For more than three centuries, violin pedagogical practices have been extensively developed towards music covering the common practice period. However, a problem arises when a violin student performing avant-garde music needs to find realistic solutions to problems that are not addressed in the standard repertoire. This critical essay offers a pedagogical approach to a work that fits well within this paradigm: Four Nocturnes (Night Music II), George Crumb’s only published work for violin and piano duo. The multi-dimensional aspect of this avant-garde work requires an equally multi-faceted approach to overcoming the inherent technical hurdles. Through practical illustrations and concise explanations, musical examples indicate how the score may be re-notated and simplified to create a preliminary step towards advancing to the original notation. Borrowing from the methodology of Otakar Ševčík and other leading twentieth-century violin pedagogues, the author shows how students can modify their approach to fit contextually in the realm of avant-garde music. Students who approach the work with this methodology will find it helpful in eliminating many of the potential pitfalls that they are likely to encounter.

Sir William Herschel (1738–1822) was a prominent musician and composer in the 18th century England. He worked as a concert director in several cities. In addition, he was a master of various instruments, and an active solo performer. Herschel composed numerous orchestral and solo works. His music, however, is hardly known today. Many of his compositions remained unpublished, among them the Twenty-Four Caprices for Solo Violin. These caprices are one of the earliest technical studies for the instrument, which must be brought to the intermediate violin students’ and violin teachers’ attentions. The purpose of this study is to create a practical edition of the Twenty-Four Caprices for Solo Violin, and to make it available for violinists by publishing them. The dissertation will look into the performance practice of Hershel’s caprices. Based on a thorough research of the violin methods, the edition will provide fingerings, bowings, and practicing suggestions which are useful for students who wish to improve violin technique. The author of this study strongly believes that these neglected technical studies are extremely beneficial works for violinists, and they deserve to be made public.

The intent of this dissertation is to identify and analyze several pieces by female composers that are technically suitable for the specific development of an advanced Suzuki violin student studying in Suzuki books 7 or 8. The selected pieces can then be used by trained Suzuki teachers, in conjunction with the male-composer-dominated Suzuki repertoire, to enhance students' technical development while also increasing their well-rounded musicianship by exposing them to female composers. The development of off-the-string bow strokes, string crossings, shifting, left-hand articulation and musical expression will be traced through the first six volumes of the Suzuki repertoire in order to understand a Suzuki student's expected abilities pertaining to these technical elements when beginning the repertoire in books 7 and 8. Pieces by female composers highlighting and enhancing the referenced techniques will be identified and analyzed in a similar manner. These pieces will be compiled into a document for Suzuki students and teachers to use, along with appropriate editorial markings and biographies of the composers. This document can be an inspirational supplement to Suzuki students' musical development and help develop an awareness of female composers.

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A lecture recital was given on July 14, 1975. The violin sonatas of Charles Ives are a unique and innovative addition to the violin repertoire and capture the New England Transcendental movement of the early twentieth century. In addition to the lecture recital, three other public recitals were performed, including solo compositions for violin and chamber works including violin.

Assumption is the story of a slave named Nathan living in a racially hostile environment in antebellum and post-Civil War Louisiana. Assumption Parish was the kind of place where slaves were whipped frequently, where disease and rustic living were the normal course of life, where the swamp, with all its savage foreboding, loomed nearby. It was a place, Nathan discovered, that traded in men's spirits, breaking them little by little for purposes that were difficult for him to comprehend. Like many slaves of his time, Nathan is raised without biological parents. His surrogate mother, Abbie, longs for the day when slavery ended. But she is too conservative in nature, too aware of her powerlessness, to do anything to force change. Nathan's surrogate fathers, on the other hand, are only too willing to rebel against the plantation system. Nefs, in fact, covertly plots revolt. He hopes Nathan will join him in this crusade. But even after being brutally whipped for a petty, accidental infraction of the plantation's unspoken code of conduct, Nathan does not fight back but instead opts to run from the plantation. This illusion of leaving the harshest of the Old South's conditions was fomented by Nathan's other surrogate father, Pinder Beauregard, who dreamed Nathan would become a New Orleans musician as Pinder once had been. Eventually, the plantation's slaves revolted and Nathan escaped, though not before witnessing Pinder death in battle. Nathan wanders the swamp where he discovers freedom is not what he'd expected. Every institution, from the military to religion to marriage, is closed off to him. Nathan falls into a deep fever, like the kind that killed his parents. He is returned to the plantation where he grew up, recovering to find the plantation has changed little since he's been away. The biggest shock is the fate of Nefs, who has been rendered into a catatonic, bootlicking, house servant. Nathan sees in Nefs his future self, a strange alien puppet with barely a mind of his own. He decides his musical life can wait until he can begin a campaign to topple the post-Civil War society.

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