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This is the first study in English of the music written by Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-75) during the 1930s. There are five chapters. In the first, I attempt to define Dallapiccola's compositional character with reference to what I have called a <I>prima maniera, </I>judged to have been established by around 1935. Particular stress is laid on Dallapiccola's debt to the works of Stravinsky's so-called 'Russian' period. The second chapter opens by pointing out how Dallapiccola's attitude towards Stravinsky, expressed in essays written throughout his career, was almost exclusively negative. In interviews given in later life, he goes so far as to repeatedly deny that Stravinsky's music had ever influenced him in any way. The contradiction between these denials and the obvious Stravinskyisms which are demonstrated in my first chapter prompts a reappraisal of Dallapiccola's early work in political terms, drawing on contemporary analyses of the relationship between neoclassicism and fascism. Chapter three investigates the most celebrated feature of Dallapiccola's music of this period, the extent to which it partakes of the innovations of the Second Viennese School. The picture usually painted in the literature is revised in the light of the analysis carried out in chapter one. The final two chapters undertake an extended study of Dallapiccola's major work of the 1930s, the one-act opera, <I>Volo di notte </I>(1937-39), after the novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Chapter four analyses the large-scale musico-dramatic design of the opera. Chapter five addresses the political/aesthetic issues which it raises, when read as a confessional 'artist opera' in the tradition of <I>Die Meistersinger. </I>Parallels are drawn between the decidedly Nietzschean heroism voiced by Saint-Exupéry novel (from which Dallapiccola prepared his own libretto), the modernism both of Schoenberg and of another of Dallapiccola's avant garde idols, Ferruccio Busoni, and a typically fascistic egotistical posturing.

This study offers a critical assessment of musical drama based on the <i>Orlando</i><i> furioso</i> of Ludovico Ariosto from the beginning of the genre to the end of the seventeenth century, and supplies a companion volume containing transcriptions of nearly all of the relevant poetic texts. The Introduction provides an outline of the history of the <i>Orlando furioso</i> in music in the madrigal through 1632, an assessment of monody and the Camérata, a survey of Seicento Ariosto reception studies, a reflection on modern Italianist scholarship and music, the main elements of the publication history of the <i>Orlando furioso</i> in the Seicento, remarks on the influence of the pastoral drama in the period, a consideration of the literary critical reception of the poem in Seicento commentaries, the method by which texts inspired by the <i>Orlando furioso</i> were identified and selected, and a detailed presentation of the three historical periods around which the central chapters of the thesis are organised. The introduction ends by summarising the central thrust of the thesis, namely that poetry deriving from the <i>Orlando furioso</i> plays a more significant role in the history of Seicento musical drama than previously suggested, and that important differences among the texts of Ariosto-inspired musical dramas in point of narrative structure, visual poetics, language and style (especially meter and syntax) invite a three-part reading of Ariostean musical drama in the period of 1600-1699. Chapter II presents a reading of the exciting variety of Ariostean musical-dramatic texts (libretti and manuscripts) in the early period (1609-1699) and links narrative reform and the emergence of the <i>aria da capo</i> in the period to a prevailing Arcadian poetics of clarity and an increasing demand for tuneful <i>diletto</i>. The Conclusion suggests this new history of Ariosto in musical drama has significant implications for future Tasso musical reception studies.

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This thesis examines the ways musical material are borrowed and re-used in early thirteenth century motets. This study is focused principally on the Latin motets preserved in the manuscript F (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1), exploring their interactions with related clausulae and motet versions extant in various thirteenth-century sources. The emphasis on musical borrowing and re-use facilitates a consideration of motets within an inter-generic context. The thesis also engages with issues of compositional process, genre, memory, orality, and literacy, especially changes in the uses of writing in musical transmission and composition. Debate about the chronological relationship between motets and clausulae has a long history. This thesis revisits the issue of ‘which came first?’ Some clausulae appear to pre-date their related motets. However, motets may also subsequently influence related pre-existent clausulae. The study of musical borrowing extends also to the re-working of existing motets through the creation of new texts. It is demonstrated that the major collection of early Latin motets in F includes some pieces which are actually Latin contrafacta of earlier French motets. This challenges the widely accepted theory that Latin motets must automatically have pre-dated those in the vernacular, a faulty premise from which general histories and specialist motet studies have long proceeded. In addition, there is discussion of the ways acts of musical re-use impact on versions of musical material as they are recorded in writing. A hitherto unnoticed pattern in the ordering of motets in F is revealed; as well as being organised in the liturgical sequence of their tenor chants, these motets appear to be grouped together according to the presence or absence of related musical materials recorded in the same source.

This thesis attempts to locate Handel’s <i>Semele</i> within the broadest possible appreciation of the political, religious, moral and literary ideas of its time, to show not only how they enhance our understanding of it, but more importantly, to show how it develops and broadens our understanding of them. The first chapter examines the development of Congreve’s original libretto in the context of Queen Anne’s reign and the approaching Hanoverian settlement. It traces his sources, including both Ovid and eighteenth century English and French dramas. It locates his treatment in the context both of the national politics of the Act of Settlement and Hanoverian succession and the theatrical and moral politics of Jeremy Collier’s attack on Congreve in 1698, and shows, through a study of the libretto, how Congreve was responding to a range of political and moral imperatives. The second chapter considers the social and political context of Handel’s production. It illustrates how <i>Semele</i> related to national political concerns, to the changing moral climate of Georgian Britain, and to the political manoeuvrings of London’s theatre companies. It suggests that <i>Semele</i> needs to be understood within multiple and conflicting contexts, which included the fall of Walpole, the rise of Countess Yarmouth and the Patriot King opposition in the political sphere, and Arne’s English masques, Lord Middlesex and opposition to <i>Messiah</i> in the theatrical sphere. The third chapter considers some of the musical and artistic influences on Handel’s composition of <i>Semele</i>. It outlines the other settings of <i>Semele</i> that already existed and considers which of these, if any, might have influenced Handel’s version. The fourth chapter examines in detail the development of Handel’s libretto. It traces the process of adaptation to establish at which stage changes were made in order to show exactly what concerns motivated the changes. It also examines how his approach to performing <i>Semele</i> changed during the season of 1744.

