Keyboard Tablatures of the Mid-Seventeenth Century in the Royal Library, Copenhagen: Edition and Commentary (open access)

Keyboard Tablatures of the Mid-Seventeenth Century in the Royal Library, Copenhagen: Edition and Commentary

In the history of seventeenth-century European music the court of Christian IV (r. 1588-1648) occupies a position of prominence. Christian, eager for fame as a patron of the arts, drew to Denmark many of the musical giants of the age, among them the lutenist John Dowland and the composer Heinrich Schltz. Sadly, except for financial records and occasional letters still in the archives, few traces remain of these brilliant years in Denmark. The music composed and played during this half century has largely disappeared, most of it probably in the tragic fire of 1794 that destroyed the old Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen and with it the court music archives. Except for the recently-discovered Clausholm Fragments, only three specimens of keyboard music from the period remain: Ny kgl. Saml. 1997 fol. (Obmaus Tablature), Gl. kgl. Saonl. 376 fol. (Copenhagen Tablature), and mu 6703.2131/6 (VoigtlaJnder Tablature). It has generally been assumed that the manuscripts were of German origin. The present study, however, demonstrates a probable Danish origin for the third, possible Danish connections for the second, and establishes that the first is of Austrian provenance. The Obmaus Tablature is an amateur's preservation of a German keyboard style already outdated. This slender manuscript, …
Date: December 1973
Creator: Dickinson, Alis
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Sounds of the Dystopian Future:  Music for Science Fiction Films of the New Hollywood Era, 1966-1976 (open access)

The Sounds of the Dystopian Future: Music for Science Fiction Films of the New Hollywood Era, 1966-1976

From 1966 to1976, science fiction films tended to depict civilizations of the future that had become intrinsically antagonistic to their inhabitants as a result of some internal or external cataclysm. This dystopian turn in science fiction films, following a similar move in science fiction literature, reflected concerns about social and ecological changes occurring during the late 1960s and early 1970s and their future implications. In these films, "dystopian" conditions are indicated as such by music incorporating distinctly modernist sounds and techniques reminiscent of twentieth-century concert works that abandon the common practice. In contrast, music associated with the protagonists is generally more accessible, often using common practice harmonies and traditional instrumentation. These films appeared during a period referred to as the "New Hollywood," which saw younger American filmmakers responding to developments in European cinema, notably the French New Wave. New Hollywood filmmakers treated their films as cinematic "statements" reflecting the filmmaker's artistic vision. Often, this encouraged an idiosyncratic use of music to enhance the perceived artistic nature of their films. This study examines the scores of ten science fiction films produced between 1966 and 1976: Fahrenheit 451, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, THX-1138, A Clockwork Orange, Silent Running, …
Date: May 2009
Creator: McGinney, William Lawrence
System: The UNT Digital Library
Opera at the Threshold of a Revolution: Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-1956) (open access)

Opera at the Threshold of a Revolution: Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-1956)

Francis Poulenc’s three-act opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-1956) depicts the struggles of the novice nun Blanche de la Force during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. The use of Latin liturgical music at critical points in the opera conveys the ritualistic nature of Catholic worship. The spiritual message of mystical substitution, along with the closely related notion of vicarious suffering, imbue the opera with a spirituality that offers a sharp contrast to earlier operatic settings of Catholic texts, particularly during the age of grand opera. Marian devotion also plays an important role in the opera. The final tableau of the opera stages the execution of Blanche and her sisters, complete with the sound of a guillotine, with the nuns singing the Salve Regina as they proceed to the scaffold. The multivalence of the final tableau highlights the importance of voice and its absence. While the nuns, onstage spectators, and the guillotine are audibly present in the scene, the priest participates solely through gesture. The surfacing of the Lacanian Real in the silent moment of traumatic shock that follows the guillotine’s first fall allows for intertextual references to the opera in Poulenc’s Sonate pour Flûte et Piano (1957) to …
Date: December 2011
Creator: Beard, Cynthia C.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Shaping Hagiography through Liturgy: Music for the Patron Saints of Three Cathedrals in Medieval Aquitaine (open access)

