Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraits from the Italian peninsula that depict women with keyboard instruments have been discussed as an apparent trend by feminist art historians and musicologists. While the connection between these portraits and the well-known iconography of the musical St. Cecilia has been noted, the association between keyboard instruments and the female body has been less frequently explored. In this study, I use methodologies from feminist theory and gender studies, most notably gender performativity, in order to explore how an artist's dialogue between the portrait subject and her instrument creates and is created by complex relationships ingrained by the dominant patriarchal structures that circumscribed women's lives at the time. To realize these interpretive goals, I have chosen two paintings that are less often discussed in art historical and musicological literature: the self-portrait attributed to Marietta Robusti, and St. Cecilia Playing the Keyboard in the style of Artemisia Gentileschi.

189 p. / Church music has been given relatively little scholarly attention in the study of nineteenth-century music. While there is an array of mass settings that were composed by Romantic-era composers, current musicological research marginalizes them. Paris was one location where a tradition of composing new masses continued well into the nineteenth century. While best known for his works for the stage, Charles Gounod (1818-1893) was a leading French composer of sacred music and one of the most prolific sacred composers of his time. His most important liturgical composition is the Messe solennelle de Sainte-Cecile, which once enjoyed considerable international success. This thesis focuses on the history of this mass in biographical and historical context. I discuss the topics of music and religion in France from the Revolution to Gounod's time, the composer's long musical relationship with the church, the music of the Messe de Sainte-Cecile, and its reception.

A estética da ópera cômica, germe da música setecentista, deu aos compositores uma nova gama de combinações e estratégias musicais de contraste e fluxo dramático, pois, ao representar na ópera a ação de homens comuns, a música pôde absorver e combinar tanto materiais retirados dos mais diversos contextos culturais - como a caça, a guerra e o campo - quanto estilos musicais que, juntos, são chamados de tópicas musicais. Por conseguinte, a gama de combinações setecentista possibilitou os compositores criarem significados expressivos únicos, de acordo com as finalidades expressivas determinadas pelo contexto social, cultural e teológico nos quais a música se insere. Tais inovações na linguagem musical também estavam disponíveis para o padre e compositor brasileiro José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767 - 1830). O objetivo desta pesquisa é estudar o Kyrie da Missa de Santa Cecilia do Pe. José Maurício Nunes Garcia na perspectiva da significação musical, a fim de investigar (1) a estratégia musical pela qual José Maurício compôs este Kyrie, (2) se estratégias musicais apontam para um significado expressivo que tenha relação (isto é, que seja correlato) com as unidades culturais/teológicas envolvidas no martírio de Santa Cecília (como, por exemplo, abnegação, redenção, salvação, etc.), e se, (3) a partir disso, podemos compreender como essas unidades culturais e/ou ideias teológicas influenciam as escolhas musicais. Ao manipular desde elementos formais, como harmonia e cadências, a tópicas musicais retiradas da tradição da música pastoril à tradição de representar na ópera cenas de assombro e maravilha (cuja música ficou conhecida como ombra), José Maurício consegue dialogar com a cultura e a teologia que circundam a Missa de Santa Cecília. / The aesthetics of comic opera, germ of eighteenth-century music, gave to composers a new range of musical combinations and strategies of contrast and dramatic flow. By playing in the opera the action of ordinary men, music was able to absorb and combine both materials taken from more diverse cultural contexts - such as hunting, war and the countryside - as well as musical styles that, together, are called musical topics. Consequently, the range of eighteenth-century combinations allowed composers to create unique expressive meanings, according to the expressive purposes determined by the social, cultural, and theological context in which music is inserted. Such innovations in the musical language were also available to the Brazilian priest and composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767 - 1830). This research aims to study the Kyrie of the Mass of St. Cecilia of Fr. José Maurício Nunes Garcia in the perspective of musical signification, in order to investigate (1) the musical strategy in which José Maurício composed this Kyrie, (2) if the musical strategie points to the cultural / theological units involved in the martyrdom of St. Cecilia (such as self-denial, redemption, salvation, etc.), and if (3) we can understand how these cultural units / theological ideas influence musical choices. By manipulating from formal elements, such as harmony and cadences, to musical topics taken from the tradition of pastoral music to the tradition of representing scenes of awe and wonder (whose music became known as ombra), José Maurício manages to dialogue with the culture and the theology surrounding the Mass of St. Cecilia.