Thesis (M.A.)--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. / 2999-01-01

This diploma thesis disserts on Indian classical music which is generally divided into two main streams called hindustānī and karnāṭak. It starts with a brief introduction of the matter and definition of basic terminology that is associated with Indian music. Next, it introduces, by means of comparison, two main traditions, the principles on which they are build and musical instruments used in them. The theses then focuses on Indian song genres firstly from a theoretical point of view. Secondly, it presents a translation and analysis of several songs chosen from South Indian tradition karnāṭak. Main themes of this vocal tradition are demonstrated on concrete translations and commentaries. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston University

Music has been part of human culture since the beginning of civilization. All musical types, styles, and genres are products of different cultures at different times. What we refer to today as Classical Music are the musical compositions written for standard Western European orchestral instruments ranging from solo to chamber music to symphony orchestra. Towards the end of the nineteenth-century classical music gradually came to be seen as "serious" music that required deeper knowledge in order to truly appreciate it. With the rise of the popular music category, classical music itself has become less relevant and less a part of today’s society. Classical music institutions have thus been trying to find different strategies to reconnect classical music with audiences. Examples include attractive subscription schemes, varied concert formats, and community and educational projects. It is also notable that non-musical aspects connected with concerts also contribute to an audience’s overall decision making. The quality of the performance is not the only factor anymore that needs to be considered to ensure success. This dissertation explores different strategies used by some prominent Western European art music organizations, mainly orchestras, to creatively engage their audiences. These strategies are examples of successful audience engagement that can serve as a resource for other organizations in their quest to engage their own audiences.

<p>In which ways have composing processes in music appeared over the past 300 years? How may composing processes work today? What does new technology do to this processes?</p><p>The key purpose of this study is to investigate various composing processes. A further purpose is also to gain an awareness of how we use modern technology by computers and their notation programmes.</p><p>The research design of this thesis includes a display of literature related to composing processes. along with an analysis of the writer’s own experiences in the area. Therefore, included in this thesis, is a score and a recording of a new composition together with an analysis of the writer’s own composing process. The results of the writer’s composing process of this piece, are furthermore discussed with three of the writer’s colleauges.</p><p>This study deliberately focuses on Western classical music and jazz improvisation as these are genres where the writer has his own musical background. He will therefore be able to reflect upon his own experiences in the area.</p><p>Today the computer and its programs is a natural component in the musical process, however, it might tempt us to take ’short cuts’ in parts of the creating process. The findings of this study point towards the idea that in order to create a sense of inspiration in a composition or in a performance, the process has to be rooted physically in the body, without any use of ’short cuts’.</p>

This report describes an action research instruction that was designed to determine the effect of using thematic classical music in the music appreciation class of 5th Graders. Through the assistance of Information Technology and the performance of musical drama¡Athe researcher tried to breakthrough the traditions and innovate a action project of music instruction. This research aims to construct an instructional material and teaching mode integrated information technology of thematic classical music appreciation instruction in elementary school. It was also to appraise the effect on learning motivation and classical music appreciation competence. The subjects consisted of two classes 5th grader students selected from the researcher¡¦s elementary school. The classical music appreciation instruction program included three pieces of classical music for appreciation and musical drama. At the research period of eight weeks, the data will collected through teacher observation records, research journals, interviews, pictures, digital video, pre-questionnaire, thematic worksheets, and questionnaire of learning effect. The results indicated¡]1¡^In affective aspect, students¡¦ learning motivations ,fondness for classical music, and classical music appreciation competence can be improved in the thematic classical music appreciation instruction.¡]2¡^In skill aspect, there is a better linkage between the stage property, action designed by students and the characteristics of classical music. Also in the musical drama, students perform how they feel about music.¡]3¡^In cognition aspect, it is an significant improvement on students¡¦ recognizable competence of quick-slow rhythm and musical instruments tone, but not including oboe and clarinet. Due to the time is limited, recognizable competence of pitch changing is not completed.¡]4¡^In teacher¡¦s professional competence aspect, the researcher has progress on information technology applications, curriculum design, critical reflection, ¡® music instruction. In conclusion, thematic classical music appreciation instruction mode can be easily implemented for teachers.

Abstract A basic interpretive qualitative research design (Merriam, 2002) was used to explore the perceptions and observations of volunteer piano teachers providing weekly piano lessons to at-risk youth. Four volunteer piano teachers from two prairie cities who volunteered teaching three twenty-minute piano lessons a week for at least one year in a local school-based program, Heart of the City Piano Program, were interviewed. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings included three themes about the perceived benefits of piano lessons for the students –student self-motivation, student confidence, student sense of accomplishment – as well as three themes about distinguishing characteristics of the piano lessons – student focussed lessons, allowing students to be themselves, and positive role model relationships. Findings are discussed in relation to current research on at-risk youth and music education, and recommendations for further research and implications for practice are included.

