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open access

“Sounds for Adventurous Listeners”: Willis Conover, the Voice of America, and the International Reception of Avant-garde Jazz in the 1960S

Description: In “Sounds for Adventurous Listeners,” I argue that Conover’s role in the dissemination of jazz through the Music USA Jazz Hour was more influential on an educational level than what literature on Conover currently provides. Chapter 2 begins with an examination of current studies regarding the role of jazz in Cold War diplomacy, the sociopolitical implications of avant-garde jazz and race, the convergence of fandom and propaganda, the promoter as facilitator of musical trends, and the influence… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Breckenridge, Mark A.
open access

It's Not Fusion: Hybridity in the Music of Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa

Description: This thesis concerns the performance of identity in the music of Indian American jazz musicians Rudresh Mahanthappa and Vijay Iyer. In combining the use of Indian classical music elements with jazz, Iyer and Mahanthappa create music that is inextricably tied to their multifaceted identities. Traditional musicological analysis is juxtaposed with a theoretical framework that draws on postcolonial theory and the history of Asian immigrant populations to the U.S. I chronicle the interactions betwee… more
Date: December 2012
Creator: Govind, Arathi
open access

Don Gillis's Symphony No 5½: Music for the People

Description: Don Gillis wrote Symphony No. 5½ (1947) in order to reconcile the American public with modern art music. By synthesizing jazz (as well as other American folk idioms), singable melodies, and humor, and then couching them into symphonic language, Gillis produced a work that lay listeners could process and enjoy. The piece was an immediate success and was played by orchestras across the globe, but it did not retain this popularity and it eventually faded from relevancy. This study focuses on el… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Morrison, Sean
open access

The Musical Fallout of Political Activism: Government Investigations of Musicians in the United States, 1930-1960

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

The Use of Jazz in Opera

Description: Methods of incorporating jazz in opera range from using simple blue notes and fox-trot rhythms, to utilizing jazz instruments, to employing elaborate passages of improvisation. Current definitions of "jazz opera" do not consider variations in the genre, which, because of their evolving nature and the varied background of their composers, are diverse. This study attempts to collectively discuss these third-stream works. Jazz rhythms and harmonies first appeared in the 1920s in the works of Gersh… more
Date: December 1995
Creator: Ottervik, Jennifer
open access

Orchestral Accompaniment in the Vocal Works of Hector Berlioz

Description: Recent Berlioz studies tend to stress the significance of the French tradition for a balanced understanding of Berlioz's music. Such is necessary because the customary emphasis on purely musical structure inclines to stress the influence of German masters to the neglect of vocal and therefore rhetorical character of this tradition. The present study, through a fresh examination of Berlioz's vocal-orchestral scores, sets forth the various orchestrational patterns and the rationales that lay behi… more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Lee, Namjai
open access

The Function of Oral Tradition in Mary Lou's Mass by Mary Lou Williams

Description: The musical and spiritual life of Mary Lou Williams (1910 - 1981) came together in her later years in the writing of Mary Lou's Mass. Being both Roman Catholic and a jazz pianist and composer, it was inevitable that Williams would be the first jazz composer to write a setting of the mass. The degree of success resulting from the combination of jazz and the traditional forms of Western art music has always been controversial. Because of Williams's personal faith and aesthetics of music, however,… more
Date: August 1996
Creator: Fledderus, France
open access

Mail Order Music: the Hinners Organ Company in the Dakotas, 1879-1936

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

Opera and the Galant Homme: Quinault and Lully's Tragedie en musique, Atys, in the Context of Seventeenth-Century Modernism

Description: The tragedie en musique of Quinault and Lully was a highly successful new genre, representative of contemporary Parisian life. However, it is still largely viewed in the negative terms of its detractors, the proponents of classical tragedy. The purpose of this study is to redefine the tragedie en musique in terms of seventeenth-century modernism. An examination of the society and poetry of the contemporary gallant world provides the historical framework for an analysis of both the libretto and … more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Browne, Marilyn K. (Marilyn Kay)
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Elements of Shamanic Mythology in E. T. A. Hoffman's Romantic Conception of Music

Description: The musicians in E. T. A. Hoffmann's tales and essays demonstrate traits remarkably similar to those of shamans. Hoffmann uses the same imagery to describe the journey of the composer into the "realm of dreams," where he receives inspiration, as the shaman uses to describe the spirit world to which he journeys via music. Hoffmann was a major force in changing the 18th-century view of music as an "innocent luxury" to the 19th-century idea of music as a higher art. As a German Romantic,author, he… more
Date: December 1993
Creator: Miller, Harry A. W. (Harry Alfred Werner)
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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.
open access

The Fourteen Seréstas of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

Description: The Fourteen Seréstas of Heitor Villa-Lobos comprise a group of songs that expresses Villa-Lobos's compositional technique for the voice. These songs are challenging as a topic because not much historical or analytical research has been done on them. I approach the topic by providing historical background on the modinha and how it relates to the serésta. This is followed by a descriptive analysis in the order of the set, which includes musical examples, chart diagrams, and comparisons of the se… more
Date: August 1999
Creator: Sánchez, Noé
open access

