Pannalal Ghosh and the Bânsurî in the Twentieth Century
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Pannalal Ghosh (1911-1960) is credited with the introduction of the bânsurî (North Indian bamboo flute) into Hindustani classical music in the twentieth century. While the transverse flute played a significant role in the music of India at least since the early centuries CE, it had lost its status as a prominent instrument in Indian art music several hundred years before Ghosh brought it to the forefront of Hindustani classical music. Ghosh's achievement is considered in the context of his time in terms of the social, political, economic, technological, and musical circumstances in India, and particularly Bengal. While twentieth-century developments contributed to his success, it was ultimately through his own efforts that the bânsurî was accepted as a featured Hindustani classical instrument. By redesigning the instrument, working out a technique to emulate the subtleties of the voice, listening to diverse genres and styles of music, engaging in intensive study, and conceptualizing his own eclectic style of playing, he succeeded in convincing twentieth-century audiences that the bânsurî deserved a place as a valued instrument for the performance of Hindustani classical music. His achievement also paved the way for other instruments such as shahnâî, sârangî, and santûr to achieve similar recognition in the classical music of North India.
Cadenzas Written for the Brahms Violin Concerto: Interpretation and Technical Commentary
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Brahms' decision to leave the creation of the cadenza in his violin concerto to the soloist sets his work apart from most concertos of his time. Although the Joachim and Kreisler cadenzas are still the most commonly used for the Brahms concerto, a large number of cadenzas were written by virtuoso violinists and eminent musicians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; most of these remain obscure and unexplored by performers and scholars alike.
Betsy Jolas's Musical Language
Author:
Desamparados Fabra Crespo
Year of Dissertation:
2012
American-French composer Betsy Jolas (b.1926) has been an outstanding figure in the contemporary musical scene, developing a successful career for over sixty years as a composer and pedagogue in a field traditionally reserved for men. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards by prominent institutions, especially in France and the United States, and yet her name is rarely mentioned in historical texts on French music and contemporary composers. A remarkably imaginative artist, she has offered new perspectives to traditional approaches to melody, harmony, texture and form. Jolas has also contributed significantly to the contemporary scene, particularly to the re-establishment of prominence of melody with her demonstration of the importance of pitch and pitch family over previously prominent serial techniques, which have privileged pitch class or set class. She has also recovered traditional rules for harmony and counterpoint, while reconstructing them as contemporary sonorities. Her textures reveal a great respect and admiration for the masters of the Renaissance. Jolas's methods of setting text in music link directly to those of Robert Schumann, and like him she reinterprets poetry through music. The structure of Jolas's works owes its clarity to classicism, although the layering of the sections links more directly to composers such as Alban Berg, and his idea of building several climaxes that grow in waves within a piece. Jolas also pays tribute to other contemporary composers and pieces, for instance Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, borrowing and treating the elder composer's music in a way that shows her admiration and her explorations into new melodic and textural territory.
Aspects of Adaptation in the Egyptian Singing Film
Year of Dissertation:
2012
This dissertation explores aspects of adaptation in the Egyptian singing film in the period from 1932 to 1962. The primary types of adaptation examined are those that are evident in the stories the films told, the ways in which the songs functioned within the stories, and the music for which these films formed the setting. Research was conducted through the viewing of over sixty Egyptian films as well as time spent in Cairo to study Arabic language and music, and to collect primary sources in the form of films, press books, books, and periodicals.
HAIRY DRUMS, LIVE SAMPLING: ETHOS PERCUSSION GROUP COMMISSIONS OF 2004 AND THEIR "EXTRA-CONSERVATORY" ELEMENTS
Author:
Frederick Files III
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Since 1999 Ethos Percussion Group has commissioned more than two dozen works for percussion quartet. The majority of these commissions incorporate instruments and musical vocabulary not commonly found in the Western chamber music tradition. This aspect of Ethos's commissioned repertoire reflects the ensemble's collective personality, as its members have augmented their conservatory training and "classical" performing experiences with extensive forays into popular and non-Western idioms.
The Bernard Ouchard Bow-Making School in Mirecourt, France, from 1971 to 1981
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Advisor:
Ora Frishberg Saloman
Although a violin bow may appear less important than a violin, it is the tool that allows string players to communicate musical expression. Not until the late eighteenth century was it considered to be more than just an accessory sold with a violin. From the early nineteenth century, French bow-makers have led the way in bow-making as proven by their legacy. The French bow-makers of the Tourte family are credited with the establishment of what is now known as the modern bow. But following the First and Second World Wars in the early twentieth century, the tradition of French bow-making, which had been transmitted orally from generation to generation, was nearly lost. In 1971, the French government opened the first official bow-making class with a three-year curriculum under the supervision of Bernard Ouchard (1925-1979) at the Lycée Vuillaume in Mirecourt, France. From 1971 to 1981, the school trained nineteen bow- makers and the superior work of its graduates proves that the goal of keeping this long- standing French tradition has been achieved.
The Triple Oboe Concerto by Theodor von Schacht (1748-1823): A Critical Edition with Notes on Performance Practice, an Analysis Based on the Theories of Heinrich Christoph Koch, and an Account of the Musical Establishment at the Court of Thurn und Taxis
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Baron Theodor von Schacht (1748–1823), who from 1773 to 1805 oversaw the music program for the Thurn und Taxis court based in Regensburg, composed numerous concertos and concertantes for woodwinds, including a work for three solo oboes, his “Concertante a Tre Oboi Principale.” Written ca. 1790, the autograph manuscript of this work is housed in the Fürst Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek as “D-Rtt Schacht 46,” and its RISM ID/AN is 450.010.951.
RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO IN NEW YORK AND OTHER AMERICAN CITIES: 1906 AND 1913
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Abstract
His Jelly Roll Soul: Revising and reclaiming the past, the minstrel mask, and the communal blast in Charles Mingus's Jazz Workshop AND Dream President: a pocket opera
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Composer, bandleader, and bassist Charles Mingus was among the earliest modern jazz figures to dialogue with New Orleans-style jazz. His musical language included the idiom in a continuum of jazz, linking New Orleans collective improvisation to the avant-garde players of the 1960s. During the mid-century jazz wars between modernist and moldy fig, Mingus invoked the early era's heritage through Jelly Roll Morton in "My Jelly Roll Soul," (Atlantic, 1959), "Jelly Roll" (Columbia, 1959), and an arrangement of Morton's "Wolverine Blues" (Gennett, 1923). Mingus commented on contemporary attitudes toward his predecessors within an environment not well-disposed to them. Yet, even as the legacies of minstrelsy in the entertainment styles of Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Fats Waller shaped Mingus's performative identity, his unpublished writings and onstage manner reflect an alternative black male performativity. The testimony of Jazz Workshop members and Mingus's own statements reveal his philosophy and identity as leader and teacher, and emphasize a reverence for the collective spirit. In the intersection of compositional and improvisational techniques in mid-to late-1950s recordings ("Dizzy's Moods," "Jump Monk," and "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting"), this emphasis shows a progression from short sections of group interplay reminiscent of early jazz to improvisation within extended forms that invoke the ecstatic communal events he heard as a youth in the Holiness church.
The Piano Works of Pall Isolfsson (1893-1974) - A Diverse Collection
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Abstract