Wind bands have been recording for over one hundred years. Through advancements in both technology and process, recordings have made a monumental impact on the wind band and its repertoire. These advancements have created clarity regarding the performance practice of pieces and helped to preserve the wind band repertoire. Many early works have gained masterwork status due, in large part, to the fact that recordings have preserved them. The increase in popularity of recording and, in particular, the wind band, warrants an investigation into the various aspects of the process. Additionally, gaining insight from wind band professionals who record will help to evaluate the contributions that recording has made to the education of performers and listeners, the preservation of repertoire and the artistic enhancement of the wind band. Each chapter explores aspects of the recording process and how those aspects have shaped the wind band, its repertoire and performance practice. Information from conductors, composers and engineers provide valuable insight pertaining to the educational, historical and artistic components of the recording process. The goal of all involved in the recording process should be the pursuit of technical perfection, which does not eclipse the ultimate musical goals of the project and the integrity of the composer's intentions.

James Caesar Petrillo, President of the American Federation of Musicians, called a strike effective July 31, 1942, prohibiting union members from making any disc recordings or electrical transcriptions. The present study recounts the history of that strike, including efforts to end it, reactions to it by various government and trade organizations and the circumstances under which it finally did end. The study focuses on the effect of the strike on radio broadcasters, both directly (through recordings they used) and indirectly (through the strike's effects on the recording and related industries), and concludes that it changed the character of radio's music somewhat, but had little detrimental effect on radio's profits.

This dissertation is an analysis of historical change within those cultural industries involved in the production and dissemination of popular music. Through an analysis of the relationship between the recording and radio industries within the United States, during the period 1976-1985, the manner in which crises within these industries arise and are resolved is traced. The emergence of such musical forms as "disco" and "New Wave", and the manner in which these forms have been integrated within the functioning of the music-related industries, are central concerns of the dissertation. At the same time, more general theoretical hypotheses concerning the role played by taste in the creation of audiences for different categories of popular music are elaborated and employed within the study of specific musical genres.

The mediation of popular musicians in the twentieth century results in the construction of cultural formations-mass mediated pop musician icons-that are, to various degrees, weighted down by the ideologies and concerns of those who receive them as mediated texts. In passing judgment on these cultural icons, the public engages in a massive act of reading, and in the process the icons become sites of personal and cultural signification. This study examines the nature of signification in and through mass mediated popular music icons by exploring the processes by which popular music icons are produced, circulated, and read as texts; and it examines, when appropriate, the significant content of these icons.

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