadences and the use of echoing phrases by both composers strongly suggest a musical link between them. There is currently no detailed theoretical analysis comparing specific elements found in the music of both Schutz and Gabrieli. My research aims to remedy this gap in knowledge by examining …

Objects Of Power: Female Instrumentalists In Medieval To Early Modern Europe, Emma Scherrer

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Women are difficult to locate in traditional histories of western music, especially performers and particularly instrumentalists. The relationship between a female performer, the instrument she played, and her audience was especially fraught, constituting a complicated web of gendered relations and power dynamics. An examination of the contexts in which women played instruments in medieval to early modern Europe elucidates how women in these societies interacted with music and musical institutions. While women were generally excluded from musical institutions and discouraged from playing most musical instruments, many women nevertheless chose to take up an instrument outside of professional contexts. From the …

The Partsongs Of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Alan Davis

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This document examines the complete set of thirteen partsongs by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) a body of choral works underrepresented in both scholarship and performance. Before the twentieth century, English partsongs had already developed a rich lineage through composers such as Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, Edward Elgar, and Charles Wood. Around 1900, the genre flourished further in the works of Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi, and Herbert Howells, whose partsongs were published by Novello & Co. and featured in The Musical Times. Within this broader context, Coleridge-Taylor’s contributions stand apart: his partsongs reveal a distinctive harmonic …

Black On Black Sounds: Music, Migration, And The ‘Nu-K Blak’ Identity Formation In Early 21st Century Britain, Monique Charles

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Examining literature on the under researched areas of Afrobeats and African migration to Britain, this article identifies significant internal shifts in the ethnic diversity of Black Britain —i.e., from Caribbean (predominantly Jamaican) to West African (Nigerian, Ghanaian) (ONS 2011). Interpreting literature and applying to the British context, it highlights how Afrobeats reshapes Blackness in Britain, particularly the incorporation of desirable Africanness through Afrobeats music. It argues that demographic and musical shifts in Britain result in a renegotiation of the Caribbean and US dominant 20th century Black Britishness — ‘UK Blak’ identity (as identified by Bradley 2013, Gilroy 1993 & Palmer …

Pretty And Problematic: The Use Of Music In Guadagnino's 'Call Me By Your Name', Brandon L. Foskett

Deliberately Queer Journal

Tension in the reception of the American-Italian film Call Me by Your Name (dir. Guadagnino, 2017)—as a beautiful film that implicitly condones a problematic narrative—is shaped in part by its compilation soundtrack. Already lauded as a timeless masterpiece in cinematography, sensuality, and music, the film also receives steadfast criticism regarding its portrayal of homosexuality and alleged condoning of interage desire between Elio, a 17-year-old Italian-French boy, and Oliver, a 24-year-old American man. In this paper, I analyze five musical episodes from the film, including The Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way,” Ravel’s Une barque sur l’océan, and Sufjan Stevens’s “Mystery …

Poets, Pioneers, And In-Betweeners: Musicians Of The South Asian Diaspora, Kancana Preetika Kathiravan

Music Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sid Sriram, Arooj Aftab, and Ganavya Doraiswamy are three Asian American musicians who have experienced a meteoric rise over the past five years. These artists are signed to major labels, receive mainstream media exposure, have multiple Grammy nominations, and tour internationally. Through different avenues, they have built up diverse audiences that include members of the South Asian diaspora who see their own stories and music represented. Rather than being a single part of a cross-cultural collaboration, these musicians belong to both worlds. With backgrounds both in South Asian and American musical styles and grammars, these musicians are like their work: …

The Sound Of Young America/The Soul Of Young America: A Sonic Rhetoric Inquiry Into 1965 And The Music Defining A Generation In Crisis, Jessica Dyche

All Dissertations

The Sound of Young America/The Soul of Young America: A Sonic Rhetoric Inquiry into 1965 and the Music Defining a Generation In Crisis builds a case for sonic rhetoric theory that sees sonic rhetoric move outside of pedagogy, becoming a valuable tool for rhetorical analysis outside the classroom. To this end, The Sound of Young America/The Soul of Young America employs sonic rhetoric concepts and methodology grounded in cultural rhetorics, social history, and sociomusicology to inquire into the cultural and social relevancy of rock music, specifically to this project, in 1965. Sonic rhetoric sees sound and music as underexplored, but …

Thomas Pereira’S 'Lülü Zuanyao' 律呂纂要 (Ca. 1685): A Jesuit Music Theory Textbook For The Chinese Emperor, Qingfan Jiang

