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A Quantitative Approach to the History of Music Binder's Volumes (1820–1900)
Music binder's volumes, or collections of sheet music typically bound by women in the nineteenth century, constitute an informative and underutilized set of historical artifacts. Each binder's volume can be viewed as a Spotify playlist frozen in time. An individual volume contains more than just the volume's individual pieces; it also holds the marginalia, the choices women made on what to include in a binder, and information on where and how music was produced. This dissertation examines music binder's volumes quantitatively, processing information found in binder's volumes by using the MARC and other cataloguing data to construct a relational database. I engage with broad questions of music publishing and consumption and provide a method to contextualize qualitative results on a larger scale. In doing so, I make two distinct contributions to music research and the digital humanities. First, this project offers a clear path for engaging with music binder's volumes and material history of nineteenth-century America in ways that scholars have rarely engaged in prior to this point. I highlight how data analysis provides new framings for binder's volumes and for sheet music consumption both at the song-level and at larger levels of the data. Second, and more broadly, this project serves as a framework for engaging in digital projects on multifaceted items that can be difficult to catalog and process. I describe in detail the metadata schema, methodological concerns in establishing a database, and data cleaning process in a way that provides transparency for the project and can also serve as a starting point for others considering data projects in the digital humanities.
Igor Stravinsky: An Analytical Study of Programmatic Design of His Symphony in Three Movements
Stravinsky seldom explained the intended theme of his works; however, he chose to do so with his Symphony in Three Movements. Stravinsky describes the first movement as a reflection on war films documenting scorched-earth tactics in China. He also states that the third movement is a reflection on the newsreels of goose-stepping soldiers, depicting the plot of the war in its entirety. In his descriptions, Stravinsky left out the second movement of the work. However, the movement already had a life of its own. The second movement expands a theme Stravinsky originally wrote for the movie The Song of Bernadette. The author, Franz Werfel, asked Stravinsky to compose music for the film when the two discussed the work and its central ideas. Although it did not appear in the film, Stravinsky recycled the music for the Symphony in Three Movements. In my opinion, the ideas of hope depicted in Werfel's novel are used by Stravinsky to evoke ideas of the importance of faith in the fallen world. My analysis aims to show the musical means used by Stravinsky to allow the central ideas from The Song of Bernadette to pervade the entirety of the Symphony in Three Movements.
Ideal Hausmusik: Brahms's Vocal Quartets (opp. 31, 52, 64, 65, 92, 103, and 112) and the Politics of Domestic Music ca. 1848-1900
This dissertation contextualizes Brahms's vocal quartets within a largely forgotten discourse about Hausmusik that flourished in German-speaking lands in the second half of the nineteenth century. In numerous texts about Hausmusik from ca. 1848-1900, authors conceived the genre as an aesthetically and politically conservative expression of German identity and connected its accessible style to an ideal of social cohesion in the pre-industrial age. Similar issues of national identity and musical style arise in the reception of Brahms's quartets, which, I contend, was informed by the works' generic status as Hausmusik. Critics either praised Brahms's works for their simple, folk-like style or disparaged their complexity, artifice, and foreignness. Ultimately, I argue, Brahms sought to elevate the genre of Hausmusik in his vocal quartets by integrating aesthetic and cultural values associated with this genre with a more sophisticated musical style. The works' stylistic and generic ambiguity and the disparity in critics' responses reveal competing aesthetic, political, and cultural world views immediately before and after German unification. Chapter 2 shows how discourse about Hausmusik constructed German identity in the private sphere by promoting a folk-like aesthetic and accessible musical style over the perceived cosmopolitanism and commercialism of Salonmusik and other repertoires. Chapter 3 investigates the tension between Hausmusik and chamber styles and their associated opposing cultural values. Chapter 4 explores a similar conflict between folk and popular musical styles manifested in reactions to the Liebeslieder, which were interpreted as either Ländler or Viennese waltzes. Finally, chapter 5 demonstrates how reception of the Zigeunerlieder reflects the impulse to define German identity in opposition to a foreign "other" by sharply distinguishing between German and exotic musical styles. By relating these descriptive reviews of Brahms's works to largely prescriptive texts about Hausmusik, I define the genre by delimiting its boundaries and demonstrate the crucial role domestic …
Clementi the Scientist: Contemporary Reception of His Symphonies
Muzio Clementi's symphonies were first performed in London between 1786 and 1796. After an extended hiatus from 1796 to 1813, his symphonic works appeared on programs again from 1813 to 1824. Clementi's career as a symphonist corresponds closely with trends in London's concert life. The reception of Clementi's symphonies during his lifetime has frequently been misinterpreted by scholars who oversimplify the use of "science" in musical discourse of the day and fail to consider the positive connotations of this adjective, so frequently applied to Clementi. Musical discourse at the time addressed the science and art of music emphasizing a composition, or its composer's, science, harmony, effects, genius, and the audience's response. Though an unstated ideal, reviews evince a preference for balancing scientific and artistic display. Reviews of Clementi's symphonies suggest he initially struggled to balance the technical and artistic qualities of his compositions but succeeded, according to reviews, in finally doing so in 1796. After his early efforts, Clementi was consistently praised as worthy to stand among the current and most prestigious composers of the continent: Haydn and Mozart initially, and Beethoven and Rossini later.
Motivic Stratification in Fauré's Late Chamber Works: Perspectives on Voice Leading and Tonal Coherence
This dissertation argues how motivic saturation on the musical surface complicates a conventional harmonic interpretation in Fauré's late chamber works. Using motivic segmentation and linear analysis, I illustrate how the abundance of foreground motives has far-reaching implications for tonal voice leading and overall coherence. The outcomes of motivic saliency are twofold, influencing harmonic progressions by 1) altering traditional syntax or 2) replacing traditional syntax to provide the primary form of tonal coherence. I unpack the voice-leading consequences of stratifying motives over one another and bring in two larger, emerging concepts: 1) key duality as disjunction between melody and bass and 2) tonal coherence from the tonal profile of motives. In the first case, either the melody or the bass projects its own center or key separate from the other parts, producing a sensation of key duality. In the second, a single motive furnishes the main source of tonal grounding by unfolding a structural harmony that the surface sonorities obscure. While motivic saliency is a consistent trait across Fauré's late repertoire, the two phenomena above increase over time.
Transatlantic Crossings: Nadia Boulanger and Marion Bauer
In the summer of 1906, Marion Bauer (1882-1955) boarded a ship to Paris to meet with Raoul Pugno, a French pianist and composer. Juliette Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) was also close with Pugno around the same time. Living with the Pugno family in Gargenville during the summer, Bauer was able to travel to Paris, where she met several important musicians of the time and also nineteen-year-old Boulanger. Pugno, who worked closely with Boulanger, asked her to teach counterpoint and harmony to Bauer. Boulanger agreed and reportedly asked Bauer for English lessons in payment. Both women went on to become important music pedagogues, teaching hundreds of students. Their meeting allowed Bauer and Boulanger to share their ideas on teaching and music with each other. As time passed, the relationship between the two women fade from collective memory, but Boulanger's teaching principles of harmony, hearing, la grande ligne, and music history and literature live on through her students and fellow teachers and composers. Bauer's writings demonstrate similarities to these four key principles. Using Kimberly Francis and Emily Green's understanding of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural production and an analysis of Boulanger's pedagogical principles, I believe that Boulanger's early accumulation of cultural capital and experience was shared with Bauer, assisting Bauer in her future role as American music pedagogue.