Shaping Hagiography through Liturgy: Music for the Patron Saints of Three Cathedrals in Medieval Aquitaine

While the development of hagiography over time has long attracted the attention of medievalists, scholars have not fully explored the critical role of the liturgy in prompting and transmitting these changes. This dissertation examines the liturgies for the patron saints of three musical and ecclesiastical centers in medieval Aquitaine: the cathedrals of Saint-Trophime in Arles, Saint-Just-et-Saint-Pasteur in Narbonne, and Saint-Étienne in Toulouse. Through the music, texts, and ritual actions of the liturgy, the clerical communities of these three institutions reinforced some aspects of their patron saint's legendary biography and modified others. Yet the process unfolded differently at each cathedral, revealing the particular preferences of the canons of each community as well as their changing circumstances during the Middle Ages. In Arles, the office for St. Trophime, which was likely composed at the cathedral, shows dramatic changes in the saint's hagiography. The clerics in Narbonne also composed an office for their patron saints but did not substantially change the details of Justus and Pastor's legendary biography. In Toulouse, the canons selected from among the preexisting repertoire of chants and texts available for St. Stephen, crafting liturgies that were particular to Saint-Étienne within a clearly Aquitanian context. By revealing the ways in …
Date: December 2018
Creator: Recek, Andrea
System: The UNT Digital Library
Mail Order Music: the Hinners Organ Company in the Dakotas, 1879-1936 (open access)

Mail Order Music: the Hinners Organ Company in the Dakotas, 1879-1936

Founded in 1879 by John L. Hinners, the Hinners Organ Company developed a number of stock models of small mechanical-action instruments that were advertised throughout the Midwest. Operating without outside salesmen, the company was one of the first to conduct all of its affairs by mail, including the financial arrangements, selection of the basic design, and custom alterations where required. Buyers first met a company representative when he arrived by train to set up the crated instrument that had been shipped ahead of him. Tracker organs with hand-operated bellows were easily repaired by local craftsmen, and were suited to an area that, for the most part, lacked electricity. In all, the company constructed nearly three thousand pipe organs during its sixty years of operation. Rapid decline of the firm began in the decade prior to 1936 during which the company sold fewer than one hundred instruments, and closed in that year when John's son Arthur found himself without sufficient financial resources to weather the lengthy depression. The studies of the original-condition Hinners organs in the Dakotas include extensive photographs and measurements, and provide an excellent cross section of the smaller instruments produced by the company. They are loud, excellently crafted, …
Date: August 1997
Creator: Alcorn-Oppedahl, Allison A. (Allison Ann)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung: Its Musico-Dramatic Structure and Relationship to the Melodrama and Lied Traditions (open access)

Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung: Its Musico-Dramatic Structure and Relationship to the Melodrama and Lied Traditions

Arnold Schoenberg's atonal monodrama, Erwartune. Op. 17 (1909). has been viewed as an unanalyzable athematic aberration, without any discernible form. Recognizing Erwartune's forward-looking aspect, this dissertation also explores the melodrama and the Lied, a connection with the past which forges a new understanding of its form and structure.
Date: December 1989
Creator: Penney, Diane Holloway
System: The UNT Digital Library
The "Beethoven Folksong Project" in the Reception of Beethoven and His Music (open access)