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The emergence of the commercial mass media catering for urban black South African audiences during the 1950s provided opportunities for the negotiation of new professional spaces for women musicians; they became ambiguous icons of urban black aspirant identity, and sites for the contestation of emergent gender relations. From the black Christian, educated elite, which controlled urban, non-traditional moral values and definitions of cultural worth until the late 1940s, they inherited a dichotomous model of respectability versus deviance. However, parallel shifts in power from the elite to the masses occurred in politics and culture during the 1950s, and the cultural tastes of the broad base of urban Africans became more important. New hybrid musical styles evolved, the most popular being those that re-Africanised American popular styles. Commercial success came to depend on an artist's ability to express the emergent experience of an urbanising township population: an ability to embody aspirant and reflective identity and fulfil multiple roles and fantasies. The most successful musicians were those able to embody cultural hybridity and inhabit spaces between diverse worlds: the west and Africa; modernity and tradition; the educated elite and ordinary workers; between aspiration and reality; Hollywood and township streets. With the emergence of the popular pictorial, the film and recording industry, and the evolution of vaudeville into large high-profile variety shows and materials, female artists proved particularly effective at expressing these multiple, often contradictory cultural identities. Women musicians were experienced as voices and as bodies; their gender impacted significantly on the ways in which they were able to function professionally. They needed to forge a workable space between respectability and deviance, and negotiate their relationship to a number of roles expected of them as public women. Although they accomplished the reformulation of aspects of the period's gender relations, their impact was contested and fractured; it resulted from efforts of individuals driven by their own personal, artistic goals, rather than for the general betterment of women's position in society.

Initial impressions would suggest that music theory intended for educational use and Wagner's <I>Götterdämmerung</I> have in common only their broad era and general location, that is, nineteenth-century Germany. The first issue which this raises, therefore, is how such theory might provide a relevant context for Wagner's music drama. A historical approach to theory illuminates its pedagogical role but reading theory as a nineteenth-century German text reveals the deeper significance of its content, its emphases and its omissions. The result is a subplot of aesthetic values and artistic expectations which assumes a further ideological significance, turning theory into not only a critical yardstick for German art but an allegory for Germany's wider artistic, cultural and political aspirations. Before examining <I>Götterdämmerung</I> in this context, I examine the artistic ideas which culminated in the <I>Ring</I> as a whole, their evolution, development and position towards Germany's prevailing ethos. I focus particularly on 'Die Kunst und die Revolution', 'Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft' and <I>Oper und Drama</I> from Wagner's early years in Zurich, as well as two considerably later essays, 'Modern' and 'Uber die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama', which were written after the <I>Ring's </I>first complete performance. Wagner's position towards nineteenth-century Germany's artistic and cultural ethos appears to be shaped by his notion of modernity, a notion which in turn shapes his whole conception of the music drama. Within the latter the place and role of symphonic music, which had become Germany's distinguishing musical genre, is crucially significant. Wagner's two late essays may appear to reverse beliefs expressed some three decades earlier but they arise, not least, from the need to explain definitively symphonic music's role in the music drama as well as Eduard Hanslick's ideologically loaded criticism. Wagner attached great importance to the reception of his music drama so it is ironic that his work has provoked such diverse receptions as those represented by Eduard Hanslick, Alfred Lorenz and Carl Dahlhaus. Analysing the different understandings of his art from which these divergent receptions have sprung reveals that they are all based on an essentially one-sided approach to Wagner's conception of his work and its place within nineteenth-century Germany.

This dissertation offers an analysis and interpretation of Theodor W. Adorno's critique of post-war musical composition with reference to the essays <I>Das Altern der neuen musik </I>(1956), <I>Musik und Technik </I>(1958), <I>Vers une musique informelle </I>(1962) and the posthumously published <I>Ästhetische Theorie. </I>My interest in these particular writings resides in the fact that from them it is possible to construct a picture of Adorno's understanding of what it is to compose. My principal contention is that this understanding depends on a rigorous application of a subject-object dialectic in the context of compositional practice. This dialectic also underpins Adorno's attitude to <I>political praxis. </I>In the course of this dissertation I argue that Adorno's use of 'critique' must be understood within the Western Marxist tradition. Accordingly, Adorno's critiques of post-war composition are more than sophisticated commentaries on current trends and tendencies within the European musical <I>avant garde</I>, but actually attempt to change the attitudes of composers with regard to their activity and to negate prevailing compositional tendencies and ideologies. They are, therefore, <I>theoretical interventions into compositional practice. </I>I demonstrate in particular how the subject-object dialectic is used by Adorno to redescribe traditional compositional concepts such as technique, <I>métier,</I> convention, and genius in terms of the objective requirements of the work. Two issues which arise as part of Adorno's attack on serialism - the 'new' and the integration of technology into the composition - can also be theorised in terms of a subject-object dialectic. I show that Adorno's understanding of the relation of technology and composition is also indebted to the Marxist distinction between the forces and relations of production. Adorno's reliance on conceptual paradoxes can be seen as obstructing the efficacy of his theory in practical compositional terms. I argue against this view and seek to defend Adorno's <I>Aesthetic Theory </I>and his compositional manifesto <I>Vers une musique informelle </I>against critiques by Albrecht Wellmer and Raymond Guess.