The Most Expressionist of All the Arts: Programs, Politics, and Performance in Critical Discourse about Music and Expressionism, c.1918-1923
This dissertation investigates how German-language critics articulated and publicly negotiated ideas about music and expressionism in the first five years after World War I. A close reading of largely unexplored primary sources reveals that "musical expressionism" was originally conceived as an intrinsically musical matter rather than as a stylistic analog to expressionism in other art forms, and thus as especially relevant to purely instrumental rather than vocal and stage genres. By focusing on critical reception of an unlikely group of instrumental chamber works, I elucidate how the acts of performing, listening to, and evaluating "expressionist" music were enmeshed in the complexities of a politicized public concert life in the immediate postwar period. The opening chapters establish broad music-aesthetic and sociopolitical contexts for critics' postwar discussions of "musical expressionism." After the first, introductory chapter, Chapter 2 traces how art and literary critics came to position music as the most expressionist of the arts based on nineteenth-century ideas about the apparently unique ontology of music. Chapter 3 considers how this conception of expressionism led progressive-minded music critics to interpret expressionist music as the next step in the historical development of absolute music. These critics strategically—and controversially—portrayed Schoenberg's "atonal" polyphony as a legitimate revival of "linear" polyphony in fugues by Bach and late Beethoven. Chapter 4 then situates critical debates about the musical and cultural value of expressionism within broader struggles to construct narratives that would explain Germany's traumatic defeat in the Great War and abrupt restructuring as a fragile democratic republic. Against this backdrop, the later chapters explore critics' responses to public performances of specific "expressionist" chamber works. Chapter 5 traces reactions to a provocative performance of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, op. 9 (1906) at the Berlin Volksbühne in February 1920. Chapter 6 examines the interplay of musical-aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in critical …
Looking through a Different Lens, Beyond Censorship: The American Reception of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
The censorship of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is a familiar story to musicologists, but reception of the opera is not frequently mentioned. Examining the reception of a work can bring a work's relative importance into focus. In this thesis, German literary and reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss's model of the horizon of expectations is applied to reviews of American productions of Lady Macbeth. Curiosity about communism following the Great Depression in 1930s, America and American music critics' knowledge that Soviet composers worked for the Soviet regime led to the belief that Lady Macbeth was officially approved export from the Soviet Union. When the article condemning the opera as a Western formalism appeared in the Soviet magazine, Pravda, Americans needed to adjust their understanding of Lady Macbeth as a socialist expression. Following the work's revival in San Francisco in 1981, the influence of Solomon Volkov's Testimony is prevalent in many reviews. Many reviewers use Volkov's narrative of Shostakovich as covert dissident of the Soviet Union to assert that the censorship of the opera was about the content of the plot and not the music. Following the Soviet rejection of the work, American critics tried to claim Shostakovich for the West based on the values of individual freedom and feminism set forth in Lady Macbeth.
Searching for Songs of the People: The Ideology of the Composers' Collective and Its Musical Implications
The Composers' Collective, founded by leftist composers in 1932 New York City, sought to create proletarian music that avoided the "bourgeois" traditions of the past and functioned as a vehicle to engage Americans in political dialogue. The Collective aimed to understand how the modern composer became isolated from his public, and discussions on the relationship between music and society pervade the radical writings of Marc Blitzstein, Charles Seeger, and Elie Siegmeister, three of the organization's most vocal members. This new proletarian music juxtaposed revolutionary text with avant-garde musical idioms that were incorporated in increasingly greater quantities; thus, composers progressively acclimated the listener to the dissonance of modern music, a distinctive sound that the Collective hoped would become associated with revolutionary ideals. The mass songs of the two Workers' Song Books published by the Collective, illustrate the transitional phase of the musical implementation of their ideology. In contrast, a case study of the song "Chinaman! Laundryman!" by Ruth Crawford Seeger, a fringe member of the Collective, suggests that this song belongs within the final stage of proletarian music, where the text and highly modernist music seamlessly interact to create what Charles Seeger called an "art-product of the highest type."
Sounding the Ancestors: Sangpuy Katatepan Mavaliyw and the Ancestral Spirit Imaginary
Sangpuy Katatepan Mavaliyw is a Taiwanese Aboriginal pop artist of the Pinuyumayan ethnic group. His albums have been acclaimed by Aboriginal listeners and Han-Taiwanese mainstream music critics for capturing the traditional Aboriginal sound and evoking the presence of the ancestors. In this thesis, I explore why Sangpuy's songs are understood to evoke ancestral spirit imaginary using a semiotic approach. I compare his music to traditional Pinuyumayan music such as pa'ira'iraw and shamanic songs to demonstrate how he uses similar musical gestures to evoke the sense of ancestral spirits. Other sonic elements such as the inclusion of the soundscape of a Pinuyumayan village provides a direct link to the lived experiences of the Pinuyumayan. I also position Sangpuy's music in the broader context of nationalism in Taiwan and how Sangpuy uses his music to negotiate Aboriginal issues such as land rights and environmentalism. Through this analysis, I demonstrate how Taiwanese Aborigines are incorporating their Indigenous ideology into popular music to carve out a space for themselves in Taiwanese society and garner more support for Indigenous rights in Taiwan.
Borrowing Culture: British Music Circulating Libraries and Domestic Musical Practice, 1853-1910
In Victorian Britain, music circulating libraries libraries operated by music publishers Novello & Co. and Augener & Co. supported upper- and upper-middle-class patrons in their pursuit of cultural capital that would help them perform their socioeconomic status. Studying these libraries in the context of domestic music-making reveals the economic and social impact of these libraries in the lives of amateur musicians and in the music publishing industry. An analysis of the account books in the Novello Business Archives demonstrates that the direct income that Novello & Co., Ltd.'s Universal Circulating Musical Library generated was negligible at best. Yet the fact that the library continued to be part of the business for over forty years indicates that Novello & Co., Ltd. found it to be profitable in some way. In this case, the library could have helped the publisher to attract customers through branding and advertising, in addition to informing publishing decisions by tracking demand. Catalogs for music circulating libraries, as well as for the publishers who owned them, contain lists of library and publisher inventory and pricing. Studying changes in these catalogs reveals how patrons' tastes changed over time. A case study of violin-piano duets in multiple catalogs confirms a continued preference for continental composers over British composers, and another case study of violin-piano duets by Felix Mendelssohn shows a growing taste for arrangements of pieces originally composed for large ensemble. Changing tastes had an effect not only on what music Victorians performed, but also on what pieces publishers offered, and, ultimately, on works' places in the canon.
Crisis and Catharsis: Linear Analysis and the Interpretation of Herbert Howells' "Requiem" and "Hymnus Paradisi"
Hymnus Paradisi (1938), a large-scale choral and orchestral work, is well-known as an elegiac masterpiece written by Herbert Howells in response to the sudden loss of his young son in 1935. The composition of this work, as noted by the composer himself and those close to him, successfully served as a means of working through his grief during the difficult years that followed Michael's death. In this dissertation, I provide linear analyses for Howells' Hymnus Paradisi as well as its predecessor, Howells' Requiem (1932), which was adapted and greatly expanded in the creation of Hymnus Paradisi. These analyses and accompanying explanations are intended to provide insight into the intricate contrapuntal style in which Howells writes, showing that an often complex musical surface is underpinned by traditional linear and harmonic patterns on the deeper structural levels. In addition to examining the middleground and background structural levels within each movement, I also demonstrate how Howells creates large-scale musical continuity and shapes the overall composition through the use of large-scale linear connections, shown through the meta-Ursatz (an Ursatz which extends across multiple movements creating multi-movement unity). Finally, in my interpretation of these analyses, I discuss specific motives in Hymnus Paradisi which, I hypothesize, musically represent the crisis of Michael's death. These motives are initially introduced in the "Preludio," composed out on multiple structural levels as Hymnus Paradisi unfolds, and, finally, I argue, are transformed as a representation of the process of healing, and ultimately, catharsis.
