The purpose of this study is to examine three works for the unusual combination of violin and voice. Chamber music for violin and keyboard and violin and other instruments has been extant since the Baroque period. However, three English composers found a unique chamber grouping in the first decades of the twentieth century: Gustav Holst (1874-1934), Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) each wrote works for violin and voice. Holst's Four Songs for Voice and Violin, Op. 35 (1917), Vaughan Williams' Along the Field, Eight Housman Songs for Voice and Violin (1927, revised 1954), and Clarke's Three Old English Songs (1924) each utilize the combination of violin and voice. The violin in each is not relegated to accompaniment but is instead a true partner. This study will investigate these works. A history of each composition will be chronicled. An analytical discussion of formal organization and significant style features will include consideration of the musical structure, harmonic language, and the use of text in select movements of each work. Finally, performance suggestions pertaining to technical and artistic issues offer specific recommendations as an aid in performance preparation. In order to provide historical and musical context, a brief overview of Late Romantic and early Twentieth-Century chamber music with strings and voice will be given. This overview will help to illuminate the uniqueness of the pairing of violin and voice. Discovery of the works discussed here makes possible an expanded repertoire of good music for both violinists and vocalists. It is also hoped that through the performance of these works a spark might be set with composers to create more pieces for this most intimate of duos.

Abstract Introduction: This master’s thesis examines how narrative development is socialized in Swedish letters and postcards to Santa Claus. The letters are from the previously unanalyzed archive collection Letters to Santa, and the years between 1960s and 1970s have been analyzed. A part of the collection consists of work materials and letters written to Santa Claus by Swedish children and adults. The collection was coordinated by the organizationPosttomten which was led by Elsa Holst.Method: The study uses a narrative and socialization analysis. Which is combined with an observation of the areas where the organization was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Analysis: The thesis has studied six volumes with Swedish letters and work materials from the 1960s and 1970s from Postmuseums archive, newspaper articles from the same time period, Posthuset on Skansen and Östra Varvsgatan 4 in Djurgårdsstaden Stockholm where the organization was active. This subjects have also beenobserved and discussed in the analysis. The theories narrative and socialization are used to explain how the sender perceives Santa Claus, what general rules they use in their letters, how they write to get in contact with him, how he is used by the organization, individuals, and other groups.Results: Why someone are using or want to contact Santa Claus depends on what they want to achieve. Adults want to help or learn thier child the basic structures and general rules to write a letter or a postcard to Santa Claus. This is a way for adults to keep the lie of Santa Claus alive for thier children. Some adults even thank the people behind Posttomten for thier work, in the letters. The child on the other hand. They write their letters or postcards to get Christmas presents. Tell him that they have been kind. Admiting mistakes and remind Santa Claus about their existence so that he does not forget them. The letters and postcards are also a way to get an answer if Santa really exists. Different groups also use Santa Claus in the media to improve their own reputation. For example the organization behind Posttomten and the Swedish Post Office use Santa Claus to tell everybody about thier own organization. For instance, to tell about what company they are, give proof that Santa Claus exists and to give the organization a better reputation. Conclusion: The letters and postcards, news articles, work materials and the two observations. They expose a narrative and socialization, that gives Santa Claus many different sides. For example where does he live? What is his name? What does he look like? His personality? These are important elements in making Santa to a real person when Posttomten and Santa Claus are perceived as the same person. The natural way is namely to give Elsa Holst the title as the real Santa Claus. This because she fits in the social expectation and ideal to the narrative that Santa Claus has been given. With the help from parents, the Swedish post office, media and teachers itbecomes possible to make the conclusion that they made it possible for everybody to discover that Santa Claus was Elsa Holst. The effect of knowing that Elsa Holst was Santa Claus made it easier for the organization to get assistance and a positive opinion about Santa Claus, When she died it becomes clear that the organization was depended on Elsa Holst too much. Because no one else was ready to take over the role as Santa Claus or the leadership in the organization all the work was ended. The Swedish post office took the control over Santa Claus. The result lead to a negative backlash in the Swedish community because the narrative, the ideals and the tradition did not fit in the Swedish post office organization. That could had been the end but it did not stop the organization and Posttomten to continue their work in a new place in the beginning of the 1980s. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.

