This dissertation draws some of the innovative composers from the early 1900's to the 1960's into the spotlight to highlight their new musical and pianistic ideas. These composers, including Debussy, Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, Cowell and others, brought new creative forces into piano music, generating many distinctive features of modern music. The discussion of new resources in harmonic language, timbre, texture, form and concept of time has a direct bearing on aspects of Richard Wilson's Eclogue itself as well as aspects of performance problems. American Composer, Richard Wilson, has written three substantial piano solo works, Eclogue, Fixations, and Intercalations. Eclogue, from 1974, is a one-movement work. The detailed analysis of Eclogue covers aspects of form, harmonic language, timbre and texture, and rhythm and time. In addition, essential issues of performance problems such as notation, rhythmic control, extended techniques, hands distribution, and pedaling are also discussed.

This thesis explores a continuous problem facing those who conduct American diplomatic affairs: the appointment of amateurs, with no previous experience in diplomacy, as ambassadors representing the United States abroad. This study contends that the noncareer, nonprofessional appointment is neither necessarily a bad thing nor should it be considered undesirable, given the American system of conducting its foreign affairs. On the contrary this thesis argues that the amateur ambassador can effectively serve to enhance the needs of American foreign policy without having the same professional training.accorded to the career foreign service officer.

Thesis (S.B. in Literature)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-70). / Introduction: "I hear a sound," said Rhoda, "cheep, chirp; cheep, chirp; going up and down" (9). Thus Virginia Woolf introduces Rhoda in her opening to The Waves. But almost immediately, this sound is transformed: " 'The birds sang in chorus first,' said Rhoda. 'Now the scullery door is unbarred. Off they fly. Off they fly like a fling of seed. But one sings by the bedroom window alone' " (10-11). While the birds were originally a unified, collective sound, "going up and down" as one, now they fly away as many, spreading like seeds that will eventually grow individually to create separate new lives. Rhoda implies that they sang as one only because they had no other choice - the door was barred, and they were jailed together. However, the single bird remaining by the window deep in song is a noteworthy figure. Like Rhoda, and human consciousness itself, it might be lonely or free, proudly individual or vulnerable in its solitude. / by Jocelyn Rodal. / S.B.in Literature

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This dissertation argues for a reappraisal of Beethoven’s middle period using the chamber music written between 1806 and 1815 to advance a new paradigm of “middleness.” I argue that Beethoven’s creative output was profoundly influenced by the circumstances of life in Vienna 1806-15. Napoleon’s eastward-advancing armies brought about the end of the Holy Roman Empire and undertook multiple bombardments of the city of Vienna itself, profoundly disrupting both the established social order and daily life. Unlike other scholarship that has made similar claims of influence on Beethoven’s oeuvre, this project does not seek to ascribe programmatic readings or political aspirations to Beethoven’s music, but rather to suggest that the effects of these events were echoed in the composer’s approach to manipulating musical time and conveying musical subjectivity. The stylistic developments that occurred in Beethoven’s music in this period are reflective of currents of upheaval and historical rupture that have been discussed in historiographic and critical literature on early nineteenth century Europe by such scholars as Reinhart Koselleck, Lynn Hunt, and Peter Fritzsche. These developments in Beethoven’s style are seen most clearly in his chamber music, a compositional venue notable both for its experimental potential as well as timbral and textural richness. To support formal and topical analyses of these works, I develop and advance a new paradigm for understanding “middleness.” Using tools from literary criticism, including work by Harold Bloom and Julia Kristeva, I conceive a framework for middleness that posits it as a fundamentally disruptive impulse. This paradigm provides artistic “middleness” with a stature comparable to oft-discussed “lateness” and opens pathways for potential future study. I furthermore theorize that, if middleness is disruptive, the nature of an artist’s disruptive middle style is heavily dependent on the context in which it occurs. Beethoven’s middle style therefore reflects the context of temporal dislocation and social change in which it occurs. Taking this into account, I consider anew questions of style in Beethoven’s middle period, which runs roughly concurrently with the period of Napoleonic upheaval in Vienna. Rather than relying on the idea of the “heroic” style, which is the most commonly cited archetype for Beethoven’s middle-period music, I establish a more capacious framework that allows for understanding even the non-heroic middle period works as part of a larger artistic current. In these works, we see a profusion of genres and topics related to improvisation, as well as new approaches to employing introductions and codas in sonata form movements. Movements from the String Quartet Op. 59 no. 3, the Piano Trio Op. 70 no. 2, the String Quartet Op. 74 “Harp”, the Violin Sonata Op. 96, the Piano Trio Op. 97 “Archduke,” and the Cello Sonata Op. 102 no. 1 are used as examples of Beethoven’s particular disruptive middle style.

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