Giacomo Meyerbeer (September 5, 1791-May 2, 1864) was one of the most celebrated composers in the 19th century and the leading exponent of French grand opera. Meyerbeer's operas were immensely popular; for example, his opera Robert le diable was performed 100 times in Paris alone and was featured on the programs of 77 theatres in ten countries, all within three years of its première. Meyerbeer's collaboration with Eugène Scribe, who was the most famous librettist of the century, began with Robert le diable (1831) and their partnership continued for the creation of Les Huguenots (1836), Le prophète (1849), and L'Africaine (1865). Meyerbeer's larger-than-life operas defined the genre of French grand opera. Meyerbeer was a serious, dedicated composer who composed mostly for the stage, but he also wrote sacred music, choral music, instrumental music, and songs. Meyerbeer composed over 50 songs, mostly mélodies and lieder that were translated and published in both German and French. He also composed some Italian canzonette. Meyerbeer's songs are rarely performed in recitals, however, they have originality, beauty, intensity, and theatricality and are worthy to be explored, performed, and cherished. His operas featured unconventional and sensational scenes, tragic love stories set in the middle of the whirlwind of political and religious clash, and bigger-than-life sets to transport his audience to exotic, faraway places. Did Meyerbeer lend the same magical touch to his songs? Was he able to create the same story line of epic portion as he did in his grand operas? My goal is to provide an introduction to the Meyerbeer song repertoire which as a result will encourage more voice teachers, students, and professional performers to incorporate Meyerbeer's outstanding, yet rarely performed songs into their recital programs. In the charts, Meyerbeer's songs are organized by three language groups: Italian, French, and German, and are organized alphabetically by title within each language group. Each chart has eight columns: number; song title; lyricist; year of composition; range; additional available singing translations; difficulty level; and comments. Six songs in total, with two songs from each language group, are chosen and analyzed to explore Meyerbeer’s songs in depth. The selected songs are from various points of Meyerbeer’s career, and are of different levels of difficulties, topics, lengths, and moods. / Music Performance

abstract: Since its inception, the American Broadway industry has flourished and grown to include numerous vocal styles and techniques. The early twenty-first century has seen a rapid increase in demand for collegiate courses and instructors pertaining to music theater. It has therefore become necessary for voice instructors to be equally comfortable teaching both music theater and classical techniques such as bel canto. This document serves as a resource for instructors seeking more information on defining and teaching vocal styles in music theater including legit, mix, and belt. The first two chapters address the following three questions: 1) What is bel canto and how does the technique function? 2) What is music theater as a vocal style and how do colloquial terms such as legit, mix and belt function within music theater? 3) Are the technical ideas behind bel canto and music theater really that different? The third chapter offers a curriculum for a semester-long course (a hybrid between a song literature class and a performance-based seminar) called Singing Music Theater Styles: From Hammerstein to Hamilton. This course shows the rich development tracing techniques of bel canto through techniques used in contemporary music theater. This document concludes with an annotated bibliography of major sources useful to both the instructors wishing to teach this course and the performers looking to expand their knowledge of singing music theater. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2018

Self-efficacy is theorized to represent our ability, capability, or capacity to accomplish particular tasks. One’s belief in that ability (self-efficacy belief) has been identified as the greatest predictor of successful performance and is influenced by four primary sources (enactive mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal/social persuasion, physiological and affective states), in addition to personal and contextual influences. However, the development of accurate self-perceptions may be particularly challenging for the collegiate vocalist. In the development of singing technique—where self-assessment is complicated by the corporal nature of the vocal instrument—Bandura’s (1997) sources of self-efficacy provide a framework whereby assessment of ability and capability may become more tangible. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to investigate how collegiate vocal students’ beliefs in their vocal performance abilities may be influenced by the four self-efficacy sources and personal/contextual factors. I distributed the Vocal Performance Self-Efficacy Survey (adapted from Zelenak, 2011) to 46 voice majors at a private university in the western United States. Nine interview participants, who represented diversity of performance beliefs, were subsequently selected from the survey participant pool. Interview participants completed an initial interview based on a priori themes (four sources of self-efficacy); and a follow-up interview, which explored contextual factors (i.e., student/teacher relationship, environment, cognitive self-regulation, practice habits, and gender). In addition, participants documented three experiences—in a voice lesson, practice session, and performance—that fostered or hindered their performance belief. Vocal students in this study described how they progressed in self-belief by moving from a reliance on external assessments of ability to a reliance on self-appraisal as they (a) developed their technique through practice, studio learning, and performance (enactive mastery experience); (b) watched coping and master models (vicarious experience); (c) received feedback (verbal/social persuasion); (d) knew and felt physically when they were singing freely (physiological and affective states); and (e) learned to exercise agency (cognitive self-regulation). A particularly important finding from this study was the common and consistent reliance singers placed on physiological and affective states. Eight of nine interview participants responded that, of all the self-efficacy sources, physiological and affective states most affected their performance belief. Interview data indicate the importance of nurturing vocal students’ performance beliefs through utilizing the four sources of self-efficacy, fostering qualities of persistence and resilience, facilitating cognitive self-regulation, working toward productive student/teacher relationships, and creating safe learning and performance environments.