"Despedida con Mariachi": The Musical Mediation of Masculine Grief in Mexican Immigrant Funerals
Music plays an important role in Mexican funeral ceremonies, acting as a vehicle for men to acceptably express emotions of bereavement. As an important symbol of mexicanidad (Mexicanness), mariachi music is often used in traditional Catholic funerals, ritualizing grief equally as a mourning of loss and a celebration of the life of a deceased person. Although a form of popular music, mariachi's secular songs go through a process of sacralization, becoming meaningful sites for experiencing grief. As a musical expression of Mexico's idealized gender norms mariachi opens an aesthetic sphere for masculine grief to be expressed, experienced, and socialized in an acceptable form. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the musical mediation of masculine grief, experienced and ritualized within funeral ceremonies, and observed through an ethnographic study of Mexican immigrant communities.
Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814) and His Jesuit-Influenced "System" of Harmony
This dissertation reexamines the music-theoretical writing of Georg Jospeh Vogler (1749-1814) in light of his educational background. His system, which is often characterized as "awkward" or "self-contradictory," is actually indicative of the rationalist/humanist preferences of Vogler's main source of training: the Jesuit Order. I argue that Vogler's theories and compositional style have been marginalized, partially due to their incompatibility with the more prevalent systems of his era, which were predominantly based in empirical modes of thought.
Chicago Renaissance Women: Black Feminism in the Careers and Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds
In this thesis, I explore the careers and songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds—two African American female composers who were part of the Chicago Renaissance. Price and Bonds were members of extensive, often informal, networks of Black women that fostered creativity and forged paths to success for Black female musicians during this era. Building on the work of Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins, I contend that these efforts reflect Black feminist principles of Black women working together to create supportive environments, uplift one another, and foster resistance. I further argue that Black women's agency enabled the careers of Price and Bonds and that elements of Black feminism are not only present in their professional relationships, but also in their songs. Initially, I discuss how the background of the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances and racial uplift ideology shaped these women's artistic environment. I then examine how Bonds and Price incorporated, updated, and expanded versions of these ideals in their music and careers. Drawing on the scholarship of Rae Linda Brown, Angela Davis, and Tammy L. Kernodle, I analyze Price's "Song to the Dark Virgin," "Sympathy," and "Don't You Tell Me No" and Bonds's "Dream Variation," "Note on Commercial Theater," and "No Good Man" through a Black feminist lens. I contend that although Price and Bonds depicted harsh realities of Black women's experiences, they also celebrated Black women's resistance in spite of intersectional oppression. Ultimately, analyzing Black feminism in these composer's careers and songs opens a path for further exploration of how Black women's agency can facilitate activism through art.
Theorizing Sonata Form from the Margins: The Keyboard Sonata in Eighteenth-Century Spain
This study describes a set of salient formal norms for the eighteenth-century Spanish keyboard sonata through an application of Hepokoski and Darcy's sonata theory, William Caplin's form-functional theory, and Robert Gjerdingen's schema theory. It finds that particular thematic types, intra-thematic functions, and rhetorical markers characterize this repertoire. In order to trace the development of these norms throughout the eighteenth century, this work is organized into two parts. The first part (Chapters 2 and 3) examines the mid-century Spanish keyboard sonatas of Sebastián de Albero (1722–1756), Joaquín Ojinaga (1719–1789), and their contemporaries. The second part (Chapters 4 and 5) examines the late-century Spanish keyboard sonatas of Manuel Blasco de Nebra (1750–1783) and his contemporaries.
Two-Dimensional Sonata Form as Methodology: Understanding Sonata-Variation Hybrids through a Two-Dimensional Lens
One of the difficulties of nineteenth-century form studies is ambiguity in ascertaining which formal types are at work and in what ways. This can be an especially difficult problem when multiple formal types seem to influence the construction of a single composition. Drawing on some recent innovations in form studies proposed by Steven Vande Moortele, Janet Schmalfeldt, and Caitlin Martinkus, I first develop a set of analytical tools specifically made for the analysis of sonata/variation formal hybrids. I then refine these tools by applying them to the analysis of two pieces. Chopin's Fourth Piano Ballade can be understood from this perspective as primarily following the broad outlines of a sonata form, but with important influences from the recursive structures of variation forms; Franck's Symphonic Variations, on the other hand, are better viewed as engaging most of all with multiple variation-form paradigms and overlaying them with some of the rhetorical and formal structures of sonata forms. I conclude with a brief speculation on some further, more general applications of my methodology.
A 'Bohemian' Premiere? Smetana's "The Bartered Bride" and National Identity in 1909 New York
When Czech composer Bedřich Smetana's opera The Bartered Bride received its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in February 1909, New York music critics published positive reviews which displayed a great fascination with the many "Bohemian" aspects of the production. However, certain comments or language used by some critics indicate that American opinions of the Czech people were less than positive. After Czechs began immigrating to America en masse in 1848, already-established American citizens developed skewed cultural perceptions of the Czech people, established negative stereotypes, and propagated their opinions in various forms of press throughout the nation. Despite a general dislike of the Czechs, reviewers revered The Bartered Bride and praised its many authentic "Bohemian" qualities. This research explores the idea of a paradoxical cultural phenomenon in which the prejudice against Czech people did not fully cross over into the musical sphere. Instead, appreciation for Czech music and musicians may have trumped any such negative opinions and authentic Czech productions such as The Bartered Bride may have been considered a novelty in the eyes of early twentieth-century New Yorkers.
Nontraditional Six-Four Chords and Their Impact on Middleground Structures in Schumann, Brahms, and Saint-Säens
This dissertation explores middleground functionality of six-four chords by combining a voice-leading approach with hypermetrical analysis. By acknowledging the functional ambiguity of certain six-four chords that do not fit into traditional classifications (Aldwell and Schachter's cadential, consonant, passing, and neighboring six-four), or that can be seen as fitting in more than one category, I show that our interpretation of deeper-level structures is contingent upon how we choose to hear the functionality of these harmonies. Three types of six-four chords are introduced: cadential/consonant, passing/cadential, and neighboring/consonant six-four, illustrated by works by Robert Schumann, Brahms, and Saint-Säens. Each pair refers to an ambiguity—the same chord invites two alternative harmonic interpretations. I call these chords nontraditional in the sense that they shed more light on the musical structure with their ambiguity, rather than when being wedged into a single type of a six-four chord. This approach renews the ways of hearing the malleability of nonconventional Romantic structures and permits us to trace the path of each work as a unique tonal trajectory from a listener's perspective.