Although music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries makes frequent use of non-isochronous meter (meters involving beats of different length, such as 5/4 and 7/8), most studies on meter and metric dissonance focus on isochronous meters (meters involving beats of the same length, such as 4/4 and 9/8). This dissertation bridges this gap by developing two methodologies to account for metric dissonance involving non-isochronous pulses: modified ski-hill graphs and the composite beat attack point system. Modified ski-hill graphs, adapted from Richard Cohn's ski-hill graphs, illustrate metric states involving non-isochronous pulses and reveal degrees of dissonance in musical passages that share time spans, as in 5/4 grouped 3+2 vs. 5/4 grouped 2+3. The composite beat attack point system uses rhythmic notation to illustrate metric states involving any pulse duration or time span, revealing specific points of dissonance and consonance, relative strength of dissonance and consonance, and patterns of dissonance and consonance. The methodology is used to closely examine the treatment of metric dissonance in Holst's "Mars," from The Planets, Ligeti's Hungarian Rock (Chaconne), and Ligeti's Désordre. The analyses focus on passages where the metric dissonance becomes ever more pronounced and ends up obliterating any sense of meter.

Members of the second generation of the English Musical Renaissance have long been associated with a break from the Teutonic influence of their predecessors to create a musical idiom that is quintessentially English. Scholarship has long looked at these composers, who include those born between Vaughan Williams and Moeran, in isolation from the artistic movements and political and social issues of Europe, when in fact they were part of them. This thesis places these composers within these currents by discussing them as part of England’s Lost Generation and within the historical contexts of Europe in the early twentieth century. Though the Lost Generation is often associated with the post-war period, I propose that the phenomenon existed prior to World War I by focussing on England’s aesthetic lostness in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The Lost Generation of composers inherited a musical culture that had been aesthetically lost for two hundred years and rebelled against it to define a musical idiom that was quintessentially English. After placing the second generation of the English Musical Renaissance within its historical contexts, I call into question previous discussions on English music that define it according to single definitions largely associated with the Pastoral School or the Folk School. Instead, I propose that the music of this generation was stylistically diverse while simultaneously a manifestation of common cultural influences, ultimately rooted in the goal of creating a sense of community. To support this claim, I discuss the various stylistic techniques of individual composers within their collective cultural influences, including the music of England’s past, the landscape, and English literature. Furthermore, I explore the role of musical community, both as a central goal in the creation of a national idiom and as a source of compositional inspiration. By examining the influences and compositional styles of these composers, I conclude that the music of this generation broke from Continental influences by developing a national idiom that was both stylistically unique to the individual composer and tied to common cultural influences that were rooted in the goal of creating a musical community within England. . / Graduate

Dans ce manuscrit, nous présentons un mise en place et calcul d'un observable physique dans le cadre de la Gravité Quantique à Boucles covariante, pour un processus physique mettant en jeu la gravité quantique de façon non-perturbatif. Nous considerons la transition d'une région de trou noir à une région de trou blanc, traitée comme une transition de géométrie assimilable à un effet de tunnel gravitationnel. L'observable physique est le temps caractéristique dans lequel ce processus se déroule.Nous commençons par une dérivation formelle de haut--en--bas, allant de l'action de Hilbert-Einstein au ansatz qui définit les amplitudes de l'approche covariante de la GQB. Nous prenons ensuite le chemin de bas--en--haut, aboutissant à l'image d'une intégrale de chemin du type somme-de-géométries qui émerge à la limite semi-classique, et discutons son lien étroite avec une intégrale de chemin basé sur l'action de Regge. En suite, nous expliquons comment construire des paquets d'ondes décrivant des géométries spatiales quantiques, plongées dans un espace-temps quantique de signature Lorentzienne.Nous montrons que lors de la mise en œuvre de ces outils, nous avons une estimation simple des amplitudes décrivant des transitions de géométrie de façon probabiliste. Nous construisons un mise en place basée sur l'espace-temps Haggard-Rovelli, où une approche d'intégrale de chemin peut être appliquée naturellement. Nous procédons à une dérivation d'une expression explicite, analytiquement bien--définie et finie, pour une amplitude de transition décrivant ce processus. Nous utilisons ensuite l'approximation semi-classique pour estimer le temps caractéristique du phénomène. / In this manuscript we present a calculation from covariant Loop Quantum Gravity, of a physical observable in a non-perturbative quantum gravitational physical process. The process regards the transition of a trapped region to an anti--trapped region and is treated as a quantum geometry transition akin to gravitational tunneling. The physical observable is the characteristic timescale in which the process takes place. We start with a top--to--bottom formal derivation of the ansatz defining the amplitudes for covariant LQG, starting from the Hilbert-Einstein action. We then take the bottom--to--top path, starting from the EPRL ansatz, to the sum--over--geometries path integral emerging in the semi-classical limit, and discuss its close relation to the naive path integral over the Regge action. We proceed to the construction of wave--packets describing quantum spacelike three-geometries that include a notion of embedding in a Lorentzian spacetime. We derive a simple estimation for the amplitudes describing geometry transition and show that a probabilistic description for such phenomena emerges, with the probability of the phenomena to take place being in general non-vanishing.The Haggard-Rovelli spacetime, modelling the spacetime surrounding the geometry transition region for a black to white hole process, is formulated. We then use the semi--classical approximation to give a general estimation of amplitudes describing the process. We conclude that the transition is predicted to be allowed by LQG, with a crossing time that is linear in the mass. The probability for the process to take place is suppressed but non-zero.

