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The Assimilation of Baroque Elements in Ferruccio Busoni's Compositions as Exemplified by the Fantasia nach Bach and the Toccata

Description: Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) has a firmly established reputation as one of the giant pianists of his age, yet his compositions are largely neglected both in musicological circles and on the concert stage. A better understanding of his thought processes might lead to a greater appreciation of his art, and the acknowledgement of his reverence for the music of Bach is an important key to such an understanding. Busoni's Fantasia nach Bach and Toccata, although two decidedly dissimilar composition… more
Date: August 2009
Creator: Van Schalkwyk, Willem Andreas Stefanus
open access

Attitudes of International Music Students from East Asia toward U.S. Higher Education Institutions

Description: Nine universities in the United States with the greatest number of international students and having an accredited music program through the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) were selected. Survey research methodologies were used to identify the status of the international music students from East Asia in U.S. higher education institutions and to determine their attitudes toward their schools. Among East Asian international music students at US higher education institutions, the… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Choi, Jin Ho
open access

Augeries, for Flute, Clarinet, Percussion and Tape: Aesthetic Discussion and Theoretical Analysis

Description: Augeries is a multi-channel electro-acoustic composition for flute, clarinet, percussion, and tape. It is intended to be diffused through an 8-channnel playback system. Inspired by the first four lines of William Blake's Augeries of Innocence, Augeries captures the qualitative aspects of Blake's poetry by presenting the listener with an equally aperspectival aesthetic experience. The small-scale structure reflected on the large-scale form - the infusion of vastness and expansiveness into the fr… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Gedosh, David
open access

The Avatar by Steve Rouse: A Performance Practice Guide

Description: The Avatar for trumpet and piano by Dr. Steve Rouse is one of the most challenging compositions in the trumpet repertoire. Due to The Avatar's challenges and increasing popularity, a study is necessary to aid its performance. Each movement is performed on a different instrument: Bb piccolo (with an optional A piccolo part) for Nativity, Bb Flugelhorn for Enigma-Release and Bb trumpet for Rebirth. In addition, the performer must convey one of the work's possible programmatic meanings: (1) Th… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Lynn, Mark J.
open access

Babel: a Composition for Rock Band, Soprano Quartet, and Chamber Ensemble—music and Critical Essay

Description: Babel is a work for rock ‘n’ roll band (two electric guitars, electric bass, drum set), four soprano singers, and a twenty-one instrument mixed chamber ensemble. The 50-minute composition is based on the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9, and the four-movement structure is derived from the form of this narrative. The first movement, “building rebellion,” establishes man’s intent to build a grand city and tower in a rebellion against God, while the second movement, “seeing/coming down,” des… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Peringer, Patrick Edward
open access

Bandanna, An Opera by Daron Aric Hagen with Libretto by Paul Muldoon, Commissioned by the College Band Directors National Association: The Origins of an Artwork with a Glimpse at its Musical Character Development

Description: All information for this study was obtained by original source documents, interviews with the principal participants and the personal observations of the writer. A complete transcript of interviews with Daron Aric Hagen Michael Haithcockand Robert De Simone are included as appendices. In1961 the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) created its commissioning project for the purpose of contracting prominent composers to contribute works of high quality to the growing wind repertoir… more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Powell, Edwin C.
open access

Baroque Elements In The Piano Sonata, Opus 9 By Paul Creston

Description: Paul Creston (1906-1985) was one of the most significant American composers from the middle of the twentieth century. Though Creston maintained elements of the nineteenth-century Romantic tradition and was categorized as a “Neo-Romantic” or “20th-century traditionalist,” many of Creston’s compositions contain elements of Baroque music. His Piano Sonata, Opus 9 provides significant examples of Baroque elements, while already foreshadowing his mature style. The purpose of this study is to explore… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Watanabe, Chie
open access

The "Beethoven Folksong Project" in the Reception of Beethoven and His Music

Description: Beethoven's folksong arrangements and variations have been coldly received in recent scholarship. Their melodic and harmonic simplicity, fusion of highbrow and lowbrow styles, seemingly diminished emphasis on originality, and the assorted nationalities of the tunes have caused them to be viewed as musical rubble within the heritage of Western art music. The canonic composer's relationship with the Scottish amateur folksong collector and publisher George Thomson, as well as with his audience, am… more
Date: December 2006
Creator: Lee, Hee Seung
open access

Benjamin Britten's Sonata in C for Cello and Piano, Op. 65: A Practical Guide for Performance

Description: Benjamin Britten is a renowned and prolific English composer, well known for his operas and vocal works. He did, however, also compose five works especially for the cello as a solo instrument of which the Sonata in C for Cello and Piano Op. 65 was the first. He was inspired by one of his musical contemporaries, the remarkable Soviet cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. Rostropovich was famous for his amazing artistry which propelled him to become one of the most prominent cellists in the world dur… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Lee, Jeong-A
open access

"Between the Staves" - Adaptations of Debussy's Six épigraphes antiques and Creative Tasks of the Performer

Description: The Six épigraphes antiques represent a cross-section of Debussy's creative output that traces the composer's germ-seed from his original setting of the work in 1901 as incidental music to accompany the recitation of several poems, to the four-hand piano version of 1914, and its consequent reduction for solo piano. What can be gleaned by the methods of derivation from his original sketches to the final, mature works is an understanding of Debussy's use of musical metaphor and his connection to … more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Astilla, Christopher
open access

Beyond the "Year of Song": Text and Music in the Song Cycles of Robert Schumann after 1848

