This paper studies the formal ambiguity that arises when a closing gesture occupies a beginning location in the instrumental works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Accordingly, I am interested in those formal areas within a piece that are concerned with the functions of either "beginning" or "ending." / I first present a systematic survey of the theoretical principles underlying the formal functions of beginning and ending in this style. I then show some specific examples of typical cadences and of initial units that imitate them. Next, I focus on the "main theme," observing how the function of "beginning" is performed by a "closing initial idea" and then, how the main theme's cadences express their proper function. Finally, I study what happens in other locations such as the return of the main theme, the cadence closing the form, and post-cadential material.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1979.

Comparatively few theoretical studies exist on the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. His music remains largely unexplored. This study investigates formal and functional aspects of the "first halves" in the Venice XIII collection (K 514--K 543) and reveals links to the aesthetics and traditions of his contemporaries. It suggests and examines relationships to the development of the sonata genre. To accomplish this, the study proposes a theoretical base for critical analysis and presents a specialised terminology to examine the features of mid-eighteenth-century sonata forms. The arguments of Michelle Fillion, J. P. Larsen, and Wilhelm Fischer are central to the discussion. Studies by William Caplin, Barbara Foster, Klaus Heimes, Ralph Kirkpatrick, and James Unger also contribute to the development of the theoretical base. An analysis section views the selected repertoire and some contemporary works according to the criteria the thesis establishes. An epilogue sums up pertinent observations made in the analysis section.

No description available.

The heroines in Restoration and Augustan drama traditionally have been divided into the categories of sentimental and witty, with the former quickly dismissed as shallow and unrealistic, and the latter equally dispensed with after being classifies as clever and caustic. Both types of heroines deserve more than a cursory glance, however, because they are complicated, realistic and psychologically plausible characters.The sentimental heroines have never been closely analyzed, so their roles are examined first to establish that they are both realistic and human characters. This analysis is covered in Chapter I: Indiana in The Conscious Lovers by Sir Richard Steele: A Naïve Heroine; Chapter II: Lady Easy in The Careless Husband by Colley Cibber: A Virtuous Heroine; and Chapter III: Jane Shore in The Tragedy of Jane Shore by Nicholas Rowe: A Penitent Heroine. After a summarizing and dividing chapter, a transitional heroine is introduced in Chapter V: Millwood in The London Merchant by George Lillo. Millwood bridges the gap between sentimental and witty heroines. The witty heroines are then analyzed and contrasted in Chapter VI: Harriet in The Man of Mode by George Etherege: A Witty Heroine; and Millamant in The Way of the World by William Congreve: The Ideal Heroine, in Chapter VII. The purpose of the chapters examining the witty heroines is to demonstrate that while both sentimental and witty heroines are realistic, the witty heroines are more likeable, memorable and admirable because they exhibit more positive traits.The order of the plays was chosen for two reasons. The sentimental heroines are presented first because their roles have not heretofore been examined; therefore their explication is of foremost importance. The plays are also presented in ascending order of importance, culminating in the discussion of the ideal heroine of the Restoration and Augustan dramas—Congreve’s Millamant.

An extensive database of the tracks of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean since 1851 is known as the North Atlantic Hurricane Database (HURDAT). While this database is valuable to public and private agencies, many of the deadliest hurricanes on record occurred prior to 1851. This study will address the research problem of the availability of historical information and the feasibility of collecting data and producing historical tropical cyclone tracks. This thesis describes a methodology for identifying tropical cyclones that existed during the one hundred year period from 1751-1850 referred to as the “pre-HURDAT era” in this study. Uncovering historical tropical cyclone tracks are important for researchers seeking long term patterns in the climate record. This study is a synthesis of all readily available historical data which can be used to identify the tracks of documented tropical cyclones that occurred during the pre-HURDAT era. To emphasize the applicability of historical hurricane tracks, a study comparing landfall patterns of landfalling east coast hurricanes was also done. These tracks were analyzed using historical chronologies, ship data, and other “regional literature”. / Department of Geography

No description available.

