Other Music Commons^™

Analysis Of Robert Schumann’S “Fantasy Pieces For Clarinet And Piano”, Opus 73, For A Greater Understanding Of A Standard In Western Classical Solo Repertory, Kaleigh Alwood

Music Undergraduate Honors Theses

In a mere two days, Robert Schumann composed a duet that would become a lasting symbol of romanticism in chamber music. “Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and Piano”, Op. 73 is now a standard in clarinet repertoire. As such, the piece is frequently performed and analyzed. Schumann and his “Fantasy Pieces” are well known and broadly discussed, which leads one to wonder: how does one contribute to and interpret such a standard? To answer this question, it is proposed that research is utilized to examine the history surrounding the composer and the work alongside theoretical analysis to find and interpret key …

How Music Shapes Our Identities And Why It Matters: Case Studies Of Professional Musicians, Annabelle C. Linker

Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders Undergraduate Honors Theses

Brain research has demonstrated that music uniquely contributes to neural functioning, but little is known about how losing the ability to produce music, which may be inherent to personal identity for professional singers, impacts quality of life. This study explored identity and music in the lives of five well-known vocal music professionals selected because they have publicly talked about the role of music in their lives via books, televised interviews, and documentaries. The careers of three of the individuals were disrupted by neurogenic disease; one lost the ability to sing after treatment for vocal nodules; and the fifth individual remains …

Audio To Architecture: House Music As A Form Generator, Polina Timchenko

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Contemporary music undergoes similar process of creation to that of the design process through computation and variation. House music as a representation of contemporary culture has a layered structure that allows specific characteristics to identify it as house music. Song components can vary and mix in different orders that form new dynamic compositions. I am going to explore the idea that every house music component can be translated into geometry with the use of parametric design techniques.

In The Groove: A Documentary About Vinyl, Jared Endsley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis project, ‘In the Groove’ is to tell the story of why vinyl records, a music format written off as a casualty to the digital age is experiencing a cultural resurgence. In the last several years vinyl records have been the only musical format to record positive sales growth.

For many musicians today, pressing their music to vinyl records yields the greatest return on investment. However, vinyl remains a niche market, supported by a devoted fan base.

This film focuses on a group of artists and vinyl enthusiasts as they navigate this new marketplace.

Musical Ear Syndrome: What Do We Know?, Cara D. Pestel

Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to review the existing literature regarding Musical Ear Syndrome and other related auditory hallucinations. While the existence of auditory hallucinations is evident, their cause is unclear and widely understudied. There was a need for existing information to be compiled for use in the healthcare field. This review of existing literature will aid speech-language pathologists, audiologists, nurses, psychologists, and physicians in understanding this condition and what differentiates it from other various disorders. This will allow these professionals to better understand the experiences and needs of those with Musical Ear Syndrome.

Characteristics Of Lifelong Musicians, Austin Lamon Farnam

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate causes for lifelong musicianship through examining the life experiences and influences of ten lifelong musicians. The participants in this study have played music starting in their childhood and into adulthood. Ages of participants range between 35 and 60 years of age. All participants have separate careers in conjunction with being active musicians.

Data collection was attained through a three phase process of an observation, interview, and collection of artifacts. Data was coded using open, focused, and axial coding and further analyzed for the purpose of identifying emerging themes. From the analysis, the …

How Musical Oddballs Warp Psychological Time, Rhimmon Simchy-Gross

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oddballs—low-probability, attention-capturing expectancy violations—are judged as longer than non-oddballs, but are temporal intervals that contain oddballs judged as longer than those that do not? In 2 experiments, we tested competing model predictions using a novel and covert measure of subjective duration—musical imagery reproduction. Participants verbally estimated and reproduced with musical imagery repeated, coherent, or incoherent familiar or unfamiliar chord sequences (3.5 s, 7 s, or 12 s) that either did or did not contain dynamic auditory oddballs. Participants verbally estimated repeated chord sequences that contained oddballs as shorter than those that did not, but reproduced with musical imagery incoherent chord …

Korngold's Leading Ladies: A Comparative Study Of Female Characters In The Operas Of Erich Wolfgang Korngold From 1915 To 1927, Brandon Larry Dow

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Portrayals of women in art have always been a sensitive subject due to the unequal distribution of power between the sexes within the Western patriarchal society and, more recently, due to newly acquired criticism of artistic misogyny. The operas of Erich Wolfgang Korngold showcase varying interpretations of female characters that waver between misogynist objectification and disparagement and ardent endorsement of feminine prominence. This thesis discusses three of Korngold’s operas (Violanta, Die tote Stadt, and Das Wunder der Heliane) and examines them through the lens of the tumultuous and ever-changing political and Social landscape of women’s issues in Vienna in the …

The Effect Of Motor Involvement And Melody Truncation On Involuntary Musical Imagery, Stephanie Audrey Mccullough

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

The term “earworm,” also known as Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI), refers to the phenomenon of an un-controllably repeating melody in one’s head. Though ubiquitous, it is comparatively under-researched in music cognition. Most existing studies have identified the defining characteristics of earworms, rather than explore their underlying mechanisms. This study investigates the hypothesis that overt motor involvement (humming, singing, tapping) and imagined motor involvement (imagining a continuation to an interrupted melody) will induce INMI more frequently than passive music listening. Four groups of participants were given instructions for different types of responses while listening to music; then they completed the same …

