<p>In this essay, Kate Chopin's portraits of women in three short stories, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse and the novel <em>The Awakening</em> are studied. It is argued that the outcomes depicted can be seen as increasingly provocative and extreme and that the main conflict and ending of <em>The Awakening </em>is a development and combination of the conflicts and resolutions in the three short stories.</p> / <p>I uppsatsen studeras Kate Chopins kvinnoporträtt i tre noveller, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse och i romanen <em>The Awakening.</em> Syftet är att visa att huvudhandlingen och slutet på <em>The Awakening</em> är en utveckling och kombination av de alltmer provokativa och extrema handlingarna och upplösningarna i novellerna.</p>

In this essay, Kate Chopin's portraits of women in three short stories, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse and the novel The Awakening are studied. It is argued that the outcomes depicted can be seen as increasingly provocative and extreme and that the main conflict and ending of The Awakening is a development and combination of the conflicts and resolutions in the three short stories. / I uppsatsen studeras Kate Chopins kvinnoporträtt i tre noveller, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse och i romanen The Awakening. Syftet är att visa att huvudhandlingen och slutet på The Awakening är en utveckling och kombination av de alltmer provokativa och extrema handlingarna och upplösningarna i novellerna.

Pianists often have trouble in determining where a phrase ends, or in other words, cadence identification. This is especially true of certain cadences that can be considered either as half cadences or authentic cadences. This analytically ambiguous cadential point can result in different performance decisions, so pianists should make informed decisions about what kind of cadence it is. This study aims to investigate such cadential ambiguity shown at points of phrase boundaries by focusing on Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35, first movement. I offer both possibilities (a half cadence or an authentic cadence) at the phrase ending, suggesting a performance-related strategy based on each possibility. My objective is not to support only one cadential status, but to bring up the cadential problem from the analytical perspective and to demonstrate how cadence identification affects performance results. The dissertation is divided into two parts: analysis and performance, so it relies on a combined method of analytical terminologies and performance-related musical elements. In the analysis, the terminology of William Caplin is employed. The performance part refers to several method books written by prestigious piano pedagogues. After an introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 reviews some literature on cadences. Chapter 3 specifically analyzes the first movement of Chopin's second sonata by means of Caplin's terminologies. Chapter 4 provides a performance-related method and Chapter 5 deals with a practical performance strategy.

One of the difficulties of nineteenth-century form studies is ambiguity in ascertaining which formal types are at work and in what ways. This can be an especially difficult problem when multiple formal types seem to influence the construction of a single composition. Drawing on some recent innovations in form studies proposed by Steven Vande Moortele, Janet Schmalfeldt, and Caitlin Martinkus, I first develop a set of analytical tools specifically made for the analysis of sonata/variation formal hybrids. I then refine these tools by applying them to the analysis of two pieces. Chopin's Fourth Piano Ballade can be understood from this perspective as primarily following the broad outlines of a sonata form, but with important influences from the recursive structures of variation forms; Franck's Symphonic Variations, on the other hand, are better viewed as engaging most of all with multiple variation-form paradigms and overlaying them with some of the rhetorical and formal structures of sonata forms. I conclude with a brief speculation on some further, more general applications of my methodology.

"The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty" examines certain prototypical natures of isolation as recurrent and underlying themes in selected short fiction of Chopin, Porter, and Welty. Despite the differing backgrounds of the three Southern women writers, and despite the variety of issues they treat, the theme of isolation permeates most of their short fiction. I categorize and analyze their short stories by the nature and the treatment of the varieties of isolation. The analysis and comparison of their short stories from this particular perspective enables readers to link the three writers and to acknowledge their artistic talent and grasp of human psychology and situations.

Der Beitrag verfolgt die Entwicklung der Skrjabin’schen Harmonik von dessen Früh- bis zu dessen Spätwerk. Ausgehend vom der Struktur des Einzelklangs (›Chopin-Akkord‹, ›Skrjabin-Akkord‹) werden die Tendenzen aufgezeigt, die folgerichtig ein neues Klangfortschreitungssystem nach sich ziehen. Der äquidistante Quintenzirkel wird durch andere, ebenfalls äquidistante Zirkel ersetzt. Es entstehen symmetrische Tonsysteme, an die später u.a. Olivier Messiaen anknüpft. Als entscheidend gilt dem Autor die Idee der ›Verdichtung‹ – ein Begriff, den Sigmund Freud in seiner Theorie der Traumdeutung ausgearbeitet hat. In dessen Sinne wird die Klangsprache Skrjabins als Verdichtungsarbeit interpretiert. / This article traces the development of Scriabin’s harmonic practice from his early work to his late work. Proceeding from the structure of individual chords (e.g., the “Chopin chord,” the “Scriabin chord”), tendencies will be shown that consequently lead to a new system of harmonic progression: the equidistant circle of fifths is replaced by other circles that are also equidistant. The result is symmetrical tone-systems that later influence Olivier Messiaen, among others. The author places special emphasis on the idea of “condensation” (Verdichtung), a term developed by Sigmund Freund in his theorizing of the interpretation of dreams. In this sense Scriabin’s harmonic language is thus interpreted as a process of condensation.