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

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

The Prologue in the Seventeenth-Century Venetian Operatic Libretto: its Dramatic Purpose and the Function of its Characters

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

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

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

Transcendentalism and Intertextuality in Charles Ives's War Songs of 1917

Description: This thesis examines a collection of three songs, "In Flanders Fields," "He Is There!," and "Tom Sails Away," written by Charles Ives in 1917, from primarily a literary perspective involving Transcendentalism and intertextuality. Ives's aesthetic builds upon the principles of Transcendentalism. I examine these songs using the principles outlined by the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists, and Ives's interpretations of these beliefs. Another characteristic of Ives's music is quotation. "Intert… more
Date: December 1998
Creator: Brandt, R. Lynne (Rebecca Lynne)
open access

Repetition and Difference: Parodic Narration in Kander and Ebb's "The Scottsboro Boys"

Description: The American musical team John Kander and Fred Ebb created many celebrated works, yet musicologists have carried out little research on those works. This study examines the role of music in the parodic narration of Kander and Ebb's final collaboration, The Scottsboro Boys. Kander and Ebb use minstrelsy to tell the story of the historic Scottsboro Boys trials with actors portraying the Scottsboro Boys as minstrels; at the same time, they employ a number of devices to subvert minstrelsy stereotyp… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Wolski, Kristin Anne
open access

English Devotional Song of the Seventeenth Century in Printed Collections from 1638 to 1693: A Study of Music and Culture

Description: Seventeenth-century England witnessed profound historical, theological, and musical changes. A king was overthrown and executed; religion was practiced fervently and disputed hotly; and English musicians fell under the influence of the Italian stile nuovo. Many devotional songs were printed, among them those which reveal influences of this style. These English-texted sacred songs for one to three solo voices with continuo--not based upon a previously- composed hymn or psalm tune—are emphasized… more
Date: May 1986
Creator: Treacy, Susan
open access

The Full Anthems and Services of John Blow and the Question of an English Stile Antico

Description: John Blow (1649-1708) was among the first group of boys pressed into the service of King Charles II, following the decade of Puritan rule. Blow would make compositional efforts as early as 1664 and, at the age of nineteen, began to assume professional positions within the London musical establishment, ultimately becoming, along with his pupil and colleague, Henry Purcell, London's foremost musician. Restoration sacred music is generally thought of in connection with the stile nuovo which, for … more
Date: August 1990
Creator: King, Deborah Simpkin
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Spółka Nakładowa Młodych Kompozytorów Polskich (1905-1912) and the Myth of Young Poland in Music

Description: This study deals with the four-composer Polish musical association, Young Polish Composers' Publishing Company, which became commonly known as the group Poland in Music. Young Poland in Music is considered by Polish and non-Polish music historians to be the signal inaugurator of modernism in Polish music. However, despite this most important attribution, the past eighty-odd years have witnessed considerable confusion over the perceptions of: 1) exactly who constituted the publishing company, 2)… more
Date: December 1987
Creator: Hebda, Paul Thomas
open access

The Program Symphonies of Joseph Joachim Raff

Description: Joseph Joachim Raff, a nineteenth-century composer of Swiss-German descent, emerged during the 1870's as one of the leading composers of the symphony and was heralded by his peers as the successor to the symphonic tradition of Schumann. Of the eleven symphonies published between 186U and 1883, nine are program symphonies. Hired as an amanuensis by Liszt during the latter part of 181+9, Raff became involved in the New Weimar School surrounding Liszt, but disenchantment with their dogmas and a ne… more
Date: May 1982
Creator: Bevier, Carol S. (Carol Sue)
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Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807-1867): His Life And Symphonies

Description: Ignacy Feliks , a Polish composer active in Warsaw, is best known for having been a colleague of Frederic Chopin while they were both composition students of Jozef Eisner. As an early nationalist composer, Dobrzynski is examined within the context of nineteenth-century Warsaw's musical culture and political situation. Dobrzynski early training was provided by his father, who was Kapelmeister at the Ilinski court in Romanow. The most important achievements of the career which followed Dobrzynski… more
Date: August 1981
Creator: Smialek, William
open access

The Theoretical Treatises of Josef Matthias Hauer

Description: This study makes available in English translations the three most important theoretical writings of the Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer (1883—1959), whose experiments with atonal and dodecaphonic music are discussed in the treatises. The treatises are Vom Wesen des Musikalischen: Grundlagen der Zwolftonmusik, Vom Melos zur Pauke: eine Einfuhrung in die Zw51ftonmusik, and Zwftlftontechnik: die Lehre von den Tropen. In addition to the translations and commentary the dissertation includes a… more
Date: August 1980
Creator: Harvey, Dixie Lynn
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