Egil Hovland is one of Scandavia’s most predominant living composers, having created a massive opus of works that encompasses nearly every genre and performing medium. Yet despite the many contributions he has made to the international community, his name and works remain virtually unknown outside of Scandinavia. For many years, the exposure to Hovland’s works in the United States has unfortunately been very limited. Most choral musicians have long had only one (if any) association with Hovland’s name, that being the 1971 motet, Saul. In recent years, however, a few select mature works by Hovland have been translated into English and performed by a growing number of American choral groups. The objective of this study is to move beyond Saul through the exploration of Hovland’s stylistic evolution, and via a survey of selected mature choral works and an analysis of the Credo, Op. 137, no. 1. While the few extant studies available in English have explored Egil Hovland’s choral music predating 1980, this study focuses on his mature choral works, dating from the late 1970s to the present. The significance of such a study is two-fold: first, Hovland’s later works represent a general departure from his earlier compositional techniques, shifting away from the experimentalism and extreme chromaticism that characterizes much of his earlier opus toward a simpler, generally neoromantic compositional idiom; and second, because of this general shift in character and style, much of his later music is accessible to a wider spectrum of both performers and listeners, and warrants the attention of choral musicians in the United States and internationally. / text

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This document focuses on a major nineteenth century choral composition written for Roman Catholic worship, Franz Liszt's Via Crucis. Analysis of this composition suggests that in it the composer mixes styles described in an early 1835 article in Gazette musicale de Paris with Lutheran chorales and ways of composition characteristic of his late period.

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Psaume 130, Du fond de l'Abime, by Lili Boulanger, poses a series of problems for conductors. Its large orchestral requirement and thirty-minute performance length severely limit the possibility of programming the work. Having thoroughly studied the composer's other works, I have determined that balance problems in the orchestration need adjustment. Errors exist in the current published edition and warrant correction.For these reasons combined with the assertion, later discussed in this document, that Lili Boulanger may have been asked to make a more practical version of Psaume 130, Du fond de l'Abime in order to promote sales of her music, an orchestral reduction is a viable solution. In addition, she died before the premier of the work and may have re-orchestrated certain passages upon hearing it.The methodology for this process of editing and rescoring includes:1) comparison of the manuscript with the published edition, 2) analysis, which includes tonal, motivic, and structural aspects of the work, 3) analysis of Boulanger's orchestral technique, and 4) an interview with conductor Mark Stringer.I will demonstrate that Lili Boulanger's Psaume 130, Du fond de l'Abime can be arranged for reduced forces while preserving its essential elements. This version will be more accessible for professional, college, community and church choirs, and orchestras.

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).

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1988.

Thesis (M.M.)--Baylor University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-33).

Thesis (D.Mus.Arts)--University of Washington. / Bibliography: 232-241.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1961. / Typescript. Type C project. Sponsor: Harry R. Wilson. Dissertation Committee: Walter E. Sindlinger. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 311-317).