Writing in 2001, musicologist Axel Klein concluded that Stanford’s reception history has been significantly impacted by the complicated national identities surrounding both the composer and his music. A lifelong devotee of the nineteenth-century Austro-Germanic tradition, Stanford’s status as an Irish-born leading figure of the ‘English’ Musical Renaissance has compromised the place that the composer and his musical output occupy within the history of Western music. Stanford is well-known for being an outspoken critic on matters musical and Irish. Although his views seldom appear ambiguous, there is still a sense that the real Stanford remains partially obscured by his opinions. Through an examination of his symphonic works, this thesis seeks to readdress our understanding of Stanford and his relationship with Ireland and the musical community of his time. Although A. Peter Brown has stated that the symphony was not a central genre for the composer, it is my argument that, on the contrary, the symphony was a pivotal form for him. Considering these works within the broader history of the symphony in Europe in the nineteenth century, and through a critical examination of Stanford’s relationship with Ireland, this thesis seeks to demonstrate that these seven works can be read as an allegory for the composer’s relationship both with his homeland and with the musical community of his time. His struggle to combine the universality of symphonic expression with a need to articulate his Irish identity parallels Stanford’s own attempts to integrate himself within both British and European musical communities, and further demonstrates, in his eventual rejection of it, that it was only when he attempted to forge a more individualistic path through his music that he found a way of expressing his individual Irish identity.

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, 'lo-fi,' a term suggesting poor sound quality, the opposite of 'hi-fi,' became a characteristic perceived in certain popular-music recordings and eventually emerged as a category within independent or 'indie' popular music. It is typically taken to express the technical and technological deficiencies associated with amateur or 'DIY' musical production, namely at home using cheap recording equipment. However, this thesis rejects the assumption that lo-fi equates to a mode of production and charts it as a construction and a certain aesthetics within popular music discourse, defined as 'a positive appreciation of what are perceived and/or considered normatively interpreted as imperfections in a recording.' I chart the development and manifestation of lo-fi aesthetics, and the ways it focuses on various 'lo-fi effects' such as noise, distortion ('phonographic imperfections') and performance imperfections, in several decades of newspapers, magazines and websites covering popular music in the English-speaking world. I argue that lo-fi aesthetics is not merely the unmediated, realist authenticity that it is often claimed to be, but one that is also fascinated with the distance from perceived commercial norms of technique and technology (or 'technocracy') that lo-fi effects signify. Lo-fi aesthetics derives from aesthetics of primitivism and realism that extend back long before phonographic imperfections were positively received. I also differentiate between lo-fi aesthetics and aesthetics of noise music, distortion in rock, glitch, punk and cassette culture. An appreciation for recording imperfections and the development of 'lo-fi' as a construction and a category is charted since the 1950s and particularly in the 1980s, 1990s and in the twenty-first century, taking in the reception of artists such as the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Hasil Adkins, the Shaggs, Jandek, Daniel Johnston, Beat Happening, Pavement, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Beck, Will Oldham, Ariel Pink and Willis Earl Beal.

Existing accounts of the music profession argue that between 1750 and 1850 musicians acquired a new identity as professional ‘artists’ and experienced a concomitant rise in their social and cultural status. In the absence of sustained investigation, it has often been implied that these changes affected male and female musicians in similar ways. As this thesis contends, this was by no means the case. Arguments in support of female musical professionalism, artistry, and their function in public life were made in this period. Based on the gender-specific nature of the female voice, they were an important defence of women’s public engagement that has been overlooked by gender historians, something which this thesis sets out to correct. However, the public role and professionalism of female musicians were in opposition to the prevailing valorisation of female domesticity and privacy. Furthermore, the notion of women as creative artists was highly unstable in an era which tended to label artistry, ‘genius’ and creativity as male attributes. For these reasons, the idea of female musicians as professional artists was always in tension with contemporary conceptions of gender, making women’s experience of the ‘rise of the artist’ much more contested and uncertain compared to that of men. Those advocating the female singer as professional artist were a minority in the British musical world. Their views co-existed alongside very different and much more prevalent approaches to the female singer which had little to do with the idea of the professional artist. Through examining debates about female singers in printed sources, particularly newspapers and periodicals, alongside case studies based on the surviving documents of specific singers, this thesis builds a picture of increasing diversity in the experiences and representations of female musicians in this period and underlines the controlling influence of gender in shaping responses to them.

