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Liturgy, Music, and Patronage at the Cappella di Medici in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, 1550-1609

Description: This dissertation describes the musical and religious support of the Medici family to the Medici Chapel in Florence and the historical role of the church of San Lorenzo in the liturgical development of the period. During the later Middle Ages polyphony was allowed in the Office services only at Matins and Lauds during the Tenebrae service, the last three days of Holy Week, and at Vespers anytime. This practice continued until the end of the sixteenth century when more polyphonic motets based on… more
Date: August 1995
Creator: Kim, Hae-Jeong
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Mahler's Tristan, A Documentary Study of Reception

Description: Conductors are oftern associated with a specific body of work in their repertoy. Gustav Mahler's conducting repertory contained some major Wagnerian works, including Tristan und Isolde. Mahler's first performance of Tristan took place during his tenure at the Stadttheater in Hamburg (1891-1897). It remained an integral part of his repertory through his tenure at the Vienna Hofoper (1897-1907), and was one of eight works he conducted at New York's Metropolitan Opera (1907-1910). This study inclu… more
Date: August 1994
Creator: Stauffer, Kristen K.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Mail Order Music: the Hinners Organ Company in the Dakotas, 1879-1936

Description: Founded in 1879 by John L. Hinners, the Hinners Organ Company developed a number of stock models of small mechanical-action instruments that were advertised throughout the Midwest. Operating without outside salesmen, the company was one of the first to conduct all of its affairs by mail, including the financial arrangements, selection of the basic design, and custom alterations where required. Buyers first met a company representative when he arrived by train to set up the crated instrument tha… more
Date: August 1997
Creator: Alcorn-Oppedahl, Allison A. (Allison Ann)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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"Marvelous Accidents": The Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra of John Cage

Description: John Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950-51) holds a unique position within the composer’s oeuvre as the first work based in part on chance-derived compositional procedures. Cage entered into such practice gradually, incrementally abandoning subjective taste and personal expression through the course of the work. Drawing from the philosophical framework provided by Cage’s "Lecture on Nothing" (1950) and "Lecture on Something" (c. 1951-52), this thesis explores the aes… more
Date: December 1999
Creator: Boutwell, Brett N.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Michael Nyman: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Description: Composer Michael Nyman wrote the one-act, minimalist opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, based off the neurological case study written by Oliver Sacks under the same title. The opera is about a professional singer and professor whom suffers from visual agnosia. In chapter 1, the plot and history of the opera are discussed. Chapter 2 places The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat alongside a selection of minimalist operas from Philip Glass and John Adams. Chapter 3 contains a history… more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Avant-Rossi, Joan
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Mus. Ms. 1511b: A Historical Review of a Lute Manuscript in the Herwarth Collection at the Bavarian Library, Munich

Description: The purpose of this paper is to create a modern transcription/edition and an historical study of Munich Mus. Ms. 1511b thereby helping to define the social and pedagogical ramifications of lute repertoire from the mid-sixteenth-century. Because of the amateurish nature of the compositions, the conclusion of this study is that a member of the Herwarth family probably used the manuscript for learning purposes. Dance, grounds and other related forms found in the manuscript are discussed. Also incl… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Beasley, Douglas William
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Musical Arrangements and Questions of Genre: A Study of Liszt's Interpretive Approaches

Description: Through his exceptional creative and performing abilities, Franz Liszt was able to transform compositions of many kinds into unified, intelligible, and pleasing arrangements for piano. Nineteenth-century definitions of "arrangement" and "Klavierauszug," which focus on the process of reworking a composition for a different medium, do not adequately describe Liszt's work in this area. His piano transcriptions of Schubert's songs, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and the symphonies of Beethoven are… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Van Dine, Kara Lynn
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Musical Fallout of Political Activism: Government Investigations of Musicians in the United States, 1930-1960

Description: Government investigations into the motion picture industry are well-documented, as is the widespread blacklisting that was concurrent. Not nearly so well documented are the many investigations of musicians and musical organizations which occurred during this same period. The degree to which various musicians and musical organizations were investigated varied considerably. Some warranted only passing mention, while others were rigorously questioned in formal Congressional hearings. Hanns Eisler … more
Date: August 1993
Creator: McCall, Sarah B.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Myth in the Early Collaborations of Benjamin Britten and William Plomer

