In attempts to take a step towards illustrating Berlioz's musical aesthetic, my dissertation explores his "Critical Study" as his manifesto of the new poetic in music, which uses Beethoven's symphonies as models. First published in 1844, his "Critical Study" is a collection of individual essays on each of Beethoven's nine symphonies - the most widely known version of these essays originally published in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris in 1837-8. This collection of essays derives from a reworking of Berlioz's earliest articles on Beethoven (1829-37), notably his reviews of a new concert series at the Societe des concerts du Conservatoire that premiered Beethoven's symphonies in Paris. Almost ten years in the making, Berlioz's "Critical Study" represents the pinnacle of his writings on Beethoven. Here he promotes Beethoven's "romantic" symphonies as models of "poetic" forms, within the context of emerging French literary Romanticism. I examined some of the key components in Beethoven's music that most occupy Berlioz as critic and, in turn, how Berlioz as composer develops these key components in his own contribution to the symphonic genre - his Romeo et Juliette (1839), composed at the peak of his Beethoven study. Ultimately, I hope to have demonstrated that the subtle mixture of the musical, the poetic, the critical pedagogical, and the cultural that intersect in Berlioz's Romeo et Juliette exemplifies the same aesthetic of the poetic that he promotes in Beethoven's symphonies. / Graduate

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.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of North Texas, 2006. / System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Accompanied by 4 recitals, recorded Apr. 3, 2000, Sept. 17, 2001, Oct. 13, 2003, and Oct. 24, 2006. Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-89).

Georges Kastner's (b Strasbourg 9 March 1810; d Paris 19 December 1867) Traite général d'instrumentation (1837), an important contribution to instrumentation study, is often overlooked because of its chronological proximity to Berlioz's Grand traité d'instrumentation (1843). Kastner's complete and concise treatise discusses the standard orchestral instruments and several obscure and ancient instruments. Intended principally for young composers, it provides the most detailed descriptions of the standard wind instruments of his day and discusses recent developments like the ophicleide and valved brass instruments. After the publication of the Traité, Kastner released a supplement including Aldophe Sax's newest innovations, entitled Cours d'instrumentation, which included musical examples of principals discussed in the Traité. Both the Traité and the Cours were accepted by the Academy and adopted by the Paris Conservatoire.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University

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This dissertation explores what it is that makes Les nuits d’été such an effective musical composition. This is done by analysing the song cycle according to Terry Eagleton’s four categories of psychoanalytical literary criticism. The death of Berlioz’s mother, with whom he had an unresolved conflict at the time of her death, is proposed as the emotional trigger that led to the composition of these songs. The content and form of the music to which he set them reveals a narrative that closely corresponds to Freud’s description of the Oedipal conflict and its successful resolution. Using the psychoanalytical theories of Lacan, Barthes, Kristeva and others, the subliminal catharsis of Berlioz’s song cycle, in the way that it is transposed to the listener through the mediation of the music, is proposed as the reason why Les nuits d’été is such an effective musical composition. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / M.A. (Musicology)