The seven compositions that comprise this dissertation are represented by the following files: text file (pdf), seven video performances (mp4), and corresponding zipped files of custom software and affiliated files (various file types). / This Digital Portfolio Dissertation centers on a collection of seven digital videos of performances of original electroacoustic compositions that feature data-driven instruments. The dissertation also includes a copy of the original software and affiliated files used in performing the portfolio of music, and a text document that analyzes and describes the following for each of the seven compositions: (1) the design and implementation of each of the seven complete data-driven instruments; (2) the musical challenges and opportunities provided by data-driven instruments; (3) the performance techniques employed; (4) the compositional structure; (5) the sound synthesis techniques used, and (6) the data-mapping strategies used. The seven compositions demonstrate a variety of electroacoustic and performance techniques and employ a range of interface devices as front-ends to the data-driven instruments. The seven interfaces that I chose to use for my compositions include the Wacom Tablet, the Leap Motion device for hand and finger detection, the Blue Air infrared sensor device for distance measurements, the Nintendo Wii Remote wireless game controller, the Gametrak three-dimensional, position tracking system, the eMotion™ Wireless Sensor System, and a custom sensor-based interface that I designed and fabricated. The title of this dissertation derives from the extra-musical impulses that drove the creative impulses of the seven original electroacoustic compositions for data-driven instruments. Of the seven compositions, six of the pieces have connections to literature. Despite the fact there is a literary sheen to these musical works, the primary impulses of these compositions arise from the notion of absolute music – music for music’s sake, music that is focused on sound and the emotional and intellectual stimulus such sound can produce when humans experience it. Thus, I simultaneously work both sides of the musical street with my compositions containing both extra-musical and absolute musical substance.

L'étude des ondes d'extrêmement basses fréquences dans les cavités ionosphériques des planètes et satellites dotés d'atmosphère suit une approche similaire à celle suivie pour la Terre. Elle contribue à la caractérisation du circuit électrique atmosphérique, des sources d'énergie associées et des limites des cavités. Un modèle numérique à éléments finis a été développé et appliqué à ces corps planétaires en vue d'étudier en particulier les résonances de Schumann. La pertinence d'un modèle de la cavité de Titan a été testée par rapport aux mesures de l'instrument PWA de la sonde Huygens. La découverte d'une couche ionisée à basse altitude et l'évaluation des propriétés diélectriques de la surface après l'atterrissage sont exposées. L'expérience acquise est appliquée à la conception de nouveaux instruments, ARES et SP2, pour étudier l'atmosphère et le sol de la planète Mars dans le cadre du projet ExoMars et pour d'autres corps lors de futurs projets spatiaux.

The research project “Beethovens Werkstatt” is intended as a contribution to basic musicological research. Methods, concepts and digital components developed in this project using the example of Beethoven are meant to be transferable to other composers. In my paper, I choose Robert Schumann as an example to test this transferability. Concepts that were developed in the course of the first module of “Beethovens Werkstatt” aim at the reconstruction and digital representation of genetic variants. They are based on research on the composer’s work processes. Fundamental aspects of this research include, for example, the temporality of the writing process; the composer’s self-critical dialogue with what he has already written; the work routines that may lie behind it (can certain compositional strategies be derived from them?). These questions are not only specific to Beethoven. They can generally be asked in connection with other composers. However, a prerequisite for an insightful research is a good record of handwritten texts and manuscripts. Due to the rich source material and Schumann’s habit of documenting many details in his diaries and working manuscripts, a text-genetic and digital analysis of his working methods is particularly suitable.

