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In the western classical tradition, the violoncello has developed a reputation for its soulful, vocal qualities. Because of this distinction, many composers have written elegiac works for the cello. This document comprises studies of three twentieth-century British elegies for cello and piano, each explored against a backdrop of poetic, societal and musical influences. The results reveal several common tropes of mourning, both musical and extra-musical, which can be applied to further studies of musical works.

The Eastman Wind Ensemble is known as the pioneer ensemble of modern wind music in North America and abroad. Its founder and conductor, Frederick Fennell, was instrumental in facilitating the creation and performance of a large number of new works written for the specific instrumentation of the wind ensemble. Created in 1952, the EWE developed a new one-to-a-part instrumentation that could be varied based on the wishes of the composer. This change in instrumentation allowed for many more compositional choices when composing. The instrumentation was a dramatic shift from the densely populated ensembles that were standard in North America by 1952. The information on the EWE and Fennell is available at the Eastman School of Music’s Ruth Watanabe Archive. By comparing the repertory and instrumentation of the Eastman ensembles with other contemporary ensembles, Fennell’s revolutionary ideas are shown to be unique in the wind music community.

This study presents a topical and chronological analysis of the published works of Fritz Perls with particular attention to specified theoretical continua. The theoretical continua specified are: 1. Determinism vs. Free Will, 2. Unconscious vs. Conscious, 3. Monism vs. Dualism, A. Physical vs. Mental, 5. Nativism vs. Environmental ism, 6. Elementalism vs. Holism, 7. Reactive vs. Proactive, 8. Subjective vs. Objective, 9. Responsibility vs. Helplessness, 10. Thinking vs. Feeling, and 11. Heterostasis vs. Homeostasis. Each continuum is analyzed in reference to Perls' published thought and his stated beliefs are described and reported. Large sections of the dissertation are devoted to the intellectual, philosophical, and emotional influences that led Perls to write the theory of Gestalt therapy. The dissertation concludes with the report of Perls' position on each defined continuum, with discussion of empirical studies, Gestalt therapy and other major theories of counseling that hold parallel theoretical positions, concluding with a discussion of the limitations of the theory of Gestalt therapy and of this dissertation.

George Frederick Handel is one of the most important composers of oratorio in musical history. Between the year 1704, when he composed his Passion According to Saint John, and 1757, the year of his last oratorio, The Triumph of Time and Truth, Handel composed twenty nine works which have at one time or another been classified as oratorios. Only those works that are considered by all authorities as oratorios and are based on the Old Testament or Jewish history are included in this study. Handel writes solo roles for the tenor voice in all of the sixteen oratorios included in the study with the exception of the revision of Esther and in Deborah. The musical and dramatic function of the tenor solo roles varies with each oratorio. The significance of the tenor roles fluctuates with the dramatic impact of the story related by the oratorio and is completely dictated by it. Handel used all solo voices with concern for the best over all theatrical effect foremost in mind. To place in proper perspective his use of the tenor voice in relation to the other solo voices, such factors as the musical and dramatic importance of the tenor roles, character types portrayed, and the style and ranges of arias, should be considered.

Slave narratives influenced nineteenth-century American religious culture and history; through the slave narrative, modern readers experience the African-American struggle for freedom and personhood in the antebellum South. While the slave narrative stimulated identity- formation, once identity was formed a narrator fought for authority and control of that identity throughout their narrative. This struggle for control is present in the narratives of Frederick Douglass and Nat Turner. Due to each slave’s religious allusions, African-American literary scholars repeatedly link Douglass and Turner to biblical books such as Jonah and Ezekiel. However, this thesis will examine Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, Written by Himself, and Thomas R. Gray’s The Confessions of Nat Turner through the lens of the Book of Job. By examining Douglass’s and Turner’s pursuit of knowledge through correlations within the Book of Job, both scriptural authority and authenticity emerges within each narrative.

The emergence of Progressivism at the beginning of the twentieth century influenced many aspects of American society. One of those aspects was urban parks. In the latter half of the nineteenth century Frederick Law Olmsted led a nationwide implementation of "Victorian" parks. These parks featured broad expanses of turf, waterways, and trees. Olmsted and the other Victorian park leaders designed the parks to cultivate Victorian values of self-restraint and independence among the citizenry. With the rise of Progressivism the ideals of the middle class changed. Led by Theodore Roosevelt, millions of Americans embraced the "strenuous life" and its emphasis on strength and leadership. Consequently, parks changed. The new Progressive park design favored athletic facilities over places for repose. Audubon Park in New Orleans was built just as this change was occurring, and therefore provides us an opportunity to study this moment in American history in detail.

