UNT Theses and Dissertations - 145 Matching Results

Search Results

Results: 1 - 24 next
open access

Accessibility and Authenticity in Julia Smith's Cynthia Parker

Description: In 1939, composer Julia Smith's first opera Cynthia Parker dramatized the story of a Texas legend. Smith manipulated music, text, and visual images to make the opera accessible for the audience in accordance with compositional and institutional practices in American opera of the 1930s. Transparent musical themes and common Native Americans stereotypes are used to define characters. Folk music is presented as diegetic, creating a sense of authenticity that places the audience into the opera's We… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Buehner, Katie R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Alban Berg as Liedkomponist: An Analytical Study of his Two Settings of "Schliesse mir die Augen beide," 1907 and 1925

Description: Alan Berg's two musical settings of Theodor Storm's poem"Schliesse mir die Augen beide" have received little in the way of scholarly analytical attention. The three major chapters of this thesis deal with the two settings on three different levels. Chapter II surveys the political and cultural milieu in which Berg functioned as a young composer of Lieder in the years 1900-1910. Chapter III examines the special quality of lyricism which is often attributed to Berg and his works. Chapter IV provi… more
Date: May 1986
Creator: Ray, Karen, 1951-
Partner: UNT Libraries

Allusions and Borrowings in Selected Works by Christopher Rouse: Interpreting Manner, Meaning, and Motive through a Narratological Lens

Description: Christopher Rouse (b. 1949), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto (1993) and a Grammy award for his Concerto de Gaudi (1999), has come to the forefront as one of America's most prominent orchestral composers. Several of Rouse's works feature quotations of and strong allusions to other composers' works that are used both rhetorically and structurally. These borrowings range from a variety of different genres and styles of works, from Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Popp… more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Morey, Michael J.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

An analysis of Brahms' Quintet in B minor, op. 115, for clarinet and strings

Description: Although many volumes concerning the life and works of Johannes Brahms have been written, it has been found that the majority of these writings treat the material of the subject in a rather poetic and romanticized fashion. This is especially unfortunate in those volumes where the works of Brahms are analyzed with pragmatic implications, since Brahms himself eschewed the use of extramusical elements in his composition. This investigation, therefore, is an attempt to present a careful analysis of… more
Date: January 1968
Creator: Graham, Jack E. (Jack Eldon)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Anthem in America: 1900-1950

Description: During the first half of this century, a wealth of anthem literature was published and performed in the United States that, as a result of the deluge of new publications since those years, has been either forgotten or is unknown to modern church musicians. The purpose of this study is to make the best of this music known, for much of it is still both suitable and desirable for contemporary worship. The research is grouped into six chapters that are entitled: The Quartet Anthem, "Anthems in the … more
Date: August 1982
Creator: Fansler, Terry Lee
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Anton Bruckner's Treatment of the Credo Text in His Last Three Masses

Description: In order to investigate the stylistic transformation that occured before Bruckner abandoned the composition of Masses, this paper analyzes the Credo settings in his last three great Masses, with special attention to the treatment of the text. The relationship between the text and specific musical techniques is also considered. The trends found in these three works, especially in the last setting in F minor, confirm the assumption that Bruckner's Mass composition served as a transition to the co… more
Date: December 1985
Creator: Lee, Namjai
Partner: UNT Libraries

Asserting Identity in Wagner's Shadow: The Case of Engelbert Humperdinck's Königskinder (1897)

Description: Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921), who was considered a Wagnerian due to to his past work in Bayreuth and the Wagnerian traits of his Hänsel und Gretel, seems to have believed that to define himself as a composer, he had to engage somehow with that designation, whether through orthodox Wagner imitation or an assertion of his independence from Wagner's musical legacy. The latter kind of engagement can be seen in Humperdinck's Königskinder (1897), in which he developed a new kind of declamatory … more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: August 2004
Creator: Kinnett, Forest Randolph
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

"Being" a Stickist: A Phenomenological Consideration of "Dwelling" in a Virtual Music Scene

