In this thesis I explore how music-text relations in Frank Zappa’s music work together to express a central narrative, with a particular focus on his use of musical allusion. First, I frame Zappa’s creative perspective from a Dadaist philosophy, illuminating an underlying critique of American culture through the use of musical and lyrical devices such as allusion. I explore how Zappa uses allusion as a narrative device and how these allusions affect a listener’s interpretation of a track. Finally, I provide an in-depth analysis of “Billy the Mountain” from the 1972 album Just Another Band From L.A. I first present an overview and analysis of the narrative as it is presented in the lyrics and then explore how musical parameters contribute to the narrative of the track. By understanding the interaction of music and text, I create a platform from which Zappa’s music can be better understood.

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Southwest Louisiana Creoles underwent great change between World Wars I and II as they confronted American culture, people, and norms. This work examines that cultural transformation, paying particular attention to the processes of cultural assimilation and resistance to the introduction and imposition of American social values and its southern racial corollary: Jim Crow. As this work makes clear, the transition to American identity transmuted the cultural foundations of French- and Creole-speaking Creole communities. World War I signalled early transformative changes and over the next three decades, the region saw the introduction of English language, new industries, an increasing number of Protestant denominations, and the forceful imposition of racialized identities and racial segregation. Assimilation and cultural resistance characterized the Creole response, but by 1945, southwest Louisiana more closely resembled much of the American South. Creole leaders in churches, schools, and the tourism industry offered divergent reactions; some elite Creoles began looking to Francophone Canada for whitened ethnic identity support while others turned toward the Catholic establishment in Baltimore, Maryland to bolster their faith. Creoles were not the only distinct community to undergo Americanization, but Louisiana Creoles were singular in their response. As this study makes clear – in ways no historian has previously documented – Louisiana Creoles bifurcated as a result of Americanization. This study also contributes to, and broadens, the literature on Acadian identity. Previously, scholars simply assumed that whitened Latins in Louisiana had always identified with Acadia and their black-racialized brethren with Haiti. This thesis, however, suggests that Cajun and Creole are not opposites. Rather, they derive from the same people and culture, and their perceived and articulated difference emerged in response to Americanization. Through a critical analysis of that bifurcation process, this thesis demonstrates how Acadianized identity and culture emerged in the first half of the 20th century.

Most Utahns spent the years between Mormon entry into the Great Basin and statehood for Utah pursuing the traditional frontier-rural life, a mode which had been an integral part of the American experience since earliest colonial times. After the Mormon capitulation and statehood, Utah moved into a transitional phase, a phase between the traditional and the modern in which elements of each were mixed and mingled. This phase ended with the Second World War. This transition to modernity affected migration behavior. Seen in light of migration theory, the Utah experience is something of an anomaly. One theory says that migration is the result of pushes from one place-- unemployment, low wages, poor climate, and similar conditions--and pulls to other places--available jobs, better pay, and lots of sunshine. The history of Utah migration during prewar years suggests another kind of pull, the pull not from outside to leave but from within to stay. The need and commitment to remain in what some call Zion {the Mormon culture region} was strong until the Second world War. After the war other needs and commitments intervened. Government-funded G.I. Bill education and a new sense of personal efficacy caused some to leave Utah for larger industrial and commercial centers. This study concludes by focusing on the experience of a few Utah veterans who migrated to California during the early 1950s.

This dissertation seeks to expose the importance of the grotesque in the poetry and writings of Trans-Atlantic poets of the early twentieth century, particularly Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot. Prior scholarship on the poets minimizes the effect of the grotesque in favor of the more objective elements found in such movements as Imagism. This text argues that these poets re-established the grotesque in their writing after World War I mainly through Hellenic myths, especially myths concerning the motif of the tree. The myths of Daphne and Apollo, Baucis and Philemon, and others use the tree motif as an example of complete metamorphosis into a new identity. This is an example of what Mikhail Bakhtin entitles grotesque realism, a type of grotesque not acknowledged in art since the French Revolution. Since the revolution, the grotesque involved an image trapped between two established forms of identity, or what Bakhtin refers to as the Romantic grotesque. This grotesque traps the image in stasis and does not provide a dynamic change of identity in the same way as grotesque realism. Therefore, these poets introduce the subversive act of change of identity in Western literature that had been absent for the most part for nearly a century. The modern poets pick up the use of the complete metamorphosis found in Hellenic myth in order to identify with a constantly changing urban environment that alienated its inhabitants. The modern city is a form of the grotesque in that it has transformed its environment from a natural state to a manmade state that is constantly in a state of transformation, itself. The modern poets use Hellenic myths and the tree motif to create an identity for themselves that would be as dynamic in transformation as the environment they inhabited.

This dissertation seeks to expose the importance of the grotesque in the poetry and writings of Trans-Atlantic poets of the early twentieth century, particularly Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot. Prior scholarship on the poets minimizes the effect of the grotesque in favor of the more objective elements found in such movements as Imagism. This text argues that these poets re-established the grotesque in their writing after World War I mainly through Hellenic myths, especially myths concerning the motif of the tree. The myths of Daphne and Apollo, Baucis and Philemon, and others use the tree motif as an example of complete metamorphosis into a new identity. This is an example of what Mikhail Bakhtin entitles grotesque realism, a type of grotesque not acknowledged in art since the French Revolution. Since the revolution, the grotesque involved an image trapped between two established forms of identity, or what Bakhtin refers to as the Romantic grotesque. This grotesque traps the image in stasis and does not provide a dynamic change of identity in the same way as grotesque realism. Therefore, these poets introduce the subversive act of change of identity in Western literature that had been absent for the most part for nearly a century. The modern poets pick up the use of the complete metamorphosis found in Hellenic myth in order to identify with a constantly changing urban environment that alienated its inhabitants. The modern city is a form of the grotesque in that it has transformed its environment from a natural state to a manmade state that is constantly in a state of transformation, itself. The modern poets use Hellenic myths and the tree motif to create an identity for themselves that would be as dynamic in transformation as the environment they inhabited.