El objetivo de la Tesis Doctoral es analizar la actividad musical que tuvo lugar en la ciudad de Murcia durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, principalmente a través de la prensa local de carácter general, y empleando además otras fuentes complementarias, tanto españolas como italianas, procedentes de diversos archivos públicos y privados. En conjunto, se han consultado para la Tesis más de 12.000 ejemplares de periódicos murcianos pertenecientes a treinta y nueve publicaciones diferentes, que aportan un total aproximado de 11.000 noticias de interés en diversos campos de la actividad musical profana y religiosa y otras noticias de índole histórica, económica, social y cultural, idóneas para contextualizar la actividad musical. El corpus más relevante de noticias procede de los numerosos ejemplares conservados del periódico La Paz de Murcia, publicado entre 1858 y 1896. La Tesis estudia la presencia de la música en la sociedad de Murcia desde una perspectiva urbana, analizando la evolución e implantación de diversos géneros musicales (zarzuela, ópera, sinfonismo, conciertos de solistas, música de salón), los gustos del público, la recepción del repertorio musical, la situación social de los músicos murcianos y sus conexiones con el exterior, entre otros aspectos. El estudio realizado aporta información particularmente relevante sobre la música profana en muy diversas facetas, y especialmente en lo referente a música teatral, sociedades y salones musicales. La Tesis presenta también información novedosa sobre música religiosa (especialmente al tratar la producción de varios compositores murcianos) y sobre algunas composiciones musicales relacionadas con Murcia en el periodo estudiado que eran inéditas o desconocidas hasta ahora, y son estudiadas en el contexto social y cultural en el que fueron creadas y/o escuchadas. La Tesis, con un total de 1836 páginas, consta de dos volúmenes. El Volumen 1 contiene el estudio propiamente dicho, dividido en cuatro partes y once capítulos. La primera parte incluye un único capítulo sobre la presencia de la música en las publicaciones periódicas murcianas de carácter general durante el siglo XIX. La segunda parte, “Los teatros y su música”, comprende los capítulos 2 al 5. El Capítulo 2 describe los teatros de Murcia durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, dando por primera vez una visión global de todos ellos (frente a visiones previas que sólo los trataban de forma independiente y fragmentaria) y aborda el estudio detallado del coliseo más importante de la ciudad, el Teatro Romea. El Capítulo 3 está dedicado a la zarzuela y la opereta, el Capítulo 4 a la ópera y la crítica teatral y el Capítulo 5 al repertorio orquestal y los conciertos de solistas en los teatros murcianos. La tercera parte de la Tesis, titulada “Los salones”, comprende los capítulos 6 al 8. El Capítulo 6 presenta un análisis detallado de la actividad musical en las sociedades, escuelas y academias musicales de Murcia durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. En él se estudian veintiocho sociedades recreativas que influyeron poderosamente en la actividad cultural murciana, además de otras escuelas y academias musicales. En el Capítulo 7 se analiza la música en los cafés murcianos y el Capítulo 8 se centra en la actividad musical y baile en el ámbito doméstico. La cuarta parte de la Tesis Doctoral (Capítulos 9 al 11) estudia los músicos de Murcia. El Capítulo 9 se dedica las generaciones de músicos murcianos activos en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y presenta las biografías y obras de los más destacados, como Julián Calvo, el maestro de capilla Mariano García López y Antonio López Almagro, cuyas trayectorias habían sido escasamente estudiadas hasta la fecha. El Capítulo 10 está dedicado al barítono Mariano Padilla (1843-1906), músico murciano que alcanzó proyección internacional, cuya exitosa carrera se analiza por primera vez en esta Tesis. El Capítulo 11 aborda la creación musical de autores murcianos a través de los “Juegos Florales” (certámenes artístico-literarios que estimularon la composición musical local) y los orígenes de la historiografía musical murciana. El Volumen 1 finaliza con las Conclusiones Generales, relación de las principales fuentes empleadas, Bibliografía e índices de Tablas, Figuras y Gráficos. En el Volumen 2 se incluye un Documentario con una selección de ciento setenta documentos procedentes de prensa y otras fuentes; cuatro obras musicales editadas y manuscritas comentadas a lo largo de la Tesis y sesenta y tres apéndices, entre ellos la reconstrucción de los programas de teatro musical de todos los teatros murcianos (públicos y privados) en 1858-1895 y la programación musical de los distintos salones murcianos (sociedades, cafés