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In 2008, the American Academy of Teachers of Singing released a paper in support of further research and training in the teaching of non-classical music or Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM). CCM can be defined as encompassing (but not limited to) the following genres: musical theatre, pop, rock, gospel, R&B, soul, hip-hop, rap, country, folk, and experimental music. Despite the increase in number of musical theatre and CCM degree programs at American universities, and the that national voice pedagogy organizations have begun to include musical theatre competitions and masterclasses, such academic training for future voice teachers has not met the demand. A 2003 survey by LoVetri and Weekly to evaluate the levels of training and experience of voice teachers in CCM styles of singing showed that while 71 schools offered Bachelor’s degrees in Musical Theatre, there were no schools offering CCM voice pedagogy training. In a 2009 follow-up, Weekly and LoVetri found that only 19% of those surveyed had any training to teach Musical Theatre. Additionally, many teachers indicated they were only classically trained and had no idea how to sing in any other style. For this study a three-part survey containing 27 questions was used to survey voice teachers who had been enrolled in or completed graduate-level (MM or DMA) voice programs since the publication of Weekly and LoVetri’s most recent survey. The purpose of the survey was to discover the pedagogical training of recent graduate voice students in CCM. The data is collected from a population in which n=66. While this study did show an increase in pedagogical training in CCM at the graduate university level (26%) as well as an increase in the number of CCM teachers with both graduate-level training and performance experience, this increase was small, and the majority of those who reported having received training did so through private instruction or independent study. / Music Performance

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Speech work, as it relates to actor training, has undergone many important changes since its formal introduction to the field over a century ago by Edith Skinner. Unfortunately, there are many who hold on to antiquated, misinformed and often harmful approaches to this kind of training. This thesis questioned the traditional models of speech pedagogy by creating a narrative for its development, questioning its efficacy, and exploring the alternatives that have developed over the years. I looked at the texts and approaches of Edith Skinner, Patricia Fletcher, Louis Coliaini, and Dudley Knight/Phil Thompson. I acknowledge that each practitioner has made a substantial contribution to the field. In this thesis I question what place each has in the future of speech pedagogy in America. I gathered opinions from both critics and proponents of each work in the hopes of creating a more cohesive understanding of how speech pedagogy should be handled in the future according to those who will be teaching it. This thesis includes considerable usage of phonetic symbols found on the International Phonetic Alphabet establish by the International Phonetic Association.

Emil Behnke was a highly esteemed vocal pedagogue of the late nineteenth century. Perhaps rare for the time, the art and science of teaching vocal methods of speech and singing was a Behnke family business, one that Emil shared with his wife and daughter, who were both named Kate. Indeed, Emil's daughter, Kate Emil Behnke, was equally regarded and valued in the field of vocal pedagogy, carrying her father's teachings into the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the elder Kate Behnke, wife to Emil and mother to Kate Emil, was responsible for administering and building upon her husband's innovative methods of speech therapy, establishing her own reputation as a speech healer. The Behnke family published no less than fourteen books, cumulatively. Largely forgotten today, the purpose of this document is to provide a comprehensive overview of the biography and the pedagogical methods and works of the Behnke family, and to contextualize these methods within the framework of trusted vocal pedagogy, both historic and current.

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