<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 thesis examines aesthetics, sonic characteristics, and performance practices of zydeco music as heard in south Louisiana today. The first chapter describes the roles of instruments in a zydeco band, focusing specifically on the importance of the kick drum and the snare drum. It also details the evolution of the modern zydeco sound and how certain instruments, their modifications, and their timbres came to characterize the style especially prevalent among a group of artists who play for zydeco trail rides. The second chapter examines the tempo of modern zydeco music through quantitative analysis of musical recordings. This chapter also elucidates the use of beat patterns and drumming techniques within the genre, providing evidence for a current preference for the boogaloo beat over the on-the-one and the double beats. The third chapter discusses sonic goals and values of the sound engineer in zydeco music in live performance. This chapter also includes analysis of the frequency spectrum profiles of live zydeco recordings which depict how sound reinforcement practices, instrument modifications, and playing techniques discussed in the thesis are manifested in these performances. Research methods employed for this thesis include interviews with zydeco musicians, empirical analysis of live musical recordings, and examination of spectrograms.

<p> Mozart&rsquo;s concert aria <i>Ch&rsquo;io mi scordi di te</i> K. 505 bridges the genres of piano concerto and opera seria aria by combining elements of sonata rondo, sonata concerto, and ritornello. Mozart&rsquo;s experimentation with Classical form emerging in the late eighteenth-century is characterized by unique transitions and retransitions, surprising modulations to secondary keys, and polarization of tonic and dominant tonalities. K. 505, a two-tempo rondo for soprano with piano obbligato, is the only one of its type in Mozart&rsquo;s oeuvre and shares many of the same ritornello form and dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra found in Mozart&rsquo;s piano concerti. Composed as a duet for himself, an accomplished pianist, and his close friend Nancy Storace, a highly regarded opera singer, as part of her farewell concert in Vienna, K. 505 highlights their virtuosic abilities celebrating artistic kinship. </p><p> After establishing the historic contexts for its composition, this study applies the theories and models developed by James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy (2006), Martha Feldman and Rosa Cafiero (1993), John Irving (2003), and Simon P. Keefe (2001) in order to analyze K. 505 as a work in a composite genre utilizing compositional techniques later associated with more conventional applications of sonata-form. K. 505 is one of several compositions rooted in Mozart&rsquo;s tonally adventurous <i>Idomeneo</i> (1781/1786). An analytical comparison of K. 505 with related works&mdash;the concert aria <i> Non piu tutto ascoltai&hellip;non temer amato bene</i> K. 490 for soprano and violin obbligato, a replacement aria in the revised <i>Idomeneo</i> (1786) and the Viennese piano concerto no. 25 in C Major K. 503 (1786) demonstrate how Mozart&rsquo;s syncretic genres played a part in the creation and expansion of the maturing conventions of sonata-form in the late eighteenth-century. </p><p>

Scholarship concerning the importance of understanding audiences and venues for music has developed a great deal over the last two decades. This thesis examines one element of this research: the importance of the venue as a space for culture. The Royal Albert Hall, a world-famous but little- understood venue, acts as case study for this text. Through a mixed-methods approach, this thesis seeks to answer four questions concerning the relationship between a public space and the events it hosts in the case of the RAH explicitly: What factors have affected the identity of the RAH as a public venue? How have these changed during the Hall's existence? How do these factors affect the events which the Hall hosts? Does a space affect what happens inside it? These questions will allow us to gain a deeper understanding of how a fixed cultural space can be repeatedly reshaped by multiple, often overlooked, factors as well as the extent to which these factors can affect the identity of a venue.

<p> The vocal jazz ensemble singing movement that began at Mt. Hood Community College (Gresham, Oregon) in 1967 reached the public schools of the Boise Valley, in Southwestern Idaho sometime in the early 1970&rsquo;s. The first generation of vocal jazz educators in the region were Jerry Vevig , Vern Swain, Moyle Brown and Lonnie Cline. In an effort to learn the new style, these four directors participated in the burgeoning vocal jazz scene occurring in the Western region of the United States. By the mid 1970&rsquo;s, vocal jazz ensemble education had become so prevalent in the Boise Valley region that the Jr. High School directors of the Boise Public School District were programming vocal jazz music and participating in many of the same vocal jazz events as their high school colleagues. These Junior High school directors included Bruce Walker, Catherine Gilck, Rich Lapp, Sue Hough, Paul Olson and Rob Newburn. The 1980&rsquo;s saw the second generation of prominent vocal jazz singing ensemble directors begin their tenures in the Boise Valley when Glenn Grant, Quinn, Van Paepeghem, Linda Schmidt, Ted Totorica, and Barb Oldenburg, continued the tradition of vocal jazz style singing and event participation that their predecessors had initiated throughout the remainder of the era investigated (inception&ndash;1990). In the study, each subjects experiences and education in vocal jazz ensemble singing is documented and specific techniques they employed when working with their vocal jazz ensembles are revealed. The literature used by each vocal jazz educator from the Boise valley (1970&ndash;1990) is also exposed, collated, and presented in the document for reference and use by future choral music educators.</p><p>

