This paper aims to draw attention to the oft neglected cello compositions of Ernst von Dohnányi. A prolific performer, composer, and pedagogue, Dohnányi has fallen into obscurity amongst the general population since his passing in 1960. Among the works discussed in this document are two unpublished sonatas from Dohnányi’s childhood, his Cello Sonata in B-flat, op.8 and his Konzertstück for Cello and Orchestra op.12. Each piece is given a historic background placing it among events of the composer’s life that led to its genesis and premier. This is followed by a formal and harmonic analysis and concludes with special considerations for the cellist in performing or teaching each work. Also included are complete editions of two previously unpublished works: Sonata for Cello and Piano in G-major composed in 1888 and a Grand Sonata for Cello and Piano in C-major composed in 1889. The manuscripts for both works are contained within the British Library’s Dohnányi Collections, from which I have compiled and edited the following performance editions. It is my hope that these two sonatas will enter the repertoire of student cellists supplementing the relatively small catalogue of music for the intermediate cellist.

The aspiration of this dissertation is to bring forth the significance of Shostakovich's Piano Sonata Op.12. This sonata is a hybrid of the German musical tradition, Russian Modernism, and Liszt's thematic transformation technique. It demonstrates Shostakovich's highly intellectual compositional skills influenced by the education that he received at St. Petersburg Conservatory as well as the exposure to modern music in the 1920s. This dissertation discusses composition techniques, such as the harmonic piers adapted from Alexander Scriabin, neighboring-tone technique, which involves the application of semitone cell throughout the piece, as well as the technique of thematic transformation borrowed from Liszt. These all come together by Shostakovich's design in the most controversial sonata form. The Piano Sonata Op.12 also sheds light on Shostakovich's early compositional style and proves its contribution to the evolution of sonata genre in the twentieth-century.

Lowell Liebermann, born in New York City in 1961, is one of America's most distinguished living composers. In addition, he often conducts and performs as pianist in his own works. His musical language is unique and unmistakably rooted in the grand tradition of Western music; however, his style combines old and new, simple and complex, emotional and intellectual aspects. It combines tuneful, catchy melodies with a rich harmonic language, all framed by a strong formal design. This study begins with presenting primary information on this concerto excerpted from an interview with Lowell Liebermann. This interview served as a reference for subsequent sections, and a transcript of the interview is appended to the end of this study. In the third chapter, the musical language of the composer is discussed. Chapters four and five constitute the main body of this dissertation. The goal of these two chapters is to understand the basic three-pitch motive of the work, to demonstrate how it operates at various levels, and to see how the raw material corresponds at a larger structure level. It is the author's hope that this study will guide performers to better understand Liebermann's Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 12.

This thesis interprets four of Schumann’s works in the light of the Hoffmann fictions with which they seem to be associated. Unlike previous studies, it deals with each of the four works, treating them as aesthetic entities enhanced by literary relationships that are not primarily programmatic, nor primarily a matter of formal parallels. Each work emerges both in a new light and as it always was. Carnaval (1834-37) appears as a dizzying comedy of theatrical vignettes and character, in the spirit of the German literary understanding of Italian carnival (including in Hoffmann), and Fantasiestücke (1837-38) as a humorous sequence of dream images, resonating with literary tales of the artist’s development, not least those in Hoffmann’s Fantasiestücke. Kreisleriana (1838), a finished masterpiece, suggests improvisations on melodic fragments appearing also in popular tunes used both in trivial variation sets and in Bach’s Goldberg Variations – which figure in Hoffmann’s Kreisleriana as opposed emblems of the philistine and the profound. Nachtstücke (1839-40) creates from plain rondos a paradoxically unsettled set, expressive of profound mental disturbances explored by Hoffmann’s book of that name. I bring out in each work previously unexamined patterns of melody, tonality, metre, sonority and form, showing how these become threads expressive of drama, emotion or symbolism. Unusually, I do not take Schumann’s approach over the 1830s as static: increasingly powerful musical means gave the music greater independence from supporting words, and what Schumann called ‘poetic’ threads increasingly coincide with core musical processes. Equally unusually, I describe those processes as resonating simultaneously with Schumann’s titles, with his culture including Hoffmann, and with his concerns around the time of composition as documented in his letters, criticism, diaries and Mottosammlung. Unlike previous work the thesis treats its subject consistently at three levels. My approach to the interpretation of the individual works at the first level is consonant with Schumann’s aesthetics as described at the second: there I focus more sharply than previous treatments on his stated view that musical works can ‘express’ ‘remote interests’ including literature, and on how he thought that possible – points that, given sensitivity to contemporary connotations and to context, emerge from his writings. Finally, at a third level, I reflect on the approach in the light of strands of musicological and intellectual thought in Schumann’s day and since.