Description: Musical instruments are not static, unchanging objects. They are, instead, things that materially evolve in symmetry with human practices. Alterations to an instrument's design often attend to its ergonomic or expressive capacity, but sometimes an innovator causes an entirely new instrument to arise. One such instrument is the Chapman Stick. This instrument's history is closely intertwined with global currents that have evolved into virtual, online scenes. Virtuality obfuscates embodiment, but … more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Hodges, Jeff
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Belle Musique and Fin' Amour: Thibaut de Champagne, Gace Brulé, and an Aristocratic Trouvére Tradition

Description: Many consider Gace Brulé (c1160-c1213) and Thibaut IV, Count of Champagne, (1201-1253) to have been the greatest trouvères. Writers on this subject have not adequately examined this assumption, having focused their energies on such issues as tracking melodic variants of individual works as preserved in different song-books (or chansonniers), the interpretation of rhythm in performance, and creation of modern editions of these songs. This thesis examines the esteem enjoyed by Gace and Thibaut in… more
Date: December 2008
Creator: Bly, Emily
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Beyond the Human Voice: Francis Poulenc's Psychological Drama La Voix humaine (1958)

Description: Francis Poulenc's one-character opera La Voix humaine (1958), a setting of the homonymous play by Jean Cocteau, explores the psychological complexities of an unnamed woman as she experiences the end of a romantic relationship. During the forty-minute work, she sings in a declamatory manner into a telephone, which serves as a sign of the unrevealed man at the other end. Poulenc uses musical motives to underscore the woman's changing emotional states as she recalls her past relationship. The musi… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Beard, Cynthia C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Bridging the Fantastical Gap: Dread and the Uncanny in the Score of "It Follows"

Description: "It Follows" (2014), written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. It chronicles the story of Jay, a college student who contracts a curse through sexual intercourse. The curse manifests itself as a human whom only the infected persons can see, always following at a walking pace, and determined to kill if it catches up. This thesis demonstrates the score's crucial role in establishing affect, setting, and character in a film with sparse dialogue a… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Johnson, Kinley
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Busoni's Doktor Faust

Description: It is the intent of this thesis to shed a new investigative light upon a musician whose importance as a creative personality and aesthetician has been sorely underestimated or at least unappreciated by fellow musicians and audiences of his own and succeeding generations, a musician who formulated a new musical aesthetic which involved the utilization of compositional techniques diametrically opposed to those which had held dominant influence over the musical world for more than half a century, … more
Date: August 1976
Creator: Harrison, Charles Scott
Partner: UNT Libraries
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)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Carlo Milanuzzi's Quarto Scherzo and the Climate of Venetian Popular Music in the 1620s

Description: Although music publishing in Italy was on the decline around the turn of the seventeenth century, Venice emerged as one of the most prolific publishing centers of secular song in Italy throughout the first three decades of the 1600s. Many Venetian song collections were printed with alfabeto, a chordal tablature designed to facilitate even the most untrained of musicians with the necessary tools for accompanying singers on the fashionable five-course Spanish guitar. Carlo Milanuzzi's Quarto Sc… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Gavito, Cory Michael
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Caught Between Jazz and Pop: The Contested Origins, Criticism, Performance Practice, and Reception of Smooth Jazz.

Description: In Caught Between Jazz and Pop, I challenge the prevalent marginalization and malignment of smooth jazz in the standard jazz narrative. Furthermore, I question the assumption that smooth jazz is an unfortunate and unwelcomed evolutionary outcome of the jazz-fusion era. Instead, I argue that smooth jazz is a long-lived musical style that merits multi-disciplinary analyses of its origins, critical dialogues, performance practice, and reception. Chapter 1 begins with an examination of current mis… more
Date: December 2008
Creator: West, Aaron J.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Centonization and Concordance in the American Southern Uplands Folksong Melody: A Study of the Musical Generative and Transmittive Processes of an Oral Tradition