The basic purpose of this dissertation is to provide the trombonist of today with a realization concerning ornamentation practices of the baroque period, and to supply trombonists and trombone instructors with the resources necessary to include the appropriate ornaments in a performance of baroque music.Chapter 1 is concerned with the ornamentation practices of Italy and France, the two most influential nations in the development of a mature style of baroque performance. The Italian tradition of free embellishment is presented and compared with the French tradition of composers' providing specific ornaments for their music. The author's choice of ornaments presented in the sonatas of Galliard, Marcello, and Vivaldi in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 is based on the prominence of these two styles.Chapter 2 is a presentation of the three most popular categories of embellishments employed during the baroque period. The families of appoggiaturas, trills, and mordents, are notated together with suggestions for their proper expression and execution on the trombone. Examples are taken from the embellished sonatas presented later in this study, using measure numbering to identify their placement withineach measure.Chapter 3 is an essay dealing with the art of trilling on the trombone. The overtone series is explained in regard to the formation of thirds, and to the proper notation necessary to adequately perform trills of major and minor thirds. A section concerning the use of the "F" attachment for performing baroque trills is highlighted with examples identifying several valve and slide combinations that favor the execution of major and minor seconds on the trombone.Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are an application of baroque embellishments to eighteen sonatas from the baroque period. Each of the ornaments is notated and placed within the context of the music. The musical compositions chasen for this study represent the Six Sonatas for Bassoon and Harpsichord Johann Ernst Galliard, Six Sonatas for Viloncello and Piano by Benedetto Marcello, and Six Sonatas for Violoncello and Figured Bass by Antonio Vivaldi.

This thesis examines the figure of the rake as portrayed in the eighteenth-century English novel, a character strangely neglected in critical studies. The first chapter examines 'libertine' writers of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, notably Bernard de Mandeville; and the dilemma faced by educators of the day over the benefits of virtue on the one hand, and of worldly wisdom on the other. While Mandeville and other lesser defenders of the rake were very much a scandalous minority early in the eighteenth century, it appears that by about mid century a more moderate strain of libertinism received wider, but by no means universal acceptance (Johnson, Chesterfield, Smith, Hume). The second chapter seeks to define the classic conception of the rake as a young upper-class prodigal, and the standard anti-libertine view that gentleman rakes, by their neglect of social and political duties, were a serious threat to established social and political order. The chapter concludes with various examples of the standard rake in minor eighteenth-century novels that both defend and vilify him. Chapters III to V concentrate on each of the three principal novelists of mid century (Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett), and their par- ticular uses of and moral conclusions about the conventional rake. The sixth chapter suggests some conclusions to be drawn, mainly from the previous three chapters, and especially the ways in which Fielding, Richardson and Smollett com- ment on the rakes in each other's fiction; and examines the continued use of the rake topos right to the end of the century and at least into the early nineteenth, in differing types of fiction (novels of manners, of Sentiment and of radical ideas, the Gothic novel).

Italian opera gained an odd resonance in eighteenth-century British sensibility. By turns loved and hated, it acted on the British imagination as a catalyst both for some of the age's most brilliant satire, and for some of the century's most unusual musical extravagances. This dissertation argues that, despite (or in some ways because of) the eventual failure of Italian serious opera and its English hybrid forms to attain status within the musical canon, the progress of opera played a vital role in shaping and reflecting the formation of British national identity, and that, reciprocally, attempts to find a national identity played a large part in opera's fate in Britain. For the competing forces and factions of Italian and English opera in 1730s London, the bid for supremacy was inevitably linked with an appeal to authority (whether that of royalty, the nobility, the populace, or ideologies of the nation) that involved stressing their link with the national interest. The first chapter examines the relationship between the consistently politicised language used to discuss opera and the mode of civic action and public spiritedness still requisite amongst the Nobility, charting ways in which aristocratic support of this foreign genre might be reconciled to British concerns. The second chapter looks to a particularly problematic instance of opera's apparent politicisation in the 1730s Lord Hervey's analysis of the division between Handel and the 'Opera of the Nobility' to propose a possible 'solution' through the two Ariannas of 1734. In so doing, it shows opera's role within a culture of emulation, emphasising the flexibility and social contingency of operatic interpretation. Coterminous with Italian opera, but of a lower status, were ballad and burlesque opera, their critique of national cultural identity all the sharper for their role as cultural and formal boundary markers. Chapter three demonstrates though exploration of the curious and much-criticised English 'opera', Hurlothrumbo (1729), that British dislike of opera was bound up with the deep-seated fear of luxury. While 'Hurlothrumbo' was used as a derogatory epithet until the end of the century, this operatic work also provides a fascinating example of how opera producers might try to negotiate British unease. Chapter four examines the concerted attempt in the 1730s to associate English opera and musical theatre with topics of national interest through composers' and playwrights' appropriation of the stories of historical British ballads as the local equivalents of the venerable texts of Italian opera. The fact that many of the works discussed are 'problem pieces', considered generically, authorially or hermeneutically unstable, points not only to the reason for indigenous opera's failure to achieve canonical status, but also to a more fundamental problem with the role of opera (and, indeed, music in general) in the still-forming British identity. In the final chapter I turn from the problems of opera to the undoubted success of Handel, who himself made the transition from opera to oratorio; I evaluate the composer's apotheosis as a national hero through examining manifestations of his image in the 1730s and at the time of his death.