Brahms The Exotic: The Representation Of Non-European And Ethnic `Others' In The Hafiz/Daumer Settings Of Opus 32, "Romanzen Aus L. Tieck's Magelone," And "Zigunerlieder," Opus 103, Kristina Marie Eckelhoff

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Though scholars, performers, and classical enthusiasts alike recognized and praised the many facets of his compositional craft, Johannes Brahms's treatment of poetry in his Lieder has led to much conflicting assessments. The negative critiques exist partially because the majority of scholars do discuss an interpretation of the poems but seldom explain precisely how Brahms conveys the texts' meanings through his music, leaving the more specific details of text-to-music relationship and what it shows about Brahms's own understanding of the texts unexplored.

Brahms's Lieder have also been criticized because of the supposed lack of exotic qualities in those works that portray …

Congruent And Incongruent Effects Of Ethnic Music On Ethnic Menu Item Selection, Ryan David Muniz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated what impact ethnic music had on ethnic menu item selection. College students were randomly divided into three groups and listened to one randomly assigned sound treatment in sensory booths. Three hundred and five participants completed the questionnaire with measures of expected price value and willingness to pay value. One of the groups listened to an Italian folk music, the second group listened to a Thai folk music, and the third group listened to a restaurant background noise in order to examine if the music will impact each participant menu items selection and perceived price values. The result …

Influences Of Music Genre And Components On Food Perception And Acceptance, Alexandra Jean Fiegel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Managers of consumer goods companies (i.e., restaurants, grocery stores, and bars) have the potential to effectively utilize environmental factors to stimulate desired consumer behaviors. Background music has been identified as one of the most readily manipulated and influential elements to which a shopper or consumer may be exposed to in a service setting. Nevertheless, little is known about the effect of background sound on food perception and acceptance. This research sought whether background music genre and musical components can alter food perception and acceptance, but also to determine how the effect can vary as a function of food type (i.e., …

Fight Or Flight, Asher Griffith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fight or Flight is a one-act, science-fiction opera. Outwardly the story of an astronaut who is marooned on the Moon, this dark comedy is an allegorical tale of forced isolation and loss; and of the anxiety and sadness that inevitably result. Musically, this piece began as an experiment in the reverse-engineering of mostly improvisatory methods of musical spoken-word delivery such as rap or slam poetry; this compositional device being a means to the more important end of creating a live musical theatre lacking the flippant sparkle commonly associated with Broadway and the like, but also free of the "intellectual" or …

An American In Paris: Musical Exoticism In The Solo Piano Works Of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Jonathan Edward Verbeten

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was a nineteenth-century American piano virtuoso and composer. In 1841, at the age of twelve, Gottschalk left his native New Orleans to pursue a formal musical education in Paris. During his sojourn, Gottschalk gained fame for his piano music, in which he claimed to portray creole culture, more specifically the songs, dances, and rituals of Louisiana slaves. Nineteenth-century music critics were all too eager to crown Gottschalk as the first great American composer. In the present era, his music is still a source of national pride. I propose that Gottschalk's music is not necessarily an accurate representation …

The Effect Of Musical Characteristics, Exposure, And Individual Difference Variables On String Student Musical Preference: Implications For Introducing Western Art Music, Michael Reed Bollero

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This study explores the influences of various musical, environmental, and personal factors on string students' preferences for selections of Western Art Music. The purpose of this study was to provide insight into the information of music preferences by young string students in order to allow teachers to introduce Western Art music most effectively. Participants (n = 498) from northwest Arkansas public school string programs were given the String Student Music Preference Questionnaire (SSMPQ) developed by the author. Part One of the SS~MPQ measured preference for six one-minute selections of Western Art music by Beethoven, Berlioz, Mahle1; Saint-Siiens, and Schoenberg. In …

Processing Surprise Tension In Tonal Melodies, David Sears

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Expectation plays a vital role in understanding how we experience music. Processing music requires listeners to form expectations about upcoming events as they unfold. The formation and violation of these expectations has been empirically tested in harmonic priming paradigms, in harmonic priming during melodies, and in more general divided attention models. Recent research has also suggested that passive exposure to music leads to the development of implicit knowledge about musical expectations for untrained as well as trained listeners. Expectation has even been cited by the theorist Leonard Meyer as "the prime generator of musical affect" (qtd. in Margulis, 2005). Expectation …

The Dies Irae ("Day Of Wrath") And Totentanz ("Dance Of Death"): Medieval Themes Revisited In 19th Century Music And Culture, Erin Brooks

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

During the pivotal November 2002 football game of Arkansas vs. Georgia in the SEC conference championship, the Georgia marching band struck up their defensive rallying song. Instead of a typical "defense" song, the band played an excerpt of the Gregorian Sequence Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath'') from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. Drastically dissociated from its original medieval milieu, this musical Sequence still manages to elicit the same effect of fear and foreboding nearly a thousand years later. Precisely because of its deep musical and cultural roots, the Dies Irae occupies a significant place in history, closely intertwined from early …