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Thomas Pereira (1646–1708), a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, arrived in Beijing in 1672 and was appointed by the Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722) as his music tutor. For the emperor's music lessons, Pereira authored Lülü Zuanyao 律呂纂要 [Elements of Music] (ca. 1685), the first known Western music theory treatise written in Chinese. My translation includes the first half of Zuanyao that focuses on Western music notation, solmization, and the hexachordal system. As a product of the global circulation of musical knowledge in the early modern period, Zuanyao is significant in three ways. First, it illustrates the direct influence of the music education Pereira …

La Música Que Nos Une: Prácticas Y Expresiones Musicales Rurales De Tracidión Oral, Rosa Delia Acosta León, Ana Betina Morgante Combariza, Manuel Fernando Merchán Bernal, Juan Manuel Urrego Laurin

Ciencias Sociales, Humanidades y Ciencias Políticas

La Música que nos une surge como una herramienta de mediación cultural concebido como producto del proyecto de investigación Etnomusicología de expresiones musicales rurales de tradición oral cundinamarquesas como elementos de educación y cultura, desarrollado por el programa de Música de la Universidad de Cundinamarca. Su propósito es reconocer y preservar las prácticas musicales de los artistas regionales, así como sus historias de vida para contribuir a la preservación de la identidad cultural de las nuevas generaciones de la región. establecer conexiones significativas entre el material recopilado durante el trabajo de campo, enfocado en las prácticas musicales. de los artistas …

Chenoweth Prevails: The Connection Between Social Standards And The Marimba’S Development In The Western Art Music Tradition, Jackson Hall

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Among percussionists, the names of many marimbists come to mind before that of Vida Chenoweth (1928-2018), the pioneer of the modern marimba recital. Chenoweth began her first recital tour in the early 1950s at a time when the marimba did not yet have a dedicated solo repertoire, and women were largely excluded from performing on orchestral instruments. This thesis explores the musical and social contexts in which Chenoweth performed and worked, with particular attention to her recital history, critical reviews, and, through works written specifically for her performance, her technical abilities. She not only sparked the evolution of marimba technique …

Minority In Baroque Trumpet Repertoire: Minor-Key Literature For Baroque Trumpet, Wing Heng Victor Yuen

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The repertoire for trumpet in the Baroque era is overwhelmingly in major keys for obvious reasons. As natural trumpet is limited by design to play the notes of the harmonic series, most players have little access to sonorities outside the major scale and arpeggios within the series without the help of technical innovations such as the slide, and much later, vent-holes. Baroque trumpet makers built valveless natural trumpets, which are limited by design to play the notes of the harmonic series. Since the fundamental physics limit the musical notes available to the natural trumpet, minor key is not an essentially …

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan I. Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

Cultural Immersion And Practices: Ellie Mannette’S Steel Pan Building Processes In Morgantown, West Virginia., Timothy Clark Friedhaber

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Ellie Mannette, among others, was one of the first builders of the modern steel pan. Born and raised in Trinidad, Mannette started building steel pans at a young age. Eventually, he gained employment with the United States Naval Steel Band, which opened opportunities for him to grow in his field. Through these opportunities and connections, Mannette arrived in the United States permanently in 1967. In the later part of his life, he moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where he continued building, teaching his building processes, and tuning steel pans. The study aims to serve as an aid for other scholars …

Playing Proverbs With Madame De Genlis, Rebecca Cypess

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The theatrical genre known as the proverbe dramatique, which flourished as a pastime of French high society during the late eighteenth century, has often been understood through the written exemplars left by the author and artist Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle. Yet Carmontelle’s literary contributions to the genre have obscured the vast range of activities known as jouer des proverbes (playing proverbs)—activities associated especially with women—which included conversational games, pantomime, poetry, dance, and music making. Attending to the many descriptions of jouer des proverbes left by Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint-Aubin, the Com­tesse de Genlis, reveals that the literary …

Enfilade And Variations: Interpreting Salon Music Through Residential Architecture In Eighteenth-Century Paris, Nicole Vilkner

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In eighteenth-century Parisian salons, theme and variations on popular melodies proliferated. Elaine Sisman’s seminal study of variation form provides a foundational approach for understanding variations as rhetorical exercises that persuade through differences in syntax and expression. In this vein, scholars have comprehensively affirmed the ways that salon music reflects the dialogic and sociable practices of Enlightenment receptions (Hanning, Sutcliffe, and Zohn). I suggest that theme and variation form is not only connected to the rhetoric of the salon, but that the concept of sequential elaboration is a principle that was also prized in residential architecture.

