Percy Grainger collected English folk song only for a short period between 1905 and 1909 as part of the revival of interest in all things English among antiquarians, folklorists, and nationalists. Grainger’s publication of his transcriptions and analysis in the Journal of the Folk Song Society in 1908 is considered one of the most insightful and groundbreaking examinations of English folk song of its time, far removed from the dilettante activities of many other collectors. His article was, however, harshly criticized by the Editorial Committee of the Journal, and Grainger subsequently never again published any significant transcriptions of English folk music. Grainger’s English folk song transcriptions have received their fair share of attention from ethnomusicologists. Thus far, however, no one has examined the connections between this aspect of his musical activities and his modernist philosophy of music. I contend that Grainger’s article contains the seeds of what would eventually become his mature, though never fully realized, musical aesthetic, and that it was this aesthetic that allowed him to examine English folk song in a manner never before imagined by other collectors. This dissertation follows the thread of his aesthetic throughout his numerous musical interests in order to demonstrate the potency of his philosophy as manifest in his examination of folk song in the Journal. To this end, I bring to bear a wide range of critical methodologies, including those of ethnomusicology, aesthetics, and critical theory. Grainger never spelled out with any clarity the fundamental tenets of his aesthetic, but I believe that such an aesthetic can be reconstructed through a broad examination of his writings and his music. Grainger shares his role in this dissertation with many other characters including Benjamin Britten, Evald Tang Kristensen, Cecil Sharp, Bela Bartok, Ferruccio Busoni, and even Jacques Derrida, often even ceding his place in the spotlight to them. This is, however, a crucial occurrence, for as my examination demonstrates, this fully realized version of his aesthetic means that Grainger emerges as a far more important and revolutionary thinker in the history of music than he has thus far been considered.

Master of Music / School of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Frank Tracz / The following report is an in depth research and analysis project based on the graduation requirement for a Masters in Music degree from Kansas State University. The product of this project was a performance at the Iowa Jazz Championships by the Xavier High School Jazz Band One (Cedar Rapids, IA), Kelli L. Swehla, director. This performance was held on March 31, 2015, at the Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center (part of the Iowa Events Center), in Des Moines, IA. The repertoire included Hay Burner by Sammy Nestico, A Child Is Born by Thad Jones, The Next Chapter by Patty Darling and Uchibeng Wow-Wow by Michael Philip Mossman. The theoretical, historical and technical analyses of this process were collected using the Unit of the Teacher Resource Guide, developed by Richard Miles and the Macro, Micro, Macro score analysis form developed by Dr. Frank Tracz. This report also includes documentation of the planning and evaluation of each rehearsal.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Julie Yu-Oppenheim / Teaching a large performing ensemble class, such as choir, can make it difficult to keep a record of each student’s individual progress. This report will discuss my philosophy of music education along with ways to incorporate technology into student assessment. Technology can most benefit the educational process when it is easy and efficient. Through personal experience, incorporating technology into student assessment can be done in the four different methods explored in this report. These four methods are: integrating practice file submissions through a virtual interface; using Google Docs Surveys for self-reflection; incorporating audio or video recording students for sight-reading tests; and using YouTube for students to post videos for final projects. Each has the potential to both strengthen and organize the way student assessment is completed.

Master of Music / School of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Julie Yu / This document examines five choral octavos for a themed choral concert. The McPherson High School Concert Choir will present a themed choral concert, “War and Peace”, which includes these five octavos, on October 14, 2013 at 7:30pm. The selections reflect the program theme and include historical and theoretical analysis. Along with the analysis, this document also contains rehearsal plans and examines common practices of selecting and preparing literature for a themed choral concert. The choral octavos examined are: The Sword of Bunker Hill arranged by Matthew Armstrong, Lift Up Your Heads arranged by Hal H. Hopson, Down By The Riverside arranged by Rosephanye Powell, Tell My Father arranged by Andrea Ramsey, and Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho arranged by Mark Hayes.

Master of Music / School of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Virginia Houser / This Lecture Recital, given in lieu of a Master’s Report, was on the use of improvisation as a teaching aid in the private piano lesson. The lecture and supplemental handout included an historical overview of the role of improvisation, research on its educational benefits in regards to student learning, and a review and demonstration of current piano method books designed to teach the concept of improvisation. A bibliography of sources used in the presentation, as well as reviewed articles, books, and websites were included in the handout. The piano method books reviewed are Scott McBride Smith’s American Popular Piano, and Pattern Play, by Forrest Kinney. This graduate lecture recital was given in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Music degree in piano pedagogy on February 25, 2015 in Kirmser Hall at Kansas State University. It featured demonstrations with the aid of Leah Harmon on piano.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Kurt Gartner / This is a report for anyone playing or teaching any one of the following pieces: Concerto for Vibraphone and Orchestra by Ney Rosauro, Surface Tension by Dave Hollinden, Urban Sketches for Percussion Trio by Lon W. Chaffin, Take Five by Paul Desmond, or DT Supreme by Austin Barnes. The repertoire is analyzed by the method given in Jan Larue’s book Guidelines for Style and Analysis. The report includes interpretive decisions, technical considerations, harmonic analysis, and form.

