A presente dissertação tem como objetivo apontar e analisar elementos composicionais relacionados aos textos em seis canções compostas por Alberto Nepomuceno no ano de 1894. A opção pela análise da relação texto-música nesta seleção de canções de Nepomuceno possibilitou a observação de associações entre o texto em diversos elementos contributivos da linguagem musical: harmonia, melodia, textura, ritmo e dinâmica. Nesse grupo de canções de Nepomuceno, podemos observar que o compositor emprega diversos procedimentos musicais para representar também os conceitos de persona e modo de endereçamento em suas eventuais mudanças, de caráter emocional, temporal ou psicológico. / This work aims to point out compositional elements in six songs composed by Alberto Nepomuceno in 1894 through musical analysis related to the texts. The option for the analysis of the text and music in this selection of songs by Nepomuceno allowed the observation of associations in several contributory elements of musical language: harmony, melody, texture, rhythm and dynamics. In this group of songs, Nepomuceno employs as well several musical procedures to represent the concepts of persona and mode of address in their eventual changes in emotional, temporal or psychological aspects.

MIRRORS is a cycle of songs composed for soprano voice and piano using five poems by Sylvia Plath. The work features the creation of a protagonist and tells a chronological story through the arrangement of the five poems colored and unified by the manipulation of a thematic twelve-tone row.

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This essay introduces readers to the music of the Venezuelan composer Modesta Bor (1926-1998) and provides a resource for interpretation of her art songs for voice and piano. Bor was an important composer in Venezuela with a successful career in composition, pedagogy, and conducting. However, she is not widely known outside of Venezuela and scholarship on her art song is limited. This study seeks to fill that void by examining Bor’s twenty-nine published art songs for solo voice and piano. These works include the song cycles/collections Tres canciones infantiles para voz y piano, Canciones infantiles, Primer ciclo de romanzas para contralto y piano, Segundo ciclo de romanzas para contralto y piano, Tríptico sobre poesía cubana, and Tres canciones para mezzo-soprano y piano, as well as nine ungrouped songs. Bor’s art songs are notable for her imitation of Venezuelan folk and popular music in the vein of Figurative Nationalism, her sophisticated harmonic language, and neoclassical techniques such as ostinato and motivic variation. This essay aims to help performers begin to understand the allusions to the national music of Venezuela. Her music elevates the llanero, the common rural laborer, and comments on the social issues of her people. This essay provides a brief history of Venezuelan music, a biography of Bor, and brief biographies of the poets used. It also contributes original poetic and musical analyses of her art songs, exploring the areas of form, melody, rhythm, and harmony. Venezuelan Spanish and the lyric diction appropriate for Bor’s songs are discussed. Poetic translations, word-for-word translations, and International Phonetic Alphabet transliterations are included for all of the poetry used.

The Kalevala, first published in 1835 by Elias Lönnrot, is the Finnish national epic and was fundamental in formalizing the Finnish language. It is a collection of stories Lönnrot collected over many years, pieced together to create a coherent epic. The stories in the Kalevala stem from an oral tradition, in which singing and music was integral. The stories in the epic contain many different characters, with Väinämöinen and his quest in to find a wife at the forefront. Other major characters discussed include Kullervo, Lemminkäinen, and Luonnotar. Extensive research exists about the history of the Kalevala itself, as well as its impact on music in Finland in the areas of pop music, symphonic music, choral music, and opera. However, little scholarship exists, regarding how the texts from the Kalevala have been incorporated into 19th and 20th century art song. The lack of research about the Kalevala in art song is due partly to the fact that no catalogue of related songs exists. Also, works based on the Kalevala are hard to obtain, as many are only available in manuscript form, or are found only in the Finnish National Archives. This essay aims to bridge the research gap on art song inspired by the Kalevala, while evaluating the works available in the context of their incorporation of the folk singing tradition that would have been used in the early performance of these Kalevala texts. Songs analyzed include works by Gabriel Linsén, Emil Kauppi, Jean Sibelius, Otto Kotilainen, and Erkki Melartin.

This doctoral essay examines the vocal solo and duet repertoire of Kenneth Mahy, an American composer of art song and choral music in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By examining his songs, assessing their difficulty, and analyzing their texts, this essay establishes that Kenneth Mahy is a composer worthy of note. In addition, this study provides pedagogical observations and performance notes of his songs. Furthermore, this essay provides biographical information about Mahy, and examines how his training, education, military experience, and unique experiences as the son of missionaries in China and the Philippines, among other influences, have affected and shaped his compositions. Resources include source material gathered from Mahy's personal archives, manuscripts and scores, and personal interviews with Mahy. This information provides comprehensive insight into a unique and deserving composer of modern American art song.

Masters Research - Master of Creative Arts / The study of Love and Death in Art Song and Opera is all- encompassing, threading the study of music with the other arts – literature, especially poetry and drama, and the visual arts, especially painting – and linking the study of philosophy and history, to provide a reference point for the societal attitudes of the time in which my repertoire was written. As the themes of love and death began to be expressed in literature and the arts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, my exploration of this theme has grown into a journey through some of the most beautiful, expressive and well-known vocal music of the Romantic era, and into the twentieth century. The Romantics were intimately concerned with the expression of individual emotions, providing me with many opportunities to study repertoire relating to the many aspects of both love and death. It was interesting to discover how musical expression changed within the different national schools I studied – German, French, Spanish, and some Italian arias. I began my study in 1810 with the songs of Franz Schubert. As the master who revolutionized the German Lied, I felt it appropriate to open my first recital, indeed the first two recitals, with a set of Schubert Lieder. I also studied the works of Robert Schumann in the first two recitals, the only composer whose Lieder I studied as single songs and as a song cycle, the well-loved Frauenliebe und Leben. In Recital 2 I turned my attention to French repertoire, with the study of the magnificent song cycle of Hector Berlioz, Les nuits d’été. In the first two recitals I also studied bel canto and French arias. In the third recital I decided to continue my exploration of French Romantic music in relationship to love and death with a set of songs by Gabriel Fauré. My attention turned back to German repertoire - very different, however, from the works of Schubert and Schumann, in the famous song cycle by Richard Wagner, Wesendoncklieder. Two French songs completed this recital. My final recital featured an all-Spanish program, in which I explored my theme in two song cycles, Spanish opera and zarzuela.