Description: Although the most well-known collaborations of William Plomer and Benjamin Britten are the three church parables (or church operas) - Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace, and The Prodigal Son - by the time of the completion of Curlew River in 1964, the librettist and composer had been working together for well over a decade. During that time, they had completed the opera Gloriana and had considered collaborating on three other projects: one a children's opera on Beatrix Potter's The Tale o… more
Date: August 2005
Creator: Salfen, Kevin McGregor
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Nobody's Fool: A Study of the Yrodivy in Boris Godunov

Description: Modest Musorgsky completed two versions of his opera Boris Godunov between 1869 and 1874, with significant changes in the second version. The second version adds a concluding lament by the fool character that serves as a warning to the people of Russia beyond the scope of the opera. The use of a fool is significant in Russian history and this connection is made between the opera and other arts of nineteenth-century Russia. These changes are, musically, rather small, but historically and sociall… more
Date: December 1999
Creator: Pollard, Carol J.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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"Now His Time Really Seems to Have Come": Ideas about Mahler's Music in Late Imperial and First Republic Vienna

Description: In Vienna from about 1918 until the 1930s, contemporaries perceived a high point in the music-historical significance of Mahler's works, with regard to both the history of compositional style and the social history of music. The ideas and meanings that became attached to Mahler's works in this milieu are tied inextricably to the city's political and cultural life. Although the performances of Mahler's works under the auspices of Vienna's Social Democrats are sometimes construed today as mere ac… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Kinnett, Forest Randolph
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Le Nuove Musiche: Giovanni Battista Bovicelli?

Description: This thesis is a comparative study on the late 16th century manuals of ornamentation by Girolamo Dalla Casa, Giovanni Bassano, Riccardo Rognoni, and Giovanni Battista Bovicelli. The study demonstrates that the latest Renaissance manual should be given more credit for the innovative ornamentation style that was to come in the Early Baroque era. Bovicelli's use of sequence, dissonances, and less moving notes for more rhythmic varieties are features most often associated in the style of the Baroqu… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Gámez Hernández, Carlos
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Ode to the Ninth: the Poetic and Musical Tradition Behind the Finale of Beethoven's Choral Symphony

Description: This study examines the finale of Beethoven's choral symphony and focuses on its inspirations and aims to invoke critical theories involving genre, namely genre's "horizon of expectation", and lead to an enriched perspective that points toward a number of compelling aspects of the Choral Finale overlooked by previous commentators.
Date: May 1992
Creator: Parsons, James, 1956-
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Opera and the Galant Homme: Quinault and Lully's Tragedie en musique, Atys, in the Context of Seventeenth-Century Modernism

Description: The tragedie en musique of Quinault and Lully was a highly successful new genre, representative of contemporary Parisian life. However, it is still largely viewed in the negative terms of its detractors, the proponents of classical tragedy. The purpose of this study is to redefine the tragedie en musique in terms of seventeenth-century modernism. An examination of the society and poetry of the contemporary gallant world provides the historical framework for an analysis of both the libretto and … more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Browne, Marilyn K. (Marilyn Kay)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Opera at the Threshold of a Revolution: Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-1956)

Description: Francis Poulenc’s three-act opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-1956) depicts the struggles of the novice nun Blanche de la Force during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. The use of Latin liturgical music at critical points in the opera conveys the ritualistic nature of Catholic worship. The spiritual message of mystical substitution, along with the closely related notion of vicarious suffering, imbue the opera with a spirituality that offers a sharp contrast to earlier operatic … more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Beard, Cynthia C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Die Opernprobe by Albert Lortzing: a Critical Edition

Description: The purpose of the present edition of Albert Lortzing's Die Opernprobe is to restore and clarify the composer's original intentions, which were often obscured or altered by the first published version, which appeared in 1899. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part One contains an introduction which discusses Lortzing's place in the history of German opera, the details surrounding the composition of Die Opernprobe, the musical and dramatic structure of the opera, and the sources used in the… more
Date: August 1990
Creator: McDaniel, Jan (Pianist)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Orchestral Accompaniment in the Vocal Works of Hector Berlioz

Description: Recent Berlioz studies tend to stress the significance of the French tradition for a balanced understanding of Berlioz's music. Such is necessary because the customary emphasis on purely musical structure inclines to stress the influence of German masters to the neglect of vocal and therefore rhetorical character of this tradition. The present study, through a fresh examination of Berlioz's vocal-orchestral scores, sets forth the various orchestrational patterns and the rationales that lay behi… more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Lee, Namjai
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Poetry and Patronage: Alessandro Scarlatti, The Accademia Degli Arcadia, and the Development of the Conversazione Cantata in Rome 1700-1710

