Abstract not available

The songs of Puccini provide another approach to understanding the composer's musical development. The objective of the study is twofold; first to provide a discussion of the musical style of Puccini's songs; and second, to show how Puccini utilized and integrated the preexistent material into the operas. The songs are grouped and characterized in three stylistic periods. In each period, Puccini was concerned with different issues in text setting. They anticipated or corresponded to the musical style of his operas, and this is evident by his use of the earlier songs in the later operas. Three examples of such cases are examined. The details involved in the transformation of self-borrowing are illustrated in terms of recomposition, expansion of the vocal line and orchestration. Each case illustrates the textual and/or musical consideration by Puccini of the original source for the new dramatic context of the opera. The borrowed material, often incorporated with new themes and expressive orchestration, blooms as an effective dramatic piece of music in his operas. In addition to the lecture recital, based on the dissertation and given on June 23, 1997, three other public recitals were performed. The first, on February 27, 1989, included works of Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, and Strauss. The second program, an operatic performance of The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky, was given on April 20, 1991. The third recital was performed on February 20, 1995, and included works by Handel, Mozart, Stravinsky, Schubert, Poulenc, and Turina.

Thesis (Ph. D)--University of Rochester, 2009. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references. Digitized version available online via the Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music http://hdl.handle.net/1802/11067

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2002. Graduate Programme in Fine Arts. / Typescript. Includes the author's compositions The millennium oratorio, Continuus line, and String quartet no. 1. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 90). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ71568.

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The song " Montreal ", by Ariane Moffatt, has achieved a great success in the Summer of 2006. This thesis scrutinizes the causes of this popularity. After a review of the diverse existing methods in popular music research, three modes of analysis are presented. First, the study shown here describes the song through a music-theoretical approach; it observes the rules governing the voice, the melody, the rhythm, the phrases, the bass, the tonality, the chords, and the instruments used, supported by a precise transcription of the song. Then, this paper studies the musical codes that are found in "Montreal". In this section, the musical message of the piece is analyzed, while taking in consideration the sociohistorical context of the Summer of 2006, the national history that preceded the release of this piece, and the lyrics of the song. Finally, this study investigates the issue of national identity in Quebec, the place of "Montreal" into the collective imagination of Quebeckers, and the popular music tradition of the province.

