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Most of the existing research on Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961) focuses on his performing career in central Europe as a left-hand pianist and his commissions from the most prominent composers of the 20th century such as Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel, and his favourite composer, Franz Schmidt. His British performing career and the compositions Ernest Walker, Norman Demuth and Benjamin Britten composed for and dedicated to him, however, remain relatively unexplored. By examining a variety of primary sources that are disclosed here for the first time, this thesis offers the first scholarly research into Wittgenstein’s performing activities in Great Britain in the 1920s–50s and his British commissions in order to fill a major research gap in Wittgenstein studies. Chapter 1 explores Wittgenstein’s self-recognition as a member of the Viennese aristocracy and the shaping of his musical identity, conception and taste, followed by an overview of the related primary sources that are currently located in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, a detailed summary of his performing activities in Great Britain and a discussion of the British reception of him as a left-hand pianist. Chapter 2 focuses on Walker and the three compositions he wrote for piano left-hand, two of which he composed before meeting Wittgenstein and one after, and the pianist’s attitude towards them. Chapter 3 brings to light the much-neglected composer Demuth and the two works he composed for Wittgenstein and discusses possible reasons why the pianist never performed them. Chapter 4 examines Wittgenstein’s first and only official British commission, the Diversions, Op. 21 by Britten, and investigates the interaction between composer and pianist in the compositional process and their differing conceptions of the work.

The commentary deals with the two principal areas of my compositional work from 1996- 2003: short pieces and modularity. Taking a survey of compositional durations as a starting point, assumptions related to duration are discussed in the context of extremely long and short pieces by Feldman, Jliat, Webern and Werder. The effect of duration on form, structure, listening and the practicalities of performance is considered in relation to memory and our perception of duration, suggesting a range of possible solutions to the problem of composing short pieces. These issues are examined in the context of my own work in composing short pieces (1996-2000), leading to a consideration of an effective performance practice and the transition to the use of short pieces as modules in a larger compositional framework. The consequent development of a fully modular approach to music is contextualised through an examination of modular theory in a manufacturing context, leading to analysis of a range of examples of modular and open form work in literature, visual art and music. Differences between open and closed forms of modularity are explored along with the effect of a modular approach on creative work. These theoretical and practical issues are discussed in relation to my modular composition #[unassigned] (2000- ), surveying its development from groups of short pieces. The compositional method is explained, examining the creation of a modular interface and types of modules and their re-use, through examples of existing versions.

Online video gaming has become a ubiquitous aspect of modern-day video gaming. It has gained immense popularity due to its accessibility and immersive experience, resulting in millions of players worldwide participating in various online games. Depending on the type of gameplay, the players’ quality of experience (QoE) in online video gaming can be significantly affected by network factors such as high bandwidth and low latency. As such, providers of online gaming services are competing to offer the highest quality of experience to their users at reasonable prices. To achieve this objective, online game providers face two main challenges. Firstly, they must accurately estimate the network throughput capacity required to meet the servers’ demands and ensure that the QoE is not compromised. Secondly, they must be able to secure the required throughput with network providers, which, in the current conventional network infrastructure, is neither agile nor dynamic. Thus, online game providers have to prepay for extra network throughput capacity or choose a cost-effective capacity that may result in potential QoE losses during peak usage. To address these challenges, this thesis proposes a deep neural network-based model that utilizes a QoE-aware loss function for predicting the future network throughput de- mand. The model can accurately estimate the network throughput capacity required to maintain QoE levels while minimizing the cost of network resources. By doing so, on- line game providers can achieve optimal network resource allocation and effectively meet servers’ demands. Furthermore, this thesis proposes a slice optimizer module that employs 5G network slicing and a machine learning model to optimize network slices in a cost-efficient manner that satisfies both the online game provider’s and the network provider’s requirements. This module can dynamically allocate network resources based on the game provider’s QoE requirements, the network provider’s resource availability, and the cost of network resources. As a result, online game providers can efficiently manage network resources, optimize network slicing, and effectively control the cost of network resources.

This thesis comprehensively examines the rApp lifecycle within the O-RAN Alliance (O- RAN) Non-Real Time RIC (Non-RT RIC) framework, serving as a practical guide for exper- imental research and development. The focus is on the entire lifecycle of rApp development, from designing and onboarding to deployment and execution, using a spectral efficiency op- timization use case to illustrate the process. The study develops and integrates a Spectrum Optimization (SO)rApp employing Reinforcement Learning (RL) techniques, specifically a Deep Q-Network (DQN) model, within the O-RAN architecture. The research highlights how the SOrApp dynamically allocates spectrum resources to enhance network performance under varying demand conditions. Utilizing the Network Simulator (NS)-3 5G-LENA simulator, the thesis replicates diverse service demand scenarios to evaluate the rApp's effectiveness in optimizing spectral efficiency. The findings demonstrate that integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven rApps within the O-RAN framework significantly improves spectral efficiency and overall network performance, providing valuable insights and methodologies for future research and practical implementations in 5G networking. / Master of Science / As 5G networks grow more advanced, managing them effectively becomes increasingly chal- lenging. This thesis explores a method to improve network performance using specialized software applications, known as rApp, within the O-RAN Non-RT RIC framework. By focusing on the lifecycle of these rApps—how they are created, onboarded, deployed, and executed. To illustrate this process, used a real-world example of optimizing the efficiency of spectrum use, which is crucial for maintaining high-speed data and reliable communication in 5G networks. Our findings show that integrating intelligent rApps driven by Machine Learning (ML) can significantly enhance the performance and efficiency of 5G networks, offering valuable insights for future innovations in this rapidly evolving field.

