Frederick Thurston was a prominent British clarinet performer and teacher in the first half of the 20th century. Due to the brevity of his life and the impact of two world wars, Thurston's legacy is often overlooked among clarinetists in the United States. Thurston's playing inspired 19 composers to write 22 solo and chamber works for him, none of which he personally commissioned. The purpose of this document is to provide a comprehensive biography of Thurston's career as clarinet performer and teacher with a complete bibliography of compositions written for him. With biographical knowledge and access to the few extant recordings of Thurston's playing, clarinetists may gain a fuller understanding of Thurston's ideal clarinet sound and musical ideas. These resources are necessary in order to recognize the qualities about his playing that inspired composers to write for him and to perform these works with the composers' inspiration in mind. Despite the vast list of works written for and dedicated to Thurston, clarinet players in the United States are not familiar with many of these works, and available resources do not include a complete listing. Much of this repertoire remains unexplored and unrecorded yet is suitable for intermediate to advanced level clarinet players.

In this thesis, I have studied the composer Johannes Brahms. I have talked about the background and history of his Quintet in B minor for clarinet and string quartet and I have then analyzed the piece. The purpose of this thesis is to find lesser known but significant information about Brahms to help other clarinetists when they have to perform this important piece of clarinet repertoire. Moreover, my artistic questions are if one piece can change your perception or your way to play it after doing a deep analysis and if the interpretation is in a way stronger than before. I decided to analyze this piece due to my interest in Brahms and to learn more about the expressive qualities in his music. I wanted to know more about the composer and so I chose this Quintet, because it is a challenging piece to play and is often performed.  From the quintet, I concentrated specifically on the possibilities of performing it and I tried to search for a way to have a deeper understanding of Brahms to produce the most convincing artistic performance of the piece.  After I learnt more about the background of this piece it resulted in a stronger interpretation of his quintet.

Please note: this work is permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and fill out the appropriate web form. / The Verdehr Trio has been one of the leading chamber ensemble groups in the world over the past half century, featuring clarinetist Elsa Ludwig-Verdehr, violinist Walter Verdehr, and pianist Silvia Roederer. Founded in 1972, the trio worked to broaden the violin, clarinet, and piano trio’s repertoire. Since 1976, through Making of a Medium project, the ensemble has commissioned over 210 pieces from more than 150 contemporary composers all over the world. Although there were already a handful of prominent works for this configuration by Bartók, Milhaud, Khachaturian, and a few others, this genre of musical composition was established and popularized by the Verdehr trio’s efforts and their commissioned works. Indeed, other ensemble groups are actively continuing the Verdehr Trio’s legacy through performing the Verdehr’s repertoire on stage and by adding new repertoire to their programs by commissioning and arranging pieces. The concept of developing a whole new repertoire for a certain group of instruments shows great promise for the possibility of new music for contemporary musicians. From the beginning of the Verdehr Trio’s existence, James Niblock has been one of the primary supporters for the ensemble, not only as a colleague at Michigan State University, but also as a composer who has provided more than 13 pieces ranging from arrangements of pre-existing works to double concertos, including trio-specific chamber compositions. Niblock’s trio compositions make a solid contribution to the violin, clarinet, and piano trio literature as valuable exemplars of American Neoclassical music, with many similarities with Roy Harris and Hindemith. Niblock maintains a classical aesthetic in his chamber music, pursuing pure sounds, refraining from emotional or scenic expressions, and employing the use of simple instrumental techniques, few dynamics, a narrow range in the piano, thin polyphonic textures, rhythmic clarity, and small motives. On the basis of traditional idioms, he added 20th century techniques and personal preferences for shifted rhythm, perfect 4th/5th intervals, use of pitch centers rather than traditionally defined key areas, repetition of small motives, and more. / 2031-01-01T00:00:00Z

The dissertation consists of four recitals: one chamber music recital compiled from two years' series of chamber music performances in residence, two solo recitals, and one lecture recital. The repertoire of these programs was chosen with the intention of demonstrating the capability of the performer to deal with problems arising in works of varying types and of different historical periods. The lecture recital, The Fifth and Sixth Clarinet Concertos by Johann Melchior Molter, begins with perhaps the first performance of the Concerto No. 4 in D Major, Mus. Hs. 337, for clarinet in D with orchestral accompaniment reduced for piano. Bibliographical, historical and technical information is marshaled to justify the solo designation of Badische Landesbibliothek concerto manuscripts 334 and 328 to D clarinet rather than clarino. An investigation into the formal and stylistic aspects shows these two questionable works to be comparable to the composer's other four clarinet concertos. The analysis is followed by a short discussion of the problems involved in the transcription and performance of the works. The lecture concludes with the first performance of the Concerto No. 6 in D Major, Mus. Hs. 328, for clarinet in D with orchestral accompaniment reduced for piano.

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The American Clarinet School includes approaches to clarinet playing from European immigrants who instilled their musical style and ideas in the first generation of American-born clarinetists. Some of the first influential pedagogues from Europe include Daniel Bonade (1896-1976), Gustave Langenus (1883-1957), Gaston Hamelin (1884-1951), and Simeon Bellison (1881-1953). Even though they inspired many ideas of the American approach to clarinet, they were known in their time as performers rather than teachers first. The aim of this dissertation is to provide further examination into the modern clarinet professorship in the United States by examining three of the first generation of American-born clarinet professors and their contributions to pedagogy: Keith Stein (1908-1980), William Stubbins (1911-1975), and Himie Voxman (1912-2011). Topics discussed include embouchure, hand position, articulation, technique, expression and phrasing, equipment, teaching beginners, and repertoire.