Vilém Zdeněk Stezka's final work, Wind Serenade from 1939, was partially lost in a small earthquake that occurred in Bergamo, Italy on July 31, 2012. In this study I present both analysis and contextualization of the surviving fragments of Stezka's music. Some fragments consist of completed movements, others survive only in short score format, and still others have been completely destroyed. I have used the knowledge gained therefrom to complete Wind Serenade in a fashion that is appropriate in both style and expression. I have also detailed the process of completion in this study as each fragment demands both a unique perspective and technique. / text

Master of Music / Department of Music / Frank C. Tracz / This document was submitted to the Graduate School of Kansas State University as a partial requirement for the Master’s in Music Degree. This document includes the historical, theoretical, performance, and rehearsal consideration of the works performed in the corresponding graduate recital. These works are Antonin Dvořák’s Serenade in D Minor, Op. 44 and Vincent Persichetti’s Symphony Number Six for Band. The analysis format for this report is based on the Blocker/Miles Unit Study technique found in the Teaching Music through Performance in Band series, as well as the Tracz concept of macro-micro score analysis. The performances of the Kansas State University Symphony Band and a chamber ensemble which consisted of faculty and Symphony Band members served as the basis for the technical, musical, and stylistic evaluations and analysis.

abstract: The German pianist and composer Johannes Brahms (1883-1897) wrote more than 122 works for a wide variety of ensembles and genres. Despite this remarkable productivity, and his widely heralded talent for innovation and technique as a composer, few of his works have been arranged for solo guitar, and these have focused primarily on his simpler, more melodic works. Conventional wisdom is that his music is "too dense" to be played on the guitar. As a result, there are no arrangements of orchestral works by Brahms in the standard repertoire for the guitar. In arranging Brahms's Serenade in D Major, movt. 1 for the guitar, I provide a counter argument that not all of Brahms's orchestral music is too dense all of the time. In Part I, I provide a brief overview of the history of, and sources for, the Serenade. Part II describes a step-by-step guide through the process of arranging orchestral repertoire for the solo guitar. Part III is an examination of the editing process that utilizes examples from the guitar arrangement of the Serenade in order to illustrate the various techniques and considerations that are part of the editing process. Part IV is a performance edition of the arrangement. In summary, the present arrangement of Brahms's Serenade, op.11 is the beginning of a conversation about why the "guitar world" should be incorporating the music of Brahms into the standard repertoire. The lessons learned, and the technical challenges discovered, should help inform future arrangers and guitar performers for additional compositions by Brahms. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2013

Programming by voice can be a viable option for programmers who suffer from physical disabilities such as Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI), but study shows there are still challenges and limitations in the area, from the requirement of syntax-specific language to inaccuracy of speech recognition. We aim to address the potential benefit and performance of gradually integrating ChatGPT with its versions 3.5/4.0 and how to best communicate (speech optimization) to see if the area of programming by voice can be improved in terms of reduced vocal and cognitive load. We present a tool named ChatGPT VCG which contains two approaches, a traditional keyword interpretation approach using the Serenade tool as a code generator and a direct code generation approach using ChatGPT to generate code directly. Using test tasks written in Java, and the Serenade tool as a base measurement, the two approaches are compared and measurements such as the number of words and code characters generated are collected and analyzed. The result indicates that integrating ChatGPT allows the user to circumvent the required syntax-specific language. The direct code generation using ChatGPT 4.0 performed the best with a 4.2 times reduction in the required number of words compared to standard Serenade, while the keyword-based approach at worst shows a 14% increase. Speech optimization shows performance can be further increased by reducing or removing superfluous grammar and instead only providing the relevant information in commands. The study concludes that integration of ChatGPT can improve performance, and the speech can be optimized to reduce the number of words, but often at the cost of a conversational speech pattern.

Though there has long been debate concerning the dating and the inception of the Serenade for Thirteen Instruments in B Flat Major, K. 370a (K. 361), the greatest inquiry has arisen in this century with the public discovery and examination of the autograph score. Coincidental with traditional Mozart scholarship has been that which finds parallels in the wind band movement of this country encompassing the past twenty-five to thirty years. With the growing importance of the wind ensemble and its capacity to perform literature of various instrumentations, many contemporary scholars from the U.S. as well as Europe have responsibly probed questions directly related to early wind music, particularly the period of the late eighteenth century. Notable among these are Frederick Fennell, David Whitwell, Daniel Leeson and Neal Zaslaw of the United States, and Marius Flothuis, Erik Smith, and Roger Hellyer of Europe. Through their efforts much new information has come to light which both changes the perspective by which certain works have come to be viewed, and the very nature of performance practice itself. Indeed, the current deepening involvement with the wind ensemble approach in our colleges, universities, and even selected high schools, demands that solid historical inquiry be made concerning all early wind literature. Only in this way will wind players, conductors, and eventually the listening public become conscious of the aesthetic value of this music in our society. The Serenade in B Flat, despite the ambiguity surrounding its inception and the accuracy of the various manuscript and printed editions, is a vital staple in the repertoire of the wind band as well as that of the orchestra. In that it comes from the pen of Mozart's maturity and constitutes such an extensive display of imaginative writing within its seven movement span, the unreserved attention it receives in performance is easily matched by its musicological significance. This paper attempts to examine in general terms the period of harmoniemusik, Mozart's contributions to this genre, as well as the critical aspects of K. 370a in some detail. Included in the Appendices is a chronological list of owners of the autograph score, a survey list of Mozart's strictly wind works, a formal analysis of K. 370a, and a complete harmonic analysis of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (NMA) score. Frequent use of the following abbreviations should be noted: AMA = Gesammtausgabe Mozart's Werke (1878 -1905); NMA = Neue Mozart Ausgabe (1955 and on); K1, K3, K6, K7 = respective Köchel catalogue editions. The use of Köchel numbers is in accordance with the latest major revision of the catalogue, namely, the sixth edition; older Köchel numbers appear in brackets. A comparison of Köchel equivalents between K1, K3 and K6 is given in Appendix A.

