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The purpose of this study is to provide a conductor's resource for preparation of the Missa Dona Nobis Pacem of Ernst Pepping (1901-1981). While research on the organ works has been done, there is no English language resource on the sacred choral works of Pepping. This paper provides a collection of information on Pepping's life, musical characteristics, and the composition of the Missa Dona Nobis Pacem. Following an introductory first chapter, Chapter Two is a biographical sketch of the composer with emphasis on compositional periods and important historical figures, and it places Pepping's works into this context. The third chapter is a brief description of Pepping's musical language and places the Mass in historical compositional context through a discussion of the Vier letzte Lieder of Richard Strauss (1869-1949) and the Cinq rechants of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), two vocal works also written in 1948. Chapter Four is an overview of the Mass. The fifth chapter gives an analysis of the Missa Dona Nobis Pacem and provides musical examples. The sixth and final chapter provides further insight into the works for a cappella choir by Ernst Pepping with a discussion of two major examples from the same compositional period, Heut und ewig (1948) and the Passionsbericht des Matthaus (1949-1950). The Appendices are a chronological list of the choral compositions of Ernst Pepping, and a chronology.

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).

The purpose of this study was to chronicle the genesis of cultivated choral tone in the United States from 1906 to 1928. That transformation was led by three conductors whose disparate careers represented a shared trajectory. Individually and collectively, they pioneered two singing genres with European provenance--a cappella and senza vibrato singing--as early techniques to isolate and refine choral tone. Their work converged in 1928, when it expanded to become the American A Cappella Movement (1928-1938). The earliest of the three conductors was Peter C. Lutkin (1858-1931). After study in Europe, he became dean of the School of Music at Northwestern University. Through his publications and university a cappella choir, founded in 1906, he placed greater responsibility on singers, and employed diction and breath control to improve intonation and tonal purity. German-educated Norwegian-American F. Melius Christiansen (1871-1955) was guided by his experience as a violinist and influenced by the choir of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, Germany. In 1907, he began to gradually transform the choir of St. John's Lutheran Church choir in Northfield, Minnesota. By 1920, his St. Olaf Lutheran Choir toured nationwide and eventually epitomized a choral prototype through his publications, compositions, ideology, and methods, both original and derivative. Self-reliant and confident, Christiansen championed Russian choral literature, symphonic form for programming, and self-referential choral singing. His "inner choir" technique, "instrumental" tuning for choirs, and "conductorless" onset of tone were widely imitated. Spiritual beliefs undergirded his work. Originally inspired by Christiansen, Ohioan John Finley Williamson (1887-1964), a trained singer, cultivated choral tone by recontextualizing solo vocal Lamperti technique into choral methods. In 1920, he modeled his ensemble's results via national tours with his Dayton Westminster Choir. By 1926, he co-founded a choir school in a Dayton church where he implemented his theory of the choral rehearsal as a class voice lesson. His unorthodox tenets included his belief that vowels were controlled by volume and phrase conducting, that vowel color was dictated by overtones, and that a conflict existed between time beating and "rhythmic magic" (or "pace").

Master of Music / Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Julie Yu Oppenheim / Students in a combined choir of 7th and 8th graders learned the basics of woodshedding, which is a technique that barbershop choirs use to add harmony to a melody without the use of written music. Building off of previous skills, particularly ear training through use of solfege and Curwen hand signs, students learned how to create their own vocal harmony with any given chord progression. Students demonstrated these skills by singing along with the melody, “You Are My Sunshine.” Through my courses at Kansas State University, two main areas of development have been, 1) continued growth in teaching beginners using Gordon’s Music Learning Theory (Gordon, 2012) and Curwen handsigns for ear training, 2) developing a culture of excellence that expands to all vocal students, teaching them strong character, work ethic, and musicianship for a lifetime of making music.