y casas particulares). / “The musical life in Murcia during the second half on the 19th century” This Doctoral Dissertation (Ph.D.) studies the musical activity in the city of Murcia (Spain) during the second half of the 19th century, using a wide variety of sources, especially local general newspapers and other complementary documents from public and private archives preserved in Spain and Italy. After the exploration of more than 12000 issues of thirty nine different newspapers from Murcia, about 11000 news of musical interest have come to light, both on secular and religious music, as well as on the historical, economic, social and cultural context in which the musical activity took place. The most relevant corpus of information used in the study comes from the numerous extant issues of the newspaper La Paz de Murcia, published in 1858-96. The Dissertation is articulated in two volumes. Volume 1 has eleven chapters, and its content is divided in four parts: "The newspapers of the city", "The theatres and their music", "The salons", and “The musicians of the city"); this volume includes general conclusions, lists of sources and bibliography, and indexes of tables, illustrations and graphics. Volume 2 includes the edition of hundred seventy documents from newspapers and other sources, the edition of four compositions studied in the Dissertation, and sixty three appendices, among them the reconstruction of the musical repertory in all the theatres in Murcia (both public and private) in 1858-95, and the reconstruction of musical repertory in several societies, salons, cafés and private houses in the city. This work studies the rich presence of music in the society of Murcia from an urban perspective, analyzing the implantation and evolution of diverse musical genres (zarzuela, opera, operetta, symphonism, soloists' concerts, salon’ music), reception of the repertory, social situation of local musicians and their national and international connections, among other aspects. The study includes information particularly relevant about secular music, and especially about theatrical music, music in societies and private houses, and music in the cafés. The Dissertation studies also some compositions related to Murcia in the selected period, analyzing the context of their creation and performance; and (in the section about local composers) it offers new information about religious music in Murcia. An entire chapter is devoted to Mariano Padilla (1843-1906), a baritone from Murcia who had a very successful international career.

It is now broadly accepted that Vaughan Williams's music betrays a more complex relation to national influences than has traditionally been assumed. It is argued in this thesis that despite the trends towards revisionism that have characterized recent work, Vaughan Williams's interest in and engagement with English folk materials and cultures remains only partially understood. Offering contextual interpretation of materials newly available in the field, my work takes as its point of departure the critical neglect surrounding Vaughan Williams's contradictory compositional debut, in which he denounced the value of folk song in English art music in an article published alongside his song 'Linden Lea', subtitled 'A Dorset Folk Song'. Reconstructing the under-documented years of the composer's early career, it is demonstrated that Vaughan Williams's subsequent 'conversion' and lifelong attachment to folk song emerged as part of a broader concern with the intelligible and participatory quality of song and its performance by the human voice. As such, it is argued that the ways in which this composer theorized an idea of 'song' illuminate a powerful perspective from which to re-consider the propositions of his project for a national music. Locating Vaughan Williams's writings within contemporaneous cultural ideas and practices surrounding 'song', 'voice', and 'Englishness', this work brings such contexts into dialogue with readings of various of the composer's works, composed both before and after the First World War. It is demonstrated in this way that the rehabilitation of Vaughan Williams's music and reputation profitably proceeds by reconstructing a complex dialogue between his writings; between various cultural ideas and practices of English music; between the reception of his works by contemporaneous critics; and crucially, by considering the propositions of his music as explored through analysis. Ultimately, this thesis contends that Vaughan Williams's music often betrays a complex and self-conscious performance of cultural ideas of national identity, negotiating an optimistic or otherwise ambivalent relationship to an English musical tradition that is constructed and referenced through a particular idea of song.