"Being" a Stickist:  A Phenomenological Consideration of "Dwelling" in a Virtual Music Scene (open access)

"Being" a Stickist: A Phenomenological Consideration of "Dwelling" in a Virtual Music Scene

Musical instruments are not static, unchanging objects. They are, instead, things that materially evolve in symmetry with human practices. Alterations to an instrument's design often attend to its ergonomic or expressive capacity, but sometimes an innovator causes an entirely new instrument to arise. One such instrument is the Chapman Stick. This instrument's history is closely intertwined with global currents that have evolved into virtual, online scenes. Virtuality obfuscates embodiment, but the Stick's world, like any instrument's, is optimally related in intercorporeal exchanges. Stickists circumvent real and virtual obstacles to engage the Stick world. Using an organology informed by the work of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, this study examines how the Chapman Stick, as a material "thing," speaks in and through a virtual, representational environment.
Date: May 2010
Creator: Hodges, Jeff
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Document and Information Experience in Virtual Zenanas: An Exploration of a Diaspora Small World (open access)

Document and Information Experience in Virtual Zenanas: An Exploration of a Diaspora Small World

The word diaspora is currently understood as the large scale voluntary movement of people, along with capital and goods due to the mechanisms of globalization. Adopting a diaspora, gender and leisure perspective, this dissertation looked at the information and document experiences of a particular fan community of women belonging to the Indian diaspora and the online spaces created and occupied by them (fan fiction blogs which can be viewed as book clubs). The study also looked at memory making and documenting of the same as a part of document experience, resulting in what can be termed as "serendipitous memory archives." The blogs hosting fan fiction and the mediated practices they support were viewed as documents for the study. The online spaces were conceptualized as small worlds and the theoretical framework used for the study consisted of a preliminary model of a small world (based on literature review and my understanding of the world under study), information experience as a concept as well as document experience models. The results show that social ties play a big role in the information and document experience, while memory making and documenting of the same are also seen to happen as part of the document …
Date: December 2020
Creator: Kizhakkethil, Priya
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Virtual Entrepreneurship: Explicating the Antecedents of Firm Performance (open access)

Virtual Entrepreneurship: Explicating the Antecedents of Firm Performance

Prior research has examined entrepreneurial businesses spatially located in the physical or offline context; however, recent radical information and technological breakthroughs allow entrepreneurs to launch their businesses completely online. The growth of the online business industry has been phenomenal. Predictions for worldwide online sales estimate it to reach $2 trillion in 2016. Virtual entrepreneurship refers to the pursuit and exploitation of opportunities via virtual platforms. Web 2.0 cybermediaries offer web-based platforms that function similarly to traditional intermediaries in a virtual setting and minimize barriers to entry for virtual entrepreneurial firms. The use of such cybermediaries with increasing success suggests an implicit shift in the dominant logic that typically underpins the functioning of entrepreneurial firms operating in the physical world. In this relatively uncharted territory, marked by a focus on profit, cooperation, collaboration and community, three ideal-type institutional logics i.e. Market, Corporation and Community, blend together. It is posited that a Virtual Entrepreneurial Logic guides the norms, behaviors, and practices of entrepreneurial firms operating via these virtual platforms. This raises the question whether the blending of three ideal-type logics leads to the existence of different antecedents of performance. A business model antecedent addressing the economic dimension, a community antecedent addressing the …
Date: May 2016
Creator: Chandna, Vallari
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Theory and Practice in Book 2 of Ugolino's (c. 1380-1457) "Declaratio musicae disciplinae" (open access)

Theory and Practice in Book 2 of Ugolino's (c. 1380-1457) "Declaratio musicae disciplinae"

Ugolino (c. 1380-1457) wrote one of the largest treatises on music theory in the first half of the fifteenth century. This work, the "Declaratio musicae disciplinae," is comprised of five books that cover everything a musician of the era would need to know, from plainchant to harmonic proportions, from musica practica to musica speculativa. However, the treatise has received contradictory interpretations by modern scholars, some viewing it as mainly practical, others as mainly theoretical. I argue that in Book 2, which deals with counterpoint, Ugolino crystallizes the relationship between theory and practice, while offering distinctive contrapuntal practices. Ugolino presents a unique view music's place in the structure of knowledge, one which is highly dependent on Aristotelian philosophy. He posits that music is a science and that it is a branch not of mathematics, as it had traditionally been categorized, but of natural philosophy. This viewpoint shapes the entire treatise and is evident in the book on counterpoint. There, he presents an Italian tradition of teaching counterpoint known as the "regola del grado." Ugolino is the first author to present this tradition entirely in Latin. In addition, he offers an unusual description of musica ficta. In it, he presents a diagram, …
Date: August 2021
Creator: Turner, Joseph (Joseph Alexander)
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Technology in Libraries: Essays in Honor of Anne Grodzins Lipow (open access)

