Joseph Mayseder (1789-1863) was one of the most significant musical figures in Vienna in the first half of the nineteenth century as a violinist and composer. His participation in musical life in Vienna was of central importance, as a ‘Soloist’ at the Hofkapelle, as the Director of the Orchestra at the Kärntnertortheater and as a friend of Beethoven. The dissertation offers an in-depth survey of Mayseder’s achievements in Vienna in his lifetime. A biographical overview of Mayseder’s life in Vienna is given, evaluating the role of his persona as a musician. Chapter 1 focuses on Mayseder as a violinist, drawing attention to his performances with new, detailed information taken from contemporary sources on his musical activities. The second chapter explores Mayseder’s compositions and highlights his key compositional elements in more detail, such as his relationship to the violin, his playing technique and his performance practice as a soloist and with an ensemble. Chapter 3 analyses Mayseder’s role in context, illustrating his importance for the development of solo violin music and its performance in this period in history. The appendices consist of the Thematic catalogue that presents a detailed listing of the complete works of this composer. The concluding catalogue provides an overview of public solo violin performances in Vienna between 1800 and 1828.

The sonata for violin and basso continuo was one of the most popular instrumental genres in early eighteenth-century Europe, as is clearly evident from the numerous works by Italian, German and French composers of the period, whose contributions are widely known and documented. Violin sonatas by British-born composers of the period, on the other hand, have largely been neglected by scholars and performers and no systematic examination of this repertoire has thus far been conducted. The present thesis attempts to contextualise this rich and fascinating repertoire and view it holistically. It aims to contribute substantially to knowledge about the British violin sonata during the period and enhance our understanding of its function, content, dissemination and performance. Fifteen collections of sonatas for violin and continuo written by British-born composers in the first half of the eighteenth century have been selected for detailed analysis. These works have been examined from two different perspectives: as social phenomena and as aesthetic objects. Following relevant introductory materials contextualising the research, the first part of this thesis presents biographical accounts of the selected composers, their careers and musical environment, and the circumstances surrounding the publication and distribution of their sonatas. In Part II the sonatas under scrutiny are analysed in terms of their external designs and internal forms, tonal scope, and harmonic and melodic vocabulary, as well as their technical demands. Technical discussion focuses on issues such as range requirements, position-work and shifting, fingering, bowing, articulation, embellishment, dynamics, and chordal playing.

This work addresses the demands of framing a theoretical problem and practice-based research and it therefore comprises two parts: a thesis and a composition. The thesis discusses the narrative structure of post-WWII Italian avant-garde opera in conceptual terms and demonstrates how it develops on three principal features: the metaphorical representation of socio-political conditions, the non-linearity of the dramaturgy, and openness to a plurality of interpretations. My composition It makes no difference contributes both as a new musico-theatrical work and an outcome of the discussion presented in the thesis. The main text is composed of three main chapters, each respectively dedicated to the features of socio-political representation, non-linearity and openness. Each chapter is in turn divided into two sub-chapters: the first presents the contextualisation and analysis of post-WWII Italian experimental operas, the second explores It makes no difference in relation to both these operas and the above three features. The discussion examines those works that have most significantly experimented with socio-political representations, non-linearity and openness. These include Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza 1960 (1961), Sylvano Bussotti’s La Passion selon Sade (1966) and Luciano Berio’s Opera (1977). At the same time, it omits both those operas relying on traditional operatic principles and those others that, although being experimental, do not focus on the three features this thesis puts forward. This study considers post-WWII Italian avant-garde opera in cross-disciplinary terms and highlights the necessity of discussing it in relation to disciplines other than those proper to the genre of opera, including prose-theatre, literature, politics and philosophy. The composition, on the other hand, provides a synthesis of the above three features: It makes no difference develops a multi-narrative structure whilst providing a representation of contemporary Italian socio-political life and epitomising the concept of openness. At the same time, it integrates theatrical and literary elements and combines traditional notation and graphic scores.