The "Beethoven Folksong Project" in the Reception of Beethoven and His Music

Beethoven's folksong arrangements and variations have been coldly received in recent scholarship. Their melodic and harmonic simplicity, fusion of highbrow and lowbrow styles, seemingly diminished emphasis on originality, and the assorted nationalities of the tunes have caused them to be viewed as musical rubble within the heritage of Western art music. The canonic composer's relationship with the Scottish amateur folksong collector and publisher George Thomson, as well as with his audience, amateur music lovers, has been largely downplayed in the reception of Beethoven. I define Beethoven's engagement with folksongs and their audience as the "Beethoven Folksong Project," evaluating it in the history of Beethoven reception as well as within the cultural and ideological contexts of the British Isles and German-speaking lands at the turn of the nineteenth century. I broaden the image of Beethoven during his lifetime by demonstrating that he served as an ideal not only for highly educated listeners and performers but also for amateur music lovers in search of cultivation through music. I explore the repertory under consideration in relation to the idea of Bildung ("formation" or "education" of the self or of selves as a nation) that pervaded contemporary culture, manifesting itself in music as the …
Date: December 2006
Creator: Lee, Hee Seung
System: The UNT Digital Library
Music and Patronage in Milan 1535-1550 and Vincenzo Ruffo's First Motet Book (open access)

Music and Patronage in Milan 1535-1550 and Vincenzo Ruffo's First Motet Book

The present study reconstructs the musical milieu in which Vincenzo Ruffo's 1542 motet collection was conceived through an examination of the archival materials surviving from each of the major musical establishments known to be active in Milan 1535-1550. The relationship of the 1542 collection to Milanese musical activity. Its publication problems and its current position in source studies are then explored in light of the archival information that is currently available.
Date: 1991
Creator: Getz, Christine Suzanne, 1957-
System: The UNT Digital Library
“Sounds for Adventurous Listeners”: Willis Conover, the Voice of America, and the International Reception of Avant-garde Jazz in the 1960S (open access)

“Sounds for Adventurous Listeners”: Willis Conover, the Voice of America, and the International Reception of Avant-garde Jazz in the 1960S

In “Sounds for Adventurous Listeners,” I argue that Conover’s role in the dissemination of jazz through the Music USA Jazz Hour was more influential on an educational level than what literature on Conover currently provides. Chapter 2 begins with an examination of current studies regarding the role of jazz in Cold War diplomacy, the sociopolitical implications of avant-garde jazz and race, the convergence of fandom and propaganda, the promoter as facilitator of musical trends, and the influence of international radio during the Cold War. In chapter 3 I introduce the Friends of Music USA Newsletter and explain its function as a record of overseas jazz reception and a document that cohered a global network of fans. I then focus on avant-garde debates of the 1960s and discuss Conover’s role overseas and in the United States. Chapter 4 engages social purpose and jazz criticism in the 1960s. I discuss Conover’s philosophy on social responsibility, and how his contributions intersected with other relevant discourses on race on the eve of the civil rights movement. I argue that Conover embodied two personas: one as jazz critic and promoter in the United States, and the other as an international intermediary. In chapter 5 I …
Date: August 2012
Creator: Breckenridge, Mark A.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume I (open access)

The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume I

The great number of musical sources preserved in manuscript and printed form clearly reflects the prominent position held by the lute as a musical instrument during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Only a relatively small portion of this vast literature is presently available to scholars and interested laymen in the form of modern transcriptions. Referred to as "l'instrument noble par excellence," the lute's popular and fashionable appeal is evidenced by the large number of composers who dedicated themselves to this instrument. Among the number of outstanding lute composers living in Italy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was Giulio Cesare Barbetta (c. 1540-after 1603). During his lifetime Barbetta published a total of four books of lute pieces containing arrangements of polyphonic compositions of various Renaissance composers as well as a large number of original compositions including .preludes, airs, fantasias, and dance pieces. Although Barbetta achieved importance as a leading figure in the Italian school of lute composition, there is little readily available material, either biographical or musical; this study provides the scholar, the performer, and the listener with biographical data and a modern edition of the composer's complete works.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Thomas, Benjamin W., 1937-
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Prologue in the Seventeenth-Century Venetian Operatic Libretto: its Dramatic Purpose and the Function of its Characters (open access)