An Analytical Study of Paradox and Structural Dualism in the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven's rich compositional language evokes unique problems that have fueled scholarly dialogue for many years. My analyses focus on two types of paradoxes as central compositional problems in some of Beethoven's symphonic pieces and piano sonatas. My readings of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 27 (Op. 90), Symphony No. 4 (Op. 60), and Symphony No. 8 (Op. 93) explore the nature and significance of paradoxical unresolved six-four chords and their impact on tonal structure. I consider formal-tonal paradoxes in Beethoven's Tempest Sonata (Op. 31, No. 2), Ninth Symphony (Op. 125), and Overture die Weihe des Hauses (Op. 124). Movements that evoke formal-tonal paradoxes retain the structural framework of a paradigmatic interrupted structure, but contain unique voice-leading features that superimpose an undivided structure on top of the "residual" interrupted structure. Carl Schachter's observations about "genuine double meaning" and his arguments about the interplay between design and tonal structure in "Either/Or" establish the foundation for my analytical approach to paradox. Timothy Jackson's reading of Brahms' "Immer leiser word meine Schlummer" (Op. 105, No. 2) and Stephen Slottow's "Von einem Kunstler: Shapes in the Clouds" both clarify the methodology employed here. My interpretation of paradox involves more than just a slight contradiction between two Schenkerian readings; it involves fundamentally opposed readings, that both result from valid, logical lines of analytical reasoning. In my view, paradoxes could be considered a central part of Beethoven's persona and philosophy. Beethoven's romantic endeavors and his relationships with mentors suggest that paradoxes might have been central to his bravura. Furthermore, Beethoven's familiarity with the politics of the French Revolution and Shakespearean literature suggest that paradoxes in some pieces (including the Ninth Symphony) could be metaphorical representations of his ideology. However, I do not attempt to explicitly link specific style features to extra-musical ideas. Modern Schenkerian scholars continue to expand …
Depicting Affect through Text, Music, and Gesture in Venetian Opera, c. 1640-1658
Although early Venetian operas by composers such as Claudio Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli offer today's listeners profound moments of emotion, the complex codes of meaning connecting emotion (or affect) with music in this repertoire are different from those of later seventeenth-century operatic repertoire. The specific textual and musical markers that librettists and composers used to indicate individual emotions in these operas were historically and culturally contingent, and many scholars thus consider them to be inaccessible to listeners today. This dissertation demonstrates a new analytical framework that is designed to identify the specific combinations of elements that communicate each lifelike emotion in this repertoire. Re-establishing the codes that govern the relationship between text, musical sound, and affect in this repertoire illuminates the nuanced emotional language of operas by composers such as Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Antonio Cesti, and Francesco Lucio. The new analytical framework that underlies this study derives from analysis of seventeenth-century Venetian explanations and depictions of emotional processes, which reveal a basis in their society's underlying Aristotelian philosophy. Chapters III and IV examine extant documents from opera librettists, composers, audience members, and their associates to reveal how they understood emotions to work in the mind and body. These authors, many of whom were educated by Aristotelian scholars at the nearby University of Padua, understood action and emotion to be bound together in a reciprocal, causal relationship, and this synthesis was reflected in the way that they depicted affect in opera. It also guided the ways that singer-actors performed and audiences interpreted this music. In contrast, post-1660 Baroque operas from France and Italy express affect according to the musical conventions of the Doctrine of Affections (based in the ideas of René Descartes) and aim to present a single, clear emotion for each large semantic unit (recitative or aria). This paradigm …
Continuous Harmonic Structure in J.S. Bach's Triple Fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier and Art of Fugue
This thesis explores how the harmonic structures of J.S. Bach's triple fugues interact with their formal, contrapuntal designs. It attempts to explain how each of these elaborate fugues is supported by a single, uninterrupted structure that holds the entire work together. In Bach's fugues one generally encounters large-scale goal-directed motion towards the concluding tonic; this continuous harmonic motion towards the final tonic is consistent with the aesthetics of the Baroque style, which valorizes constant motion or dynamism.
Developing Ogolevets's Doubly Augmented Prime: Semitonal Voice Leading in the Music of Shostakovich
In this dissertation, I develop and apply an original voice-leading method to the music of Shostakovich. Between the years of 1926 and 1948, his music involved extreme chromaticism that required analytical views from both Russia and the West. In the mid-twentieth century, Russian theorists such as Lev Mazel' and Alexandr Dolzhansky wrote about the modal language of Shostakovich's works, but their writings lacked how to identify them within extremely chromatic passages. In the West, scholars describe his music as both tonal and atonal, sometimes combined within one work. I unify these two views with my voice-leading system consisting of an intervallic resolution of the doubly augmented prime (DAP), which appears seemingly random on the musical surface, but occurs for specific compositional reasons. First mentioned by name in Aleksei Ogolevets' 1946 "An Introduction into Contemporary Musical Thought," the DAP served no harmonic or modal purpose. While Ogolevets mentions and includes examples that show this interval, he does not discuss its resolutions nor how it functions in musical contexts. This structure, however, has broader conceptual and analytical implications. Therefore, I develop a method based on the voice leading and semitonal resolutions of the DAP, which I apply to the music of Shostakovich. The DAP contributes to his compositional style by functioning in three ways: 1) identifying one mode or two simultaneous modes, 2) completing traditional triadic harmonies, and 3) facilitating both tonal and modal modulations.
Sounds Themselves: Intersections of Serialism and Musique Concrète in Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Elektronische Studie I"
In the summer of 1953, Karlheinz Stockhausen began composing his first piece of elektronische Musik at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne. Up to that point, Stockhausen's only experience with electroacoustic music was his time spent at the Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française the previous year, where he assisted Pierre Schaeffer and composed a piece of musique concrète. An early case study in the marriage of serial aesthetics and electroacoustic techniques, Studie I is a rigorously organized work that reflects Stockhausen's compositional philosophy of a unified structural principle in which all musical materials and parametric values are generated by and arranged according to a single governing series. In spite of this meticulously wrought serial structure, Studie I displays features that are the consequences of the realities of electronic sound production either imposing on the sonic result, or altering the compositional plan entirely. I use a three-part approach to my analysis of Studie I by examining Stockhausen's serial system, the electroacoustic studio techniques in use in 1953, and the original recorded realization through spectrographic analysis. Using this methodology, I expose the blurring of the supposed divide between elektronische Musik and musique concrète by exploring the features that lie between the serial plan and the technical processes Stockhausen used to realize Studie I.
Bridging the Fantastical Gap: Dread and the Uncanny in the Score of "It Follows"
"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 and a silent monster. Moreover, the score creates a sense of the uncanny by complicating the binary between music and sound effect and fulfills the need to create dread without resorting to the loud or sudden sounds traditionally heard in horror films. The score's composer, Richard Vreeland, achieves this effect by drawing on both classical film scoring techniques as well as more modern horror scoring styles. It is this interaction between styles that enhances the viewers' experience of dread and horror in the film. This thesis analyzes how Vreeland's score for "It Follows" exploits the poetics of the fantastical gap, of the uncanny, and of musical semiosis. I primarily focus on the "Heels" theme and use of drones in "It Follows," tracing how these musical features blur the distinction between what is score and what is sound effect. I also examine the use of melodic themes in a primarily non-melodic score. By analyzing these elements, I show how Richard Vreeland uses both classical and modern scoring techniques to answer his own question: "Why is this scary? What could push that emotion even further?"
