In Victorian Britain, music circulating libraries libraries operated by music publishers Novello & Co. and Augener & Co. supported upper- and upper-middle-class patrons in their pursuit of cultural capital that would help them perform their socioeconomic status. Studying these libraries in the context of domestic music-making reveals the economic and social impact of these libraries in the lives of amateur musicians and in the music publishing industry. An analysis of the account books in the Novello Business Archives demonstrates that the direct income that Novello & Co., Ltd.'s Universal Circulating Musical Library generated was negligible at best. Yet the fact that the library continued to be part of the business for over forty years indicates that Novello & Co., Ltd. found it to be profitable in some way. In this case, the library could have helped the publisher to attract customers through branding and advertising, in addition to informing publishing decisions by tracking demand. Catalogs for music circulating libraries, as well as for the publishers who owned them, contain lists of library and publisher inventory and pricing. Studying changes in these catalogs reveals how patrons' tastes changed over time. A case study of violin-piano duets in multiple catalogs confirms a …

The censorship of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is a familiar story to musicologists, but reception of the opera is not frequently mentioned. Examining the reception of a work can bring a work's relative importance into focus. In this thesis, German literary and reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss's model of the horizon of expectations is applied to reviews of American productions of Lady Macbeth. Curiosity about communism following the Great Depression in 1930s, America and American music critics' knowledge that Soviet composers worked for the Soviet regime led to the belief that Lady Macbeth was officially approved export from the Soviet Union. When the article condemning the opera as a Western formalism appeared in the Soviet magazine, Pravda, Americans needed to adjust their understanding of Lady Macbeth as a socialist expression. Following the work's revival in San Francisco in 1981, the influence of Solomon Volkov's Testimony is prevalent in many reviews. Many reviewers use Volkov's narrative of Shostakovich as covert dissident of the Soviet Union to assert that the censorship of the opera was about the content of the plot and not the music. Following the Soviet rejection of the work, American critics tried to claim Shostakovich for the …

The comparison of structural and formal traits in the concert grossi of Corelli's Opus VI and Vivaldi's Opus III will proceed in the following manner: first, the cycle as a whole will be taken up; next, the individual movements will be considered. Finally, in each instance of comparison, Corelli's music will be dealt with first.

The London British Museum Manuscript Additional 35087, hereafter referred to as London Add. 35087, is an important parchment manuscript in large octavo choirbook arrangement from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Its measurements are 19.4 x 29.3 centimeters. The manuscript contains ninety-five folios and one stub where a leaf has been torn out (f. 4).1 The last composition in the manuscript is incomplete, which indicates that one leaf is lacking at the end (f. 96). Two sets of foliation are shown: the original Roman and a more recent Arabic. Both are placed in the upper right hand corner of folio recto. The sets agree in folios 4-93. Folios 1 and 2 show no Roman figures now; folio 3 has "ii," and therefore the missing leaf probably had "iii." The Arabic numbering does not account for this missing leaf. This folio might have been assigned "4," but this number is given on the next complete leaf to coincide with the Roman "iiii." At the end, by mistake, folio 94 has "xciii" and folio 95 has "xciiii."

This study seeks to examine the history of the ricercare, specifically in the baroque era. In this work, all types of keyboard compositions that utilize imitative counterpoint have been examined. Late baroque fugues have been examined to determine which characteristics of the earlier ricercare remained in general use and which specific compositions contain elements causing them to resemble strongly the parent form.

A work concerning the history of the Paris Conservatoire and music education in France. Follows the development of the horn and its correlation with the French school of horn playing. Includes biographic information on the horn professors of the Conservatoire through 1997, as well as a comprehensive list of the morceaux de concours for horn, 1795-1996.

The Concierto Romántico for Piano and Orchestra is one of Manuel M. Ponce's outstanding compositional accomplishments from his Romantic period, reflecting both the state of Mexican music at the turn of the 20th century, and his early nationalist tendencies. However, it remains the only concerto in Ponce's output in need of a more comprehensive analysis. This treatise focuses on a global investigative that examines descriptive and analytic references to the work, as well as a comparison and clarification of the existing score sources. An analytical and stylistic musical study using conventional theoretical techniques leads to a musicological interpretation of the work's extra-musical meaning, based on close assessments of Ponce's compositional practice and social principles.

This investigation surveys pertinent literature, from 1917 to 1982 inclusive, regarding artistic vibrato and tremolo in singing. The contents are subdivided into individual investigative reports by various vocal researchers. Due to mounting confusion within the amassed literature, the need for systematic organization and evaluation is evident. Misunderstandings within the context of the literature and misnomers within the terminology require clarification and resolution. The evaluation intends to produce a proper perspective on vibrato and tremolo, eradicating some of the confusion surrounding the terms. Artistic vibrato is recognized as a desirable component in Western vocal music. In contrast, tremolo is deemed a deviant vibrato, i.e., a vibrato which deviates from artistic norms. The study attempts to clarify the distinguishing traits of these two vocal phenomena.

It is the purpose of this thesis to present a study of music written for the clarinet during the period from 1600 to 1800. The first part is a history of the clarinet showing the stages of development of the instrument from its early predecessors to its present form. Part one also explains the acoustics of the clarinet and its actual invention. The second part deals with composers and their music for the clarinet. No attempt is made to include all music written for the instrument during the prescribed period; rather, the writer's intention is to include chiefly those works by composers whose musics has proven to be outstanding in clarinet literature or interesting historically. The order in which the works themselves are taken up is chronological, by composers, with comment on their styles as to form, harmonic content, melodic content, rhythmic content, problems in phrasing, or any other general technical problem. All of these elements are illustrated with examples taken from the music.