Description: The special relationship of patrons, librettists, and composers, in the Accademia degli'Arcadia in Rome from 1700-1710 appears in Alessandro Scarlatti's settings of Antonio Ottoboni's cantata librettos in the anthology GB Lbm. Add. 34056. An examination of Arcadian cantatas and their texts reveals the nature of their audience, function, and their place within the historical development of the genre. The conversazione cantata did not exist outside of Rome and was popular for only a brief perio… more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Hale Harris, Kimberly Coulter
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Polyphonic Harmony in Three of Ferruccio Busoni’s Orchestral Elegies

Description: This dissertation focuses on three of Busoni’s late orchestral works known as “orchestral elegies”: Berceuse élégiaque (Elegie no. 1, 1909), Gesang vom Reigen der Geister (Elegie no. 4, 1915), and Sarabande (Elegie no. 5, 1918-19). The study seeks to provide a better understanding of Busoni’s late style as a crucial bridge from late nineteenth-century chromaticism in the works of Liszt, Wagner, and others to the post-tonal languages of the twentieth century. At the heart of this study lies a pa… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Davis, Colin
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Prologue in the Seventeenth-Century Venetian Operatic Libretto: its Dramatic Purpose and the Function of its Characters

Description: The Italian seicento has been considered a dead century by many literary scholars. As this study demonstrates, such a conclusion ignores important literary developments in the field of librettology. Indeed, the seventeenth-century operatic libretto stands as a monument to literary invention. Critical to the development of this new literary genre was the prologue, which provided writers with a context in which to experiment and achieve literary transcendence. This study identifies approximately … more
Date: August 1998
Creator: Miller, Robin A. (Robin Annette)
Partner: UNT Libraries

Reading Handel: A Textual and Musical Analysis of Handel's Acis and Galatea (1708, 1718)

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold: one is to analyze the narratives of Acis and Galatea written by Ovid, and the two libretti by Handel's librettists including Nicola Giuvo (1708) and John Gay (1718) with John Hughes and Alexander Pope; the other is to correlate this textual analysis within the musical languages. A 1732 pastiche version is excluded because its bilingual texts are not suitable for the study of relationships between meaning and words. For this purpose, the study uses … more
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Date: August 2005
Creator: Chang, Young-Shim
Partner: UNT Libraries

Reconsidering the Lament: Form, Content, and Genre in Italian Chamber Recitative Laments: 1600-1640

Description: Scholars have considered Italian chamber recitative laments only a transitional phenomenon between madrigal laments and laments organized on the descending tetrachord bass. However, the recitative lament is distinguished from them by its characteristic attitude toward the relationship between music and text. Composer of Italian chamber recitative laments attempted to express more subtle, refined and sometimes complicated emotion in their music. For that purpose, they intentionally created d… more
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Date: December 2004
Creator: Chung, Kyung-Young
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Reconstructing Convention: Ensemble Forms in the Operas of Jules Massenet

Description: Over the last quarter-century, scholars have taken a unified approach in discussing form in Italian and French opera of the nineteenth century. This approach centers around the four-part aria and duet form begun by Bellini, codified by Rossini, modified by Verdi, and dissolved by Puccini. A similar trajectory can be seen in French opera in the works of Meyerbeer, Gounod, and Massenet; however, only Meyerbeer and Gounod have received significant critical attention. This is in part due to Mass… more
Date: December 2004
Creator: Straughn, Gregory
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Recorder Tutors in 't Uitnement Kabinet

Description: Paulus Matthysz, a prominent music printer in Amsterdam during the seventeenth century, published Jacob van Eyck's Der Fluyten Lust-hof and a collection entitled 't Uitnement Kabinet. Three extant copies of Lust-hof include a tutor Vertoninge...op de Handt-fluit, presumably by Matthysz, and a tutor by Gerband van Blanckenburgh, Onderwyzinge...op deHandt-Fluyt. Their content is not correlated with Lust-hof, and they were presumably designed for inclusion in the Kabinet II. Confusion over the … more
Date: August 2005
Creator: Carpenter, Jennifer
Partner: UNT Libraries
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