Le compositeur espagnol Luis de Pablo a écrit nombre de pièces pour voix soliste et instruments, basées sur des textes poétiques, qui ont été fort peu étudiées.À tous les points de vue, ces oeuvres ne constituent pas un corpus homogène. À travers quatre axes analytiques (forme, timbre et instrumentation, vocalité et mélodie, sémantique et texte) correspondant aux quatre chapitres centraux, ce travail essaie de cerner à quel genre elles se rattachent et quel type de relation elles entretiennent avec le Lied, la mélodie ou la canción. Ces pièces vocales « de chambre », occasion privilégiée de rencontre avec la poésie, « émanent » d'un texte avec lequel elles entretiennent un rapport tout à fait spécifique. L’une de nos hypothèses est que l’on peut peut-être y déceler une influence « madrigaliste ».Cette thèse ambitionne in fine de resituer l'ensemble de ces oeuvres dans le parcours esthétique du compositeur, ainsi que dans leur contexte spatio-temporel à la fois espagnol et européen.La thèse aborde aussi d'autres questions subsidiaires, comme le rôle que joue la langue espagnole dans cette production, la capacité de la musique de transmettre une idée extra-musicale et la nette intertextualité qui se dégage d’une partie de ces pièces. Ce travail s’appuie dans son intégralité sur la voix personnelle du compositeur (recueillie dans des entretiens inédits, réalisés à Madrid de juillet 2011 à juin 2012). / Spanish composer Luis de Pablo is author of a number of works for solo voice and instruments (usually small instrumental ensembles), based on poetic texts, which is one of his less studied features of his oeuvre.From any point of view, these works are not a homogeneous group. Departing from four analytical perspectives (form, timbre and instrumentation, voice emission and melody, and semantic and text) which correspond to the four central chapters, this thesis seeks to answer the question of their identity as a musical genre and their relationship to Lied, mélodie and canción. As a music that « emanates » from a text, these « chamber » vocal pieces, meeting place par excellence with poetry, present in every level and parameter, a specific relationship to the text. We will try to elucidate a possible influence of madrigalisms in this relationship. The present thesis finally ambitions to place these works in the overall evolution of the composer and in the Spanish and European context.The thesis approaches also other questions like the role of Spanish language, the capacity of music to convey an extramusical idea and the high level of intertextuality in some of these works. This thesis uses along the exposition the personal voice of the composer (collected through our own unpublished interviews which were made in Madrid from July 2011 to June 2012).

abstract: The purpose of this research is to assemble a collection of Russian Art song repertoire selected for beginner level training, with an exposition of the criteria for their appropriateness as teaching pieces. This examination defines the scope of vocal, technical, language and interpretive abilities required for the performance of Russian Art song literature. It also establishes the need for a pedagogical approach that is free from Eurocentric cultural biases against Russian language and culture. Intended as a reference for teachers and students to simplify the introduction of Russian Art song into the repertoire of the advanced secondary or beginning undergraduate student, it includes a discussion of learning priorities and challenges particular to native English speakers relative to successful Russian language lyric diction assimilation, with solutions. This study is designed to furnish material for a published edition of songs in the appropriate transpositions for high, medium and low voice including word-for- word and sense translations with IPA transcriptions, along with program notes for each piece. Repertoire is selected from the works of Alyab'yev, Gurilyov, Varlamov, Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, as well as a few folk songs. The repertoire is grouped by difficulty and accompanied by English translations, interpretive analyses of the Russian Language poetry, and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions modified for lyric diction. The degrees of difficulty are determined by vocal registration demands, word lengths and rhythmical text setting, as well as the incidences of unfamiliar phonological processes and complex consonant clusters occurring in the text. A scope and sequence chart is included, supplemented with learning objectives and teaching strategies, which organizes the repertoire according the order in which the pieces are to be taught. A palatalization guide is provided, to provide solutions for common pronunciation problems. Included in the appendices are listings of additional recommended Russian art song titles and recommended listening and viewing. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2014

abstract: This paper is a performance guide for Quatro Canções da Floresta do Amazonas [Four Songs of The Amazon Forest] by Brazil's most prolific composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos. The primary purpose of the paper is to serve as a source for the correct pronunciation of the Brazilian Portuguese language of the songs. It will begin with an overview of Heitor Villa-Lobos's life and career, showing how his compositions catalyzed the Nationalistic movement in Brazilian classical music. His inclusion of native and folk elements into classical compositions was a significant innovation, which places Villa-Lobos as one of the most important Brazilian classical composers. Furthermore, this paper will explore the issue of Brazilian Portuguese diction in depth, using the Quatro Canções da Floresta do Amazonas to aid non-native Brazilian speakers. This includes an International Phonetic Alphabet transcription of the songs, as well as a recording of the songs being read and sung by the author, a link to which can be found in the appendix. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2017