Prophet Muhammad stated, “A white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.” Because of the continual idea of race as a social construct, this study examines the memoirs of Douglass, Jacobs and Malcolm X, as it relates to the narrative of self and identity. They have written their personal autobiographies utilizing diction as a tool that develops their art of storytelling about their distinct life journeys. These protagonists utilize their autobiographical experiences to construct a generational transference of race and identity from when Douglass was born in 1818, to Jacob’s escape to freedom in 1838 to the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. Historically, the texts are written from where slavery was still an institution until it was abolished in 1865, proceeding through to the Civil Rights movement. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs and Malcolm X will experience racial trauma throughout their personal narratives that were life-altering events that severely influenced them as they matured from adolescence to adulthood. The writer has determined that, “Racial trauma can be chracterized as being physically and or psychologically damaged because of one’s race or skin color that permanently has long lasting negative effects on an individual’s thoughts, behavior or emotions,” i.e., African American victims of police brutality are racially traumatized because they suffer with behavioral problems and stress, after their encounters. This case study is based on the definition of race as a social construct for Douglass, Jacobs and Malcolm X’s narratives that learn to self-identify beyond the restrictions of racial discrimination which eventually manifests into white oppression in a world that does not readily embrace them. Their autobiographies provide self-reflection and a broad comprehension about how and why they were entrenched by race. Douglass, Jacobs and Malcolm X were stereotyped, socially segregated, and internalized awareness of despair because of their race. Conclusions drawn from Frederick Douglass-Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: American Slave, Harriet Jacobs-Incidences of a Slave Girl, and Malcolm X’s- Autobiography of Malcolm X will exemplify the subject of African American narrators countering racism and maneuvering in society.

This dissertation fundamentally re-interprets King Frederick the Great of Prussia as military commander and military thinker, and uses Frederick to cast new perspectives on the warfare of ‘his time’: that is, of the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. It uses the methodology of cultural history, which focuses on the meanings given to human activities, to examine Frederick and the warfare of his time on three levels: cultural, temporal, and intellectual. It shows that Frederick’s warfare (at least in his youth) was culturally French, and reflected the towering influence of King Louis XIV, with Frederick following the flamboyant masculinity of the French baroque court. Frederick was a backward-looking military thinker, who situated his war-making in two temporal envelopes: broadly in the long eighteenth century (1648-1789), which was dominated by the search for order after the chaos of religious and civil wars, but more specifically in the ‘Century of Louis XIV’: the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Frederick embraced French military methods, taking inspiration from generals like Turenne and Luxembourg, employing aggressive French battle tactics, and learning his concept of ‘total war for limited objectives’ from French writers like the Marquis de Feuquières. Frederick also sought to surpass the ‘personal rule’ of the Sun King by commanding his army personally. This work shows the early eighteenth century as a liminal period, which saw the Louisquatorzean paradigm interact with the beginnings of the Enlightenment, developments in scientific methods, and the growth of the administrative capacity of states, all of which would exercise an increasing influence as the century progressed. The combination of older traditions and newer ideas placed enormous pressure on the monarchs of this period, and this was seen in Frederick’s strained relations with his generals. Finally, this work examines how ideas are created. It shows military knowledge in the early eighteenth century as the product of power structures (and often an element within them). Military command was itself an element in the assertion of political power, and Frederick depended on ‘the power of (military) knowledge’ to maintain his authority with his generals. Power, however, is negotiated, and knowledge is typically produced collectively. In the early part of Frederick’s reign, the Prussian war effort was a collective effort by several actors within the Prussian military hierarchy, and ‘Frederick’s military ideas’ were not necessarily his own.

Published in November 1877, Black Beauty is one of the most popular and enduring works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book, in which the eponymous narrator relates his life's story, sold well following its publication in England and in the United States; by 1985, sales were estimated at over forty million. While usually regarded as entertaining, Black Beauty has a strong crusading purpose: Anna Sewell herself said she wrote to improve the treatment of horses. This study springs from an intuitive notion. While reading the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, I could not shake a "curiously different sense of familiarity" that took me home to my well-worn copy of Black Beauty. The more I explored a relationship between Douglass's Narrative and Black Beauty, the more apparent it became that these two works were interrelated in ways that had yet to be explored in critical literature. Although comparisons between animals and slaves have long been made-slaves themselves recognized and used such comparisons-the relationship between animal autobiography and the slave narrative has only recently been recognized. In 1994 Moira Ferguson sketched several commonalities between the two genres. In 2003 Tess Cosslett made an explicit-if brief-comparison of the animal autobiography and the slave narrative, a comparison developed in depth in her 2006 study Talking Animals in British Children's Literature 1786-1914. This thesis investigates that relationship further. It begins by briefly reviewing generic criticism, moves to a consideration of the various genres into which critics have placed Black Beauty, and then examines the text as a slave narrative, focusing upon James Olney's 1985 discussion of the conventions of the slave narrative. Finally, it considers Elizabeth W. Bruss's study of autobiographical acts as a literary genre for additional areas that establish my original "sense of familiarity." In short, this thesis confirms Black Beauty's rhetorical, formal, thematic, and social power within the genre of the American antebellum slave narrative.