This document consists of the following elements: (1) an examination of Healey Willan's background in the English Cathedral tradition; (2) a study of the formation of his compositional style based on his knowledge of English composers and treatises of the day; (3) a look at the German influences on his compositional style; and (4) an analysis showing how he merged these styles into a unified whole to create a monumental work for the organ. Included are musical examples of English and German keyboard works compared with examples from Willan's introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue in order to illustrate the use of similar compositional devices and stylistic traits. Also included is a discussion of the evidence of Willan's individuality as a composer in spite of numerous derivative sources.

An interpretive analysis of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Concerto for Bass Tuba which compares tempi, interpretation of the melodic line, ornamentation, dynamics, pitches, rhythms. phrasing and articulations as utilized by four prominent tuba performers. Performers selected to share their interpretations include Arnold Jacobs, Donald Little, Richard Nahatzki and Harvey Phillips. Little, Nahatzki and Phillips provided a copy of their solo parts with their personal markings. Jacobs gave permission to transcribe his interpretation from the recording he made with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Performers' biological information is included along with musical reviews of Concerto for Bass Tuba.

An analysis of re-orchestrations of Robert Schumann's four symphonies employed by conductor Felix Weingartner (1863-1942). The text includes a brief history of Schumann's orchestral writing career and an overview of Weingartner's life as a conductor. The bulk of the dissertation discusses actual changes suggested by Weingartner (with score examples). Patterns of modifications are identified and discussed as they relate to historically entrenched problems perceived with Schumann's originally employed practices of orchestration. The analysis focuses on overall patterns of alteration imposed by Weingartner and their perceived effectiveness in achieving a noticeably improved aural outcome.

This dissertation explores constructions of Chineseness in China Wind music, a trend that emerged in the 2000s in Chinese popular music. China Wind music typically references traditional Chinese culture and incorporates Chinese instruments into global pop genres, such as hip hop, R&B, rock, and ballad. The trend was popularized by artists based in Taiwan but also includes those from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, and Singapore. China Wind music’s seemingly pro-China messages belie the diverse political and cultural realities of Chinese-speaking artists and consumers residing in different regions. To better understand the complex relationship that China Wind artists and consumers have with Chinese identity, culture, and politics, I suggest that China Wind artists are acting as cultural nationalists who construct “an imagined cultural China” based on a supposedly shared culture and history. The three approaches to analyzing China Wind music employed in this thesis are: examining the musical construction of Chineseness in China Wind songs through the use of pentatonicism and musical borrowing, surveying the social meanings of instruments (e.g. erhu, pipa) and their deployment in China Wind music, and analyzing the relationship between the song and visual narratives in China Wind music videos and their remediation of Beijing opera, calligraphy, and martial arts. These analyses reveal how China Wind music incorporates a mix of living traditions and invented traditions (Hobsbawm 1983) to evoke an ambiguous “ancient” Chineseness that fosters a sense of belonging and connects audiences from various locales to an imagined cultural China. / Music Theory

The purpose of this thesis is to isolate the techniques presently being used by composers and to define and explain these techniques. The thesis concludes with a series of studies based on these twentieth-century compositional techniques for high school students in the form of warm-up and technique materials. The purpose of this study was to devise a sequence of studies designed to acquaint band members with twentieth-century composition techniques found in contemporary band literature.

In this study, the Anton Webern's music is considered in two groups: that which was written before Webern adopted the twelve-tone technique, Opp 1-16, and that written in the twelve-tone technique, Opp. 17-31. This division is not intended to represent an attempt at periodization of Webern's music, for the changes of style in Op. 17 are not that significant. But the fact that Webern employed the twelve-tone technique in all the works he wrote after Op. 16 makes this a natural point of division for a study of this sort. Besides the music of Webern, two peripheral areas are included in this study. No attempt has been made at an exhaustive biography of Webern, but facts relative to his life, and impressions about the person are presented. Also, to create a proper perspective for the study of Webern's which existed during the time that Webern lived and composed, is presented.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to give the prospective performer of Schumann's piano works a better understanding of his many works for the piano and to give the pianist, and musicians in general, a better understanding of the pianistic devices employed by Schumann in his works for this instrument. Schumann rose to great heights for short intervals. He possessed enthusiasm, humor, charm, and eloquence. Such qualities have kept his music alive and have provided his listeners with lasting pleasure. Much of his music represents the nobility and warm-heartedness that characterized early Romanticism at its best.

In an effort to proliferate the awareness of and interest in flute and organ chamber music, I have commissioned five new works for flute and organ. An analysis and performance guide of these works will provide the basis for the discussion in this monograph. Through a survey of various sources, I hope to prove the need for more flute and organ chamber works as well as introduce the five new pieces into the mainstream repertoire. I begin with a discussion of the organ/flute duo and briefly touch on the small number of existing works widely recognized in both the flute and organ communities. I use several instrument-specific catalogues of repertoire to compare which pieces are common in both the flute and the organ communities as well as how they are catalogued. Using modern scholarship surrounding the rapidly growing performance-studies discipline, I hope to show that a performance guide of these new works can be of great significance to the performers. Once I have established a need for more repertoire for this unique paring, I introduce and discuss at length each individual piece, providing a formal analysis and suggestions to the performer on how best to approach these pieces based on this analysis. I provide an abridged version of the performance guide for each piece as an appendix. Finally, I compare the five new compositions to the existing handful briefly mentioned in the introduction and strive to use the opinions of other professionals in the field to prove not only the validity of the works in themselves, but their viability as upstanding compositions in the mainstream repertoire. / Music Performance

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