My thesis explores the extent to which people's nationality informs their engagement with popular culture and strategies of social distinction (Bourdieu 1984). I address this question by studying the emergence of popular music criticism as a new cultural sector in Italy, and more specifically the practices of critics working during the 1970s. Drawing on Bourdieu's field theory (1996), and combining archival research, social history and discourse analysis, the thesis explores the different dimensions of criticism as a social practice. On the one hand, it analyses the social biography of critics and the boundaries of music criticism as a cultural field; especially as regards class, gender and place. On the other hand, it studies the way critics evaluated different forms of Anglo-American popular music – such as rock, jazz and soul – and how their aesthetic claims and distinctions were received by their audience. The thesis argues that the social trajectory of critics shaped the way they distinguished themselves from national culture and, as a result, their cosmopolitan critique of Italian cultural and political institutions. Furthermore, the thesis argues that the social diversity of critics' audience, and their active contestation of critics' claims, made the music press a space for reflexivity about the inequalities shaping both the field and Italian youth culture. From a theoretical point of view, the thesis expands Bourdieu's field theory taking into account: a) the effects of global forces on the construction of national cultural fields; b) the impact of aesthetic experiences on the habitus (Bourdieu 1984) and practices of cultural producers; c) the forms of reflexivity and critique enabled by specific fields of practice. The thesis provides an original contribution to the study of media, music cultures, taste and cultural production.

Through an analysis of the work of Virginia Woolf and T.W. Adorno’s theory of the aesthetic, this dissertation seeks to develop a poetics of criticism that takes account of the philosophy of the non-identical in subjective experience. As the subversion of the positivist and subjectivist tendencies of identity thinking, Adorno’s negative dialectic is read here in parallel with Woolf’s work as an example of a discourse that preserves the particularity of experience. Much of Woolf’s writing about music is in the form of diary entries, letters and notes or jottings and is singularly unfinished. Her writing about music pushes her to the extremes of essayistic practice where she is forced to improvise and invent a musical-critical voice. This dissertation argues that subjectivity and aesthetic experience are constructed negatively in Woolf’s diaries, letters and essays and by reading her tendency to resist describing musical experiences as a resistance to the domination of conceptual subsumption, I hope to show that Woolf’s writing could offer a new perspective on criticism. The present work attempts to develop a three-fold thesis, the presentation of which will constitute a poetics of criticism. Firstly, Woolf’s attempts to write a critical selfhood actually serve as a critique of transcendental subjectivity and undermine the ideology of a priori subjectivity. Secondly, Woolf’s essays complement work done by Adorno on genre theory which asserts that contradiction remains essential to the critical essay, contradiction which secures the identity of negative dialectics and a contradiction that can simultaneously be read as fundamental to the architectonics of a modernist subjectivity. Woolf’s essays, therefore, will be read for their potential status as a means of critique. And thirdly, the technique of parataxis as a form of writing that Adorno thought best expressed the inaccessibility of objectivity will be shown to be decisive in analyzing Woolf’s fragments. What I hope to assemble, therefore, is a constellation of ideas that map several points ofconnection between Adorno and Woolf.By effecting a salvaging of Woolf’s musical marginalia this thesis argues that ostensibly ill-informed or naïve testimony can be given legitimacy within contemporary music criticism. In addition, this thesis presents all the references to music found in Woolf’s diaries and letters, and, as such, the appendices found at the back of the dissertation constitute not only the first attempt to bring this material together, but are also presented in such a way so as to reinforce the paratactical nature of Woolf’s writing about music. That is to say, structurally, the appendices appear as they appear in Woolf’s original texts, and this thesis has, self-consciously, tried to resist the conceptual overdetermination of these fragments. This structural consideration implies that this dissertation fulfils a performative, as well an analytical function.

The work of this thesis seeks to further the use of computation in musical analysis. To a lesser extent it is hoped that it will provide some little evidence of a new angle on creating analytic elements through inference, and cast light onto some areas where analysis may be used anew. Parsers for musical information are small in number, none have been implemented in functional languages, nor using monadic combination techniques. Few analytic systems are capable of, or even consider it necessary to, represent semantic ambiguity, and this is even more true of parsing systems. The work herein presented provides a system of unique monadic parsers built on combination that are capable of delivering several different types and depths of results. Many computational-analytic systems are based on theories of similarity. The work presented here provides for analytic structures to be created through inference i.e. in the absence of known structures. This is believed to be the first instance of this type of structure generation in the field of music.