This study examines the historical development of the piano quintet from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. This development is coloured by the fact that the ensemble combines two discrete constituents, solo piano and string quartet, each with its own separate heritage. The assessment of the genre thus involves consideration of the manner in which its composers, while applying their own compositional aesthetics, have, over these centuries, treated ensemble interaction and texture. In the twentieth century, in particular, the rise of concern with timbre affected attitudes towards integration of the ensemble. The introduction to this dissertation argues for the identification of the piano quintet as a genre in its own right, based on its fixed scoring (of piano and string quartet) and the substantial body of works written for the ensemble since the 1770s. Chapters 1-5 consider aspects of ‘ensemble conversation’ within the quintet up to the present, for which a broadly chronological approach is adopted. Early examples by Soler, Giordani and Boccherini are all considered; thereafter, the canonical works of Robert Schumann, Brahms, Franck and Dvořák are viewed in the context of contemporaneous works by, among others, Saint-Saëns, Bruch and Coleridge-Taylor. The study then draws on significant twentieth-century examples by Shostakovich, Schnittke, Ginastera, Xenakis and Feldman, as well as more recent works, by Messiaen, Carter, Goehr and Adès. As will be shown, a surprisingly limited number of models for new works have been utilised, earlier exemplars inspiring later compositions. Chapter 6 applies some of the observations made to three specific case studies by women composers, two Piano Quintets by Grażyna Bacewicz and one by Sofia Gubaidulina, which are examined in detail and evaluated for their significance both to their own time and ours. The conclusion offers an evaluation of the differing forms of textural and timbral interaction and concludes that the piano quintet, for all its professed links with the Romantic Period, has emerged as an ensemble valued by contemporary composers for its capacity for timbral conversation.

The chance discovery of a composer of whom the present writer had previously been unaware; who was allegedly a pupil of J.S. Bach; whose list of compositions occupied no small space in modern lexicographical entries, let alone in Eitner's now largely obsolete catalogue; who, according to Feder in his article entitled Decline and Restoration in Protestant Church Music - a History, though highly regarded in his day, had not received detailed consideration: such were the factors which gave impetus to the present day. No sooner was that study underway than it transpired that others, too, had been struck by the deficiency noted by Feder. Already in 1970, the American scholar Robert Ellis Snyder had prepared a doctoral thesis on the choral music of Gottfried August Homilius. More significantly, the East German scholar Hans Hohn had published a comprehensive survey of the composer's life and work which was subsequently published in a revised and shortened form in 1980. Far from undermining the work undertaken by the present writer, the above-mentioned studies helped to give it sharper focus. Snyder's contribution, valuable both for the attention drawn anew, through his editorial work in Volume 2, to the composer's music, and still more for his English translation of the Generalbass, nonetheless left room for deeper analysis and evaluation of Homilius' works. John's signal achievement, his painstaking collation of documentary evidence of the composer's life, remains largely inaccessible to the English reader who has no command of German. Further, his evaluation of the man and his compositions, based on an albeit rigorous survey, is vitiated by a tendency to play down the importance of theology in the formation of the composer's character and to portray him, in a one-sided way, as a torch-bearer for an emergent and emancipated bourgeoisie. Thirdly, John failed to distinguish correctly between the Passion Cantata So gehst du nun mein Jesu hin on the one hand and on the other the Markuspassion which bears the same subtitle and which turned out to be one of Homilius' lengthiest and most substantial works. These factors, then, helped to give shape to the present study which, as far as its author has been able to establish, is the first of substantial length to be undertaken in Britain. The first chapter of Volume I is devoted to a summary of Homilius' life. Relying, though by no means exclusively, on John, details are given of the composer's background, of his earlier life and education, of his first frustrated attempts to secure employment and his eventual success in being appointed organist of the Frauenkirche in Dresden in 1742, of his subsequent preferment in 1755 to the post of Cantor of the Kreuzkirche in the same city, of his varied life and success as cantor, teacher and organist over against a background of social upheaval, and finally of the circumstances of his death in 1785. Chapter 2 is deovoted to a general survey of the music. While account is taken of John's findings, the content is larely an independent survey of Homilius' music based on the main on manuscripts held in the Music Department of the Staatsbibliothek der Stiftung PreussischerKulturbesitz in West Berlin. The chapter contains details of the extant works, both published and in manuscript, new information about the dating of works established in the course of research, and, following a brief description of the main genres of music encountered (Oratorios, cantatas, motets and settings of the Magnificat), a discussion of the texts which underpin the works. Attention is then directed to the music: to the characteristics of the composer's musical language and to the techniques of composition and orchestration which he employs. From this study there emerges the picture of a composer who had full command of the musical dialects of his day, but whose obedience to a task which was essentially musico-theological kept him from producing music of lasting appeal. Chapters 3 and 4 constitute the main burden of the present study. The first of these is devoted to a study of the St Mark Passion both as a structure and as a theological statement. Through detailed analysis and comparison with similar works it is suggested that Homilius' work has its own particular theological stamp, in particular that he is more concerned with the life which faces his listeners in the here and now and with present moral choices than with affording to the listener a spiritual experience of the road to Golgothe. Unlike J.S. Bach who is content to let the gospel speak for itself, Homilius incorporates in the work a particular theological view of the work of Christ. Both factors conspire with others of a more musical nature to deprive this work of that timeless quality which characterises Bach's great Passions. In Chapter 4 the music is subjected to systematic analysis. If the arias emerge as the least satisfactory component, the recitatives are remarkably fluent, and the work as an entity proves to have been carefully and indeed ingeniously planned. Conclusions are drawn in Chapter 5, though a review of the most important literature, about the man, the composer and the St Mark Passion in particular. While there is some evidence to support the view, championed by John, that Homilius had certain progressive reflexes, Rudolf Steglich's 1915 analysis of him as an essentially conservative being seems the more perceptive and compelling, however dubious his comparison of Homilius with C.P.E. Bach. As a composer Homilius had great facility, but his musical language, shot through with gracious vocabulary and popular idiom, lacked innate strength. It is a language limited, too, by the composer's intellectual horizons and by his very pre-occupation with theology and his ecclesiastically based méier. As an oratorio Passion the St Mark Passion, a monumental work, is unique among the pieces which Homilius composed for performance during Holy Week. Of his entire oeuvre this work above all is both an expression of his debt to the Baroque past and at the same time an acknowledgement that he has left that past far behind. Volume I is furnished with three appendices. The first is devoted to a Choralbuch which sheds light both on the dating of works and on Homilius' treatment of the chorale. The second contains details of larger works and cantatas in manuscript. Musical incipits are given, where they were available, in order to facilitate more reliable identification of works. Appendix 3 contains diagrams and musical examples relevant to Chapters 2 and 4. Volume II contains a performance edition of Homilius' St Mark Passion furnished with a 3-part Critical Apparatus, containing 1) Text and Translation, 2) Notes on the Edition - including details of the manuscript, its provenance, an attempt to date the work, and an evaluation of its dedication to Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia - and 3) Notes on Performance.