The Prologue in the Seventeenth-Century Venetian Operatic Libretto: its Dramatic Purpose and the Function of its Characters

The Italian seicento has been considered a dead century by many literary scholars. As this study demonstrates, such a conclusion ignores important literary developments in the field of librettology. Indeed, the seventeenth-century operatic libretto stands as a monument to literary invention. Critical to the development of this new literary genre was the prologue, which provided writers with a context in which to experiment and achieve literary transcendence. This study identifies approximately 260 dramatic works written in Venice between the years 1637 and 1682, drawn together for the first time from three sources: librettos in the Drammaturgia di Leone Allacci accresciuta e continuata fino all'anno MCDDLV; the musical manuscripts listed in the Codici Musicali Contariniani; and a chronological list of seventeenth-century Venetian operas found in Cristoforo Ivanovich's Minerva al Tavolino. Of the 260 Venetian works identified, over 98 begin with self-contained prologues. This discovery alone warrants a reconsideration of the seventeenth-century Italian libretto and the emergence of the dramatic prologue as a new and important literary genre.
Date: August 1998
Creator: Miller, Robin A. (Robin Annette)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Depicting Affect through Text, Music, and Gesture in Venetian Opera, c. 1640-1658 (open access)

Depicting Affect through Text, Music, and Gesture in Venetian Opera, c. 1640-1658

Although early Venetian operas by composers such as Claudio Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli offer today's listeners profound moments of emotion, the complex codes of meaning connecting emotion (or affect) with music in this repertoire are different from those of later seventeenth-century operatic repertoire. The specific textual and musical markers that librettists and composers used to indicate individual emotions in these operas were historically and culturally contingent, and many scholars thus consider them to be inaccessible to listeners today. This dissertation demonstrates a new analytical framework that is designed to identify the specific combinations of elements that communicate each lifelike emotion in this repertoire. Re-establishing the codes that govern the relationship between text, musical sound, and affect in this repertoire illuminates the nuanced emotional language of operas by composers such as Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Antonio Cesti, and Francesco Lucio. The new analytical framework that underlies this study derives from analysis of seventeenth-century Venetian explanations and depictions of emotional processes, which reveal a basis in their society's underlying Aristotelian philosophy. Chapters III and IV examine extant documents from opera librettists, composers, audience members, and their associates to reveal how they understood emotions to work in the mind and body. These authors, …
Date: May 2018
Creator: Hagen, Emily
System: The UNT Digital Library
Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807-1867): His Life And Symphonies (open access)

Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807-1867): His Life And Symphonies

Ignacy Feliks , a Polish composer active in Warsaw, is best known for having been a colleague of Frederic Chopin while they were both composition students of Jozef Eisner. As an early nationalist composer, Dobrzynski is examined within the context of nineteenth-century Warsaw's musical culture and political situation. Dobrzynski early training was provided by his father, who was Kapelmeister at the Ilinski court in Romanow. The most important achievements of the career which followed Dobrzynskifs move to Warsaw in 1825 include second place in an 1835 Viennese contest with the Second Symphony, a German tour in I8I8, and the directorship of the Teatr Wielki in 1852. Cast in the late eighteenth-centurv style, Dobrzynski two symphonies were composed in 1829 and 1831. These works show knowledge of Beethoven's music and exhibit Dobrzynski's skill at orchestration. Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 15, is the more important work because of national elements in each movement, as well as its success in a Viennese symphony contest in 1835. Although a precedent for national elements is seen in studying the development of the Polish symphony in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Dobrzynski's contribution shows an intensification of musical patriotism which was inspired …
Date: August 1981
Creator: Smialek, William
System: The UNT Digital Library
Patronage, Connoisseurship and Antiquarianism in Georgian England: The Fitzwilliam Music Collection (1763-1815) (open access)

Patronage, Connoisseurship and Antiquarianism in Georgian England: The Fitzwilliam Music Collection (1763-1815)