Sing Rāga, Embody Bhāva: The Way of Being Rasa
The rasa theory of Indian aesthetics is concerned with the nature of the genesis of emotions and their corresponding experiences, as well as the condition of being in and experiencing the aesthetic world. According to the Indian aesthetic theory, rasa ("juice" or "essence," something that is savored, that is tasted) is an embodied aesthetic experienced through an artistic performance. In this thesis, I have investigated how the aesthetics of rasa philosophy account for creative presence and its experiences in Karnatik vocal performances. Beyond the facets of grammar, Karnatik rāga performance signifies a deeper ontological meaning as a way to experience rasa, idiomatically termed as rāga-rasa by South Indian rāga practitioners. A vocal performance of a rāga ideally depends on a singer's embodied experience of rāga and rāga-bhāva (emotive expression of rāga), as much as it does on his/her theoretical knowledge and skillset of a rāga's svaras (scale degrees), gamakas (ornamentation), lakṣhaṇās (emblematic phrases), and so on. Reflecting on my own experience of being a Karnatik student and performer for the last two decades, participant observation, interviews, and analysis of Indian aesthetic theory of rasa, I propose a way of understanding that to sing rāga is to embody bhāva opening the space that brings rasa into being. Reflecting on the epistemology of rāga theory, particularly its smaller entities of svaras and gamakas, and through a phenomenological description of the process through which a vocalist embodies rāga (including how a guru transmits this musical embodiment to his shishya [disciple]), I argue that the notion of rāga-rasa itself has agency in determining the nature of svaras and its gamakas in a rāga performance. Additionally, focusing on the relationship between performers and rasikas (drinkers of the juice), this thesis examines how the embodiment of rāga-bhāva and the experience of rasa open the possibility for …
Psalms, Hymns, and Commercial Songs: Tradition and Innovation in James Lyon's "Urania"
This dissertation asserts the value of James Lyon's Urania to the field of American music history as a vital contribution to the development of music in the British colonies prior to the War for Independence. While previous scholarship acknowledges Urania's importance as the first publication in America to contain music by a native-born composer, this study argues that its subscription list and selection of anthems (both of which were new to the field of American music publishing) contribute to the status this compilation is due. The confluence of the English chapel tradition and American singing school tradition contributes to the theological universality and accessibility of its twelve anthems. An introductory chapter discusses the secondary literature upon which this study is based - notably that of Oscar Sonneck and Richard Crawford - and posits applications for the idea presented herein beyond the field of musicology. Chapter 2 provides biographical information on James Lyon and contextualizes Urania within the broader framework of the English chapel tradition and the American singing-school tradition. Chapter 3 discusses the marketability of music in colonial America and explores the biographies of the subscribers to Urania using modern databases. Chapter 4 concerns the confluence of music and sacred text by placing Urania as a spiritual and cultural descendant of the theological universality preached during the Great Awakening. It concludes with an analysis of the anthems, taking into account both text and music. Chapter 5 concludes the study by showing how Urania affected music in the generations after its publication. My dissertation concludes with four appendices. Appendix A is an annotated list of Lyon's subscribers. Appendix B parses out basic information on the anthems, notably the texts. Appendices C and D provide critical notes and editions of the anthems, respectively.
A.B. Marx's Concept of Rondo and Sonata: A Critical Evaluation of His Explanations of Musical Form
The third volume of A.B. Marx's theory treatise Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition is discussed. His definitions of rondo and sonata formal types are demonstrated in the first chapter in addition to the manner of their derivation through a developmental process originating in the Liedform. Musical examples chosen by Marx are examined in chapter two. These examples, taken from Mozart's and Beethoven's piano works, are evaluated in relation to Marx's definitions of the various types of form. The third chapter is concerned with the progression from microstructure to macrostructure and the functional interrelation of the parts to the whole. In addition, Marx's opinion on musical form is compared with perspectives of philosophers from his time period and the immediate past.
Developing Variation and Melodic Contour Analysis: A New Look at the Music of Max Reger
Max Reger was a prolific composer on the threshold of modernism. The style of his extensive musical output was polarizing among his contemporaries. A criticism of Reger's music is its complex and dense musical structure. Despite writing tonal music, Reger often pushes the boundaries of tonality so far that all sense of formal organization is seemingly imperceptible. In this dissertation, I offer what I observed to be a new way of discerning Reger's motivic relationships and formal structures within and between movements. There are three primary tools and methods I incorporated to make these observations: Schoenberg's developing variation; melodic contour analysis as discussed by Elizabeth West-Marvin and Diana Deutsch; and Janet Schmalfeldt's motivic cyclicism stemming from internal themes. In this dissertation I examine five different musical works by Reger: D minor Piano Quartet, Clarinet Quintet, Piano Concerto, String Quartet, op. 121 and E minor Piano Trio, op. 102. My analysis shows how Reger relies on melodic contours of his motives to connect musical moments across entire movements and entire works with multiple movements. These motives are developed and often mark structurally significant moments providing the organization often perceived as missing in Reger's music.
Negotiating Decades of Change in America: The Houston Chinese Traditional Music Group
For over two hundred years, Chinese immigrants have brought ancient customs and musical traditions to their new homes in America. As in many immigrant communities, a new heritage that embodies and exhibits both the quintessential features of American culture and genuine Chinese heritage have come together to form new expressive cultures that are uniquely "Chinese American." As the youngest of the major American Chinese immigrant centers, the city of Houston, Texas provides an exemplary example of a distinct cultural cohesion that, in part, resulted from significant cultural and political upheavals in the latter half of the twentieth century. During this era of political unrest, many Chinese people's attitudes towards their traditional culture changed drastically. The Houston Chinese Traditional Music Group (HCTMG) is a Chinese orchestra comprised of amateur and professional musicians ranging in age from 13 to over 60 years old. Performing regularly for the Chinese immigrant population in Houston, HCTMG's take on traditional Chinese music deviates greatly from that of older, more established immigrant communities on the East and West Coasts and in some parts of mainland China. Via participant observation, interviews, and analysis of source materials, this paper examines how changing political and economic climates in China during the 1960s to the 1990s—when the majority of HCTMG musicians lived in China –are reflected in the musical decisions of HCTMG and the greater Houston Chinese immigrant community at large.
Allusions and Borrowings in Selected Works by Christopher Rouse: Interpreting Manner, Meaning, and Motive through a Narratological Lens
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 Poppea to Jay Ferguson's "Thunder Island." Due to the more accessible filtering and funneling methods of musical borrowings (proliferation of mass media), the weighty discourses attached to them, and their variety of functions (critiquing canons, engaging in an allusive tradition, etc.), quotation has become elevated to the most prominent of musical actors that trigger narrative listening strategies, which in turn have a stronger role in the formation of narratives about music as well as narratives of music. The primary aim of this study is to adapt and apply more recent methodological narrativity frameworks to selected instrumental compositions by Rouse containing quotations, suggesting that their manner of insertion, their method of disclosure, and their referential potential can benefit from being examined through various narrative lenses as well as reveal their participation in certain roles of narrative functions. For this study, I have chosen six instrumental works by Rouse for examination - the Violoncello Concerto, Symphony No. 1, Iscariot, String Quartet No. 2, Seeing, and Thunderstuck. On a more specific level, the aim of this study is to investigate the manner, meaning, and motive of the quoted material in a select group of Rouse's compositions through various narratological lenses. To accomplish this, I intend 1) to establish a context for understanding the musical borrowing procedures of Rouse; 2) to explore how works containing quotations can be …
Elements of Formal Continuity in Robert Schumann's "Novelletten," op. 21 and Other Piano Works
This dissertation explores Robert Schumann's treatment of phrase boundaries in the Novelletten, Op. 21, and his other piano works from the late 1830s. It argues that in contrast to Classical-style works, which generally feature clearly delineates phrases and formal sections, Schumann's works of the 1830s undermine formal boundaries, making it difficult to discern exactly where phrases and sections begin and end. I examine three means through which Schumann promotes a sense of formal continuity in his music: (1) by beginning phrases with a cadential harmonic progression; (2) by ending phrases without a cadence; and (3) by weakening the boundary between the middle section and the recapitulation in small-ternary-form pieces. The dissertation culminates with a detailed analysis of Noveletten Op. 21, No. 5.
Harmonic Function in Rock: A Melodic Approach
This dissertation explores the influence of melody on harmonic function in pop and rock songs from around 1950 to the present. While authors define the term "function" in several ways, none consider melody in their explanations, and I contend that any discussion of harmonic function in rock must include melody. I offer a novel perspective on function by defining it through what I call tension-as-anticipation, and I define a "melodic function" that accounts for the sense of tension and relaxation a melody creates within a particular moment in a track. My dissertation defines two types of melodic function—dominant and tonic—based on the melody's goal-directed scale-degree content, position within a phrase, and relation with the harmony. Dominant-melodic function results in two musical phenomena that I call the "imposed dominant" and the "dominant remainder." An imposed dominant occurs when a dominant-melodic function is initially dissonant with the harmony and resolves over a tonic. A dominant remainder occurs when a dominant-melodic function occurs over a harmonic resolution to the tonic, creating a slower dissipation of tension. Tonic-melodic function produces a phenomenon I call the "tonic anticipation," where a melody outlines a tonic mode over a pretonic harmony, creating a maximum sense of tension-as-anticipation. By including melody in considering harmonic function, we can more adequately describe the cycles of tension and resolution found in pop styles.
