abstract: Owen Middleton (b. 1941) enjoys an established and growing reputation as a composer of classical guitar music, but his works for piano are comparatively little known. The close investigation offered here of Middleton's works for piano reveals the same impressive craftsmanship, compelling character, and innovative spirit found in his works for guitar. Indeed, the only significant thing Middleton's piano music currently lacks is the well-deserved attention of professional players and a wider audience. Middleton's piano music needs to be heard, not just discussed, so one of this document's purposes is to provide a recorded sample of his piano works. While the overall repertoire for solo piano is vast, and new works become established in that repertoire with increasing difficulty, Middleton's piano works have a significant potential to find their way into the concert hall as well as the private teaching studio. His solo piano music is highly effective, well suited to the instrument, and, perhaps most importantly, fresh sounding and truly original. His pedagogical works are of equal value. Middleton's piano music offers something for everyone: there one finds daring virtuosity, effusions of passion, intellectual force, colorful imagery, poetry, humor, and even a degree of idiomatic innovation. This study aims to reveal key aspects of the composer's musical style, especially his style of piano writing, and to provide pianists with helpful analytical, technical, and interpretive insights. These descriptions of the music are supported with recorded examples, selected from the works for solo piano written between 1962 and 1993: Sonata for Piano, Childhood Scenes, Katie's Collection, and Toccata for Piano. The complete scores of the recorded works are included in the appendix. A chapter briefly describing the piano pieces since 1993 concludes the study and invites the reader to further investigations of this unique and important body of work. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2011

Thesis--Zürich. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 177-181.

Born in London in 1791, George Augustus Middleton attended Cambridge University but failed to graduate. Ordained priest for the Colonies in 1819, he arrived in Sydney, New South Wales, in January 1820 and shortly after commenced work as Assistant Chaplain at Parramatta in the role of locum tenens for the Reverend Samuel Marsden. In 1821 he was appointed to the convict settlement of Newcastle, where, over the ensuing five and a half years he found himself in constant conflict with both the military and ecclesiastical authorities because of his perceived absenteesim and his agricultural dealings. His conflict with the Commandant of Newcastle, Major James Morisset, originated from his perceived interference in, and condemnation of, Morisset’s disregard for the Sabbath and Christian morality. Relations between the two men broke down completely and Middleton found himself criticised from the Governor down and very much isolated. In 1825, Archdeacon Thomas Hobbes Scott, a former secretary to Sir Thomas Bigge during Bigge’s enquiry into the state of New South Wales, arrived in Sydney and commenced the first structural organisation of the antipodean Anglican Church. Almost immediately relations between Scott and Middleton deteriorated to the point where, in 1827, Middleton resigned and moved to his land grant at Paterson, about 70 kilometres from Newcastle. Scholars since then have incorrectly seen the main cause of their conflict as Middleton’s perceived absenteeism, unaware that far greater differences existed. To Scott, Middleton was an incompetent administrator, a lax pastor and unfit for ministry. After resigning, Middleton acted as a pastor, farmer, Justice of the Peace and community member until 1832, when, forced by drought, he moved to Sydney where he established a school by which to support himself and his family. In 1836, William Grant Broughton, formerly the Archdeacon of Australia, and later the first and only Bishop of Australia, returned from England, and in 1837, licensed Middleton to the parish of Butterwick and Seaham. There Middleton served as pastor until his early death in 1848. / Masters Thesis

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis--Zürich. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-181).

Texte remanié de: Th. doct.--Université d'Uppsala, Suède, 2003. / Notes bibliogr. Index.

Th.--Lett.--Montpellier 3, 1986.

<p> In this dissertation, I read several early modern plays - Shakespeare's Richard II, Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and Marlowe's Dido, Queene of Carthage - alongside a variety of early modem historiographical works. I pair drama and historiography in order to negotiate the question of early modem untimely deaths. Rather than determining once and for all what it meant to die an untimely death in early modem England, I argue here that one answer to this question requires an understanding of the imagined relationship between individuals and the broader unfolding of history by which they were imagined to be shaped, which they were imagined to shape, or from which they imagined to be alienated. I assume here that drama - particularly historically-minded drama - is an ideal object to consider when approaching such vexed questions, and I also assume that the problematic of untimely deaths provides a framework in which to ask about the historico-culturally specific relationships that were imagined to obtain between subjects and history. While it is critically commonplace to assert that early modern drama often stages the so-called "modern" subject, I argue here that early modern visions of the subject are often closely linked to visions of that subject's place in the world, particularly in the world that is recorded by historiographers as a world within and of history. I argue that one can begin to make sense of deaths in terms of their timeliness or untimeliness only by recognizing historically specific senses of the narrativized subject and the imagined relationship between that subject and history. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

A Mad World, my Masters est une pièce de jeunesse de Thomas Middleton qui fut représentée en 1605 au théâtre des Enfants de Saint-Paul. Cette pièce, qui n’avait jamais été traduite en français, a été représentée en 1998, pour la première fois depuis le XVIIème siècle, dans le théâtre reconstitué de Shakespeare, le Globe de Londres. La scène du Globe s’est révélée être un outil extraordinaire pour redonner vie à cette comédie exubérante et pour en faire comprendre les ressorts dramatiques. Quant à la traduction, elle a permis d’analyser en détail les complexités du langage d’un auteur trop longtemps méconnu. / A Mad World, my Masters is one of Thomas Middleton’s early plays. It was first performed in 1605 by the Children of Saint Paul’s in London. This comedy had never been translated into French. It was revived in its original version in 1998, for the first time since the printing of the Second Quarto (1640) at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. The bare stage and open playing space of this replica made it possible to draw the best out of this exuberante comedy and to make its dramatic efficiency clear to modern audiences. Translating the play also made it possible to analyse in detail the complexities of the language of an author who had been little studied until his Complete Works were published in 2007 by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino.

Obituary in memory of John Francis Marchmant Middleton