In eighteenth-century Britain, many aristocrats studied music, participated as amateurs in musical clubs, and patronized London’s burgeoning concert life. Richard Fitzwilliam, Seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion and Thorncastle (1745-1816), was one such patron and amateur. Fitzwilliam shaped his activities – participation, patronage, and collecting – in a unique way that illustrates his specialized tastes and interests. While as an amateur musician he sang in the Noblemen’s and Gentlemen’s Catch Club (the premiere social club dedicated to musical performance), he rose to the highest level of patronage by spearheading the Handel Commemoration Festival of 1784 and serving for many years as a Director of the Concert of Antient Music, the most prestigious concert series in Georgian Britain. His lasting legacy, however, was his bequest to Cambridge University of his extensive collection of art, books and music, as well as sufficient funds to establish the Fitzwilliam Museum. At the time of his death, Fitzwilliam’s collection of music was the best in the land, save that in the Royal Library. Thus, his collection is ideally suited for examination as proof of his activities, taste and connoisseurship. Moreover, the music in Fitzwilliam’s collection shows his participation in the contemporary musicological debate, evidenced by his …
Date: December 2011
Creator: Heiden, Mary Gifford
System: The UNT Digital Library
Composing Symbolism's Musicality of Language in Fin-de-siècle France (open access)

Composing Symbolism's Musicality of Language in Fin-de-siècle France

In this dissertation, I explore the musical prosody of the literary symbolists and the influence of this prosody on fin-de-siècle French music. Contrary to previous categorizations of music as symbolist based on a characteristic "sound," I argue that symbolist aesthetics demonstrably influenced musical construction and reception. My scholarship reveals that symbolist musical works across genres share an approach to composition rooted in the symbolist concept of musicality of language, a concept that shapes this music on sonic, structural, and conceptual levels. I investigate the musical responses of four different composers to a single symbolist text, Oscar Wilde's one-act play Salomé, written in French in 1891, as case studies in order to elucidate how a symbolist musicality of language informed their creation, performance, and critical reception. The musical works evaluated as case studies are Antoine Mariotte's Salomé, Richard Strauss's Salomé, Aleksandr Glazunov's Introduction et La Danse de Salomée, and Florent Schmitt's La Tragédie de Salomé. Recognition of symbolist influence on composition, and, in the case of works for the stage, on production and performance expands the repertory of music we can view critically through the lens of symbolism, developing not only our understanding of music's role in this difficult and often …
Date: August 2016
Creator: Varvir Coe, Megan Elizabeth, 1982-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Foreignizing Mahler: Uri Caine’s Mahler Project As Intertraditional Musical Translation (open access)

Foreignizing Mahler: Uri Caine’s Mahler Project As Intertraditional Musical Translation

The customary way to create jazz arrangements of the Western classical canon—informally called swingin’-the-classics—adapts the original composition to jazz conventions. Uri Caine (b.1956) has devised an alternative approach, most notably in his work with compositions by Gustav Mahler. He refracts Mahler’s compositions through an eclectic array of musical performance styles while also eschewing the use of traditional jazz structures in favor of stricter adherence to formal ideas in the original score than is usual in a jazz arrangement. These elements and the manner in which Caine incorporates them in his Mahler arrangements closely parallel the practices of a translator who chooses to create a “foreignizing” literary translation. The 19th-century philosopher and translation theorist Friedrich Schleiermacher explained that in a foreignizing translation “the translator leaves the writer alone as much as possible and moves the reader toward the writer.” Foreignizing translations accentuate the otherness of the original work, approximating the foreign text’s form and syntax in the receiving language and using an uncommon, heterogeneous vocabulary. The resulting translations, which challenge readers with their frequent defiance of the conventions of the receiving linguistic culture, create literal, exaggerated readings that better convey authors’ characteristic use of their own languages for a new audience. …
Date: August 2015
Creator: Ritchie, J. Cole
System: The UNT Digital Library

Still life in black and white: An intertextual interpretation of William Grant Still's "symphonic trilogy."