Multidimensional Musical Objects in Mahler's Seventh Symphony
Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony seems to belie traditional notions of symphonic unity in that it progresses from E minor in the first movement to C major in the Finale. The repertoire of eighteenth and nineteenth century composers such as Haydn, Beethoven, and Brahms indicates that tonal holism is a significant factor for the symphonic genre. In order to reconcile Mahler's adventurous key scheme, this dissertation explores a multidimensional harmonic model that expands upon other concepts like Robert Bailey's double-tonic complex and transformation theory. A multidimensional musical object is a nexus of several interconnected chords that occupy the same functional space (tonic, dominant, or subdominant) and can be integrated into a Schenkerian reading. Mahler's Seventh is governed by a three-dimensional tonic object that encompasses the major and minor versions of C, E, and A-flat and the augmented triad that is formed between them. The nature of this multidimensional harmony allows unusual formal procedures to unfold, most notably in the first movement's sonata form. To navigate this particular sonata design, I have incorporated my own analytical terminology, the identity narrative, to track the background harmonic events. The location of these events (identity schism, identity crisis, and identity reclamation) is critical to the entire structure of the Seventh.
Listening in the Living Room: The Pursuit of Authentic Spaces and Sounds in Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Punk Rock
In the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) do-it-yourself (DIY) punk scene, participants attempt to adhere to notions of authenticity that dictate whether a band, record label, performance venue, or individual are in compliance with punk philosophy. These guiding principles champion individual expression, contributions to one's community (scene), independence from the mainstream music industry and consumerism, and the celebration of amateurism and the idea that everyone should "do it yourself." While each city or scene has its own punk culture, participants draw on their perceptions of the historic legacy of punk and on experiences with contemporaries from around the world. For this thesis, I emphasize the significance of performance spaces and the sonic aesthetic of the music in enacting and reinforcing notions of punk authenticity. The live performance of music is perceived as the most authentic setting for punk music, and bands go to great lengths to recreate this soundscape in the recording studio. Bands achieve this sense of liveness by recording as a group, rather than individually for a polished studio sound mix, or by inviting friends and fans into the studio to help record a live show experience. House venues have been key to the development of the DFW scene with an emphasis on individual participation through hosting concerts in their homes. This creates a stronger sense of community in DIY punk performance. Through participation observation, interviews, analysis of source materials, as well as research in previous Punk scholarship, questions of authenticity, consumerism, and technology and sound studies, this thesis updates work on the experience of sound, listening, and the importance of space in DIY punk communities today.
The Emergence of the Subconscious in Erik Satie's "Parade": The Search for Surrealism in Sound
This thesis investigates possible connections between the music of Erik Satie (1866-1925) and the later surrealist movement, turning to Parade (1917) in a case study that seeks to understand surrealism in music through the idea of self-exploration, a well-established interpretive approach in studies of surrealism in the visual arts. This thesis seeks to redefine surrealism in music not as a set of concrete musical characteristics, but as a collection of techniques meant to evoke subconscious turbulence by blurring the boundary between the "outside" and "inside," between conscious and subconscious, leading to a new discovery of higher or deeper truth. Satie's music aligns with the psychoanalytic elements of the discourse on surrealism. Psychoanalysis, pioneered by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and his followers in the 1890s in Vienna, permeated France around the time of the creation of the work. It inspired early surrealist techniques like automatism, illusory formal structures, collage, and stylistic allusion. This thesis demonstrates that such techniques can be discerned throughout Parade, not only in Satie's music, but also in its scenario, staging, costumes, and choreography. As such, Parade was a foundational work for the surrealist movement, with Satie's music contributing with the other media equally to the emotional and psychological impact of the ballet.
Shaping Hagiography through Liturgy: Music for the Patron Saints of Three Cathedrals in Medieval Aquitaine
While the development of hagiography over time has long attracted the attention of medievalists, scholars have not fully explored the critical role of the liturgy in prompting and transmitting these changes. This dissertation examines the liturgies for the patron saints of three musical and ecclesiastical centers in medieval Aquitaine: the cathedrals of Saint-Trophime in Arles, Saint-Just-et-Saint-Pasteur in Narbonne, and Saint-Étienne in Toulouse. Through the music, texts, and ritual actions of the liturgy, the clerical communities of these three institutions reinforced some aspects of their patron saint's legendary biography and modified others. Yet the process unfolded differently at each cathedral, revealing the particular preferences of the canons of each community as well as their changing circumstances during the Middle Ages. In Arles, the office for St. Trophime, which was likely composed at the cathedral, shows dramatic changes in the saint's hagiography. The clerics in Narbonne also composed an office for their patron saints but did not substantially change the details of Justus and Pastor's legendary biography. In Toulouse, the canons selected from among the preexisting repertoire of chants and texts available for St. Stephen, crafting liturgies that were particular to Saint-Étienne within a clearly Aquitanian context. By revealing the ways in which the clerics of Saint-Trophime, Saint-Just, and Saint-Étienne shaped the legendary biographies of their patron saints, my work provides new insights into the ways in which clerical communities throughout Latin Christendom shaped and reshaped the hagiographic portraits of their patron saints through the creation, compilation, and celebration of new liturgies.
The Phenomenology of Harmonic Progression
This dissertation explores a method of music analysis that is designed to reflect the phenomenology of the listening experience, specifically in regards to harmony. It is primarily inspired by the theoretical approaches of the music theorist Moritz Hauptmann and by the writings of philosopher Edmund Husserl.
Change, Longing, and Frustration in Djent-Style Progressive Metal
The progressive metal style "djent" emerged in the mid-to-late 2000s with bands that modeled their use of extended range instruments and complex rhythmic cycles after that of Swedish metal band Meshuggah. The addition of a new vocabulary of melody and harmony by bands such as Periphery, Tesseract, and Animals as Leaders has come to define djent in a new way and provided fruitful ground for voice-leading and metrical analysis. In this dissertation, I approach analysis in two steps. The first step is the production of detailed transcriptions of four djent songs. The process of transcription has allowed for the development of Transcription Preference Rules, modeled after Lerdahl and Jackendoff's preference rule approach in their Generative Theory of Tonal Music. The Transcription Preference Rules account for the selection of key signatures, time signatures, and other features of the scores that may affect analysis. Second, using these scores, I examine the connection between the textual topic of change and the voice-leading and metrical structures in Periphery's "Insomnia" and Tesseract's "Of Matter." I show how this topic is reflected by techniques such as change melodic direction, multidimensional metrical dissonance, and auxiliary cadential events. Finally, I apply voice-leading and metrical analysis to Animals as Leaders's "Tempting Time" and Mute the Saint's "Sound of Scars" in order to show what these analytical techniques reveal about instrumental djent pieces. I show how shifts in meter in "Tempting Time" can be represented cyclically. I conclude by showing how the interaction of metal and North Indian Classical techniques produces a unique representation of Mute the Saint's topic of longing and frustration in "Sound of Scars."