Description: This study presents a theory of melodic creation, transmission, memory, and recall within the Anglo- and Celtic-American culture of lower Appalachia, from the time of the earliest European settlers until the present. This theory and its attendant hypotheses draw upon earlier published ideas, current theories of memory and recall, and the results of applying a computer-supported analytical system developed by the author. Sources include previous studies of folksong melody, song collections, and … more
Date: August 1984
Creator: Bevil, J. Marshall (Jack Marshall)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: An Exponent of the Parisian Symphonie Concertant

Description: The symphonie concertante, a product of the late eighteenth-century Parisian concert societies, provided a vehicle for display of the virtuoso style sought by contemporary audiences. The works of the Chevalier Joseph Boulogne de Saint-Georges, one of its chief exponents, served as strong influences on the development of the form and its diffusion throughout Europe. The symphonies concertantes of Opus VI, No. 1 and Opus X, No. 2 (according to thematic numbering of Barry S. Brook) date from ca. 1… more
Date: August 1982
Creator: Braun, Melanie
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Choral-Orchestral Works of Hector Berlioz

Description: In this study the choral-orchestral compositions produced by Hector Berlioz are examined in detail for characteristics of musical form, textual setting, and methods of scoring for chorus and orchestra. Reasons for the preponderance of the choral-orchestral medium in Berlioz' output are examined in two introductory chapters. The initial chapter concerns Berlioz' personal experiences as an observer, conductor, and critic of choral music, while the second is devoted to Parisian customs in regard t… more
Date: May 1978
Creator: Alexander, Metche Franke
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Christmas Cantatas of Christoph Graupner (1683-1760): Volume 2

Description: An assessment of the contributions of Christoph Graupner's 1,418 extant church cantatas is enhanced by a study of his fifty-five surviving Christmas cantatas, written for the feasts of Christmas, St. Stephen's, St. John's, and the Sunday after Christmas. Graupner's training in Kirchberg, Reichenbach and at the Thomas School in Leipzig is recounted as well as his subsequent tenures in Hamburg and Darmstadt. This volume contains the appendices and bibliography.
Date: August 1992
Creator: Schmidt, René R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Clavichord Traits in Selected Late Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Pieces

Description: Several late eighteenth-century keyboard composers indicated that some of their works were written specifically for the clavichord, as opposed to the harpsichord or pianoforte. This demand was indicated by a composer's commentary, remarks made by a contemporary, or by Bebung and Tragen der Tone indications in the music. The thesis examines selected works of C.P.E. Bach, Johann Eckard, Nathanael Gruner, Johann Hassler, Christian Neefe, F.S. Sander, and Daniel Tt*rk, and discusses elements of the… more
Date: May 1983
Creator: Clark, Alice Ham
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Comparative Study of Harmonic Tension in Hindemith's Piano Sonatas and in His Theoretical Writings

Description: The purpose of this paper will be to compare the Hindemith theory of harmonic tension as set forth in his book, Craft of Musical Composition, with his actual use of harmonic tension in compositional practice. The compositions used for this study are Hindemith's Sonaten für Klavier, published in 1936, consisting of three sonatas*. Although these pieces were published one year before the theory book, it seems reasonable to assume that Hindemith was at least formulating the ideas that would go int… more
Date: August 1957
Creator: Tull, Charlotte
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Comparison of the Use of Music in the Holy Eucharist of the Roman Catholic Church and the Sabbath Morning Service of the Jewish Synagogue in the Middle Ages

Description: The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of comparing the medieval musical traditions of two of the world's most influential religions. The similarities are discussed in two major categories: the comparison of liturgical texts and ritual, and the comparison of the music appearing in each ritual. This study has one main purpose. That purpose is to demonstrate how, through musical traditions, each religion has developed through the influence of the other. Samples of the litu… more
Date: July 1971
Creator: Simmons, Sandra K. (Sandra Kay)
Partner: UNT Libraries
Back to Top of Screen