Chinese art songs—which are derived from over four thousand years of Chinese culture and combine unique Chinese literary and musical flavors with Western compositional techniques—remain largely unknown in the Western world. Chinese art song, a treasure of a genre, deserves more attention from Western singers and scholars. With a population of 1.41 billion, China has the largest potential market for bel canto singing. Not only will studying Chinese art songs enrich a singer's worldview and repertoire choices, doing so will also be advantageous when singing internationally. In order to assist non-Chinese-speaking singers overcome the difficult language barrier that often prevents them from studying Chinese art songs, I have chosen six songs by the renowned early twentieth century Chinese composer, Huang Zi (1904–1938) to analyze. Although he remains virtually unknown in the Western scholarly world, Huang's Chinese art songs, which include both ancient and contemporary Chinese poetry as well as Chinese and Western musical characteristics, are representative of this genre. By analyzing the poetry and musical settings of six Chinese art songs by Huang Zi, providing pronunciation instructions for Mandarin Chinese, word-for-word and poetic translations, practical International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions from the Pinyin system, and creating an interpretive guide of these songs, this project aims to help singers worldwide to prepare and perform Chinese art songs in a more expressive and authentic way. Taking this project as the first step, singers and scholars worldwide will be able to study and research more Chinese art songs and explore a new artistic world.

Thesis (M.M.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

Dominick Argento (1927-) is one of America¡¦s most distinguished contemporary composers. He composed ten song cycles. Songs about Spring is his first vocal work which composed in 1950 and 1955. This song cycle contains five songs. Argento selected five poems about spring season from American poem Edward Estlin Cummings¡¦ collections of poem, and named the song cycle as Songs about Spring. The study of the lecture recital document contains five main sections: the biography about Argento, the characteristics of Argento¡¦s art songs, a brief introduction of poet Edward Estlin Cummings, the compositional background of Songs about Spring, and a performance analysis of Songs about Spring. The purpose of this study is to explore how Argento made use of music device to express variable sentences, telescoped words, harmony of sound and poem¡¦s frame of mind from Edward Estlin Cummings¡¦s poem, and expects to reinforcing profundity in performance.

This dissertation examines the contributions of the early twentieth-century Chinese composer Huang Zi to the genre of Chinese art songs. It discusses how he combined Western compositional techniques with traditional Chinese music and ancient or contemporary Chinese poetry, focusing on his works 花非花 Flowers in the Mist, 点绛唇, 赋登楼 Ode to Ascending the Tower, 思乡 Missing Homelands, and 春思曲 Spring Nostalgia. Huang's songs, which created a bridge between East and West, are still significant today in China and deserve performance in the West, too. Translations and a phonetic guide to the four songs are provided so that Western singers have the tools they need to perform these songs.

Giacomo Meyerbeer (September 5, 1791-May 2, 1864) was one of the most celebrated composers in the 19th century and the leading exponent of French grand opera. Meyerbeer's operas were immensely popular; for example, his opera Robert le diable was performed 100 times in Paris alone and was featured on the programs of 77 theatres in ten countries, all within three years of its première. Meyerbeer's collaboration with Eugène Scribe, who was the most famous librettist of the century, began with Robert le diable (1831) and their partnership continued for the creation of Les Huguenots (1836), Le prophète (1849), and L'Africaine (1865). Meyerbeer's larger-than-life operas defined the genre of French grand opera. Meyerbeer was a serious, dedicated composer who composed mostly for the stage, but he also wrote sacred music, choral music, instrumental music, and songs. Meyerbeer composed over 50 songs, mostly mélodies and lieder that were translated and published in both German and French. He also composed some Italian canzonette. Meyerbeer's songs are rarely performed in recitals, however, they have originality, beauty, intensity, and theatricality and are worthy to be explored, performed, and cherished. His operas featured unconventional and sensational scenes, tragic love stories set in the middle of the whirlwind of political and religious clash, and bigger-than-life sets to transport his audience to exotic, faraway places. Did Meyerbeer lend the same magical touch to his songs? Was he able to create the same story line of epic portion as he did in his grand operas? My goal is to provide an introduction to the Meyerbeer song repertoire which as a result will encourage more voice teachers, students, and professional performers to incorporate Meyerbeer's outstanding, yet rarely performed songs into their recital programs. In the charts, Meyerbeer's songs are organized by three language groups: Italian, French, and German, and are organized alphabetically by title within each language group. Each chart has eight columns: number; song title; lyricist; year of composition; range; additional available singing translations; difficulty level; and comments. Six songs in total, with two songs from each language group, are chosen and analyzed to explore Meyerbeer’s songs in depth. The selected songs are from various points of Meyerbeer’s career, and are of different levels of difficulties, topics, lengths, and moods. / Music Performance

The purpose of this study is to give some insight into the solo songs of John Alden Carpenter and show their position in the history of song composition in general.

