The critical literature on composers and their work is often distinguished by as much unsupported speculation as fact - Mozart is no exception to this and it is particularly in the realm of the significance and influence of key in his work that such a tradition of writing has evolved. The key of G minor has received most attention in this respect. However interesting, subjective interpretation ultimately reveals more about the speculator than the object of speculation; and although usually ventured sincerely it is, in terms of the music itself, of little value from an epistemological standpoint. This study attempts to consider musical aspects of Mozart's G minor, and aims to counter, or at least balance, the subjective interpretations which have obscured this repertory by adopting a more objective and empirical viewpoint. To this end, the G minor music will be studied in terms of several structural and compositional features common to a representative number of pieces - These include the Piano Quartet K. 478, the String Quintet K. 516 and the Symphony K-550, a number of operatic arias, and lesser-known works and movements in G minor. The inquiry is conducted within the general theoretical framework of Schenker's analytical methods. With respect to certain of these characteristics, a provisional evaluation of their predominance or exclusivity is attempted on the basis of comparisons with a representative group of movements in other minor keys. It is concluded that in his last decade Mozart was moving toward a limited, although increasing, stylistic definition of G minor.

This thesis investigates recorded music in everyday life and its relationship to memory. It does this by establishing the social and historical context in which sound recording was invented and developed, and by formulating a theory of how recorded music signifies. It argues that musical recordings do not simply facilitate remembering but are equally bound up with processes of forgetting. Each chapter of the thesis examines a different aspect of the relationship between recorded music and memory. Chapter one analyses the origins of sound recording and charts its subsequent development in terms of a continuum between social and solitary listening. Chapter two interrogates common assumptions about what is meant by the ‘everyday’, and argues that music in everyday life tends to be consumed and remembered in fragmentary form. Chapter three investigates the significance of, and reasons for, involuntary musical memories. Chapter four analyses the relationship between recorded music and nostalgia. Chapter five examines recorded music’s role in pleasurable forms of forgetting or self-oblivion. Chapter six is a summation of the whole thesis, arguing that recorded music in everyday life contains utopian traces which, when reflected upon, yield insights into the nature of social reality. The thesis also contains two ‘interludes’ that deal with pertinent theoretical issues in the field of cultural studies. The first of these interludes argues that Peircean semiotics is better suited to the task of analysing music than Saussurean semiology and that, furthermore, it is able to contribute to the emerging field of affect theory. The second interlude continues this analysis by arguing that mimesis or creative imitation should become a key concept in cultural studies.

The process of learning jazz improvisation is investigated in an exploratory way drawing on schema theory as a possible framework, from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. A schema is considered to be an abstract framework in the mind that both structures and is structured by experience. In this thesis, schema theory relating to a number of disciplines, is explained indetail, focusing on cognitive and motor elements in order to relate these processes to jazz improvisation and thus to provide a theoretical model. The model in turn is used to investigate how conceptual knowledge may be abstracted and generalised; how motor skill in musical improvisation may be developed; how cohesion in improvised lines may be generated; how multi-modal aspects of the skill may be integrated; how novel ideas may occur; how the individual voice is created and how improvised ideas may be communicated. This schema theory for jazz improvisation provides the theoretical ground from which a series of educational workshops (involving both groups and- individual musicians), on jazz improvisation learning was guided, observed and interrogated by the author as investigator in collaboration with the participants. A qualitative research methodology is used to collect and then analyse data from the workshops. Evidence from these practical investigations demonstrates the ability for musicians (mainly classically trained instrumentalists), untrained in jazz or improvisation to develop improvisation skills in a naturalistic and holistic manner, which is consistent with a theoretical account of schema theory. The workshop teaching also reveals the value of singing to improvisation development and the recreative/selective nature of memory. The findings, whilst considered speculative and work in progress have wide ranging implications for understanding dynamic adaptive skill and for educational practice, specifically, how knowledge of the schema might help teachers striving to teach music improvisation.