As one of Great Britain's leading composers, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (b. 1936) is prolific in a wide range of media, idioms, and genres, including concert and stage music, jazz, and film scores and has to his credit an extensive discography. He excels in solo vocal, instrumental, and chamber music composition and has a significant but lesser known corpus of choral music. A classically trained pianist, Bennett enjoys a parallel performing career as a jazz musician and cabaret singer. He has lived in New York since 1979.Bennett is one of a group of twentieth-century British composers who have cultivated distinctly English styles of composition. Like his near contemporaries Kenneth Leighton (1929-88), William Mathias (1934-92), and Paul Patterson (b. 1947), Bennett borrows from ancient and modern English traditions and from twentieth-century techniques to create an individual style.This study provides an historical context for English choral tradition, traced from its medieval roots through a twentieth-century musical renaissance, then identifies and examines a wide array of eclectic traits in Bennett's unaccompanied choral compositions for mixed voices. A component of the study is a literature survey to aid the choral conductor's preparation of these works for performance.This investigation revealed Bennett's affinity for English poetry and his desire to communicate the emotional content of his chosen texts through musical expression. Salient features of his compositional method are fluent linear part-writing within a contrapuntal texture, skillful textural manipulation, refined rhythmic control, and structural symmetry and balance. Other style traits emerged, including modality, pitch cross-relations, canonic imitation, word-painting, cross-rhythms, metric shifts, harmonic shifts, tone clusters, driving repetitive rhythms, extended vocal techniques, and use of the octatonic scale. Collectively, these suggest the composer was influenced by Tudor polyphony (possibly subconsciously), Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), William Walton (1902-83), Olivier Messiaen (1908-92), and Benjamin Britten (1913-76).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of History, 2003. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 276-293).

Focusing on interactions between Britain and the US in the field of popular song, this thesis explores the constitutive relationship between discourse, performance, and identity via critical and postcolonial theory. I interrogate how and why nostalgic and essentialising visions of alterity were used to resist mass consumption, global capitalism, and the changes wrought by modernity during the twentieth century. I argue that folk music does not exist outside the discourse of revivalism and is therefore best seen as an institutionalised system of knowledge animating the 'low Other'. Chapter 1, '"Dancing Puppets": Nationalism, Social Darwinism, and the Transatlantic Invention of Folksong', uncovers moments of mediation between 'primitive' cultures and metropolitan elites during the early twentieth century. Employing the idea of gatekeeping, I critique a genealogy of powerful voices including Cecil J. Sharp and John A. Lomax alongside others who persistently challenged their orthodoxies. Chapter 2, '"His Rough, Stubborn Muse": Industrial Balladry, Class, and the Politics of Realism', investigates Marxist visions of working-class culture, showing how ideas of rural authenticity were translated onto urban contexts. Focusing on the BBC 'radio ballads', I argue that industrial folksong was a form of social realism intended as a gendered bulwark against threats posed by Americanisation and postwar affluence. Chapter 3, '"Found True and Unspoiled": Blues, Performance, and the Mythology of Racial Display', explores African American culture, showing how desires written into a revivalist gaze forced artists to assume what I term 'black masks' for the benefit of white male fantasy. Focusing on televised performances, I argue that the semiotics of blues events provide a way of understanding the workings of racial identity itself. I conclude by proposing that what I term the 'folkloric imagination' is a simulacrum brought into existence by ideological fantasy - a manifestation of the colonialist Real.

abstract: ABSTRACT The annual concours, or examens de fin d’année, of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP) is a centuries-old tradition that began in 1797. It serves to determine each participating student’s readiness for graduation. For each competition from 1797-1999, specific pieces were assigned for each instrument. Through much of the nineteenth century, conservatory professors wrote these pieces for their students. In the twentieth century, the practice of assigning works previously written by other composers or commissioning new works by (usually) French composers became the norm. Oboists outside of France tend to associate terms such as “conservatory pieces” or “concours pieces” with pieces assigned during the nineteenth century, while generally overlooking twentieth century morceaux de concours. The purpose of this paper is to bring these forgotten pieces to light and provide background information to help oboists determine the suitability of these pieces for their own performance contexts. Because research regarding the pieces selected during Professor Georges Gillet’s tenure (1882-1919) is already available, this paper focuses on the pieces selected from 1920-1999. A list of required pieces for oboe from 1824-2000, obtained from CNSMDP archive manager Sophie Lévy, made possible the compilation of an annotated bibliography of morceaux de concours for oboe from 1920-1999. (The annotated bibliography ends with the 1999 concours because, since 2000, oboists have been required to select their own programs.) The bibliography lists every piece that was performed, but only gives detailed descriptions of (1) twentieth century pieces that were specifically commissioned for the concours and (2) twentieth century pieces selected, but not specifically commissioned, for the concours, that are not considered to be part of the standard oboe repertoire. A brief description of trends observed within this set of contest pieces follows the bibliography, along with appendices intended to facilitate more productive use of the bibliography. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2020