Previous research has shown that the reactive paradigm is suitable for programming by voice, due to its frequent use of expressions used in common English. However, the software used in the previous research (Talon) does not support reactive programming. To our knowledge, no other programming-by-voice software has built-in support for RxJava. The main focus of this study is the development and testing of a vocal programming environment that recognizes RxJava operators and commands. This is done by writing custom scripts that form a RxJava-adapter for a software called Serenade. The purpose of the adapter is to determine to what degree customization can improve the programming-by-voice experience, in terms of reduced cognitive and vocal load. The testing process also reveals challenges related to programming-by-voice in reactive Java, as well as challenges related to creating custom voice commands for Serenade. The results indicate that Serenade is superior to Talon, requiring on average 45\% fewer words to produce the same code. When the default version of Serenade is compared to the custom version with custom voice commands, the improvement is 19\%. The study also concludes that there are many challenges facing speech recognition when used in a programming environment. The custom script feature in Serenade, while still having some limitations, is advanced and allows the user to create complex custom voice commands.

The thesis explores the integration of voice programming in Java using the voice programming tool Serenade. Voice programming tools are motivated by the need for an alternative to traditional software development as software developers face the risk of contracting Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) from their extensive use of display units and prolonged periods of typing. Programmers who have used voice programming tools have raised concerns regarding these tools, highlighting that the tools are frustrating to use and would prefer if the tool was optimized for the purpose and allowed for a more natural speaking. This study implements an adaptation for Serenade aimed at improving Java voice programming by introducing object-oriented specific commands and compares the efficiency of Serenade before and after the adaptation. The main Java concepts were identified and implemented in 17 smaller tasks and two separate Java projects, which were then reproduced using Serenade with and without the adaptation. The adaptation was implemented based on the shortfalls identified in Serenade's documentation and when implementing the projects with Serenade. The results show that the efficiency of voice programming in Java was improved by reducing word count and time to execute, ultimately creating a better experience for Java developers using the voice programming tool while keeping the same keywords to keep the current users familiar with the tool. This study also identifies that this improvement can be translated to other languages, such as C\# and Python as those languages are based on similar object-oriented programming concepts.

This study has two divisions: Part I, an historical and analytical summary of the emergence and development of the divertimento and the serenade in the eighteenth century, and Part II, the culmination of these structures in the works of W. A. Mozart. Two primary purposes are envisioned: 1) to further our knowledge of how German Gesellshafts-musik evolved toward its peak in the second half of the eighteenth century, and 2) to furnish a useful analytical handbook of Mozart's works in these genres.

Senegal ranks second for mango production among West African countries and has the potential to competitively produce mangoes for the European market. Colletotrichum gloeosporioides Penz. and Sacc. has historically been considered the causal pathogen of anthracnose of mango and other fruits, but is now known to represent a species complex. Field trials to examine the efficacy of fungicides and biofungicides were conducted in southern and northern production regions of Senegal. In three southern trials, Sonata (Bacillus pumilus strain QST 2808), Serenade Optimum (Bacillus subtilis strain QST 713), and sodium molybdate provided 63%, 67% and 76% control of disease severity, respectively, whereas thiophanate methyl and azoxystrobin provided 77% and 78% control, respectively. Disease severities of all treatments were significantly lower than that of the control. Thiophanate methyl and azoxystrobin produced more disease-free mangoes (64 and 62%, respectively) than Serenade (49%), sodium molybdate (44%), and Sonata (38%). Differences within each trial were not statistically significant, but when all trials were combined, all treatments resulted in significantly more disease-free mangoes than the control. Among treatments, thiophanate methyl and azoxystrobin resulted in significantly more disease-free mangoes than Sonata. No results were obtained in the northern orchards due to an absence of disease development. Sequencing of the ITS gene region of 30 Colletotrichum isolates from mangoes from different regions in Senegal indicated that all belonged to the C. gloeosporioides species complex. Sequencing of the ApMat intergenic region identified all of them as most closely resembling C. siamense. / Master of Science in Life Sciences

Mgr. Petra Kolátorová Abstract: Thesis dealt with the Serenade E major Op. 22 (B 52) and the Serenade for Wind Instruments Op. 44 (B 77) of Antonín Dvořák in the view of the musical genre of the orchestral serenade. It answered the question of influence and meaning of the Dvořák's Serenades among Serenades of his contemporaries, the question of place of this genre among the other musical genres and the question of reflection of music criticism at that time. Analysis of both works and their comparison with the selected works showed the way how the expectation of this genre reflected in the compositional ways and methods of both Dvořák's Serenades. The composer in his Serenades depicted all layers of meaning of this genre as was such a noble simplicity, oscilation of the genre between chambre and orchestral music between artistic or rather entertaining character of music, continuity of original serenades and history of the genre. Dvořák had created the works which in certain aspects foreshadowed near future (neoclasicism).