Technology in Libraries: Essays in Honor of Anne Grodzins Lipow

This collection of essays celebrates Anne Lipow's contribution to library technology.
Date: 2008
Creator: Tennant, Roy
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
The UNT Music Library at 75: Selections from Its Special Collections (open access)

The UNT Music Library at 75: Selections from Its Special Collections

The UNT Music Library boasts an interesting and vastly varied assortment of musical treasures in its special collections. This commemorative volume celebrates its 75th anniversary with a brief history of the Music Library and a selection of items from its unique collections.
Date: 2016
Creator: McKnight, Mark
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Freshman Music Students' Identification With Expected Tasks in the Music Theory Class as a Relevant Part of Becoming a Musician (open access)

Freshman Music Students' Identification With Expected Tasks in the Music Theory Class as a Relevant Part of Becoming a Musician

The purpose of the study was to investigate freshman music students' identification with expected tasks in music theory class including aural, written, and performance requirements. The second research problem compared students' descriptions with actions in class to determine the presence of role taking (the conscious adherence to a set of behaviors) or role playing (the unconscious assumption of a set of behaviors).
Date: December 1996
Creator: Kteily-O'Sullivan, Laila Rose
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Music in the Fiction of Willa Cather (open access)

Music in the Fiction of Willa Cather

This thesis explores the use of music in the literary works of author Willa Cather.
Date: August 1953
Creator: Johnston, William Winfred
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Mariachismo: Music, Machismo, and Mexicanidad (open access)

Mariachismo: Music, Machismo, and Mexicanidad

One of the most recognized icons of Mexico is the mariachi moderno tradition, which in the global popular imaginary, is associated with nostalgic, humorous, and emotional songs of love, heartache, death, drinking, and place. Inseparably fused to tequila and the historic charro figure, mariachi moderno completes a symbolic trinity of hetero-nationalist culture, conveyed within a popular imaginary of authentic mexicanidad (Mexican-ness). For mariachis and aficionados in Mexico, performative hypermasculine machismo acts as a perceptual baseline, structuring modes of feeling that signify an experience of authentic nationalist musicality This process is musically constructed in an incorporation of bodily movement, instruments, sound timbres, and symbolic clothing, simultaneously gestured with a heavy male-accent fusing an experience that feels genuinely Mexican. This reflexive signification is a consequence of the lived experience, shared dispositions, and competencies learned in the habitus, constituting real and imagined notions of hetero-nationalist culture. I refer to this musical semiosis as mariachismo, a neologism describing an intersubjective experience of machismo-infused mariachi subjectivity, ritualized through repeated gestures of sound, lyric, and corporeality. The semiotic power of mariachismo is most potent for subjects enculturated to Mexico's hetero-nationalist culture, shaped by popular imaginaries operationalizing gender and mexicanidad, connecting the two, making them feel unquestioned, …
Date: December 2020
Creator: Torres, José R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Lay Spirituality in Fourteenth-Century England (open access)

Lay Spirituality in Fourteenth-Century England

In fourteenth-century England, a form of lay spirituality emerged, influenced by the writings and example of the famous mystics, both English and continental, of that period, but much affected by other developments as well. Against the background of socio-economic and political change, the emergence of lay spirituality is examined, with particular emphasis upon continuity and change within the church, the religious instruction of the age, and the spirituality of the English mystics. Finally, the sole surviving written record of lay spirituality of the period, The Book of Margery Kempe, is investigated, along with its author, Margery Kempe - pilgrim, visionary, and aspiring mystic.
Date: May 1991
Creator: Field, Carol Hammond
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Music from the Hilltop: Organs and Organists at Southern Methodist University