<p>As Catherine Clément argues in her 1979 publication "L'Opéra ou la Défaite des Femmes" most female operatic characters befall a tragic ending: death, suicide, madness, murder. Building on Clément and observations of more recent feminist scholars (Carol Gilligan, Susan McClary, Marcia Citron), and on the compositional work of Paula Kimper and others, the current project strives to problematize opera's dominant paradigm, and to use my artistic work as a composer to present a different one. With a dearth of stories that highlight the relationship between a mother and a daughter, I have sought to create an artistic work with strong female leads featuring women whose lives carry on and, even, thrive. It was a propitious opportunity to have been approached by conductor Sara Jobin and feminist theorist and author Carol Gilligan (under the auspices of A Different Voice Opera Project) to develop such an opera based upon Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter". What better way to break free from a paradigm than to do so with a popular and well-loved novel? The present artistic foray seeks thus to depart from an accepted paradigm while remaining within the bounds of something fundamentally familiar and popular. In a separately available essay "Gender and Music: A Survey of Critical Study, 1988-2012", I explored a wide survey of scholarship on gender. </p><p>The feminist reinterpretation of "The Scarlet Letter" was first developed into a play, "The Scarlet Letter", work-shopped and staged at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, the Culture Project in New York City, the National Players, and the Primary Stage Theatre. It was ripe for development into a libretto for operatic presentation by a Different Voice Opera Project. As the selected composer, I began a long collaboration with Sara Jobin, Carol Gilligan, and poet Jonathan Gilligan (co-author of the libretto). Pearl, the opera, was presented in workshop versions by A Different Voice Opera Project at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA during the summers of 2012 and 2013. Subsequently, our collaborative efforts were expanded through the addition of Sandra Bernhard, a dramaturg and director for a community outreach program at the Houston Grand Opera. Through conversations with Sandra, the opera became more streamlined and I was able to give it a smoother dramatic flow. In particular, Sandra's advice informed much of the opera in terms of increasing the presence of the chorus to provide the medium through which Pearl understands her past. Musically, the chorus also becomes the third part of what I call "Dimmesdale's triangle of pressure" in which he is caught within a patriarchy and pulled by three separate forces: his love and family (Hester and Pearl), his responsibility as a minister (the townspeople represented by the Chorus), and a father figure and mentor (Reverend Wilson). The present work, extensively revised during 2013-2015, grew out of these experiences.</p><p>In Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", Pearl is a seven-year-old girl, born from the love affair of Hester Prynne and minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. The pregnancy of Hester immediately places her upon dangerous footing with her only preservation being silence. She is required to permanently wear a scarlet A upon her chest, whereas the minister, Dimmesdale, hides his identity as the father of the child both for himself and for the protection of his lover and child, also through silence. In the times of Puritan New England during the 17th century, a crime such as adultery (a term that is never mentioned in Hawthorne's novel) would have been punishable by death. Needless to say, the ability of Pearl and others to speak the truth within this story becomes much too perilous for the characters to voice. The silence surrounding the life of this little girl is the focus behind the development of our main character for the opera: Pearl as a grown adult, thus making this opera a sequel, of sorts, to "The Scarlet Letter". As quoted in Gilligan's 2003 publication, "The Birth of Pleasure": "At turning points in psychic life and also in cultural history - and I believe we are at one now - it is possible to hear with particular clarity the tension between a first-person voice, an "I" who speaks from human emotional experience, and a voice that overrides what we know and feel and experience, that tells us what we should see and feel know." </p><p>Pearl as a grown woman, reflects back upon her life as a child where she is both the main character and the narrator of the story, often breaking the fourth wall. In this sense, this opera is reminiscent of the term "memory play"; a term coined by Tennessee about his work, "The Glass Menagerie". In the opening of his play, Tom, the main character, begins with: </p><p>The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to happen to music. That explains the fiddle in the wings. I am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it. </p><p>With the creation of Pearl, a new character, the opera is able to integrate the relationships that do not exist within Hawthorne's novel, providing the libretto fertile material through which to explore Carol Gilligan's psychological theories . (See page vi, Note 2). We now see the story through the lens of Pearl as she remembers her childhood with highlights upon her relationships with her mother (Hester Prynne), her father (Arthur Dimmesdale), her mother's husband (Roger Chillingworth, née Roger Prynne), the townspeople, her father's mentor, Reverend Wilson, and herself as a child, allowing for the creation of duets, trios, and ensembles to highlight these relationships. The most notable of these relationships is the one between Adult Pearl and her child self, Child Pearl. In this way, and reminiscent of Williams' "memory play", Pearl's memories and current life can now be juxtaposed, together in time, memorialized through the music that binds these events and memories together.</p><p>In life we can experience our past through memory. In film we can be provided with visual flashbacks to offer a retrospective. However, it is only within music where the relationship between two eras of self can be juxtaposed. Thus, the gambit of my opera is to find musical means where the audience may now experience the character of Pearl as a child, as an adult, and as both child and adult in duet, as an echo, as a memory, a reflection. This phenomenon is most effectively evoked within opera or musical theatre. While a libretto must fundamentally be created using fewer words than say a novel or a play - it takes longer to sing a line than it would to speak it - it falls to music to express that which cannot be extrapolated through words alone. This dilemma creates a most wonderful opportunity for music to soar with tension and emotion. It is the music that can bridge together certain characters and scenes through the creation of themes that represent (in the case of this opera) truth/honesty, a patriarchy, and love, among other themes as well as the representation of particular characters. The necessity for the score to embellish the drama through music's tools: melody, harmony, motivic development and orchestration, essentially enables the audience to draw closer to the story and the characters by means that only music can provide.</p><p>In creating Pearl, it was my hope to birth the first of many such operas that shift one operatic paradigm on its head. To create an opera where the main characters are women and where they both have independent voices and thrive. As I have written elsewhere: "Some, throughout history, have argued that music has been exhausted. That everything that can be said, particularly within the Western language of tonality, has already been said. However, I must wonder, did any of the authors of such statements consider that the female voice has yet to really sing? For, we are just beginning. And I cannot wait to hear what `she' has to say."</p> / Dissertation

