The poems of Mignon have inspired song writers for almost two centuries. They have served as the texts for more composers than almost any other single set of poetry. The Romantic composers were especially fond of the words. The poems are full of sadness and yearning and composers found they could be set in different moods. Some settings are in major tonalities while other settings of the same poem can be found in minor. Simple harmonies are used in some settings while others contain more complex harmonies. There are those composers who would have Mignon appear as a lost soul throughout all the poems with each song quietly sung, while others use a variety of dynamics adding drama to the setting and picturing Mignon as full of optimism at the end.

Nyimbo, kama tanzu ya fasihi yeyote ile zina majukumu mbalimbali ambayo hutekeleza katika jamii. Lengo kuu la fasihi ni lile la kuielimisha na hata kuiburudisha jamii. Ndivyo ilivyo katika nyimbo kwa sababu kupitia kwazo wanajamii huburudika na kuelimishwa. Ni kwa sababu hiyo ndipo makala hii inalenga kuangalia nafasi ya nyimbo zinazopendwa katika fasihi ya Kiswahili. Huu ni utanzu ambao huwafikia watu wengi katika jamii. Kutokana na kutumia lugha ya Kiswahili, utanzu huu unaweza kueleweka na Wakenya wengi. Nchini Kenya, vyombo vya habari vimeipa fasihi hii nafasi kubwa sana na hivyo basi kuipanua hadhira yake. Hii ni kutokana na sababu kuwa fasihi hii inathaminiwa sana na wengi na ipewe nafasi kubwa katika vyombo vya habari hasa katika redio kwa muda mrefu. Ni kutokana na sababu hii ndipo tunajaribu kuonyesha nafasi yake katika fasihi ya Kiswahili.

This study centers on a 1907 collection of art songs for voice and piano composed by Alexander Zemlinsky. Although his small cycle of five songs was not published during the composer's lifetime and has not been given the scholarly attention that other pieces in his oeuvre have, it is well crafted and carries a high degree of expressive and emotional weight. The cycle sets the poetry of Richard Dehmel; a contemporary of Zemlinsky and the inspiration behind works of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Richard Strauss as well. In these 1905 settings Zemlinsky experiments with an extremely chromatic language while exploring themes of love and betrayal in the poetry of Dehmel. This study examines this chromatic style and how it relates to the themes in the text. Through the detailed analysis of each of the songs the reader will see how, in spite of the free succession of harmonies that often obscure the tonal orientation, a central underlying tonic/dominant relationship is at the core of each song except the first. In this manner the songs display a subtle yet powerful exploitation of tonal ambiguity that brings out many of the nuances of Dehmel's poems. / School of Music

Franz Liszt, who was the greatest virtuoso pianist in the nineteenth-century, was also a productive composer. But his tremendous technique brought the misunderstanding that his compositions were just flashy and superficial, thus creating an obstacle for appreciating his music. The purpose of this study is to encourage an understanding of the value of Liszt's music, especially his Schubert Lieder transcriptions. The study starts with an introduction, which states the revival of the art of transcription, gives the muscial background of Liszt and describes the instruments that were available to him. Then follows a discussion about his experimentation with the conventional piano techniques and how he applied them to the song transcriptions. Two transcriptions "Hark, Hark, the Lark" and "Der Lindenbaum" are analyzed in detail to show the transcriptive procedure and the relation between the poetry and the musical expression. A conclusion summarizes the study.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Jennifer R. Edwards / This report consists of extended program notes and translations for programmed songs and arias presented in recital by Elizabeth Ann Rodina on April 22, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. in All Faith's Chapel on the Kansas State University campus. Included on the recital were works by George Frideric Handel, Franz Schubert, Reynaldo Hahn, Jules Massenet, Clifford Shaw, and Giacomo Puccini. The program notes include biographical information about the composers and a textual and musical analysis of their works.

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Prolongation in post-tonal music is a topic that music theorists have engaged for several decades now. The problems of applying Schenkerian analytical techniques to post-tonal music are numerous and have invited several adaptations of the method. The bulk of the thesis offers a survey of prolongational analyses of post-tonal music. Analyses of theorists such as Felix Salzer, Allen Forte, Joseph Straus, Edward Laufer, and Olli Väisälä are examined in order to reveal their various underlying theoretical principles. The thesis concludes with an analysis of Alban Berg's Warm die Lüfte from his Op. 2 collection that focuses on the prolongation of a referential sonority that forms the background of the song. The analysis highlights the most significant analytical techniques and theoretical concepts explored in the survey and codifies them in a generally applicable method of post-tonal prolongational analysis.

Of all the composers of German Lied, Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf can be considered the true giants of this musical form. Schubert's position is secure as the greatest composer of the Lied. Wolf, though challenging Schubert in this particular idiom only, brought the Lied to its culmination. This study will show, by comparative analysis, the respective treatment by Fr anz Schubert and Hugo Wolf of selected poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Though Schubert composed some seventy songs (not including multiple settings of the same text), and Wolf fifty-one, based on the poetry of Goethe, they shared only thirteen of these poems in common. Four songs by each composer have been selected for detailed analysis.

Stilkopien anzufertigen ist ein zentraler Bestandteil von Satztechnik- bzw. Tonsatzseminaren. Ausgehend von der Komposition Erinnerung aus dem Album für die Jugend op. 68 von Robert Schumann werden hier die Arbeitsschritte von analytischen Vorüberlegungen bis hin zum fertigen Klaviersatz für ein lyrisches Klavierstück präsentiert, Strategien für verschiedene Entwürfe vorgestellt und deren Ergebnisse diskutiert. Dabei kommen melodische, harmonisch-metrische und formale Kriterien ins Spiel. Für Begleitfiguren gibt es einen Exkurs zu Mendelssohns Lieder ohne Worte. / The production of style-imitations is central aspect of compositional seminars. Proceeding from the work Erinnerung from Schumann’s Album für die Jugend op. 68, this article presents the steps ranging from preliminary analytical considerations up to the completion of the keyboard score for a lyrical piece, while strategies for various drafts are offered and their results are discussed. Melodic, harmonic-metrical, and formal criteria all play a role. Regarding accompanimental figuration, a digression addresses Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte.

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