Opera and Society in Early-Twentieth-Century Argentina: Felipe Boero's El Matrero
Premiering at the twilight of the gauchesco era and the dawn of Argentine musical Modernism, El matrero (1929) by Felipe Boero (1884-1958) remains underexplored in terms of its social milieu and artistic heritage. Instantly hailed as a masterpiece, the work retains a place in the local repertory, though it has never been performed internationally. The opera draws on myths of the gaucho and takes further inspiration from the energized intellectual environment surrounding the one-hundred-year anniversary of Argentine Independence. The most influential writers of the Centenary were Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938), Ricardo Rojas (1882-1957), and Manuel Gálvez (1882-1962). Their times were marked by contradictions: xenophobia and the desire for foreign approbation; pride in an imaginary, "barbaric" yet noble ideal wiped out by the "civilizing" ambitions of revered nineteenth-century leaders. Krausism, a system of ideas following the teachings of Karl Friedrich Krause (1781-1832), had an impact on the period as exhibited in the political philosophy of Hipólito Yrigoyen (1852-1933), who served as president from 1916 to 1922 and 1928 to 1930 when he was deposed by a right-wing coup d'état. Uncritical applications of traditional understandings of nationalism have had a negative impact on Latin American music scholarship. A distillation of scholarly conceptions of Argentine nacionalismo, which address the meaning of the word as it was used in the early twentieth century, combined with an examination of major works of important literary figures of the Centenary provide a firmer ground for discussion. Gálvez paints a conservative portrait of a refined, well-traveled dilettante who finds true enlightenment only in his own rural, Argentine culture. A liberal, Rojas understands nationalism as devotion to the development of national institutions and local art. Lugones argues the foundation of national art should be the gaucho, and articulates the hierarchical sociabilities it should articulate. Boero adopts elements of Krausism and …
Metric Dissonance in Non-Isochronous Meters
Although music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries makes frequent use of non-isochronous meter (meters involving beats of different length, such as 5/4 and 7/8), most studies on meter and metric dissonance focus on isochronous meters (meters involving beats of the same length, such as 4/4 and 9/8). This dissertation bridges this gap by developing two methodologies to account for metric dissonance involving non-isochronous pulses: modified ski-hill graphs and the composite beat attack point system. Modified ski-hill graphs, adapted from Richard Cohn's ski-hill graphs, illustrate metric states involving non-isochronous pulses and reveal degrees of dissonance in musical passages that share time spans, as in 5/4 grouped 3+2 vs. 5/4 grouped 2+3. The composite beat attack point system uses rhythmic notation to illustrate metric states involving any pulse duration or time span, revealing specific points of dissonance and consonance, relative strength of dissonance and consonance, and patterns of dissonance and consonance. The methodology is used to closely examine the treatment of metric dissonance in Holst's "Mars," from The Planets, Ligeti's Hungarian Rock (Chaconne), and Ligeti's Désordre. The analyses focus on passages where the metric dissonance becomes ever more pronounced and ends up obliterating any sense of meter.
Performing Translations: Rethinking Christian Wolff's Alternative Notation (1960-1968) in the Context of His Creative Communities
Christian Wolff's alternatively notated scores grant the performer several interpretive choices. These pieces feature symbols (known as "coordination neumes") that instruct performers when to begin and end a sound event in relation to the sounds being made around them, thereby generating a reactive improvisation between the musicians. Among these scores are five compositions that form the basis of this project: For 5 or 10 People (1962), In Between Pieces (1963), For 1, 2, or 3 People (1964), Septet (1964), and Edges (1968). Focusing on these pieces specifically, this dissertation explores the unique performance practices required by Wolff's indeterminate music and contextualizes that music within his career in classics and comparative literature, particularly with regard to the concept of translation, and within his creative communities. These creative communities include his fellow New York School composers, New York's wider downtown artistic scenes in the 1950s and 60s, and the experimental music scenes at Cologne and Darmstadt. While scholars such as David Behrman, Thomas DeLio, and Mark Nelson have addressed the interactive quality of Wolff's notation and the technical skills needed to execute his pieces, I argue that there are deeper processes at work in these compositions that go beyond typical discussions of performance practice. Applying Gestalt psychology's principles of organization as a means of analyzing the process of performing these works, I reveal potential conflicts between the temporal spacing implied by the notation's visual elements and the temporal spacing in an actual performance. I also examine the discography of Wolff's pieces and compare recordings to demonstrate how different realizations can be. Lastly, using an autoethnographic approach, I argue that Wolff's coordination neumes create a collaborative atmosphere among performers that act as an on-stage representation of the artistic community fostered in New York's cultural environment at mid-century. Ultimately, in making connections between these …
Mariachismo: Music, Machismo, and Mexicanidad
One of the most recognized icons of Mexico is the mariachi moderno tradition, which in the global popular imaginary, is associated with nostalgic, humorous, and emotional songs of love, heartache, death, drinking, and place. Inseparably fused to tequila and the historic charro figure, mariachi moderno completes a symbolic trinity of hetero-nationalist culture, conveyed within a popular imaginary of authentic mexicanidad (Mexican-ness). For mariachis and aficionados in Mexico, performative hypermasculine machismo acts as a perceptual baseline, structuring modes of feeling that signify an experience of authentic nationalist musicality This process is musically constructed in an incorporation of bodily movement, instruments, sound timbres, and symbolic clothing, simultaneously gestured with a heavy male-accent fusing an experience that feels genuinely Mexican. This reflexive signification is a consequence of the lived experience, shared dispositions, and competencies learned in the habitus, constituting real and imagined notions of hetero-nationalist culture. I refer to this musical semiosis as mariachismo, a neologism describing an intersubjective experience of machismo-infused mariachi subjectivity, ritualized through repeated gestures of sound, lyric, and corporeality. The semiotic power of mariachismo is most potent for subjects enculturated to Mexico's hetero-nationalist culture, shaped by popular imaginaries operationalizing gender and mexicanidad, connecting the two, making them feel unquestioned, natural, and unmediated. The ontology of mariachismo, is in part revealed through an analysis of metaphors used by practitioners and aficionados to describe mariachi's musical techniques and social practices. These metaphors index an archive of embodied knowledge, a lived experience where hypermasculine subjectivity is reified and other forms of gendered performativity, including femininity and non-hetero subjectivities, are marginalized or purposefully subverted. Employing ethnomusicological analysis and building on concepts of habitus, performativity, and musical semiotics, this dissertation illustrates how mariachismo aesthetically enacts sonic-somatic gestures, enhanced by fetishized clothing, and construed within a symbolic music practice, all of which ritualize a perceptual …
Theory and Practice in Book 2 of Ugolino's (c. 1380-1457) "Declaratio musicae disciplinae"
Ugolino (c. 1380-1457) wrote one of the largest treatises on music theory in the first half of the fifteenth century. This work, the "Declaratio musicae disciplinae," is comprised of five books that cover everything a musician of the era would need to know, from plainchant to harmonic proportions, from musica practica to musica speculativa. However, the treatise has received contradictory interpretations by modern scholars, some viewing it as mainly practical, others as mainly theoretical. I argue that in Book 2, which deals with counterpoint, Ugolino crystallizes the relationship between theory and practice, while offering distinctive contrapuntal practices. Ugolino presents a unique view music's place in the structure of knowledge, one which is highly dependent on Aristotelian philosophy. He posits that music is a science and that it is a branch not of mathematics, as it had traditionally been categorized, but of natural philosophy. This viewpoint shapes the entire treatise and is evident in the book on counterpoint. There, he presents an Italian tradition of teaching counterpoint known as the "regola del grado." Ugolino is the first author to present this tradition entirely in Latin. In addition, he offers an unusual description of musica ficta. In it, he presents a diagram, the "duplex manus," that mixes together both musica recta and musica ficta. Ugolino's work suggests that theory and practice, although arranged hierarchically, need not be in conflict, and that a treatise such as his can be both eminently practical and highly theoretical.
