Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-241).

A PhD by publication comprising two of my books, My Elvis Blackout and Neverland, accompanied by a reflective and critical exegesis, which examines notions of truth, fiction and celebrity in the composite novel through a broadly analytical and practice-based methodology. The exegesis begins by exploring the links between the methodology of the fine artist and the new creative writer. It then demonstrates that My Elvis Blackout and Neverland represent an original contribution to knowledge in the way that they explore and develop literary form (the ‘composite’ novel), and, in their exploration of celebrity, myth-making and fictional hagiography, and that the two books function as performative critiques which probe the boundaries between fiction and the fabricated reality of celebrity culture. My exegesis analyses Linda Boldrini’s term ‘heterobiography’ (2012) with particular reference to Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy The Kid (1981), which as a bricolage relies upon the reader’s pre-conceived recognition of the historicity of its protagonist and continually tests the boundaries between fact and fiction. In this section of the exegesis, I propose that what sets My Elvis Blackout and Neverland apart from Billy The Kid is that whilst Ondaatje’s book certainly does exploit the confusions between fact, fiction, autobiography and history, it remains firmly set within the timeframe that its historical protagonist inhabits. My Elvis Blackout and Neverland remain grounded within their readers’ expectations of American settings contemporary to their nominative protagonists, but both books also feature dilations in both historical and geographical setting. Through analysis I have come to perceive ‘the celebrity persona’ as an identikit image assembled by thousands of witnesses. A photo fit photomontage tiered with impressions of subjective provenance, each layered transparency filtered through the fears and desires of fans and critics. Whereas other historiographic metafictions use historical figures as singular characters, My Elvis Blackout and Neverland can be seen to be utilising an ‘identikit’ concept to present their respective protagonists as manyheaded Hydras, or multiple probability ‘versions’ from parallel universes. By a conflation of terms, Hutcheon’s ‘historiographic metafiction’ (1988) and Boldrini’s ‘heterobiography’ (2012), My Elvis Blackout and Neverland are in fact historiobiographic metafictions. The exegesis concludes by establishing my own works’ live impact on the overarching celebrity metanarratives, and their inevitable organic status.

This thesis alms to identify and explore the ideas of John Cage, then looks at their impact on and absorption by a variety of American composers. This in turn provides the context for my own compositional work which forms the main substance of this submission and which is presented on compact disc (accompanied by indicative scores). The source material for the second half of the thesis comes largely from my own book of interviews with composers, American Originals (co-authored with Nicola Walker Smith), which is included as an appendix.

This Literature Review contextualises the work I undertook for 'Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head', a 140,000 word biography based on the life of the musician Syd Barrett, lead guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter in the original line up of Pink Floyd. The book is based on two and a half years of focussed research, carried out between January 1997 and August 2009. During this time I interviewed family, friends, schoolmates, fellow college students, musicians, artists, and admirers from every stage of Barrett‟s life, from his earliest days growing up in Cambridge, through his period as an active musician and pop star, to his final years as a reclusive and enigmatic figure in his home town. However, these 65 interviews comprise only one element of my research. In addition I utilised an extensive range of primary and secondary source material, and the bibliography for the book runs to some 49 texts. (See appendix.) I also drew upon significant audio and video material including rare and hard to find television transmissions, and archive and bootleg recordings, many of which are not in the public domain.

There can be little doubt that the usage of the concept of genre remains widespread in discourses around music, cinema, theatre, literature. However, for a long period of time, musicologists have paid little attention to genre which is considered to be an outdated legacy of positivism: a concept belonging to amateurish criticism or daily musical practice – and incompatible with the hegemonic ideology of ‘absolute music’. In the commentary that follows, the history of my own efforts to bring genre back to the theoretical core of musicological debate is outlined, and intertwined with the work of other scholars (sociologists, cultural theorists, anthropologists) who helped re-define genre as a useful concept in the scholarly study of music. Popular music, as a set of genres from which paramusical elements – and related social conventions – were never expelled as spurious (as formalist musicology did with respect to Western art music), was obviously my main focus, although in some writings I deal with classical music, electronic music and traditional (folk) music. After examining at some length the development of my theory of genre (definitions, ‘rules’ and conventions, inter-genre relations and intra-genre diachronic development), the commentary focuses on a number of studies of specific (mostly popular) genres, music scenes, forms, artists, where genre is an underlying concept. One of the most delicate aspects of any theory about genre, and one that has been at the centre of my investigation for so long, is that of diachronic development; as a consequence, the history of popular music became at some point a favourite subject for my study – my contributions are outlined in the commentary which can be read in conjunction with my writings on the subject. Finally, a section is dedicated to my writings on music technology, music industry, and media. In the conclusions my work on genre is contextualised nationally and internationally, with some considerations on linguistic issues; the commentary ends with a brief outline of my future research plans.

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This thesis is an essay in the phenomenology of religion; it is not primarily a study of the literature or history of early Ireland. This thesis investigates the content and meaning of the early Irish people's language and expression as it relates to music. The culture being investigated is that of early medieval Ireland, up to and including the twelfth century. The focus of the thesis is on a Collection of music references extracted by this author from selected literature; the Collection itself is presented here as an independent Appendix volume to the main body of the thesis. The specific literature selected for this thesis is found in eight major categories of Old and Middle Irish texts: 1) tales from the Mythological Cycle; 2) Dindshenchas (Place-lore poems); 3) the tales and sagas from the Ulster Cycle; 4) the tales from the Cycles of the Kings literature; 5) the Immrama ("Voyage") literature; 6) tales from the Acallam na Senorach; 7) early Irish poetry; and 8) the early Irish saints' Lives. This thesis is divided into five major chapters--Performers, Instruments, Effects, Places, and Times. The Performers chapter examines the "supernatural" performers, the mundane performers, and those performers portrayed with some degree of Otherworld influence(s). The Instruments chapter discusses the various instruments portryed in this literature, as well as how they might relate to the Otherworld. The Effects chapter examines all of the various effects of music mentioned in the references from the Collection, and discusses how they relate to the "supernatural". The Places and Times chapters discuss the "supernatural'', liminal, and mundane places and times regarding music, as referred to in the references from the Collection. Comparative material is used from other world cultures, in each chapter, for illustratory purposes only. Arguing that music is a means by which the early Irish people test their world and register its realities, this thesis discovers in this select literature on music, an unbroken continuity between the otherworldly and the mundane, experienced and expressed through early Irish music, and this is common to both overtly primal and overtly Christian contexts.

Thesis (M. A.) -- University of Limpopo, 2008 / Refer to the document

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Warschau. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-[300]).