<p> Scriabin&rsquo;s music is saturated with the mystical and heavily influenced by the psycho philosophical presence of his evolving thoughts throughout his life. Scriabin constructed his own self-mythology modeled on Romantic idealizations based on Nietzschean philosophy and Prometheon narrative. He combined this construction with his Symbolist aesthetics for total unity through mystical transcendence. The combining of these archetypes is seen in his <i>Fantasy in B Minor, Op. 28</i>. The <i>Fantasy</i> inhabits both psychological realities which manifests into different aesthetic characteristics. The presence of the more conservative nineteenth-century style alongside the Symbolist narrative elements are what make the <i>Fantasy</i> and elusive and transitory piece that represents the shifts occurring within Scriabin&rsquo;s psyche during the dawn of the twentieth-century. </p><p> The <i>Fantasy</i> has been neglected by scholars but was written merely three years before all his pieces became drenched in the mystical. I therefore propose from my own analysis of the piece and from the evidence of Scriabin&rsquo;s close associations to the Symbolist movement that the <i> Fantasy, Op. 28</i> is driven by Symbolist mythological undertones within the thematic narrative. Evidence will be provided from close friends and acquaintances of Scriabin, his own writings, exploration of Romantic and Symbolist aesthetics, and evidence provided by previous scholarship on Scriabin&rsquo;s theosophical beliefs.</p><p>

<p> The following dissertation combines reception history and technical analysis in a revisionist account of Russian orchestral music from 1850 to 1870. Through close readings of a wide range of reception materials, I recover little-known historical perspectives on this repertory, focusing particularly on ways in which Russian musicians engaged with transnational musical trends. These historical perspectives inform my analyses of compositions by Mikhail Glinka, Mily Balakirev, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, and Anton Rubinstein. In these analyses, I elucidate formal, harmonic, and orchestrational features that nineteenth-century Russian listeners found notable, such as Balakirev's disintegrating recapitulations, Dargomyzhsky's ubiquitous augmented triads, and Glinka's timbrai crescendos. This analytical approach allows me to reimagine this repertory as a variegated network of musical works, where each new composition is a reaction to existing ones, to domestic reception, and to pan-European aesthetic currents.</p><p> Chapter 1, entitled "Glinka's Three Models of Instrumental Music," traces the organicist discourse surrounding Glinka's orchestral fantasias, links the origins of this discourse to the writings of Adolf Bernhard Marx, and articulates the musical features that distinguish the three fantasias. Chapter 2, "Formal Disintegration in Balakirev's Overtures," portrays Balakirev's attempts to distinguish himself from Glinka as well as from established formal conventions of the time, primarily through creative reinterpretations of formal strategies employed by Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, and Franz Liszt. Chapter 3, "Satire, </p><p>

<p> This dissertation is a mythological analysis written from a feminist perspective, on the emergence of the theme of rescue stories, and specifically plots where a female heroine saves a male character, which arose in German-language opera during the roughly one hundred years that spanned the lifetimes of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Wagner. </p><p> This paper begins with a survey of the origins of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, in which Orpheus descends to Hades in an effort to bring his beloved back to the world of the living. It then describes the creation of opera in the city-states of Italy at the turn of the seventeenth century, based on the understanding scholars of that time had of ancient Greek tragedies. It next explores how the Orpheus and Eurydice narrative was used frequently as the source material for the still nascent genre, focusing on Monteverdi&rsquo;s <i> Orfeo</i> and Gluck&rsquo;s <i>Orfeo ed Eurydice</i>. Following this, it considers the parallel development of the artform in the German-speaking territories of Europe. Finally, it analyzes the German-language compositions of Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner using the Orpheus and Eurydice myth to interpret them from Eurydice&rsquo;s perspective, or the <i>Vox Eurydice</i>. </p><p> This writing explores how the German-language works of these three musical giants grew out of the rescue story paradigm, as an extension of Italian <i> opera buffa</i> and French <i>op&eacute;ra comique</i>. This is reflected in Mozart&rsquo;s <i>Singspiele</i> and Beethoven&rsquo;s one completed opera, <i>Fidelio</i>, considered the epitome of the German-language rescue opera. It then goes on to examine Wagner&rsquo;s oeuvre, not only his ten mature masterpieces, but also three earlier operas and his unfinished pieces. This writing also suggests that the need for the ascent of the female rescuer in German-language opera was unconsciously tied into the desire of the people of the German-speaking territories for a homeland, and how the presence of the Orpheus-Eurydice archetype subsided soon after a German nation was established in 1871.</p><p>

