The serpent, an extinct musical instrument, was important to the development of contemporary low brass. Its characteristics, performance problems, and literature give insight into its development as well as reasons for its ultimate demise and replacement with technically more advanced instruments.

The purposes of this study are to determine the scope and nature of music programs in rural public community colleges in the United States; to determine the unique characteristics of the rural public community college music program when compared to music programs of the total population of two-year colleges; to propose criteria to serve as a basis for a music program at rural public community colleges and to recommend a music program for rural public community colleges based upon the proposed criteria.

The purpose was to investigate attitudes of successful full-time performing classical singer-actors toward career concerns of the music profession. Five research problems were formulated to: (1) describe attitudes toward control of work conditions; (2) describe attitudes toward entrapment; (3) describe attitudes toward dependency; (4) report attitudes concerning current practices of training the solo singer; and (5) identify commonalities among the subjects regarding demographic, the attitudes described in problems one through four, and demeanor during the interviews.

This study investigates, analyzes, and attempts to evaluate Robert Lucas Pearsall's (1795-1856) published articles and music as well as all available writings and music in manuscript form.

The process of the organization of the orchestra began with the rise of opera; considered on a broad scale this process divides itself into two periods, the first terminated by the deaths of Bach and Handel (1600-1759) and the second beginning with the complete change of orchestral sound evident in the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart during the second half of the eighteenth century. It is the first of these two periods that witnessed the composers of art music exploiting the natural trumpet, an instrument long associated with court, camp, and field, to the extent that they developed a vast repertoire of trumpet music characterized by its virtuosic technical requirements.

The lecture recital was given on April 18, 1974. Some Mendelssohn organ works in manuscript were performed during the lecture to illustrate Mendelssohn's indebtedness to baroque models and his evolution as an organ composer.

The lecture recital, given April 13, 1981, began with biographical background for Busoni's compositional development leading to his mature style, as found in the Toccata, the Carmen Fantasy, and the Mephisto Waltz. The three works--an original composition, an operatic paraphrase, and a transcription from an orchestral score--were then detailed with emphasis placed primarily on Busoni's aesthetic ideals in relation to the three works.

The purpose of this study is to trace the role of music and music education in Abilene, Texas, from 1881 to 1911. The research presents historical data relative to five categories: Educational music, cultural music, religious music, music of the vernacular, and music merchandising. The study utilizes personal interviews, newspaper files, city directories, local histories, photographs, city and county documents, school documents, minutes of public school board meetings, minutes of meetings of churches, school catalogues, articles in journals, unpublished works, and published books.

The popularity of the miscellaneous wind bands in Italian society through the centuries, and the prominent use of the trumpet within these ensembles and as a solo instrument, become evident in the examination of the development of the banda sul palco (the band on stage) in Italian opera. Gioachino Rossini was the first to use the banda sul palco (stage band) with any regularity. Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Gazzaniga, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart must be considered earlier contributors to the growing movement of using instrumental ensembles on stage.

The History of Horn Playing in Los Angeles from 1920 to 1970 begins with the horn players who played in the silent film orchestras and the Alfred Brain's tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This study details the introduction of soundtracks, the early studio orchestras, the contract studio orchestras, the musician union's role in structuring the work environment, the horn players who played in both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the studios, major figures from the subsequent freelance period such as Vincent de Rosa, and the local and international influence of the Los Angeles Horn Club.