This is a folio of compositions that interferes with composition and improvisation in practice and in theory. A resistance to theme and content is countered by proposing a very broad conception of form that brings into play anthropological and philosophical examples as well as a questioning of traditional musical forms. The pieces in general propose ways of composing and playing otherwise. The scores are interspersed with texts which engender relationships and patterns of thought pertinent to the workings of the pieces such that a critical position is articulated without resorting to longwinded argument. Audio recordings of the pieces are included at the rear of the document.

The essence of seventeenth-century musical fantasy lies in the contemporary notion of freedom. Contemporary fantasy genres and verbal descriptions of fantasy highlight freedom from given tonal, harmonic, and temporal frameworks. This freedom assumes the composer's ingenuity (freedom to command the rules of counterpoint) and spontaneity (freedom to breach the rules and conventional expectations), both important sources to understand the distinctiveness of seventeenth-century musical fantasy. Given that a manifestation of freedom could be perceived as either fantastic or 'irrational', I survey the cultural and intellectual background concerning an assumed norm and the contemporary notion of 'rationality' through differing views on reason and the senses. In order to clarify the environment in which musical fantasy was sensed and defined, I turn to the analogy between music and its sister arts: imitation (philosophical mimesis and rhetorical imitatio as key concepts of artistic representation) and empirical thought (the growing interest in the role of the senses and imagination in aesthetic experience) are taken as bases for contemporary artists' understanding of nature and art. To discern the freedom that seventeenth-century musicians exercised in their representation of nature, I trace the varied properties and fantastic aspects of expressive resources in dramatic and improvisatory genres by exploring three metaphorical subjects: lament, melancholy, and humour. In all, this study focuses on how fantasy was musically represented and perceived in the era, and elucidates the distinctive and universal aspects of fantasy in the seventeenth-century context through an interdisciplinary approach that combines the historical, the philosophical, and the musical.

This thesis explores the musical dimension of Scottish song-collecting between the years c.1760 and 1888. The collections under investigation reflect the general cultural influences that bear on their compilers, starting with those associated with what we now call the Scottish Enlightenment, and continuing with those we associated with developing nineteenth-century romanticism. Building upon the work of Harker on the concept of ‘fakesong’, and of Gelbart on the developing idea of ‘folk’ versus ‘art’ music, I suggest that the sub-title of James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, ‘Our Ancient National Airs’, has implications which can be traced throughout this period. The nature of the finished collections tells us much about editorial decisions, value-judgements, and intended audiences. The prefaces, other published writings and surviving correspondence have been especially informative. Parallels can be traced between Joseph and Patrick MacDonald’s A Collection of Highland Vocal Airs, and the Ossian works of James Macpherson, embodying an urge to record and preserve the heritage of Highland Scotland’s primitive past. The collaborations of Robert Burns with James Johnson and George Thomson, and the English Joseph Ritson’s Scotish Song, similarly reflect the antiquarian ‘museum’ mentality. However, the drive to record and codify is tempered by Burns’s and Thomson’s wish simultaneously to improve and polish. The ‘discovery’ of the Highlands as a tourist destination, and the appeal of its primitive history, prompted a substantial body of literature, and Alexander Campbell’s output particularly exemplifies this, but the sense of place was as much a motivator for private collectors. It can also be demonstrated that later song-collectors, such as Robert Archibald Smith, were as much motivated to create and improve the repertoire, as were James Hogg and his literary peers. A passion for domestic music-making, and an increased wish to educate and inform, is evidenced in song-collections by George Farquhar Graham, Finlay Dun and John Thomson, but most significantly, this thesis demonstrates a resurgence of cultural nationalism, driven as much by William Chappell’s anxiety to define and defend the English repertoire, as by Andrew Wighton’s and James Davies’ passion for the Scottish, with Graham and Laing caught in the crossfire. Thus, even if ‘Our Ancient National Airs’ appeared at different times in different kinds of musical setting, and for differing purposes, it can clearly be demonstrated that published Scottish song-collections of this period can, indeed, be taken to reflect a wider range of contemporary cultural trends than has hitherto been recognised.