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
In Music from the Hilltop, Benjamin A. Kolodziej studies three significant academic musical figures to weave a narrative that not only details the role musical studies played in the development of Southern Methodist University but also relates a history of church music and pipe organs in Dallas, Texas. Bertha Stevens Cassidy (1876–1959), the first organ professor and the only woman on the faculty of the new university, established herself as a leader and veritable dean of the church music community, managing a career of significant performances and teaching. Her student and protégé, Dora Poteet Barclay (1903–1961), broadened the pedagogical horizons for her students. Many of her own students achieved great professional heights as performers and church musicians. Robert Theodore Anderson (1934–2009) was intellectually able to bridge the gap between the theologians of the Methodist seminary and the performers at the Meadows School of the Arts. He consulted with the Dallas Symphony to prepare for the installation of an organ in the new Meyerson Symphony Center—an organ that would influence concert hall instruments in subsequent decades.
Date: October 2023
Creator: Kolodziej, Benjamin A.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
After he died, Townes Van Zandt found the success that he sabotaged throughout his short life despite the release of sixteen brilliant albums. Since his death, numerous albums both by and in honor of him have been released and many critical articles published, in addition to several books (including Robert Hardy’s A Deeper Blue by UNT Press). For the Sake of the Song collects ten essays on Townes Van Zandt from a variety of approaches. Contributors examine his legacy; his use of the minor key; his reception in the Austin music scene; and an exploration of his relationship with Richard Dobson, with whom he toured as part of the Hemmer Ridge Mountain Boys. An introduction by editors Ann Norton Holbrook and Dan Beller- McKenna provides an overview of Van Zandt’s literary excellence and philosophical wisdom, rare among even the best songwriters.
Date: June 2022
Creator: Holbrook, Ann Norton & Beller-McKenna, Dan
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Extending the Apprenticeship through Informal Learning on Facebook: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the Lived Experiences of Music Faculty (open access)

Extending the Apprenticeship through Informal Learning on Facebook: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the Lived Experiences of Music Faculty

Facebook studio groups/pages are commonly used by applied music faculty to communicate with current students, recruit new students, share students' activities, and promote faculty members' professional performances and academic endeavors. However, the blurred lines between academic, professional performance, and social activities in the field have led to a wide variety of approaches to Facebook use by music faculty. This dissertation documents the first generation of music faculty social media users and investigates the beliefs, intent, and lived experiences of music faculty who use Facebook studio groups/pages to communicate with their students. Four music faculty were interviewed and a semester's Facebook studio group/page data collected for each faculty member. Interviews and Facebook data were analyzed using Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to identify emergent, and ultimately super-ordinate, themes from the data. The three super-ordinate themes that emerged were: Impact of Social Media on Studio Teaching and Learning, Learning through Enculturation, and Faculty Lived Experiences with Facebook Studio Groups/Pages. Findings of the study included: faculty concerns about personal and professional risk; the observation that teaching and learning are occurring through these Facebook studio groups/pages by way of the process of enculturation, but without evidence of a Virtual Community of Practice; and, a multitude …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Meredith, Tamara R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Quantitative Approach to the History of Music Binder's Volumes (1820–1900) (open access)

A Quantitative Approach to the History of Music Binder's Volumes (1820–1900)

Music binder's volumes, or collections of sheet music typically bound by women in the nineteenth century, constitute an informative and underutilized set of historical artifacts. Each binder's volume can be viewed as a Spotify playlist frozen in time. An individual volume contains more than just the volume's individual pieces; it also holds the marginalia, the choices women made on what to include in a binder, and information on where and how music was produced. This dissertation examines music binder's volumes quantitatively, processing information found in binder's volumes by using the MARC and other cataloguing data to construct a relational database. I engage with broad questions of music publishing and consumption and provide a method to contextualize qualitative results on a larger scale. In doing so, I make two distinct contributions to music research and the digital humanities. First, this project offers a clear path for engaging with music binder's volumes and material history of nineteenth-century America in ways that scholars have rarely engaged in prior to this point. I highlight how data analysis provides new framings for binder's volumes and for sheet music consumption both at the song-level and at larger levels of the data. Second, and more broadly, this …
Date: December 2022
Creator: Anderson, Brian K
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Case Study of Interpersonal Influences in a Band Music Setting: Bohumil Makovsky (1878-1950) and His Association with Selected Individuals Involved in Instrumental Music in the State of Oklahoma (open access)

A Case Study of Interpersonal Influences in a Band Music Setting: Bohumil Makovsky (1878-1950) and His Association with Selected Individuals Involved in Instrumental Music in the State of Oklahoma