Master of Music / School of Music, Theater, and Dance / Julie Yu-Oppenheim / This report is for the beginning choral music educator or music education student who seeks guidance when selecting repertoire for their advanced elementary or beginning middle school choir. I attended the 2011 Kansas Choral Directors Association conference. Conferences such as these are great resources for the novice choral educator and even the veteran teacher. Choral reading sessions are excellent ways to find new and quality repertoire, because the directors that select the music spend a good amount of time researching and selecting songs. In determining what factors directors use to choose repertoire for their choirs, a survey was developed and administered to forty Kansas music educators at one of the reading sessions which asked the following three questions: 1) What is the likelihood that you would use this song in a concert or program? The next two are questions in which I asked (these two were based on a ‘disagree or agree’ scale): ‘This song has good educational value for the students’ and ‘I can teach many elements of music within this song.’ Evidence is shown from other master educators of various levels that choosing appropriate, worthy, and challenging repertoire is crucial to the success of the choral program.

Master of Arts / Department of Music / Jana Fallin / This report presents a feasibility study of operating constructivism in Chinese music education. Major problems have been discussed in each chapter, including the historical background of music education in China, and a philosophical rethinking of current situations in China. Questions have arisen: what is constructivism? Why would it be a new changing point for Chinese music education? What needs to be done to apply constructivism in China? China has a strong background of behavior-focused education. Because of that, music education falls into a teacher directed model, and often loses its impact in public schools for students. But as the development of economy in a worldwide context and a collaboration of multi-cultural environments, music should be recognized as an important role for promoting active learning and cultural understanding. Therefore, music educators in China need to start exploring in new directions for development of music education. Constructivism, as a learning theory provides an understanding of how students learn. Based on constructivism, students would develop their own understanding of knowledge, and build their independent learning skills. Constructivism presents how students truly learn, and it could lead to a new paradigm of music education in China.

Master of Music / Department of Music / David Littrell / An aspect of instrument choice that has not been studied in such abundance as the topics of timbre and gender associations of instruments are the influences of external factors, such as ensemble director, parent and family, friends, academic diversity, travel opportunities, and medical reasons as examples; however, these factors have been briefly addressed in word alone in many of the studies completed for related examinations. This study is integral in defining how music educators can better identify supplementary factors in addition to the timbre and gender association studies that will further influence students to choose to play an instrument and more specifically a string instrument. The findings can be applied to band, choir, theater, ROTC, and any other student organization as these factors are contributions and experiences from the student’s life previous to the presentation of the new activity. The current study focuses primarily on string instrument choice as gathered from a pilot survey using a string youth symphony ensemble from the Midwest as subjects and then high school students from three different but similar districts also in the Midwest. The information provided by the students was in agreement with previously performed studies; however, it also featured truths specifically unique to the ensemble and communities in which they were gathered. The researcher will seek to answer the following research questions: 1) What are the three most influential external factors that contributed to the student’s choice to begin string instruction? 2) How are these factors related to the musical culture of the student including opportunities for participation as well as observations? 3) Are family influences stronger than teacher/friend influences? 4) How does the strength of the string community (school and community) affect the beginning string student based on student perceptions of the two communities? Using descriptive statistics, the three most influential external factors contributing to the student’s string instrument choice in the pilot study were Parents, Private lesson teacher, and Other family. The three most influential external factors for the high school students were Parents, Live performance, and Friends. The three most influential external factors for High School #1 were Parents, Live performance, and Elementary Orchestra Teacher. For High School #2, the top three were Parents, High School Orchestra Teacher, and Friends. In High School #3, Parents, Live Performance, and Private Lesson Teacher were shown to be the student’s most influential external factors. In each case, Parents were reported as the most influential external factor for string instrument choice among the populations of students surveyed. When teachers determine recruitment activities, they must recruit the parent, which begins the moment the public school teacher is hired in the orchestra teaching position. Overall, parental influences trump all other external factors in the list examined by this population, which was slightly dissimilar than the review of the literature suggested.

As a social practice, being part of the school band stylizes our lives—individually and collectively. The pedagogical band world, a world made up primarily of school and university wind bands, is in many ways similar to the world of community/civic bands of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on an examination of professional discourses, however, I argue that processes of institutionalization have altered the nature of music making via band participation. The pedagogical band world, like other bounded worlds, operates according to what Michel Foucault calls “regimes of truth”—the regulative norms that delimit what can be said and done. The specific ways in which the subject is fashioned, in other words, are a function of the truths we endorse about ourselves and, in the present case, about music making. Studying the discourses in the disciplinary practice of large ensemble (band) music making is of paramount importance for music educators to better understand the effects of disciplinary practices. Employing a conceptual framework based on the work of Michel Foucault, the following question guided this inquiry: “What ‘regimes of truth’ are fashioned in school music (bands) discourse, how did they come to be, and what are their potential effects on the subject?” Methods from the field of corpus linguistics were used to concordance the journal of the Canadian Band Association, 1978-2008. Concordance lists were used to introspectively examine each occurrence (approximately 25,000 in total) of a downsampled set of words related to subject formation in order to generate statements making truth claims. While there is no mistaking that a primary goal in music education discourse is to foster a “love of music,” this investigation suggests the kind of musicality fashioned in today’s pedagogical discourse has become a relationship to music (based on the study of music; music as something to know) rather than the kind of relationship fashioned in band participation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which I describe as a relationship with music (music as something to do).