The present thesis is an investigation into the musical rhetoric of Protestant funeral music in seventeenth-century Germany. The study begins with an exposition on the present state of musicological inquiry into occasional music in the Baroque, focusing primarily on ad hoc funeral music. Because funeral music is not discussed in any of the basic music reference works, a cursory overview of existing critical studies is included. The survey of this literature is followed by a brief discussion of methodological obstacles and procedure with regard to the present study. Chapter Two comprises a general discussion of Protestant funeral liturgy in Baroque Germany. Although numerous examples of the Divine Service in the Lutheran Church have survived the seventeenth century, not a single order of service for the funeral liturgy from the period seems to exist. This chapter provides both the social and extra-liturgical background for the music as well as a plausible Lutheran funerary liturgy based on documents from the period and modern studies. Prosopopoeia, the rhetorical personification of the dead, is the subject of Chapter Three. After examining the theoretical background of this rhetorical device, from Roman Antiquity to the German Baroque, the trope is examined in the context of funerary sermonic oratory. The discussion of oratorical rhetoric is followed by an investigation into the musical application of the concept of prosopopoeia in various styles of funerary composition, from simple cantional-style works to compositions in which the personified deceased assumes certain physical dimensions. Chapter Four includes an examination of various other musical-rhetorical figures effectively employed in funeral music. Also treated in this chapter are musica1-rhetorical aspects of duple and triple metre, where triple metre in particular, depending on the text, can be understood figuratively, metaphorically or as a combination of both. As this chapter makes clear, owing to the perceived antithetical properties of metre and certain figures, musical rhetoric was often used to illustrate the distinction between this world and the next. / Arts, Faculty of / Music, School of / Graduate

The selection of the subject, “The New in Music,” was prompted by an interest in the frequent appearance of new aspects in the art music. The following critique is the result of an attempt to uncover forces which work toward forming the new, to evaluate essential factors of newness, and to consider the reaction of the public to new musical trends. Although the accent of the work is placed on the music of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, consideration is also given to essentially new aspects of music during the earlier period since the Fourteenth Century. Complexities of modern composition become more easily understood when viewed in the light of previous attainment. The listener who wishes to hear modern music intelligently must needs be learned, for the entire world is included in the scope of modern music, not only the realm of emotion, but also the actual and the transcendental. One must be able to follow the common thread of thought and inspiration which runs through the works of Monteverde, Bach, Debussy, and Irving Berlin.

This study seeks to examine the history of the ricercare, specifically in the baroque era. In this work, all types of keyboard compositions that utilize imitative counterpoint have been examined. Late baroque fugues have been examined to determine which characteristics of the earlier ricercare remained in general use and which specific compositions contain elements causing them to resemble strongly the parent form. This volume is a musical supplement to the thesis.

The problem of classifying variations according to technical plan and stylistic treatment centers on the determination of which elements of the theme (melody, harmonic scheme, structure) are retained in each component variation and the compositional methods (elaboration, embellishment, motivic fragmentation) which are applied.

This study traces the development of the baton conductor from his earliest origin up to and including the present day. From his initial role, that of a time beater and teacher, he has progressed to that of an interpreter and creator of music.

The goal of this dissertation is not only to introduce the unique cadenza by Alkan but also to offer an argument from the performer’s point of view, for why Alkan’s cadenza should be considered when there exists a cadenza by Beethoven himself, not to mention those by a number of other composers, both contemporaries of Beethoven and later. Information in reference to the brief history of the cadenza and the pianoforte in the time of Mozart and Beethoven is presented in Chapter 2. A brief bibliography about Alkan is presented in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 describes not only the cadenza in the era of Alkan, but also a comparison which is presented between Beethoven and Alkan's cadenzas. Examples of the keyboard range, dynamic contrast, use of pedal and alternating notes or octaves, and creative quote are presented in Chapter 4. In conclusion, the revival of Alkan's cadenza is mentioned, and the author's hope to promote the Alkan's cadenza is presented in Chapter 5.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries