In 2016 Taiwan gained its first Taiwanese, female President Tsai Ing-wen, at the same time, composer Kuo Chih-Yuan (1921-2013) was named by popular media as the ‘Father of Taiwanese Music’. Kuo Chih-Yuan was a Taiwanese composer who created music with elements of traditional Taiwanese music in ways which had not been done before. In this thesis I evaluate how Kuo uses traditional elements from Taiwanese music in the Kuo Chih Yuan Piano Solo Album and Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra, and suggest how an understanding of these influences might guide an appropriate performance of these works. In my final recital I present my own interpretation of Kuo’s piano music as a product of my research into his life and musical influences.

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This thesis investigates the contributions made by British composers to the repertoire of piano concertante works during period 1918-1955. It has two fundamental aims: 1) to elucidate the reasons for the remarkable upsurge of interest in the genre on the part of British composers and audiences in the earlier twentieth century, with particular reference to historical, cultural, and social factors; and 2) to examine the stylistic and structural trends evident within these works, highlighting the extent to which they continue romantic traditions, on the one hand, and reflect contemporary modernist developments, on the other. Chapter 1 sets out to demonstrate how the popularity of this repertory arose from nineteenth-century developments in piano manufacture and public concert life. Chapter 2 continues this investigation into the twentieth century, highlighting those key factors that encouraged the composition of concertante works, including the emergence of British piano virtuosi in significant numbers and steadily increasing performance opportunities. Chapter 3 presents a critical survey of British piano concertante works composed during the period under examination, discussing the stylistic trends and approaches that are in evidence. Finally, Chapters 4 and 5 focus respectively on examining a selection of key piano concertos and concertante works from the period that are representative of the technical and formal approaches that were predominant, contextualising these in relation to nineteenth-century precedents and contemporary modernist concertos written in other countries.

The focus of this PhD has been to explore new ways of expanding the language of my improvised solo piano performances through the investigation of, and immersion in various forms of creative media. I have combined this interest with an exploration into textures found largely in contemporary classical music scores and recordings, and more specifically selected contemporary classical piano compositions. By extracting the principles of their construction in an intuitive manner, I have developed a number of models and exercises for developing similar textures in an improvisatory context'. These textures are then melded with fragments of music and film dialogue and executed in live performance settings. The recordings and the accompanying commentary are structured in a chronological format, and, when used in tandem provide a detailed record of the research whereby the reader is taken through each work in a step-by-step (and in some cases second-by-second) account. After examining a few of the works in detail, the discussion assumes a much broader approach in illustrating how the methodology has progressed toward embracing a variety of performance contexts, including working with other musicians in a number of creative settings and also the opportunity of designing a soundtrack for a silent film. This research documents the evolution of an intuitive methodology that is in a state of constant flux, which continues to have a life beyond the duration of the research period. The main achievement of the outcomes of this research was developing a disciplined, selfanalytical and flexible strategy by which to plan and execute original musical works.

The piano is capable of controlling significant polyphony through the detail of voicing and sustain; a unique ability. However it remains a limited and frustrating instrument in terms of its ability to manipulate timbre. Contact with the strings is remote, and timbre inflection limited to note-onset within the capability of its mechanism; its musical output is often likened to visual studies in black and white. From the standpoint of design all musical instruments compromise musical capability in one form or another in order to align with human physical and sensory capability. A full range of expression may be sought by developing expertise on different instruments, but this is frustrating; in terms of expert performance interfaces such as guitar and piano are mutually exclusive — common theoretical structure must be relearned for comparable performance expression. This study explores the potential to create an instrument comprising a set of musical compromises comparable to that of the guitar, whilst remaining adaptive to pianistic technique. It begins with exploration of the autoharp and posits a keyboard variant of this instrument. Practice based research has been undertaken in the form of a prototype series and musical engagement upon the resulting instruments. Five prototypes have been developed, practice engages with aspects of automated design and manufacture, and in the latter stages, working with an exceptional industry based luthier. The resulting instrument has been patented. Musical practice encompasses genres from gypsy-jazz to contemporary experimental music. New works have been commissioned for the instrument and other musicians have played and studied it. Practice is supported through analysis of related forms of musical instrument (which influence the developing design) and the nature of change within musical technology. The result is a new, versatile instrument, with demonstrated capacity to gain traction and to propagate within the musical community.

This thesis is concerned with how a performer might engage with the supposed narrative elements in piano ballades of the nineteenth century, and more generally with the performative principles that would be needed to sustain a narrative realisation of music wherever it seemed appropriate. Of course, the presence of narrative elements in music is usually defined not according to the methods employed by performers, but to those familiar from literary, historical, contextual and analytic studies of the music-as-a-text. Therefore a first step is to examine the tensions between methodologies centred on the “work-as-a-text”, and those concerned with the act of performance. Some important distinctions between critical interpretations and performance interpretations are suggested, even if the former sometimes provide an instigating basis for the latter. Out of this comes a need to demonstrate that, in respect to musical “meaning”, performance has a generative as well as reproductive role, and that the processes and decisions embedded in the acts of rehearsal and the “unfolding-through-time” of performances are central to the creation and emergence of such meanings, including narrative meanings. Next, the evidence for the existence of narrative meanings in music is placed in a particular historical context (that concerned with the development of the piano ballade and its conventions), and in the framework of the changing aesthetic attitudes towards programme music in the first half of the nineteenth century –attitudes that played out in radically different ways in relation to those piano works by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt that form part of this study. The focus then turns to possible and actual performances of these works, and questions are asked about how performances, as implicative sonic shapes and gestural events, for example, might be analysed and theorised by employing recent methodologies of the discipline of performance studies. A final step is to develop and test those findings against a series of case studies of performance approaches to particular works – by Kullak, Chopin, and Liszt – the last two of which are included in the recital that accompanies this doctoral investigation.

Since the advent of the record, more than forty recordings of the Scriabin Sonata-Fantasy op. 19 n. 2 have been produced, as well as two piano rolls, with Igumnov (1911) and the composer himself performing the work (1910). This thesis sets out to analyse the evolution of performance style of this work within the last two centuries, using numerical values and music analysis software, in search of a verifiable analysis of performance traits. This study aims to detect strategies and techniques that performers of the work have used to form their performances. Observation is oriented to register long-scale and short-scale performance details, which are equally valuable in one’s preparation when practising a musical work. The actual sound of the sonata has been primarily assessed. The sonata is secondarily viewed as music text (Belaieff edition) and simultaneously compared to Scriabin’s own recorded performance on piano roll, which is valid only to a certain extent, due to recording technical impediments. The final goal of this research is to bring to light some neglected or merely underrated pianistic techniques, so as to inform the contemporary performer on different possibilities of expression. This experimentation could result in a richer musical language.

Beethoven's cadenzas for his piano concertos are important manifestations of his pianistic and compositional development, from the early sketches through to the published compositions of 1809. While the compositional principles behind them have their roots in C.P.E. Bach's writing on improvisation, and the concertos themselves take Mozart's as their model, Beethoven altered the function of the cadenza, creating a more organic structure for the concerto. The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the ways in which Beethoven constructs cadenzas for the first movements of his piano concertos so as to provide integrated structural extensions of those movements. This aim has been realised through a detailed re-examination and analysis, not previously undertaken, of all the relevant sketch material as well as a consideration and contextualisation of Beethoven's performances in relation to this material and the later printed versions. This reassessment also sheds new light on later performance traditions, principally those of the nineteenth century. Developments in the tonal qualities and sonority of the piano contributed to a new virtuosity among pianists of the generation following Beethoven. The cadenzas of Carl Czerny (arguably Beethoven's most significant pupil) and Czerny's student Franz Liszt demonstrably adopt Beethoven's compositional principles. Yet those by Beethoven's friend and colleague Ignaz Moscheles embrace the new figurations and surface complexities typical of this period. By contrast Clara Schumann would master a more compositional approach based on her understanding of Beethoven's style. The establishment of recording in the early part of the twentieth century means that certain nineteenth-century performance traditions can, with the help of other kinds of documentation, be reconstructed. Recordings of several pianists are considered here on account of their links to Liszt, Moscheles and Clara Schumann, and the special bond with Beethoven claimed by them and the previous generation. Amongst other features they provide evidence of the then current habit of integrating a newly-composed cadenza with the work.

My thesis is an object-based study which uses the piano as an investigative tool with which to explore cultural value from the perspective of different audiences in attendance at the Great Exhibition of 1851. In a nutshell, my approach is to use an object to explore how a specific historical event was understood. The piano proves to be a provocative agent; physical complexity (both internal and external), the ability to signify multiple meanings and a varied price tag are all relevant characteristics. The thesis examines the perspective of the Exhibition organisers, juxtaposed with networks of other human and non-human actors, focusing specifically on how the materiality of objects and the Exhibition building contributed to meaning. The thesis also considers how visitors and judges might have evaluated exhibits taking into account what knowledge and ‘habitus’ would have shaped their understanding. The piano maker’s perspective is investigated with a view to establishing why the range of instruments displayed was so diverse and whether or not the items chosen reflected normal everyday output. The consumer’s perspective questions how class purchasing power might have impacted how visitors understood the designation ‘cheap’ which was applied to some products, including the piano. Some of my work tackles issues already identified by Exhibition scholars such as visuality, imperialism, consumerism and the question of working-class inclusion, using alternate theoretical methods. Most of the thesis, however, ventures into new territory, specifically the significance of materiality and the role of sound. My work also questions whether the piano was understood primarily as a sound producer or as a decorative object adopting a constructivist methodology rather than the more usual technological approach. In wider terms, my most significant contribution, both to the fields of New Organology and Material Culture Studies, concerns the application of physical evidence to answer wider cultural questions.

The history of music-making in Victorian and Edwardian England has, in recent decades, been well documented. The dedication and hard work of legions of amateur singers and brass players is now appreciated and admired, and this admiration also extends to those working behind the scenes – the wives and daughters who washed uniforms, sewed on loose buttons, polished brass instruments, made teas and sandwiches for rehearsals etc. Theirs is an important story. However, there were countless other amateur musicians whose histories are much harder to unearth – the tens of thousands of amateur pianists, who laboured at their instruments for many hours in order to provide entertainment for themselves, their families, and for visitors. Their stories have remained hidden from the modern gaze because the nineteenth-century home was a private world of respectable domesticity. This thesis aims to uncover something of this hidden world of domestic music-making, through an examination of the piano compositions of (Edward) Sydney Smith (1839-89), probably the most prolific English composer working in this field.