Studien undersöker tre strategiskt valda Facebook-kampanjer där projektledarna blivit intervjuade om deras uppfattningar av kampanjerna. Fyra grupper undersöktes sedan med fyra deltagare i varje för att se hur denna publik uppfattade kampanjerna. Därefter jämfördes skillnader och likheter i uppfattningarna mellan projektledarna och den utvalda publiken. I studien undersöks även vad båda parter anser karaktärisera en lyckad Facebook-kampanj. Teorierna som används är technology-image expectancy gap teorin som uppmärksammar hur publikens förväntningar kan mötas upp av organisationen och virtuellt kampanjskapande samt marknadsföring i sociala medier. Kvalitativa analyser av projektledarna och den valda publiken har genomförts för att undersöka skillnader och likheter i deras uppfattningar av de utvalda kampanjerna och vad de anser karaktäriserar en lyckad Facebook-kampanj. I analysen av resultatet kunde vi utifrån teorierna hitta skillnader och likheter i projektledarnas och publikens uppfattning av de kampanjer vi undersökte. När det kom till uppfattningarna kring vad som karaktäriserar en lyckad kampanj på Facebook var deras åsikter till största del lika med undantaget att projektledarna även poängterade omvärldsbevakning som en viktig del i kampanjskapandet på Facebook. Vi såg i resultatet att det fanns ett gap mellan projektledare och publiken i den mån att det inte handlar om att skapa den häftigaste kampanjen bara på Facebook då publiken genom andra medier påverkas att interagera med organisationen och därmed ser nyttan med att delta i kampanjen. Intressant och anpassat innehåll för publiken är faktorer som ger spridning på Facebook men främst genom andrahandskällor som exempelvis nyhetsinslag eller videoklipp från externa webbplatser, vilket tyder på att andra medier bör bearbetas under kampanjen. Främst ska kampanjen vara till nytta för publiken i form av underhållning eller en tjänst. Kampanjen bör även väcka en viss nyfikenhet hos publiken genom igenkännande av en produkt eller en känd person. Dagens kampanjer kräver ett gediget förarbete med omvärldsbevakning av publikens intressen vilket kan generera ett intressant innehåll och kunskap för dem som jobbar med kampanjen. Detta följs av omfattande realtidskommunikation med publiken.

Since most historical composers of Western art music were European Christians (or resided in areas that were primarily populated by Christians), a vast majority of the sacred choral-orchestral repertoire is based on major figures and themes from the most prominent denominations, including Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism. As a corollary this is also the case for analytical, pedagogical, and exegetical literature related to the topic. However, in the late nineteenth century some composers began to look to other faith traditions for inspiration, which resulted in compositions based on texts that are less-familiar to Western audience members and performers. Despite the fact that many of these pieces are innovative and well-written, few, if any, have entered the standard repertoire. Because of this they are under-represented in both performance and extant music literature. The purpose of this study is to examine three compositions from this marginalized category in order to produce a guide that provides salient information on the religious/cultural background and musical aspects of each work. This guide will serve as a resource for conductors to facilitate an understanding of and connection with the text, allow informed programming decisions, and promote approaches that are appropriate and respectful to the religious source material. The pieces selected for investigation are Gustav Holst's Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, Op. 26: First Group, Lili Boulanger's Vielle Prière Bouddhique (Old Buddhist Prayer), and Robert Cundick's The Redeemer.

In my kennismaking met die poësie van Yeats en Roland Holst het ek onvermydelik opgemerk dat hulle sekere simbole ooreenkomstig gebruik, dat hulle dieselfde hoë, aristokratiese waardes handhaaf en gevolglik 'n afkeer het van die moderne massa-demokrasieë. Later het ek ontdek dat albei digters sterk in die Keltiese mites en sages belang gestel het en dat Roland Holst Yeats as 'n belangrike invloed eien. Dit alles, en die feit dat hulle albei enkele gegewens uit die Griekse mitologie daarby voeg in wat hulle "mites" word, het my voorgekom as goeie rede vir 'n vergelykende studie. So 'n ideë-studie het egter gedreig om iets heel anders te word as die literêre beskouing wat ek beoog het. Geleidelik het dit egter geblyk dat die mite méér moet wees dan die ideë-sisteem; en juis dit waardeur die mite meer is dan ideë-sisteem het die belangrikste regverdiging geword vir 'n vergelykende studie, en terselfdertyd, vir 'n toespitsing van die aandag op die poësie.