Ten skilled and eleven less skilled sight-readers, advanced adult pianists, undertook two sets of studies. First, controlled preview experiments measured dependence of maximised sight-reading tempo on preview size with monophonic, two-part and four- part notation. Secondly, monophonic experiments measured isolated, sight-reading related perceptual and motor sub-skills: a transcription based error detection task and a test of visually unmonitored, unrehearsed output. All experiments employed tonally coherent and incoherent materials, with the aim of testing the theory that the ability of skilled readers lies in their use of larger preview than less skilled readers, courtesy of their greater sensitivity to musical structure. The skilled group sight-read consistently faster than the less skilled group, achieving larger effective preview with monophonic and four-part, but crucially not with two- part materials. Extra preview use with the former materials was found to be a source of only small gains, the evidence overall indicating skilled readers' faster performance to have been primarily dependent on a more efficient processing of smaller preview amounts than less skilled readers. Both skill groups demonstrated similar, limited tempo responses to the structural distinction in experimental materials, with no structural effect on preview for skilled readers. These results suggest, therefore, that the skilled group's superior performance was primarily due to perceptuo-motor factors. This finding is confirmed by the skilled group's faster performance on the two sub- skill studies. On the perceptual study, both groups display similar patterns of response and sensitivity to structure. In terms of motor skill, compared to less skilled readers, skilled readers are either better at unrehearsed output, non-visually monitored performance, or both. Finally, individual participant data suggest sight-reading to be a complex combination of skills: many participants show significant variation in performance across the studies, and there is evidence for a number of different factors limiting skill development amongst less skilled readers.

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Using ethnographic research-and attendant methods of participant-observation and informal interviewing-at twelve universities in the UK and Germany, Experiencing Ethnomusicology studies the transmission of ethnomusicology, while exploring the ways in which students experience and make sense of their (world) musical encounters. Discussions begin with the contexts and broader organisational structure of higher education in which ethnomusicology is transmitted. Drawing on the voices of ethnomusicologists, the first chapter illustrates the ideological and social practices that inform the disciplining of ethnomusicology and its transmission to students at universities. Subsequent chapters focus on student experiences of the transmission of ethnomusicology and world musics. Specific emphasis is placed on how students make music meaningful and useful in their academic and personal lives, and what and how they learn when ethnomusicology is transmitted in the university classroom. This starts with discussions about students' listening to world musics and ethnomusicologists in order to shed light into their constructing and articulating of sociocultural identity, ideas of authenticity and a heightened sense of democracy. Ile following part explains student experiences of performing ethnomusicology, and assesses students' change of attitude and perspective, while drawing conclusions on the politics of representation and appropriation of world musics in the performing of ethnomusicology. Focusing subsequently on activities involving the composing of ethnomusicology, the final part discusses students' recreation of world musics in the form of transcriptions and creation of ethnography, whilst reflecting on the ways in which composing ethnomusicology transforms students' senses of self and others. The conclusion presents a pedagogy for ethnomusicology that resonates with a music education of the 21st century, drawing on previous discussions to illustrate some of the possibilities of a globally, contemporary and democratically informed sense of music.

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This dissertation investigates trends in the critical reception of the music of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century; more precisely, from the earliest reviews ofhis works to appear in the German musical press (1824) up to the controversy provoked by Wagner's 'Judaism in Music' (1869). The reasons for this fifty-year span are twofold: first, to consider the changing dynamics in critical reactions towards the composer in greater detail than a broader time frame would afford; and second, to avoid the historical determinism present in our existing picture, which assumes a direct link between the anti-Semitic dimension of Mendelssohn reception in the 185Os and the composer's treatment in the Third Reich. In identifying and explaining changes in the reception ofMendelssohn's output, this . study explores some ofthe aesthetic and ideological issues shaping its evaluation. As such, it touches on many aspects ofnineteenth-century thought and culture. In'addition to revising and clarifying the existing picture ofMendelssohri's reception, secondary outcomes of this study include an elucidation of the aesthetic stances and competing agendas of a diverse selection ofpolemicists and critics such as Adolf Bernhard Marx, Eduard Hanslick, Eduard KrUger, Heinrich Heine, Robert Schumann, Franz Brendel, Richard Wagner, Richard Pohl, Peter Cornelius, Franz Liszt, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Emil Naumann and Felix Draeseke. Thus, this dissertation aims to contribute to our broader understanding of music criticism and aesthetic discourse in this period.

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