The 10 Etudes for Guitar by Giulio Regondi represent the pinnacle of technical achievement for nineteenth century guitar performance. Dense textures, large stretches, fast scales and arpeggios, and obscure modulations are used in combinations that were unrivalled among his contemporaries. The etudes were not published until the late twentieth century and have not had generations of guitarists solving their challenges and teaching them to younger generations of students. Right-hand fingerings are virtually non-existent in published versions, but a thorough study of period sources yields several strategies; examples from each etude are provided. Modern right-hand scale philosophy, such as playing scales with "a," "m," and "i" in the right-hand are addressed and further example provided to give players several solutions to choose from. Right-hand fingering implies articulation and several interpretations are analyzed for each etude where they exist. Left-hand fingerings are sporadically present in modern editions but are often lacking in the most difficult passages. Stretching techniques from other string instruments can be applied to the guitar and one technique in particular can be applied to the most difficult stretches in Regondi in numerous instances. For some of the most challenging textures several solutions are given. The etudes of Regondi can prepare the guitarist for challenges found in playing music that is not written for the guitar or even by guitarists which consists of a substantial portion of the modern concert guitarist's repertoire. His music pushes what is possible on the guitar and borderlines what many would call idiomatic. This paper establishes a small number of techniques that will allow players to solve any challenge presented in the etudes from multiple technical viewpoints.

Vocal duets have had a long history in the Western classical music tradition. Their use as a teaching resource can be traced back to the Renaissance, where duets were used for the development of singing, performance, and musicianship. In the late 19th and all of the 20th centuries, this pathway of vocal pedagogy has markedly declined. This study proposes a reintroduction of this methodology of teaching, asserting that it provides the collegiate vocal student with maximum opportunity for growth and development in terms of technique, musicianship, ensemble skills, and performance development. Four vocal duets ("La pesca," "Il brindisi," "Il gallop," and "La caccia") of Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870) serve as the point of discussion. These songs from Les soirées italiennes (C.1836), which are representative of the salon culture of the 19th century, are given detailed attention through a discussion of their pedagogical value. Since they are long out of print, a new performance edition is presented.

Existing accounts of the music profession argue that between 1750 and 1850 musicians acquired a new identity as professional ‘artists’ and experienced a concomitant rise in their social and cultural status. In the absence of sustained investigation, it has often been implied that these changes affected male and female musicians in similar ways. As this thesis contends, this was by no means the case. Arguments in support of female musical professionalism, artistry, and their function in public life were made in this period. Based on the gender-specific nature of the female voice, they were an important defence of women’s public engagement that has been overlooked by gender historians, something which this thesis sets out to correct. However, the public role and professionalism of female musicians were in opposition to the prevailing valorisation of female domesticity and privacy. Furthermore, the notion of women as creative artists was highly unstable in an era which tended to label artistry, ‘genius’ and creativity as male attributes. For these reasons, the idea of female musicians as professional artists was always in tension with contemporary conceptions of gender, making women’s experience of the ‘rise of the artist’ much more contested and uncertain compared to that of men. Those advocating the female singer as professional artist were a minority in the British musical world. Their views co-existed alongside very different and much more prevalent approaches to the female singer which had little to do with the idea of the professional artist. Through examining debates about female singers in printed sources, particularly newspapers and periodicals, alongside case studies based on the surviving documents of specific singers, this thesis builds a picture of increasing diversity in the experiences and representations of female musicians in this period and underlines the controlling influence of gender in shaping responses to them.

This diploma thesis interprets the anonymous Inventory of Chamber Compositions, which is held in the Archives and Library of Prague Conservatory. It informs about the conditions of performing the repertory from this source between 1843 and 1864. In comparison with other sources the author of this manuscript was identified. His biography is contained in the second chapter. The content of the manuscript is analyzed and compared with the repertory performed in other bourgeios houses and Prague public concerts. Apart from the relevant literature the period critical concert reviews and further archive sources are taken into consideration. The discovered Inventory of the compositions performed in JUDr. František Švestka's house is one of the few sources which prove reception of similarly demanding repertory among non-professional instrumentalists in the 19th century. Key words: 19th century, Prague, chamber music, music societies, non-professional musicians, František Švestka, Moritz Mildner, music in salons, concert programmes, the Bohemia journal

