Act one of The Metamorphosis is based on the novella by Franza Kafka of the same title. In the writing of the act, George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill and Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are provide a model of using musical material as a storytelling device. Benjamin emphasizes the parallel nature of Crimp's text through the manipulation of similar music between the acts. Knussen uses form and color to emphasize Max's childlike energy and his desire to return home. In act one of The Metamorphosis these approaches are combined to enhance Kafka's absurd narrative through a rapid collage of texture and form that is influenced by both events and characters in the opera.

Although music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries makes frequent use of non-isochronous meter (meters involving beats of different length, such as 5/4 and 7/8), most studies on meter and metric dissonance focus on isochronous meters (meters involving beats of the same length, such as 4/4 and 9/8). This dissertation bridges this gap by developing two methodologies to account for metric dissonance involving non-isochronous pulses: modified ski-hill graphs and the composite beat attack point system. Modified ski-hill graphs, adapted from Richard Cohn's ski-hill graphs, illustrate metric states involving non-isochronous pulses and reveal degrees of dissonance in musical passages that share time spans, as in 5/4 grouped 3+2 vs. 5/4 grouped 2+3. The composite beat attack point system uses rhythmic notation to illustrate metric states involving any pulse duration or time span, revealing specific points of dissonance and consonance, relative strength of dissonance and consonance, and patterns of dissonance and consonance. The methodology is used to closely examine the treatment of metric dissonance in Holst's "Mars," from The Planets, Ligeti's Hungarian Rock (Chaconne), and Ligeti's Désordre. The analyses focus on passages where the metric dissonance becomes ever more pronounced and ends up obliterating any sense of meter.

Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony has suffered neglect since its premiere in 1857. The analysis in this study aims to clarify some of the misunderstandings which have led to this neglect, particularly concerning Liszt's formal structure and character portrayal. In the Faust movement, the flat 6th scale degree (♭6) plays a prominent role in harmonic organization. Nineteenth-century composers sometimes used the distinct sonic color of chromatic-third progressions, as Liszt does here between C and E rather than diatonic movement by fifth to evoke a distant dream-world state. Liszt's conspicuous and form-defining use of ♭6 in the Faust movement suggests fantasy and mysterious elements ripe for programmatic interpretation. In this dissertation, I will attempt to clarify how Liszt portrayed the character of Faust by using the flat 6th scale degree as a crucial harmonic organizing principle in the Faust movement.

Christopher Rouse (b. 1949), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto (1993) and a Grammy award for his Concerto de Gaudi (1999), has come to the forefront as one of America's most prominent orchestral composers. Several of Rouse's works feature quotations of and strong allusions to other composers' works that are used both rhetorically and structurally. These borrowings range from a variety of different genres and styles of works, from Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea to Jay Ferguson's "Thunder Island." Due to the more accessible filtering and funneling methods of musical borrowings (proliferation of mass media), the weighty discourses attached to them, and their variety of functions (critiquing canons, engaging in an allusive tradition, etc.), quotation has become elevated to the most prominent of musical actors that trigger narrative listening strategies, which in turn have a stronger role in the formation of narratives about music as well as narratives of music. The primary aim of this study is to adapt and apply more recent methodological narrativity frameworks to selected instrumental compositions by Rouse containing quotations, suggesting that their manner of insertion, their method of disclosure, and their referential potential can benefit from being examined through various narrative lenses as well as reveal their participation in certain roles of narrative functions. For this study, I have chosen six instrumental works by Rouse for examination - the Violoncello Concerto, Symphony No. 1, Iscariot, String Quartet No. 2, Seeing, and Thunderstuck. On a more specific level, the aim of this study is to investigate the manner, meaning, and motive of the quoted material in a select group of Rouse's compositions through various narratological lenses. To accomplish this, I intend 1) to establish a context for understanding the musical borrowing procedures of Rouse; 2) to explore how works containing quotations can be examined through various narrativity frameworks; 3) to inspect the ways in which borrowings can enhance or clarify the structural design and stylistic musical features for which he is known; 4) to investigate the various meanings that are generated from his borrowings; 5) to consider the extent to which Rouse's musical borrowings comment on various discourses, and 6) to examine the psychological needs of certain narratives triggered by quotation and the various questions they pose. This study does not attempt to systematically unify the works of Rouse that contain borrowings under a kind of "grand theory" in narrativity or borrowing studies, but rather to examine each work individually, noting the particular roles that borrowings play in regards to narratives of and about music. Fundamentally, I claim that narrativizing about music is a foundational psychological and social impulse, aiding to serve our curiosities about music's otherness qualities. Using both narratives of and about music to frame analyses, I hope to make a small contribution to the growing methodological frameworks of narrativity by featuring works containing borrowings by one individual composer, suggesting that other comprehensive approaches in borrowing studies can used for future composers.

The purpose of this study is to examine Sonata No. 2 in detail from many analytical perspectives including melodies, rhythms, harmonic progressions, tonal plans, voice leading, and cadential patterns on macro- and micro-levels. It is believed that a more in-depth discussion of the composition from the perspective of harmony and voice leading may provide answer for the questions raised, and correct some misinterpretations in the works of certain writers. Furthermore, through analysis of Sonata No. 2. this study will show the relationship of the use of formal, stylistic, harmonic features between Mendelssohn and other composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Of all the composers of German Lied, Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf can be considered the true giants of this musical form. Schubert's position is secure as the greatest composer of the Lied. Wolf, though challenging Schubert in this particular idiom only, brought the Lied to its culmination. This study will show, by comparative analysis, the respective treatment by Fr anz Schubert and Hugo Wolf of selected poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Though Schubert composed some seventy songs (not including multiple settings of the same text), and Wolf fifty-one, based on the poetry of Goethe, they shared only thirteen of these poems in common. Four songs by each composer have been selected for detailed analysis.

This study outlines the history of and development of Russian music, leading into the song cycles of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky.

The idea for this investigation was inspired by the writer's attempt to acquire a more complete knowledge of piano teaching techniques. It is hoped that this report will challenge musicians of all ranks to delve further into the subject and investigate other methods of technique not included in this report.

The real importance of the twelve-tone system would seem to lie in its structural possibilities. It combines the inherent potentialities of the theme of a movement in sonata form with those of the theme of a fugue and of variations. It creates a coherent texture throughout the single movements and the work as a whole. It is needless to say that this kind of coherence can also be achieved in serial compositions, that is, in movements in which not the full row of twelve tones, but only seven or eight or nine tones form the basic row.

The purpose if this study is to make an analysis of the structural elements and stylistic characteristics in the Concerto in A Minor for Piano by the nineteenth century German composer, Robert Schumann. These elements include the composer's treatment of melody, rhythm, form, and piano idiom. This problem has been limited to a stylistic analysis of Schumann's only concerto in A minor for piano and orchestra, Op. 54. Its purpose is to make an analysis of the structural and stylistic elements in the Concerto. These include the composer's treatment of melody, rhythm, form and the piano idiom. Since the matter of harmony is not of primary importance in this work, it is not discussed here. The present study does not include a consideration of the orchestral score and its relationship to the piano; however mention of it is made in the chapter on piano idiom.