Description: This paper delineates meaningful relationships of passions, emotions, feelings, affections, nuances and aural perceptions of expressions and utterances, for understanding human artistic possibilities historically and contemporarily in the fraternal arts of music and poetry, with reference to sounds, silences, sequences, rhythms, rhymes, repetitions, retards, accelerations, tempos, harmonies, melodies, forms, etc., in four poetic and three musical compositions uniquely created by its author.

Description: Robert Eugene Ward's impressive body of work encompasses almost every genre of music. He has composed symphonies, operas, large orchestral pieces, chamber works, solo instrumental pieces, extended choral works, short choral pieces, ceremonial works, a ballet, theatre pieces, and even jazz and swing band pieces. Ward's name is recognized in most musical circles but usually only for his opera The Crucible, a work for which he earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1962. In fact, a survey of all the dissertations, articles, interviews, and books written about Robert Ward shows that the vast majority of these studies focus on his most famous opera. His choral works, though they comprise some of Ward's most expressive work, have received little attention. Ward's works show a deliberate use of symbols and allusions. While this use is far from an innovative concept in composition, Ward distinguishes himself with a consistent and purposeful application of these devices establishing an unmistakable interweaving of text, composition, and context. This study examines several of Ward's short choral compositions as they relate to the composer's use of symbols and allusions. Comparisons are made to Ward's use of these devices in his operatic works as a means of determining the consistency ...

Description: There is disagreement among clicker trainers on whether or not food should be delivered every time the clicker (conditioned reinforcer) is used. However, presenting a conditioned reinforcer without food can weaken the strength of the conditioned reinforcer and also disrupt its discriminative stimulus function. A within subjects reversal design was used with 2 dogs to compare the behavioral effects of continuous pairings (C+F condition) vs. intermittent pairings (C+C+F condition) of the clicker with food. Results show that the C+C+F condition affects the frequency, accuracy, topography, and intensity of the behavior, and increases noncompliance and other unwanted behaviors. This study adds to the literature by evaluating the effects of conditioned reinforcement in an applied setting using discrete trials without undergoing extinction.

Description: This study analyzes negative particle variation (i.e., the variable presence or absence of the negative particle ne) in synchronous French chat discourse within a labovian-inspired framework. Selected morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological constraints are considered. Multivariate analyses performed by GoldVarb 2001 revealed that subject type (i.e., NP, [- overt] subject environment, pronoun) and the phonological environment preceding the position of neregardless of its presence or absenceare determining factors in the variation. In addition, discursive-pragmatic effect was explored in a sub-sample of data. The results indicate that ne is seldom present in verbal negation during explanatory discourse style, yet it is very likely to be retained in ludic, emphatic, and proverbial styles.

Description: For more than 20 years, Christian Lindberg has been internationally recognized as the premiere trombone soloist of our time. Few, however, are familiar with his compositions. For over ten years, he has composed many solo and ensemble works for trombone. Many prominent musical organizations in the world have performed Lindberg's music, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the University of North Texas Wind Ensemble. Today, Christian Lindberg has commission requests up to 2010. Christian Lindberg completed Mandrake in the Corner, a three movement concerto for trombone, in 1999. The purpose of this dissertation is to present an analysis of the first movement of Mandrake in the Corner to provide the first in depth study of Lindberg's compositional style. This analysis borrows freely from the method of Jan LaRue, which focuses on sound, harmony, melody, rhythm, and growth of musical structure on the small, middle, and large levels. The focus of this study centers on the aspects of melody, harmony, and rhythm to explain how the piece works despite the lack of a second theme or change of key in the first movement.