With the rise of technology and finance, crowdfunding has been uprising as a popular method of financing projects. Kickstarter provides an online platform in which anyone with Internet access can upload their own project “pitch” to gain funding for their idea on an all-or-nothing model. My thesis explores financial trends and factors that potentially contribute to a successful Kickstarter campaign within the classical music projects subcategory. I use a logistic regression and the Ordinary Least Squares model to examine a dataset of already successfully funded projects and a second dataset that contains both successfully and unsuccessfully funded projects that were tracked over a period of time. Additionally, I collected text files of the word content on all projects to identify most frequently utilized words for the successful and unsuccessful files. Controlling for other characteristics, the key findings are that projects with higher target funding levels are both less likely to fund and fund at a lower percentage of the target, projects receiving more comments are more likely to fund, and projects proposed by those that fund other projects are more likely to fund. In addition, certain words are correlated with success or failure. However, since the method of identifying important words used data mining rather than just testing, we cannot predict that these words would increase the likelihood of success in future projects. Due to limited sample size and high correlations among the variables in specifications including both the project characteristics and words, the main results for each set of explanatory variables used separately tend to become statistically insignificant. Additionally, the funding pattern over time appears not to exhibit the herding behavior found in some asset pricing markets. This is an interesting finding given the highly social nature of funding via Kickstarter.

Orientador: Dorotéa Machado Kerr / Resumo: Com esse trabalho busca-se compreender o processo de integração da música popular urbana à música de concerto representada pelos pianeiros que surgiram no Brasil a partir da segunda metade do século XIX. Os pianeiros foram representantes de uma nova geração de pianistas que se profissionalizaram e se desenvolveram para atender às necessidades de entretenimento das diversas classses sociais da época em detrimento de um efetivo crescimento econômico e urbano. Além de pianistas profissionais, foram também responsáveis pelo desenvolvimento de elementos fundamentais para uma nova concepção de música popular urbana, participando da formação e fixação dos gêneros musicais populares da época e incorporando-os ao piano. A abordagem desse processo estabeleceu-se, tendo como pano de fundo, a dicotomia cultura popular-cultura de elite que é analisada sob a ótica da circularidade de Baktin e seu conceito de dialogismo e polifonia. O problema é, então, estruturado em um pensamento que não propõe a exaltação ou domínio de uma cultura sobre a outra, mas um processo de reciprocidade e circularidade, no qual dialogam diferentes vozes que constituem o dircurso polifônico. Assim, diante desse processo de integração de culturas, o pianeiro assume o papel de intermediário cultural ou seja, passa s ser um elo de ligação entre a música erudita e a música popular, ampliando os conceitos e influenciando a cultura e a sociedade da época, tendo em vista que, até então, o piano pertencia exclusivamente à musica erudita restrita às camadas da elite. / Abstract: The aim of this work is to understand the process of integration between the urban popular music and the concert music represented by the pianeiros that have emerged in Brazil since the second half of the 19th century. The pianeiros represented a new pianists generation that have professionalized and improved themselves in order to chieve the entertainment needs of the different social classes of that period that were exclused of the real economic and social growth. Besides being professional pianists, they were also responsible for developing the crucial elements of a new concept of urban popular music, taking part in forming and settling the popular music kinds of their yers and taking these ones to be played on the piano. The apporach of that process had as backgound the tichotomy between popular culture and elite culture, which will be unterstood using Bakhtin's idea of the "optics of ciecularity" and the concepts of dialogism and polyphony that it brings. Then, research question is structured in a line of thought that does not see superiority or mominancy of any culture above other cultures, but in the other hand proposes a process of reciproity and circularity in which dialog is held by the different voices that constitute the polyphonic discourse. Though this integration of cultures, the pianeiro played the role of cultural intermediate, acting as a link between classical and popular music and then changing musical concepts and influencing their own cultures and societies in a moment that piano belonged exclusively to the classical music restricted to the social elites. / Mestre