Drawing from theoretical writings of …

Secular Formations Of Sacred Music: Schleiermacher, Romanticism, And Devotional Media In Germany, Desmond Sheehan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Theologians and musicologists alike have often disregarded the material and technical facets of devotional scenes such as the one meticulously described in Schleiermacher’s Christmas Eve Celebration: A Dialogue (1806). More recent musicologists have highlighted more concealed technologies that helped to facilitate Romantic aesthetic experiences – a form of methodological unmasking that at once denies and reclaims a Schillerian notion of disenchantment. This essay argues that both types of studies perpetuate secularization narratives that displace a Christian religiosity into public artforms and social practices in Romanticism, and secular modernity by extension. As a proposed alternative, a media history of sacred music …

The Grateful Dead: An Imperfect Symbol Of The Hippie Movement, Vanessa Sharfe

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The emergence of the band, the Grateful Dead, took San Francisco by storm in the 1960s as the hippie counterculture movement increased in popularity in the United States. The Grateful Dead’s career spanned thirty years from 1965 to the passing of their lead singer, Jerry Garcia in 1995. My work will focus on the political and social context of the 1960s and 1970s because the time period was shaped by major political issues and events that influenced the ideologies of the various protest movements such the Free Speech Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and controversial topics such as the Hell’s …

How Schubert’S 9th Symphony (“The Great”) Serves As A Turning Point For The Orchestral Trombone, Tim Mccord

Bakerman Student Research Awards

No abstract provided.

Singing Petrarch In The Cinquecento: Embodied Reading And The Italian Madrigal, Thomas A. Hedrick Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how composers of sixteenth-century Italian madrigals highlighted poetic line rhythm, repeated vowel sounds (or assonance), and word repetition in figures of speech—all elements of the verse that have been previously overlooked by scholars, who have traditionally focused on musical depictions of the text’s semantics. The analysis in chapters 2, 3, and 4 shows that composers used a consistent set of techniques from the madrigals of Arcadelt to those of Monteverdi, and musical examples draw from large collection of madrigals on Petrarch sonnets. The analytical methodology is built on the premise that Cinquecento encounters with poetry can be …

Arnaud Préot: Teacher, Composer, And President, Melonee Gray

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Arnaud Préot (1818-1873) was the 8th president of Longwood University. He served between the years 1863-1869 and ran the institution during the Civil War. A Frenchman, Préot immigrated to America at the age of 19. In America, he served as a professor of language and music, and eventually served as president at three female colleges. Additionally, he composed music, including several piano compositions and many vocal pieces. His works are reflective of both the classical period and the French style. In this essay, two of his piano compositions and one of his vocal pieces are analyzed and discussed. Préot's pieces …

El Nacimiento Del Rock En Español: ¿Cómo Fue Que Este Género De Música Latina Tuvo Éxito?, Alejandro V. Martinez

World Languages and Cultures

This paper titled El nacimiento del rock en español: ¿Cómo fue que este género de música latina tuvo éxito? will cover information regarding the Spanish rock movement. This essay compares what is written in this paper to that of prior scholars to show that although they do bring valid points, there is a lot more than many of us realize. There are various articles and reports written about the movement, but many do not explain the creation of the movement, let alone its survival in the music industry as a new genre that some had never heard of or had …

“Sounds Like” Redemption? On The Musicality Of Species And The Species Of Musicality, Tyler Yamin, Alice Rudge

Faculty Journal Articles

Popular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called ‘natural world’ of non-human species. And amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. To critique these claims, we trace how notions of ‘musicality’ have been applied to or denied from non-human entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. We conclude that such debates reinforce the separation that they …

Dimitris Kafyris: The Legacy And Pedagogy Of A Trailblazing Greek Trumpeter, Stephen M. Wadsack

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Dimitris Kafyris (Δημήτρης Κάφυρης, 1932–2020) is regarded as one of the most talented trumpeters of the twentieth century, within his native homeland of Greece. From the early 1950s into the mid-1980s, Kafyris performed with the Athens State Orchestra (Greece’s premier orchestral ensemble), the Greek Radio Symphony, and the National Opera. During this period, Kafyris also maintained a teaching position at the Hellenikon Conservatory (Ελληνικόν Ωδείον) in Athens. Following what many would already consider to be a robust career, Kafyris returned home to the Greek island of Corfu, where he assumed the roles of Bandmaster and Director of the Corfu Philharmonic …

Polluted Soundscapes And Contrepoison In Sixteenth-Century France: The Sonic Warfare Leading To The First War Of Religion, John Romey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In the decades leading up to and during the first years of the Wars of Religion, Huguenots and Catholics waged audible battles over sonic territories using songs as spiritual weapons. Huguenots memorized and communally sang metrical psalms in the vernacular as sonic markers of the Reformed faith. Catholics interpreted these same sounds as pollution in need of eradication. Artus Desiré, for example, responded by producing polemical contrepoison, musical antidotes created by composing new countertexts to Marot’s Psalm tunes to “cleanse” them of their perceived heresy. While scholars have long recognized both the destructive nature of iconoclastic attacks on religious …