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A 'Bohemian' Premiere? Smetana's "The Bartered Bride" and National Identity in 1909 New York

Description: 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 America… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Fehr, Laura
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Borrowing Culture: British Music Circulating Libraries and Domestic Musical Practice, 1853-1910

Description: 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 N… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Cooper, Amy Nicole
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Bridging the Fantastical Gap: Dread and the Uncanny in the Score of "It Follows"

Description: "It Follows" (2014), written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. It chronicles the story of Jay, a college student who contracts a curse through sexual intercourse. The curse manifests itself as a human whom only the infected persons can see, always following at a walking pace, and determined to kill if it catches up. This thesis demonstrates the score's crucial role in establishing affect, setting, and character in a film with sparse dialogue a… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Johnson, Kinley
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Change, Longing, and Frustration in Djent-Style Progressive Metal

Description: 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 ste… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Sallings, Patrick Nolan, 1982-
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Chicago Renaissance Women: Black Feminism in the Careers and Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds

Description: 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 workin… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Durrant, Elizabeth
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Clementi the Scientist: Contemporary Reception of His Symphonies

Description: 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 conno… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Asber, Joyce
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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"Despedida con Mariachi": The Musical Mediation of Masculine Grief in Mexican Immigrant Funerals

Description: 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.… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Domínguez, Lizeth C.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

Developing Ogolevets's Doubly Augmented Prime: Semitonal Voice Leading in the Music of Shostakovich

Description: 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 des… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Hatch, Amy M
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Dido the Chaste: A Characterization of Dido in Spanish Baroque Pasticcio Opera

Description: The Dido myth has evolved and been adapted by many cultures over the centuries. Each Dido was altered to fit the needs of its creator, their society and customs. Despite these variations, every Dido retelling is derived from the Virgilian Dido, historical Dido, or chaste Dido narrative, or a combination of these stories. The pasticcio opera, Ópera armónica al estilo italiano que se intitula Dido y Eneas draws on the general Virgilian plot but emphasizes the chaste Dido narrative. The changes in… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Zimmerman, Camila
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Early Songs (1880–1885) of Claude Debussy: An Analytical Approach to Defining a Repertoire

Description: 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… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Waldroup, William Allan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Elements of Formal Continuity in Robert Schumann's "Novelletten," op. 21 and Other Piano Works

Description: 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 … more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Nowak, Jeremy C.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Emergence of the Subconscious in Erik Satie's "Parade": The Search for Surrealism in Sound

Description: 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 tu… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Rajatanavin, Tanaporn
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Fanfare and Pastoral Topics in Mozart's Così fan tutte

Description: 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 pie… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Vagts, Andrew
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814) and His Jesuit-Influenced "System" of Harmony

Description: 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, whic… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Donley, Douglas Michael
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Harmonic Function in Rock: A Melodic Approach

Description: 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 relaxatio… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Oliver, Matthew Ryan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

Ideal Hausmusik: Brahms's Vocal Quartets (opp. 31, 52, 64, 65, 92, 103, and 112) and the Politics of Domestic Music ca. 1848-1900

Description: 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 … more
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Date: May 2022
Creator: Anderson, Robert Michael
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Mariachismo: Music, Machismo, and Mexicanidad

Description: 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 hyper… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Torres, José R.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Motivic Stratification in Fauré's Late Chamber Works: Perspectives on Voice Leading and Tonal Coherence

Description: 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 prim… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Bilik, Matthew Allan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Nontraditional Six-Four Chords and Their Impact on Middleground Structures in Schumann, Brahms, and Saint-Säens

Description: 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 t… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Gao, Yiyi
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

On the Precipice: Examining Generic Convention and Innovation in Thermidorian Opera through "Sapho" (1794)

Description: 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 … more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Wodny, Anna
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Performing Translations: Rethinking Christian Wolff's Alternative Notation (1960-1968) in the Context of His Creative Communities

Description: 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), S… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Stearns, Jessica
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Phenomenology of Harmonic Progression

Description: 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.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Russell, Michael Lance
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Psalms, Hymns, and Commercial Songs: Tradition and Innovation in James Lyon's "Urania"

Description: 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… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: La Spata, Adam
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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A Quantitative Approach to the History of Music Binder's Volumes (1820–1900)

Description: 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… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Anderson, Brian K
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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