This dissertation is about a peculiar conflict that occurs in the process of music performance, a conflict that exists between the body and the mind. What I call “executive mismatch,” this conflict tends to occur when music performance is treated only as an art, and not also as a kind of a sport; that is, when music is valued only for its artistic expression and representation, and not also for its kinetic essence. Executive mismatch happened, for example, during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a critical time that shaped our modern views on how the piano should be played. While many – among them Liszt, Thalberg, Chopin, and Mendelssohn – managed to find their rightful places in this process of development, individuals like Schumann struggled for theirs. Focusing on this influential but overlooked nineteenth-century dilemma, this dissertation examines the inharmonious collaboration between kinetics and aesthetics as evident in pedagogical writings, training materials, witness accounts, and compositions. This dissertation argues that musical performance mandates a proper matching of the body and the mind, and it does so at two levels. First, it argues historically that Schumann’s famous hand injury was as much about the executively mismatched world he lived in as about biographical details. His pursuit of a performing career was always doomed to end badly, whether or not he tried to use machines to accelerate progress. Accordingly, his injury was unlikely to be self-inflicted, nor was it entirely medical/pathological by nature. Second, it argues that executive mismatch, which found perfect expressions in Schumann’s life and in early nineteenth- century pianism, still influences our modern world through performers, music-score editors, and researchers. / published_or_final_version / Music / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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This project explores Samuel Barber’s complete works for solo piano, including his early works published in 2010. The recording, captured on two CDs, represents the first complete collection of Barber’s published piano works and outlines Barber’s maturation from his teenage years to his full development as a world-renowned composer. The document includes a biographical sketch, an overview of his published solo piano works, and a performer’s guide. The performer’s guide examines technical and musical difficulties commonly found throughout his piano output, focusing on three aspects of Barber’s compositional appeal: lyricism, virtuosity, and eclecticism. The goal of this discussion is to aid the student in her exploration of Samuel Barber’s piano music. / School of Music

In this thesis, it is my intention to use Heideggerean phenomenology to build an account of two seemingly disparate areas of humour. Firstly, humour that arises out of a shift between ontological categories - specifically, between the ‘human’ and the ‘object,’ on one hand, and the ‘human’ and the ‘animal’ on the other; and, secondly, between objects and bodies failing. In doing so, I hope to elucidate the ‘hermeneutic condition’ of all humour, understood in Heidegger’s terms as the phenomenon of world. A hermeneutic condition is not to be thought of along the vein of a ‘necessary and sufficient condition’ of something being comical. There have been a number of attempts to try to pinpoint such a condition, with theories gravitating towards the ‘big three’ of incongruity, superiority and release. Personally, I am not convinced that there is such a condition - I think it more likely that certain types of humour share some traits, but there are no traits shared by all humour that can act as a marker that humour is afoot. Similarly, a hermeneutic condition should not be understood as a causal condition - I am not claiming that something is funny because of this condition. Rather, my suggestion is that the phenomenon of world is a necessary condition of humour’s intelligibility – we are the sort of creatures that can make and comprehend jokes because we are in-the-world, in Heidegger’s sense. I will suggest that it is only for Dasein that either getting the joke or failing to get the joke is a possibility, and this is precisely because only Dasein has this hermeneutic condition. Developing this claim necessitates the pursuit of a thoroughly worlded phenomenology, and to that end I want to suggest Heidegger’s work as an ideal foundation. Moreover, I will suggest that the humanlike objects and animals which amuse us are tacitly playing with this being-in-the-world, and the object and body failing has the potential to disclose this nature of this world to us. In this way, I hope to demonstrate that there is much to be gained from the phenomenological analysis of these two types of humour.

Bhānds are wandering comedians, widely dispersed in Pakistan and North India. While their art constitutes a persistent mode of performed practice in Pakistan, it is not given recognition by dominant culture. The thesis explores the caste, class, ethnic and literary biases that motivate this ostracism, and in turn how bhānds play with these status distinctions in performance. This interaction creates a dynamic mode, which is able to expose, negotiate and subvert hegemonic power structures, and, in so doing, continually adapts itself to changing socio-cultural contexts. Appreciation of these practices and their effects on the social norm has hitherto been lacking, precisely because of the cultural marginalisation which attempts to place the bhānd within a fixed definition of identity. In order to redress this imbalance, I explicate the bhānd’s aesthetics and socio-cultural mediation through multiple contemporary and historical manifestations. Contemporary reinventions range from stand-up comics in the nuptial rites, to carnivalesque comedians of the popular Punjabi theatre and socio-political commentators on satellite television. By extracting the bhānd from the prejudices of historiography, the thesis explores historical lineages between the bhānd and Sanskrit jesters and Sufi wise fools, arguing that this Indo-Muslim synchronism perpetuates the bhānd's presence in South Asia. This re-reading aims conceptually to release the bhānd from contemporary and historical constraints as a shape-shifting mode, which may be seen to continue generating innovative forms and practices for theatre and performance in Pakistan today.

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In this thesis, we established a cellular CDMA reverse channel model, which incorporates a time-invariant discrete multipath Nakagami-fading channel in a multiple-cell system. The effects of intra and inter-cell interference, perfect power control, lognormal shadowing and RAKE receiver with varying number of taps are investigated. For performance improvement forward error correction and smart antenna techniques are incorporated into the model. Expressions for probability of bit error are developed under a range of operating conditions and the model is tested using Monte Carlo Simulation. / Turkish Army author

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between drive level, defined in terms of scores on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, and performance in a complex paired-associate learning task, in which an attempt was made to control the number and strength of the competing responses.

Abstract not available

Compact discs presented in separate bound volume. / Includes reproduction of the author's edition of the piano works of Margaret Sutherland (Allans Publishing ; c2000) / Includes selective list of public performances by the author (leaves 8-14), and comprehensive list of performances of works by Australian composers (leaves [66]-76). / Bibliography: leaf [65] / 173 leaves : / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / The principal focus of this submission is performance, represented by a set of four compact discs containing recordings of a wide range of solo and ensemble repertoire. There is, in addition, a secondary focus in the area of Musicology, represented most obviously in the published edition of the piano music of Margaret Sutherland, and in some of the accompanying commentary. The primary elements of the portfolio are the recordings and the edition. / Thesis (D.Mus.)--University of Adelaide, Elder School of Music, 2004?