abstract: Redeemed from the Fall is a cantata in five movements for double choir SSAATTBB with Soprano and Baritone soloists and violin, bass clarinet, marimba, and organ. The work’s approximate duration is 19 minutes. The text is derived from ancient and modern scriptures including the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses as contained in the Pearl of Great Price. The textual theme addresses the compelling narrative of the redemption of Adam and Eve after the Fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The work begins with an instrumental overture, In Sorrow, inspired by the fallen state our first parents entered as consequence for partaking of the forbidden fruit. The second movement, The First Angel, is an aria for baritone accompanied by choir a cappella. It sets to music the words of an angel who appeared to Adam proclaiming that animal sacrifice is representative of the future atoning sacrifice of the Son of God. The central movement, The Baptism of Adam, is for soprano solo, choir (SSAA) and the ensemble. It depicts the miraculous events surrounding Adam’s acceptance of the gospel covenant, with the Holy Spirit baptizing Adam by immersion in water. The subsequent a cappella chorus, This Is the Plan of Salvation, further explores the truth that salvation for Adam and Eve and all their posterity was prepared through Christ from the beginning. The full chorus and ensemble perform the finale, Adam Fell, declaring that the very purpose of the Fall was that all humans could know the joy of redemption through Christ. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2017

abstract: William Levi Dawson (1899-1990), director of the Tuskegee Institute Choir from 1931 to 1956, was one of the most important arrangers of Negro spirituals in the twentieth century. He is also remembered as an outstanding composer, conductor, speaker, and leader of festival choruses. His arrangements are still sung by choirs all over the world. Save a small number of dissertations and various articles, however, very little has been written about him. In fact, almost no significant writing has been undertaken utilizing the Dawson papers held at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. This study utilizes that collection in examining four areas of Dawson's life: his work as a composer, his work as an arranger of Negro spirituals, his work as a choral conductor and music pedagogue, and his life as an African American man living in segregated times. Dawson is shown as a thoughtful, deliberate practitioner of his art who built his career with intention, and who, through his various activities, sought both to affirm the traditional music of his people and to transcend his era's problems with the definitions, associations, and prejudices attached to the term "race." Using a diverse selection of letters, notes, and speeches held in the archive, it is possible to develop a fuller, more nuanced portrait of Dawson. Through a thorough examination of a select few of these documents, his growth can be traced from a young composer living in Chicago, to a college choral director dealing with the realities of racial inequality in the mid-twentieth century, to a seasoned, respected elder in his field, endeavoring to pass on to others knowledge of the music he spent his life arranging and teaching. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2013

abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes, preferences, and practices of Arizona high school choral directors towards sight-singing skills, and student success in group sight-singing evaluations, the teaching of sight singing including preference for a specific sight-singing system, and the instructional practices employed in daily rehearsals. High school choral directors from the state of Arizona (N = 86) completed an online researcher-designed questionnaire that gathered demographic information as well as information regarding directors' attitudes towards sight-singing instruction, which exercises are used for sight-singing instruction, and directors' self-perceived ability not only to sight sing but also to teach sight singing. Independent variables such as teaching experience, level of education, the system they were trained to use as a student, the system they currently use in the classroom, their self-perceived ability to sight sing, their self-perceived ability to teach sight singing, their choir's sight-singing rating at festival, and their daily instructional practices (as measured by minutes per week of sight-singing instruction) were used to investigate potential differences in attitudinal responses. Multivariate analyses of variance were conducted to investigate potential differences in responses according to various independent variables. Significant differences were found in responses to statements of the importance of sight-singing instruction according to level of teaching experience and time spent on sight-singing instruction in the classroom. No significant differences were found for statements of directors' attitudes toward sight-singing instruction according to level of education or prior training. Results indicate that Arizona high school directors are a seasoned and highly education group of professionals who understand and believe strongly that sight-singing instruction should be a part of their choral music rehearsals. These directors use a variety of systems and resources to teach sight-singing and all dedicate time to sight-singing each week in their rehearsals. Despite the overwhelming support for teaching sight-singing in daily choral rehearsals, there is a lack of participation in choral adjudication festivals where group sight singing is assessed. Further research is suggested to investigate the lack of participation of Arizona high school choral teachers in the group sight-singing component of the state choral adjudication festivals. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music Education 2013

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