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
William Grant Still's musical achievements are legion. Because he was the first African American to break the color line in America's concert halls, Still earned the sobriquet "Dean of Negro Composers." Paradoxically, Still's reception suffers from this list of "firsts." The unintended consequence of cataloging his achievements venerates his position as an iconoclast while detracting critical attention from his music. Conversely, if we ignore the social context in which Still produced his music, we risk misinterpreting his compositional choices or trivializing the significance of his accomplishments prior to the Civil Rights Movement in America. Still's so-called symphonic trilogy-Africa, Symphony No. 1 ("Afro-American"), and Symphony No. 2 ("Song of a New Race")-is the subject of an intertextual analysis that demonstrates how extra-musical concerns, such as race, and musical elements can be brought into alignment. Chapter one discusses black music scholarship in general and Still scholarship in particular by tracing the development of black music historiography. The second chapter explores one of the various modes of inquiry used to study black music-intertextuality. The context for Still's self-titled racial and universal periods is the subject of chapter three. For the first time, arguments from both sides of the racial divide are reconsidered in …
Date: August 2005
Creator: Lamb, Earnest
System: The UNT Digital Library
Caught Between Jazz and Pop: The Contested Origins, Criticism, Performance Practice, and Reception of Smooth Jazz. (open access)

Caught Between Jazz and Pop: The Contested Origins, Criticism, Performance Practice, and Reception of Smooth Jazz.

In Caught Between Jazz and Pop, I challenge the prevalent marginalization and malignment of smooth jazz in the standard jazz narrative. Furthermore, I question the assumption that smooth jazz is an unfortunate and unwelcomed evolutionary outcome of the jazz-fusion era. Instead, I argue that smooth jazz is a long-lived musical style that merits multi-disciplinary analyses of its origins, critical dialogues, performance practice, and reception. Chapter 1 begins with an examination of current misconceptions about the origins of smooth jazz. In many jazz histories, the origins of smooth jazz are defined as a product of the jazz-fusion era. I suggest that smooth jazz is a distinct jazz style that is not a direct outgrowth of any mainstream jazz style, but a hybrid of various popular and jazz styles. Chapters 2 through 4 contain eight case studies examining the performers of crossover jazz and smooth jazz. These performers have conceived and maintained distinct communicative connections between themselves and their audiences. In the following chapter, the unfair treatment of popular jazz styles is examined. Many early and influential jazz critics sought to elevate jazz to the status of art music by discrediting popular jazz styles. These critics used specific criteria and emphasized notions …
Date: December 2008
Creator: West, Aaron J.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Reconstructing Convention: Ensemble Forms in the Operas of Jules Massenet (open access)

Reconstructing Convention: Ensemble Forms in the Operas of Jules Massenet

Over the last quarter-century, scholars have taken a unified approach in discussing form in Italian and French opera of the nineteenth century. This approach centers around the four-part aria and duet form begun by Bellini, codified by Rossini, modified by Verdi, and dissolved by Puccini. A similar trajectory can be seen in French opera in the works of Meyerbeer, Gounod, and Massenet; however, only Meyerbeer and Gounod have received significant critical attention. This is in part due to Massenet's reception as a "composer for the people," a title ill fitting and ripe for reconsideration. This dissertation will examine duet forms in Massenet's oeuvre and will focus on the gradual change in style manifest in his twenty-five operas. Massenet's output can be divided into three distinct periods delineated by his approach to form. Representative works from each period will show how he inherited, interpreted, thwarted, and ultimately rewrote the standard formal conventions of his time and in doing so, created a dramaturgical approach to opera that unified the formerly separate number-based elements. Massenet's longevity and popular appeal make him the quintessential French opera composer of the fin de siècle and the natural choice for examining reconstructed conventions.
Date: December 2004
Creator: Straughn, Gregory
System: The UNT Digital Library