The thesis is a critical reading of pedagogical and biographical texts by and on violinists, written in the early twentieth century. It contributes to historical and discursive studies by providing a limited engagement with a largely neglected group of historical sources relating to musical performance, and further advances the historical research on subjectivity, the body, pathology, and erotics, in relation to discourses of music. The thesis also contributes to studies of performance practice, and empirical and psychological studies of musical performance, in that it engages with discursive notions of theoretical and performance categories, such as tempo, melody, vibrato and portamento. By taking a hermeneutic approach to detailed discussions of performative practices, primarily found in pedagogical texts, the project aims to provide a more nuanced assessment of many of the topics that have played a central role in the ongoing research on early twentieth-century performance (which principally consists of recordings analysis). The project does this by demonstrating the extent to which these practices are culturally and historically mediated. Following an introduction, chapter 2 demonstrates that notions of consciousness inform writers’ notions of musical virtuosity, and shows that Nietzschean and Wagnerian notions of self underpin the idea of the violinist as a superior producer of art. Chapter 3 argues that these ideas combine with metaphysical notions of melody to make the concept of ‘tone’/Ton the cornerstone of string playing during this period, which in turn has important implications for how writers conceive of tempo, rhythm, vibrato, portamento and dynamics. Chapter 4 demonstrates that writers perceive their ideal of tone to be threatened by moral and physiological disease, manifested in individual/social bodies, which leads to a very different articulation of these same practices. Chapter 5 explores traces of notions of intersubjectivity, arising from metaphors of erotic desire, which challenge the hegemonic ideal of universal mind. The conclusion frames the discourse as a problematic attempt to posit an authoritarian model of string playing. It also includes a preliminary study of early twentieth-century discourses of cello playing, and engages with the research to date on national styles of violin playing in the same period.

The purpose of this research is to document how Claude Debussy’s compositional style was used in Louis Vierne’s organ music in the early twentieth century. In addition, this research seeks standard nineteenth-century practices in Vierne’s music. Vierne lived at the same time as Debussy, who largely influenced his music. Nevertheless, his practices were varied on the basis of Vierne’s own musical ideas and development, which were influenced by established nineteenth-century practices. This research focuses on the music of Louis Vierne’s Pièces de fantaisie, Opp. 51, 53, 54, and 55 (1926-1927). In order to examine Debussy’s practices and standard nineteenth-century practices, this project will concentrate on a stylistic analysis that demonstrates innovations in melody, harmony, and mode compared to the existing musical styles.

No description available.

The first chapter introduces the purpose and significance of this study for the piano teacher who wants to teach twentieth-century piano music effectively at the elementary or intermediate level, combining it and comparing it with nineteenth-century piano music. The second chapter presents an overview of both Schumann and Liebermann's Album for the Young. In the third chapter, the two collections are analyzed pedagogically and compared in detail. The study should provide piano teachers with an understanding of the musical concepts of each piece and how to effectively teach students about twentieth-century music by pairing them.

In the late 19th century, Georg Schumann (1866-1952) composed an attractive sonata for the cello that remains largely unknown today. By presenting a performer's analysis, this dissertation aims to position Georg Schumann's Sonata for Cello and Piano in E minor, Op. 19 (1898) amongst other more commonly performed sonatas of the era. This paper provides a detailed analysis of each movement of the sonata, an overview of the history and development of the cello sonata and an overview of Georg Schumann's biography leading up to the composition of his cello sonata.

One of the difficulties of nineteenth-century form studies is ambiguity in ascertaining which formal types are at work and in what ways. This can be an especially difficult problem when multiple formal types seem to influence the construction of a single composition. Drawing on some recent innovations in form studies proposed by Steven Vande Moortele, Janet Schmalfeldt, and Caitlin Martinkus, I first develop a set of analytical tools specifically made for the analysis of sonata/variation formal hybrids. I then refine these tools by applying them to the analysis of two pieces. Chopin's Fourth Piano Ballade can be understood from this perspective as primarily following the broad outlines of a sonata form, but with important influences from the recursive structures of variation forms; Franck's Symphonic Variations, on the other hand, are better viewed as engaging most of all with multiple variation-form paradigms and overlaying them with some of the rhetorical and formal structures of sonata forms. I conclude with a brief speculation on some further, more general applications of my methodology.