Description: In recent years scholars have begun to re-evaluate the works, writings, and life of Robert Schumann (1810-1856). One of the primary issues in this ongoing re-evaluation is a reassessment of the composer's late works (roughly defined as those written after 1845). Until recently, the last eight years of Schumann's creative life and the works he composed at that time either have been ignored or critiqued under an image of an illness that had caused periodic breakdowns. Schumann's late works show h… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Ringer, Rebecca Scharlene
open access

Birth of a Modern Concerto: An Explication of Musical Design and Intention in Journey: Concerto for Contrabass Tuba and Orchestra

Description: John Stevens was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and the Edward F. Schmidt Family Commissioning Fund to compose a concerto for its principal tubist, Gene Pokorny. The piece began with multiple conversations between composer and performer and from these meetings actualized the influences that shaped the work. The most important influences that the performer mentioned were his passions for American steam locomotives and the Three Stooges, both of which were used by Stevens … more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Daussat, David M.
open access

I, Blavatsky: A One-Act Opera

Description: I, Blavatsky is a one-act opera based on the life of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a nineteenth-century Russian princess and co-founder of a religious organization called the Theosophical Society. The libretto, by the composer, involves a cast of three principal soloists and minor roles for six more singers who are also participants in a small chorus. The text format features free verse alternating with regular, rhymed strophes. Accompaniment is provided by a piano. Melodic structure combines some… more
Date: May 1990
Creator: Cooper, Steve, 1951 Dec. 4-
open access

Bohuslav Martinu: An Examination of Selected Chamber Music Involving the Clarinet

Description: The discussion dealt with stylistic influences, compositional techniques, and performance considerations of chamber music involving clarinet composed by Bohuslav Martinu and included a performance of three of his works: Quartet. for clarinet, horn, cello, and side drum, Madrigals for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon, and Sextet for flute, oboe, clarinet, two bassoons, and piano. The selections performed and discussed in the lecture show compositional growth of the composer through the three periods … more
Date: December 1997
Creator: Walzel, Robert L.
open access

Breakdown

Description: Breakdown is a 17 minute, single movement work for orchestra in five sections. It is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 Bb clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 Bb trumpets, 4 horns in F, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion, piano, and strings. The percussion consists of a tam-tam, 5 break drums, 4 timbales, 2 gourds, chimes, marimba, vibraphone, snare drum, 2 field drums, bass drum and tympani. The inspiration for this work is the poetry of Bruce Weigl which deals with many facets of the Vietnam experience. One par… more
Date: December 1994
Creator: Kappaz, Philip C., 1956-
open access

Britten’s Op 47, Five Flower Songs: Breaking Trends in Analysis

Description: Benjamin Britten’s life and music have been the subject of study from early in his musical career. Current trends in psychological analysis of Britten’s music tend to focus on common themes, such as homosexuality, pacifism, the sense of the outsider, and the loss of innocence. Similarly, theoretical analyses tend either to provide general categorizations of the technical elements in Britten’s music or to apply a singular preconceived concept as a tool for understanding his compositions. Thes… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Jackson, Christopher Michael
open access

A-Bu-GE: A Composition for Organ and Percussion

Description: Keyphrases describe a document in a coherent and simple way, giving the prospective reader a way to quickly determine whether the document satisfies their information needs. The pervasion of huge amount of information on Web, with only a small amount of documents have keyphrases extracted, there is a definite need to discover automatic keyphrase extraction systems. Typically, a document written by human develops around one or more general concepts or sub-concepts. These concepts or sub-concepts… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Kim, Chol-Ho
open access

Cadential Syntax and Mode in the Sixteenth-Century Motet: a Theory of Compositional Process and Structure from Gallus Dressler's Praecepta Musicae Poeticae

Description: Though cadences have long been recognized as an aspect of modality, Gallus Dressler's treatise Praecepta musicae poeticae (1563) offers a new understanding of their relationship to mode and structure. Dressler's comments suggest that the cadences in the exordium and at articulations of the text are "principal" to the mode, shaping the tonal structure of the work. First, it is necessary to determine which cadences indicate which modes. A survey of sixteenth-century theorists uncovered a striking… more
Date: May 1996
Creator: Hamrick, David (David Russell)
open access

Camille Saint-Säens' Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major, Opus 103: An Analytical Study of Form, Compositional Techniques, and a Performance Perspective

Description: The majority of books about Saint-Säens cover his life, compositions, contemporaries, and French music in general. Although his life is well documented, most sources present only brief analyses of his works; there is not one single comprehensive and exhaustive study of the Piano Concerto in F Major, Opus 103, available in the current literature. This study aims at filling the gap by providing other musicians interested in performing this piece with an initial study-guide. The research for this … more
Date: December 2004
Creator: Yoo, Seung Won
open access

Canonic Variations for Percussion and Orchestra

Description: This work in three movements is written for piccolo, flute, alto flute in G, oboe, English horn in F, clarinet in Bb, bass clarinet in Bb, contrabass clarinet in Bb, bassoon, soprano saxophone in Bb, alto saxophine in Bb, horn in F, trumpet in Bb, six percussion, violins, violas, and violoncellos. The approximate duration is thirteen minutes. The rhythm of the piece is notated metrically and spatially. Movements I and III employ both types of notation, while movement II is strictly metric. Most… more
Date: August 1992
Creator: McDonald, Richard F. (Richard Frederic)
open access

Capriccio: A Composition for Symphonic Orchestra

Description: A body of works titled 'capriccio' have existed for over four hundred years. Most of these works are characterized by a composers abandonment of expected stylistic norms. Guided only by the fanciful whim of the composer, a capriccio exhibits extreme contrasts in the various parameters of a musical composition including melody, harmony, counterpoint, mood and texture. The composition embedded in these compositional parameters as its point of departure and development.
Date: August 1994
Creator: Walczyk, Kevin, 1964-
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