<p> This study presents a detailed analytical examination of formal organization in Anton Bruckner&rsquo;s early instrumental slow movements: from the String Quartet, WAB 111, to the Third Symphony, WAB 103. It proposes an analytical methodology and conception of the formative process of musical works that seeks to 1) reappraise the development and idiosyncrasies of his slow movements&rsquo; form, and 2) turn the textual multiplicity often associated with Bruckner&rsquo;s large-scale works (a scholarly issue often referred to as the &ldquo;Bruckner Problem&rdquo;) into a Bruckner Potential.</p><p> In addressing traditional and innovative formal aspects of Bruckner&rsquo;s music, critics have tended to overemphasize one side or the other, consequentially portraying his handling of form as either whimsical or excessively schematic. By way of a reconstruction of Bruckner&rsquo;s early experiments with slow-movement form (1862&ndash;1873), this study argues that influential lines of criticism in the reception history of Bruckner&rsquo;s large-scale forms find little substantiation in the acoustical surface of Bruckner&rsquo;s music and its dialogic engagement with mid- and late-19th-century generic expectations. </p><p> Because the textual multiplicity often associated with Bruckner&rsquo;s works does not sit comfortably with traditional notions of authenticity and authorship, Bruckner scholarship has operated under aesthetic premises that fail to acknowledge textual multiplicity as a basic trait of his oeuvre. The present study circumvents this shortcoming by conceiving formal-expressive meaning in Bruckner&rsquo;s symphonies as growing out of a dual-dimensional dialogue comprising 1) an <i>outward dialogue,</i> characterized by the interplay between a given version of a Bruckner symphony and its implied genre (in this case, sonata form); and 2) an <i>inward dialogue,</i> characterized by the interplay among the various individualized realizations of a single Bruckner symphony. The analytical method is exemplified through a detailed consideration of each of the surviving realizations of the slow movement of Bruckner&rsquo;s Third Symphony, WAB 103.</p><p>

<p> Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, along with most other female creators of musicals, remain in the shadows, in spite of an increased focus by the media on women&rsquo;s contributions to society. The messages of Cryer and Ford&rsquo;s dramatic themes and songs have not been fully understood by many critics and audience members. Scholarly and popular writings on women in theater remain scarce, and literature on Cryer and Ford contains errors and promotes misunderstandings. </p><p> In this thesis, I argue that Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, a writer and composer of musical theater respectively, tackled contemporary issues in their Broadway and off Broadway musicals, introduced new theatrical forms and musical genres to the stage, and have built a distinguished collaborative career and earned a meritorious position in musical theater heritage by incorporating these issues, in particular, those which pertain to women or those which affect women, into their works. I seek to correct and build upon extant writings and information from media resources. My thesis is the first monograph to detail the lives and works of Cryer and Ford, and to assess their contributions to the musical theater genre. My detailed case studies dissect several Cryer and Ford musicals, which speak directly to prominent images and ideas of the time, and reveal how their works emphasize the importance of interpersonal communication, and endorse humanism and, in particular, feminism. Cryer and Ford are trailblazers for other female musical writers, for whom they have advocated, and for whom I provide a comprehensive overview.</p><p>

In recent decades, historical concert programmes have emerged as a fascinating resource for cultural study. As yet, however, little detailed work has been done on the programme notes that these booklets contained. This thesis concentrates on the notes written for the Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts between 1865 and 1879. The series held an important place in London concert life during this period, and featured a number of influential authors in the programmes, such as George Grove, August Manns, James William Davison, Edward Dannreuther, and Ebenezer Prout. Grove in particular made use of his notes as part of entries in the first edition of the Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Close critical readings of the Saturday Concert booklets illustrate the complex combination of context, content, and function that the programme notes represented. These readings are supported by short histories of the series, the programme note, and the various authors, along with a study of the audience through booklet construction and advertising. A database covering the repertoire performed and programme note provision during the case-study period is included on the attached CD. Programme notes that outlined pre-existing or newly-invented plots make it clear that one of their functions was to give music a narrative. Even notes that did not contain stories per se were filled with material that served a very similar purpose. The most obvious examples were explanations of how the work was created, and it's place in history. However, all of the language used to describe a piece could signal wider meanings, which then became part of the story being told. References to gender, families, education, morality, religion, politics, or race imbued the works with a wide variety of pre-existing 'texts' (in the broadest sense of the word), and formed social and cultural narratives for music.

Throughout the eighteenth century Italian violinists were praised and admired by London audiences. Though never as feted as the Italian castrati and sopranos, the Italian violinists in eighteenth-century London played a prominent role, featuring as leaders and soloists in every context where music was required. This dissertation focuses on the role the 'Solo' played in the careers of these Italian violinists, and how these artists and this genre fitted in socially, culturally and aesthetically. The 'Solo' was an important tool for them in promoting their careers: it was the repertoire they performed and subsequently published in order to enhance their fame. As a genre, the 'Solo' was uniquely suited to exploring a violinist's artistic invention. Exploring the repertoire provides a new understanding of these artists and the important role they played in eighteenth-century London. First, the Italian violinist is considered through a discussion of the historical and cultural context of eighteenth-century London into which these artists arrived. The cultural scene (including the Italian Opera, the theatres and the emerging public concert scene) is studied, as are various forms of patronage and the tradition of private pupils. The prominence and longevity of the 'Solo' is examined through a consideration of surviving catalogues from the publishers active in London during the century. Concert and publication advertisements support the argument. To understand further why the 'Solo' and the Italian violinist were appreciated, eighteenth-century treatises on aesthetics and musical performance are discussed, exploring the concept of 'Good Taste' and in the process revealing the 'aesthetic of moderation'. Finally, the Solo repertoire itself will be explored, focusing both on contemporary aesthetics and performance practice issues. This will be done both through a general survey of the Solo genre as well as a couple of case studies.