The selected works by the composers studied in this thesis might well stand as illustrative of the normal development of the use of the bass trombone near the close of the nineteenth century. Although notable progress was made by the cited composers in increasing the bass trombone's usefulness in the orchestra, each composer also continued to use the bass trombone as it had been used in previous years, such as in doubling bass parts, harmonic backgrounds, and for strong rhythmic punctuations.

The purpose of this thesis is to show the development of the trombone, in form and music, and its use in the orchestra through the times of Beethoven and Schubert. Since very little material has been presented concerning the history of the trombone, it is hoped that the illustrations and explanations contained herein will be a contribution toward a representation of music from different composers and periods. The music covered gives a picture of the use of the trombone from the Renaissance through to the beginning of the Romantic Period. The results of this study are presented in three main sections: (1) The history of the trombone in the Renaissance; (2) The history of the trombone in the Baroque; (3) The history of the trombone in the Classical Period, and up to the time of Schubert.

In music, the term verismo usually refers to a realistic or naturalistic movement in Italian operas of the late nineteenth century. From the dawn of Italian opera four features have been manifested--umanita (humanism), sincerity (sincerity), passione (passion), effetto (not only theatrical effect but the supreme dramatic moment). The elements of verismo are among the characteristics present in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi where they reached a zenith of development. It is upon these veristic aspects, as identified in the second chapter, that the operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci were based. Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata richly exhibit these elements of verismo which have been identified in the fourth chapter.

This study of Verdi's choral style in the Manzoni Requiem includes an investigation of the bibliography pertaining to the subject, and a detailed study of the score to determine and verify the characteristics of each stylistic component, tabulating statistical material and listing examples demonstrating the various characteristics.

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the changes and developments of the accompanied solo song throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including instrument usage and song types.

The present investigation deals with the cantatas of Dietrich Buxtehude written for three voice parts with instrumental accompaniment. An examination of the various musical forms which Buxtehude employed in these cantatas will comprise one of the two areas in this study. The other area shall be concerned with Buxtehude's usage of word painting (i.e., musical portrayal of word meanings). Before entering an investigation of Buxtehude's music, his life and background should be considered.

The two fields of acousmatic music and site-specific conceptual art take strikingly different approaches to the notions of space and place. In this document, I describe how these two areas of aesthetic research diverge and relate to each other, focusing on how their unique approaches can be implemented in the practice of site-specific music composition. The first part of this document surveys the distinctive features of each of these fields, describing the particular differences between them in their approach to space and place. The contradictions between the two approaches are then briefly analyzed in reference to Georgina Born's understanding of music as fundamentally multitextual. In the second part of the document, I describe in detail how I implemented a site-specific approach when composing "…threaded through," a 16-channel audio, 6 video, site-specific installation for the UNT College of Music Main Building. In this, I describe how both the space and place of the UNT College of Music Main Building influenced my musical choices, visual content, and approach to audio and visual spatialization. The final part of the document contains a detailed score for realizing "…threaded through" in the location of the UNT College of Music Main Building.

In this thesis, I explore the careers and songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds—two African American female composers who were part of the Chicago Renaissance. Price and Bonds were members of extensive, often informal, networks of Black women that fostered creativity and forged paths to success for Black female musicians during this era. Building on the work of Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins, I contend that these efforts reflect Black feminist principles of Black women working together to create supportive environments, uplift one another, and foster resistance. I further argue that Black women's agency enabled the careers of Price and Bonds and that elements of Black feminism are not only present in their professional relationships, but also in their songs. Initially, I discuss how the background of the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances and racial uplift ideology shaped these women's artistic environment. I then examine how Bonds and Price incorporated, updated, and expanded versions of these ideals in their music and careers. Drawing on the scholarship of Rae Linda Brown, Angela Davis, and Tammy L. Kernodle, I analyze Price's "Song to the Dark Virgin," "Sympathy," and "Don't You Tell Me No" and Bonds's "Dream Variation," "Note on Commercial Theater," …

This paper provides an in depth examination of the style and works of Antonio Vivaldi, particular his secular solo cantatas. Stephen J. Town also provides historical background about the development of the solo cantatas as well as the life of the composer Antonio Vivaldi.

In the summer of 1953, Karlheinz Stockhausen began composing his first piece of elektronische Musik at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne. Up to that point, Stockhausen's only experience with electroacoustic music was his time spent at the Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française the previous year, where he assisted Pierre Schaeffer and composed a piece of musique concrète. An early case study in the marriage of serial aesthetics and electroacoustic techniques, Studie I is a rigorously organized work that reflects Stockhausen's compositional philosophy of a unified structural principle in which all musical materials and parametric values are generated by and arranged according to a single governing series. In spite of this meticulously wrought serial structure, Studie I displays features that are the consequences of the realities of electronic sound production either imposing on the sonic result, or altering the compositional plan entirely. I use a three-part approach to my analysis of Studie I by examining Stockhausen's serial system, the electroacoustic studio techniques in use in 1953, and the original recorded realization through spectrographic analysis. Using this methodology, I expose the blurring of the supposed divide between elektronische Musik and musique concrète by exploring the features that lie between the serial …

The Seville Cancionero is a manuscript collection of songs from late fiftennth-century Spain and is preserved today in the Biblioteca Colombina of Seville with the number 7-1-28. This dissertation describes the document and provides commentary and transcriptions of the Seville Cancionero.