The article examines the significance of one of Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s masterpieces. First, it highlights the circumstances of its production and the contemporary critical acclaim in the AmZ. In a second step, Robert Schumann’s involvement with this work is shown. In his journal, the sonata of Hummel is mentioned several times which indicates the engagement of the young piano discipline. In a short article, published in the NZfM in the year 1839, Schumann links this sonata with the compositional “way of Mozart” and thus gives an important hint to the formal design of the piece itself. Aspects of formal organization and structure of this sonata are analyzed and presented in the third part of the essay. In opposition to Beethoven’s motivic development, Hummel pursues another strategy of formal structure by stringing together each of the segments and themes. Thus, the focus shifts from a dynamic design of sonata-form to a more epic layout of the piece. Additionally, technical development and innovations concerning piano techniques and virtuosity are examined.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the premise that a pianist like Clara Wieck/Schumann ‘speaks’ in her song compositions. This, however, raises a number of epistemological questions that will be discussed in this article. First of all, an explicit distinction is made between the examination of the ‘technical’ aspects of her compositional practice – in German: Praktik – (which may allow conclusions to be drawn about the pianist’s implicit knowledge) on the one hand, and the social aspects of her discursive practice – in German: Praxis – on the other. Thus, it is also necessary to discuss the criteria that the structural-analytical methodology must satisfy, as well as to consider to whom the pianist is actually speaking: to us music researchers of the 21st century? Or should we ask ourselves whether our analysis is not rather a “reading of traces” in the sense of Sybille Krämer, through which we invent the ‘producer’ of the analyzed ‘trace’ in the first place? Or to put it another way epistemologically: how do we make the pianist speak? What function does our ‘speaking’ of her compositions – namely the piano parts in her songs – have in scholarly argumentations?

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My dissertation seeks to answer the following question: why did German Romantic composer Robert Schumann turn to the composition of sacred music in the early 1850s? From Schumann's earliest biographers to more recent commentators, critics have struggled to make sense of the composer's seemingly uncharacteristic production of a Mass and Requiem Mass, often explaining his work in these musical genres in terms of his struggles with mental illness and eventual institutionalization. I seek to revisit this question by taking a broader look at Schumann’s compositional output from his years in Düsseldorf, arguing that his interest in sacred genres reflected an active engagement with evolving questions of religious and national identity during these pivotal decades in the German states. To this end, I analyze three case studies. The first examines the tension between communal and individual understandings of Romantic religion through comparison of Schumann’s choral-orchestral Adventlied, Op. 71 and his song cycle Sieben Lieder, Op. 104. The second analyzes Schumann’s plans for a Martin Luther oratorio, which, although he never completed the project, reveal much about Schumann’s nationalist aspirations and understandings of German history and culture. The final case study looks at the Missa Sacra, Op. 147, highlighting Schumann’s investment in the history and future potential of church music. Examination of Schumann’s church music reviews from the 1830s and 40s, as well as his conducting and scholarly priorities during the late 1840s and early 1850s, suggests that Schumann esteemed and sought to contribute to the history of German church music. These case studies demonstrate how, using different means, Schumann was interested in and actively participated in larger currents of religious transformation in the mid-nineteenth century, transformations that were shaped by intersecting forces of nationalism, historicism, Romanticism, and the shifting roles and venues of religious identity and practice in German society and culture.

Zwei Beispiele dafür, wie das Klavierstück Erinnerung Robert Schumanns im Musikunterricht allgemeinbildender Schule vorkommt, werden zur Darstellung gebracht und in einer musikdidaktischen und verstehenstheoretischen Kontextualisierung mit den Bezugspunkten Gegenstand und Subjekt als komplementär-gegensätzliche Ausgangspunkte diskutiert. Im Interesse einer Lösung der als problematisch angesehenen ›Das-Eine-oder-das-Andere‹-Dichotomie wird ein Ausblick auf eine anders angelegte, eine dezidiert konstruktivistische inspirierte Perspektive hinzugefügt. / Two examples will be examined of how the keyboard piece Erinnerung by Robert Schumann appears in the music lessons in a general education school. They will also be discussed in the context of music didactics and conceptualization-theory with object and subject as both complementary and contrasting reference points. With the goal of resolving the problematic “one or the other” dichotomy, emphasis will be placed on differently designed, constructivism-inspired perspective.

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