The aim of this thesis is to present a survey of Swedish vocal music.

The following analysis of Franz Schubert's (1797-1828) song cycle Schwanengesang (1828) was undertaken in the hope that such a treatment of the final contributions of this important master of song literature would prove of interest to students of this field.The materials examined comprise the fourteen songs collectively known as Schwanengesang (Dying Strains), taken from the G. Schirmer's Edition of Schubert's Songs with English translations by Theodore Baker. From a synopsis of the art song concluded with critical remarks on Schubert's style and contributions to the art of writing songs, the author has proceeded to a few general statements on the song cycle itself. This is followed by an analysis of each song from the point of view of the text, the general harmonic scheme, the vocal line, and the function and type of accompaniment.

I would like to understand what kinds of connections exist between musical rhythm and poetic and linguistic rhythm, particularly the phenomenon of accent, so I investigated accent in art songs, examining twelve songs in an attempt to further understand how and if the accents and patterns found in poetry correlate to those found in songs based on this poetry. This study examines how the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in Lieder by Amy Beach, Richard Strauss, and Camille Saint-Saëns correlate with musical rhythmic and accent patterns in the resulting music. I systematically determined what kinds of accents were present, where they were present, and how they were related. I tracked nine different types of musical accents: agogic, contour, dynamic, articulation, metric, pitch, phrasing, structural, and textural. I then tracked the linguistic accents in the poems themselves, with the categories of meter, individual word stresses (if different from the meter), rhyme scheme, internal rhymes, and cadences (ends of sentences and questions). I then compared the accents found in the music to the accents found in the poetry. I then compared the correlation of linguistic and musical accents through graphic representation of the values I found. I found significant correlation between musical and linguistic accents in the twelve different pieces I studied. These results suggest that, for at least these three composers, the text does in fact influence the accent patterns of the music. For the songs of Beach and Strauss, there is a visual pattern in the graphs, which matches the meter of the text. The linguistic and musical accent patterns in both Beach and Strauss songs tended to be regularly alternating in a binary fashion, in keeping with the iambic meter. For Saint-Saëns, there was overall close correlation as well. The main difference between graphs for Saint-Saëns and the others seems to be the lack of a pattern in the relative accent strengths, which can be found in both the English and German graphs. French poetry does not have an iambic pattern to it; correspondingly the music doesn't show the regular binary alteration of accents. This pattern or lack thereof is part of the correlation that all of the pieces share between the music and the language, and the lack of pattern seems to demonstrate a particularity in the music in the case of French. Though showing how accents in music and text correlate in the songs of English-, German-, and French-speaking composers, this thesis does not fully determine how and if musical and linguistic accents correlate in music composers other than Amy Beach, Richard Strauss, and Camille Saint-Saëns.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was one of the important English art song composers in the Twentieth century. His Ten Blake Songs for voice and oboe, composed in 1957, was commissioned for the documentary film The Vision of William Blake, which commemorated the bicentenary birth of the poet, William Blake (1757-1827). Ten poems were selected from Blake¡¦s Songs of Innocence and Experience as well as Notebook: Manuscripts by Williams, and were later collected, composed, and published in the name of Ten Blake Songs. In this song collection, Ralph Vaughan Williams used a variety of styles and composition techniques, which demonstrated his maturity and sophistication in composing English art songs in his later years. This study is consist of six parts, including the biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, the characteristics of Vaughan Williams¡¦ art songs, the biography of William Blake, introduction of Songs of Innocence and Experience, the composition background of Ten Blake Songs, and the analysis as well as interpretation of these songs. Through analyzing these songs, the author wishes to explores the multiple approaches Ralph Vaughan Williams took in composing the music and enhancing the poetry written by the great eighteenth-century poet, William Blake, as well as to provide references for performers to further enhance the breadth and depth in their performance.