Many protein-linked oligosaccharides are believed to impart biological specificities to the molecules. The knowledge of detailed structural characteristics of oligosaccharides is essential for understanding their functions. In order to develop methodology for characterization of oligosaccharides of glycoproteins, and to compare glycosylation patterns of different immunoglobulins, oligosaccharides of IgM from two cell lines, MOPC 104E and PC 700, were analyzed. Homogeneous preparations of glycopeptides carrying individual glycosylation sites of the heavy chain were obtained from the two IgM's. The oligosaccharides of these glycopeptides were prepared by hydrazinolysis, and fractionated by HPLC under conditions that resolve oligosaccharides by charge and size, and by affinity chromatography on Concavalin A-Sepharose. Structures of some of these oligosaccharides were determined by 400 MHz NMR spectroscopy. HPLC fractionation by charge resolved oligosaccharides with zero, one, two, and three sialic acids. As indicated by HPLC analyses, oligosaccharides at all the glycosylation sites of both the IgM's were highly heterogeneous. A comparative study on oligosaccharides prepared by peptide-N-glycosidase F digestion of glycopeptides showed a similar degree of heterogeneity. Therefore, it was concluded that the observed heterogeneity of oligosaccharides was not an artefact caused by hydrazinolysis. Major differences between the glycosylation patterns of the two IgM's were evident from analyses of the oligosaccharides by both chromatographic techniques and NMR spectroscopy. MOPC IgM contained a high proportion of sialylated oligosaccharides when compared to PC IgM. Furthermore, the major oligosaccharide structures of MOPC IgM were of triantennary type whereas PC IgM contained biantennary oligosaccharides as its major species. In both the IgM's, a decreased trend of oligosaccharide processing was observed from the N-terminus to the C-terminus.

As any introductory astronomy student knows, M dwarfs are the most common stars in the Galaxy and are the faintest of the core hydrogen burners. A comprehensive study of these faint objects is crucial to our understanding of the stellar composition of the Galaxy and necessary for a more complete knowledge of the transition between main sequence M stars and their slightly less massive counterparts, the brown dwarfs, which never achieve hydrogen burning in their cores. In this thesis, a spectroscopic catalog of 125 K and M dwarfs is first presented. This catalog covers the wavelength range from 6300 to 9000 Å, near where these objects emit most of their light. Eight of these spectra, covering classes M2 through M9, are combined with infrared spectra from 0.9 to 1.5 μm to create a second catalog. The two sets of spectra are used to search for temperature-sensitive atomic lines and molecular bands, which are then used in fitting the observed spectra to a sequence of theoretical models. As a result, a new temperature scale for M dwarfs is determined, and this scale is more accurate than previous determinations which have depended on blackbody energy distributions. The sequence of spectra is also used to compare the spectrum of the brown dwarf candidate GD 165 B to known M dwarfs. Furthermore, the spectral catalog is used in an attempt to separate the spectra of faint companions from their M dwarf primaries in systems where the two objects are too close for conventional spectroscopy to resolve the individual components. A survey for faint M dwarfs is also launched using the data acquired through the CCD/Transit Instrument (CTI) on Kitt Peak, Arizona. Follow-up spectroscopy is presented for 133 of these objects, and several more very late M dwarfs are identified. This spectroscopy combined with photometric data from the CTI are used to construct a luminosity function for M dwarfs which is in excellent agreement with determinations from previous surveys. Finally, possible avenues for future work are discussed. These include spectroscopic follow-up of the reddest of Luyten's proper motion objects--the first results from which have uncovered, in just twelve observations, two objects of type M7 and one of type M8, among the coolest objects yet recognized. Future searches, such as an all-sky survey for objects of extremely high proper motion, are also outlined.