The Buxheim Organ Book, the largest fifteenth-century manuscript of keyboard tablature, has never before been examined as a whole in light of musica ficta issues, although it contains far more accidentals than any contemporaneous source in mensural notation. Although tablature has been used by various scholars to examine accidentals in sixteenth-century music, studies of fifteenth-century accidentals have focussed on theoretical evidence and small groups of pieces from mensural sources. The author uses the Buxheim Organ Book to extend the investigations of accidentals in tablature back into the fifteenth century, combining the large data set provided by this manuscript with a statistical approach modelled on that of Thomas Brothers's smaller-scale study of the chansons of Binchois. Specialised computer programs are introduced, which detect musical structures relevant to the analysis of Renaissance music such as different types of cadential voice leading. These programs function as extensions to David Huron's Humdrum Toolkit. With these tools, signing practises in the intabulations are statistically compared with all of the concordances of the models. Conclusions are suggested pertaining to issues of signature accidental transmission, partial signatures, mode, and musica ficta, which can be used as a contextual backdrop for the analysis of individual pieces. The evidence provided by the accidentals in Buxheim and its concordances draws a clear picture of how a group of fifteenth-century musicians added accidentals to polyphonic music. For the first time, this study provides us with principles and guidelines for musica ficta -decisions based on actual practice.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: An area of data mining and statistics that is currently receiving considerable attention is the field of multi-label learning. Problems in this field are concerned with scenarios where each data case can be associated with a set of labels instead of only one. In this thesis, we review the field of multi-label learning and discuss the lack of suitable benchmark data available for evaluating multi-label algorithms. We propose a technique for simulating multi-label data, which allows good control over different data characteristics and which could be useful for conducting comparative studies in the multi-label field. We also discuss the explosion in data in recent years, and highlight the need for some form of dimension reduction in order to alleviate some of the challenges presented by working with large datasets. Feature (or variable) selection is one way of achieving dimension reduction, and after a brief discussion of different feature selection techniques, we propose a new technique for feature selection in a multi-label context, based on the concept of independent probes. This technique is empirically evaluated by using simulated multi-label data and it is shown to achieve classification accuracy with a reduced set of features similar to that achieved with a full set of features. The proposed technique for feature selection is then also applied to the field of music information retrieval (MIR), specifically the problem of musical instrument recognition. An overview of the field of MIR is given, with particular emphasis on the instrument recognition problem. The particular goal of (polyphonic) musical instrument recognition is to automatically identify the instruments playing simultaneously in an audio clip, which is not a simple task. We specifically consider the case of duets – in other words, where two instruments are playing simultaneously – and approach the problem as a multi-label classification one. In our empirical study, we illustrate the complexity of musical instrument data and again show that our proposed feature selection technique is effective in identifying relevant features and thereby reducing the complexity of the dataset without negatively impacting on performance. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: ‘n Area van dataontginning en statistiek wat tans baie aandag ontvang, is die veld van multi-etiket leerteorie. Probleme in hierdie veld beskou scenarios waar elke datageval met ‘n stel etikette geassosieer kan word, instede van slegs een. In hierdie skripsie gee ons ‘n oorsig oor die veld van multi-etiket leerteorie en bespreek die gebrek aan geskikte standaard datastelle beskikbaar vir die evaluering van multi-etiket algoritmes. Ons stel ‘n tegniek vir die simulasie van multi-etiket data voor, wat goeie kontrole oor verskillende data eienskappe bied en wat nuttig kan wees om vergelykende studies in die multi-etiket veld uit te voer. Ons bespreek ook die onlangse ontploffing in data, en beklemtoon die behoefte aan ‘n vorm van dimensie reduksie om sommige van die uitdagings wat deur sulke groot datastelle gestel word die hoof te bied. Veranderlike seleksie is een manier van dimensie reduksie, en na ‘n vlugtige bespreking van verskillende veranderlike seleksie tegnieke, stel ons ‘n nuwe tegniek vir veranderlike seleksie in ‘n multi-etiket konteks voor, gebaseer op die konsep van onafhanklike soek-veranderlikes. Hierdie tegniek word empiries ge-evalueer deur die gebruik van gesimuleerde multi-etiket data en daar word gewys dat dieselfde klassifikasie akkuraatheid behaal kan word met ‘n verminderde stel veranderlikes as met die volle stel veranderlikes. Die voorgestelde tegniek vir veranderlike seleksie word ook toegepas in die veld van musiek dataontginning, spesifiek die probleem van die herkenning van musiekinstrumente. ‘n Oorsig van die musiek dataontginning veld word gegee, met spesifieke klem op die herkenning van musiekinstrumente. Die spesifieke doel van (polifoniese) musiekinstrument-herkenning is om instrumente te identifiseer wat saam in ‘n oudiosnit speel. Ons oorweeg spesifiek die geval van duette – met ander woorde, waar twee instrumente saam speel – en hanteer die probleem as ‘n multi-etiket klassifikasie een. In ons empiriese studie illustreer ons die kompleksiteit van musiekinstrumentdata en wys weereens dat ons voorgestelde veranderlike seleksie tegniek effektief daarin slaag om relevante veranderlikes te identifiseer en sodoende die kompleksiteit van die datastel te verminder sonder ‘n negatiewe impak op klassifikasie akkuraatheid.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1968. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Frederick D. Mayer. Dissertation Committee: Charles Walton, Lawrence Taylor, . Appendix A: Musical Scores of the A Cappella Choral Music for mixed voices of Arnold Schoenberg. Includes bibliographical references.