This work implements a prototype of a music practice tool, and evaluates alignment methods in an audio matching scenario required for it. By two interviews with piano teachers, we investigated the user demands towards a music performance practice tool that incorporates an alignment technique between a shorter practice segment and a reference performance, from a jazz and classical music point of view. Regarding technical aspects, we studied how Deep Learning (DL) based signal representations compare to standard manually tailored features in the alignment task. Experiments were conducted using a well-known alignment algorithm on a piano dataset. The dataset had manually annotated beat positions which was used for evaluation. We found the traditional features to be superior compared with the DL based signal representations when used independently. We also found that the DL based signal representations, on their own, were insufficient for our test cases. However we found that the DL representations contained valuable information. Multiple test cases demonstrated that the combination of DL representations and traditional representations outperformed all other considered approaches. We also did experiments using deadpan midi renditions as references instead of actual performances, in which we got slight, but insignificant improvement in alignment performance. Finally, the prototype was implemented as a website, using a traditional signal representation as input to the alignment algorithm. / Detta arbete implementerar en prototyp av ett musikövningsverktyg och utvärderar ljudjusteringssmetoder som krävs för det. Användarkraven för verktyget undersöktes genom två intervjuer med pianolärare och fokuserade på ljudmatchning mellan en kort övningsinspelning och en referensinspelning, fokuserat på jazz och klassisk musik. De tekniska aspekterna inkluderade en jämförelse mellan djupinlärningsbaserade signalrepresentationer och traditionella manuellt anpassade funktioner i ljudmatchningsuppgiften. Experiment utfördes på ett pianodataset med en välkänd ljudjusterings algoritm, anpassad för ljudmatchning. Datasetet hade manuellt annoterade taktpositioner som användes för utvärdering. Vi fann att de traditionella funktionerna var överlägsna jämfört med djupinlärningsbaserade signalrepresentationer när de användes ensamma. Vi fann också att djupinlärningsbaserade-baserade signalrepresentationer, ensamma, var otillräckliga för våra testfall. Dock upptäckte vi att de djupinlärningsbaserade representationerna innehöll värdefull information. Flera testfall visade att kombinationen av djupinlärnings-representationer och traditionella representationer överträffade alla andra övervägda metoder. Test med midi-renderade inspelningar som referenser visade en svag, men insignifikant förbättring i prestanda. Slutligen implementerades en prototyp av övningsverktyget som en webbplats, med en traditionell signalrepresentation som inmatning till matchningsalgoritmen.

Master of Music / School of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Slawomir Dobrzanski / This Master’s Report is a study of four piano compositions performed on April 10, 2016 at the author’s Master’s Piano Recital. These discussed pieces are including Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata in G major, BWV 916; Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3; Claude Debussy’s Images Book One; Fryderyk Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2, Op. 31. This study focus on historical, theoretical and stylistic implications of each composition.

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening fundamentally share the universal feminist yearning for personal freedom and independence within an oppressive, patriarchal society. With regards to the texts’ stylistic differences and disparate social contexts, their heroines seek to ideologically oppose social rules and conventions for women without achieving the same results. This difference lies in the fact that Chopin’s text fosters the traditional feminism embraced by the majority culture, while Walker’s text makes use of womanism. The availability and authenticity of feminine space for the generation of women’s culture also determine the extent of changes achieved.

Chopin’s artistic philosophies were heavily indebted to his love of vocal music and his staunch belief that vocal expression represented the supreme essence of musical declamation. To his contemporaries in the Parisian salons, his veneration of the vocal ideal illuminated the expressive significance of Chopin’s musical language. Influenced by the dramatic function of operatic and vocal works, and by interpretive trends that associated literary programs with instrumental (textless) music, Chopin’s contemporaries searched for concealed narratives within his piano nocturnes. This thesis considers the narrative function of Chopin’s late nocturnes within the sociopolitical and musical culture of the Parisian salons, and utilizes a modern approach to narratology that resonates with a prominent facet of historical interpretation. The study reveals a specific reception in which audiences, influenced by the philosophies of Polish messianism, heard national narratives, sung pronouncements of his Polish nationality, and political support for the Polish nation in Chopin’s nocturnes. / Graduate