Fanfare and Pastoral Topics in Mozart's Così fan tutte
This dissertation explores the use of topics for dramatic purposes in Mozart's Così fan tutte. The five analytical chapters are organized around a central question: how do pastoral and fanfare topics shape the plot of Così fan tutte? Chapter 2 highlights the role topics and tropes play in emplacing and nuancing emergent meaning in the Così fan tutte motto. Chapter 3 examines transformative topical tropes in "Ah guarda, sorella." Chapter 4 shows how the horn fifths and fanfare topics in "Per pietà, ben mio" frame Fiordiligi's choice: the Albanian or Guglielmo. Chapter 5 illustrates the relationship between fanfare topics and galant recitative schemas to articulate formal boundaries between accompanied recitatives and arias. The expectations of closure emplaced by the examples from Così fan tutte nuance a reading of "Hai già vinta la causa!" from Le nozze di Figaro. Chapter 6 discusses the role of recitative intrusions and their articulation of the Count's unrest in "Vedrò mentre io sospiro." Detailed analyses and close readings of the topics and tropes in this dissertation drawn from throughout Così fan tutte showcase Mozart's rich deployment of topics in varied musical and dramatic roles.
Composing Symbolism's Musicality of Language in Fin-de-siècle France
In this dissertation, I explore the musical prosody of the literary symbolists and the influence of this prosody on fin-de-siècle French music. Contrary to previous categorizations of music as symbolist based on a characteristic "sound," I argue that symbolist aesthetics demonstrably influenced musical construction and reception. My scholarship reveals that symbolist musical works across genres share an approach to composition rooted in the symbolist concept of musicality of language, a concept that shapes this music on sonic, structural, and conceptual levels. I investigate the musical responses of four different composers to a single symbolist text, Oscar Wilde's one-act play Salomé, written in French in 1891, as case studies in order to elucidate how a symbolist musicality of language informed their creation, performance, and critical reception. The musical works evaluated as case studies are Antoine Mariotte's Salomé, Richard Strauss's Salomé, Aleksandr Glazunov's Introduction et La Danse de Salomée, and Florent Schmitt's La Tragédie de Salomé. Recognition of symbolist influence on composition, and, in the case of works for the stage, on production and performance expands the repertory of music we can view critically through the lens of symbolism, developing not only our understanding of music's role in this difficult and often contradictory aesthetic philosophy but also our perception of fin-de-siècle musical culture in general.
The Early Songs (1880–1885) of Claude Debussy: An Analytical Approach to Defining a Repertoire
The period between 1880 and 1885 was a significant time in Claude Debussy's life and compositional career. 1880 marks the date of his first published composition, "Nuit d'étoiles," and 1885 is the year in which he began his two-year tenure in Rome after winning the coveted Prix de Rome in 1884. During the intervening time Debussy composed about forty songs. Scholarly literature, especially analytical literature, tends to focus heavily on music in Debussy's mature style, often casting his early compositions in an unfavorable light. Writing on Debussy is scattered with references to the early songs but authors almost always situate them on one end of a continuum that shows an evolution of compositional style culminating in maturity. Such a view tends, if only tacitly, to regard early works as inferior instances of juvenilia rather than works worthy of study in their own right. In this dissertation I establish a foundation for regarding Debussy's early songs as significant compositions in their own right, independent from anachronistic comparisons with his more mature compositional style, and provide justification for considering the songs as a unified, identifiable repertoire within Debussy's larger œuvre. Using a modified Schenkerian analytical approach, I identify consistencies among the songs that give them an independent identity and provide support for their classification as an identifiable collection of works. I consider the songs within a proper historical narrative and in close association with poetry, French musical culture, and issues related to Debussy's biography. Furthermore, I delineate Debussy's compositional aesthetic in the early songs and examine his relationship to other notable contemporary composers of the mélodie, thus showing how his early style emerged from the tradition of the mélodie, how he participated in late-nineteenth century art-song culture, and how he ultimately pushed the genre of the mélodie forward.
Composing-Out Notre-Dame: How Louise Bertin Expresses the Hugolian Themes of Fate and Decay in La Esmeralda
From 1831 to 1836, Victor Hugo and Louise Bertin collaborated on an opera titled La Esmeralda. For Hugo, it would be the only opera libretto he would ever write, a mere footnote to his collection of widely admired novels, plays, and poetry; for Bertin, however, it would become her most important work, yet seemingly destined to fade into obscurity like so many great pieces of art. Using Schenkerian analysis, this thesis uncovers the tonal and voice-leading structure of the first act of La Esmeralda. A study of this nature, which operates from the premise that forms as large and complex as opera can be examined in terms of a large-scale structure, is valuable because it sheds new light on the correlation of tonal structure and dramatic organization. Through these methods, Act I of La Esmeralda is read as a background progression from D major (with F# kopfton) to F major, composing-out an F#/F♮ dichotomy introduced in the overture. With reference to several musical-symbolic ideas - including the representation of virtue through the pitch F#, the key of Notre-dame's bells - it is shown how the musical structure of Act I expresses the Hugolian themes of fate and decay.
A Study of Large-Scale Auxiliary Cadence Types in Songs of Schubert, Brahms and Berg
Heinrich Schenker's concept of the auxiliary cadence can be considered as a middleground manifestation of the Ursatz; his definition of the auxiliary cadence caters only to tonal compositions with a single background tonic, such as Brahms's songs. However, there exist compositions in which the a single background tonic cannot be easily ascertained. Such unorthodox compositions, in fact, can be found even prior to Brahms's songs. In such cases, although the opening and closing tonics are different and are often categorized as large-scale auxiliary cadence structured compositions, they do not operate within the single-tonic based tonal paradigm upon which Schenker formed his idea of the auxiliary cadence. Such compositions may be approached as a novel type of auxiliary cadence and described as "process-driven." The thesis presents and contrasts examples of both types of auxiliary cadences in songs by Schubert, Brahms, and Berg.
On the Precipice: Examining Generic Convention and Innovation in Thermidorian Opera through "Sapho" (1794)
Often neglected in the musicological coverage of revolutionary music and theater, the Thermidorean Reaction phase (1794–1795) of the French Revolution was a period of governmental transition, in which Parisian theaters enjoyed the institutional and generic freedoms of the Le Chapelier Laws of 1791 in addition to relaxed enforcement of censorship. In recent years, Mark Darlow and Julia Doe's work has advanced understandings of operatic genres during the early years of the Revolution, which they characterize as a balance between "rupture and continuity" with artistic conventions of the ancien régime. I extend their methods of analysis to the second half of the revolutionary decade, exploring the impact that Thermidorian theatrical politics and legal (de)regulations had on operatic genre through the lens of Sapho (1794). This tragédie lyrique premiered at the Théatre de Louvois, a venue of ambiguous status within Paris's theatrical hierarchies. Featuring a libretto by Constance de Salm and music by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini, Sapho falls within the period of temporarily suspended theatrical privilege initiated by Le Chapelier and borrows key formal elements from "great" and popular operatic styles. The opera facilitates a discussion of how composers and librettists collaborated to navigate the rapidly shifting political and legal climate of Thermidor. I argue that Sapho's careful blend of generic consistency and innovation arose from its twofold institutional and aesthetic positioning. Institutionally, it premiered within a period of relaxed theatrical regulations at a theater, the Louvois, that avoids clear categorization. Aesthetically, Sapho represents a culmination of generic developments initiated in the 1750s, with innovative musical and formal elements stemming from the authors' attention to dramatic progression and their desire to remain artistically relevant in the wake of the Terror.
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