The purpose of this study was to investigate the interpersonal influences which Bohumil Makovsky, Director of Bands and Chairman of the Music Department at Oklahoma A&M College from 1915 to 1943, had on his students and peers, as confirmed through the perceptions of selected individuals, and to determine what personal characteristics and means he drew upon to induce changes in his students and peers.
Date: May 1992
Creator: Dugger, Richard Charles
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
In-between Music: The Musical Creation of Cholo Identity in Cochabamba, Bolivia (open access)

In-between Music: The Musical Creation of Cholo Identity in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Music and identity are inextricably linked. While a particular social or ethnic group's music may reflect characteristics of that group, it also functions in creating the identity of the group. In Andean Bolivia, the choloethnic group has very subjective and constantly changing boundaries. Cholo-ness is made possible through mediated cultural performances of all types, in which members actively choose elements from both criollo and Indian cultures. Music is one particularly effective way in which cholos create and maintain their identity. This thesis focuses on the ways in which cholos use music to create a hybrid identity in and around Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Date: August 2007
Creator: Jones, Eric
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Technology Standards for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning in Community College Music Programs (open access)

Technology Standards for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning in Community College Music Programs

Providing standards for music technology use in community college music programs presents both challenges and opportunities for educators in American higher education. A need exists to assess the current use of technology at the community college level for the purpose of improving instruction. Although limited research has been done on the use of technology to support music education K- 12 and in four-year universities, little research on the problem in the community college setting was found. This research employed a Delphi study, a method for the systematic solicitation and collection of professional judgments on a particular subject, to examine existing criteria, “best practices”, and standards, in an effort to develop a set of standards specifically for the community college level. All aspects of a complete music program were considered including: curriculum, staffing, equipment, materials/software, facilities and workforce competencies. The panel of experts, comprised of community college educators from throughout the nation, reached consensus on 50 of the 57 standards. Forty-one or 82%, were identified as minimal standards for the application of music technology in music education. Community college music educators, planning to successfully utilize music technology to improve teaching and learning should implement the 41 standards determined as minimal by …
Date: December 2001
Creator: Crawford, Michael
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
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)
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Analytical Study of Paradox and Structural Dualism in the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven (open access)

An Analytical Study of Paradox and Structural Dualism in the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven's rich compositional language evokes unique problems that have fueled scholarly dialogue for many years. My analyses focus on two types of paradoxes as central compositional problems in some of Beethoven's symphonic pieces and piano sonatas. My readings of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 27 (Op. 90), Symphony No. 4 (Op. 60), and Symphony No. 8 (Op. 93) explore the nature and significance of paradoxical unresolved six-four chords and their impact on tonal structure. I consider formal-tonal paradoxes in Beethoven's Tempest Sonata (Op. 31, No. 2), Ninth Symphony (Op. 125), and Overture die Weihe des Hauses (Op. 124). Movements that evoke formal-tonal paradoxes retain the structural framework of a paradigmatic interrupted structure, but contain unique voice-leading features that superimpose an undivided structure on top of the "residual" interrupted structure. Carl Schachter's observations about "genuine double meaning" and his arguments about the interplay between design and tonal structure in "Either/Or" establish the foundation for my analytical approach to paradox. Timothy Jackson's reading of Brahms' "Immer leiser word meine Schlummer" (Op. 105, No. 2) and Stephen Slottow's "Von einem Kunstler: Shapes in the Clouds" both clarify the methodology employed here. My interpretation of paradox involves more than just a slight contradiction between two …
Date: May 2016
Creator: Graf, Benjamin
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Earth Ascending: A Composition in Three Movements for Female Voice, Electroacoustic Music, and Video (open access)

Earth Ascending: A Composition in Three Movements for Female Voice, Electroacoustic Music, and Video

Earth Ascending is a composition in three movements scored for female voice, electroacoustic music, and video. Composed in the Year 2000, Earth Ascending lasts approximately sixteen minutes and was created specifically for live performance in which all three elements combine to create a sonic and visual environment. As such, no single element has greater importance than any other, with each of the three performing forces assuming a foreground role at various times throughout the work. Earth Ascending is defined by a single poem written by contemporary female British poets Jeni Counzyn, Jehanne Mehta, and Cynthia Fuller. The movements are named according to the title of each poem: Earth-Body, Light-Body; Wringcliff Beach; and Pool. The movements are separated in performance by five seconds of silence and black on the video screen. The paper accompanying the score of Earth Ascending is divided into five chapters, each discussing in detail an element central to the composition itself. The Introduction presents background information, general ideas, and approaches undertaken when creating the work. Chapters 1 through 3 investigate in detail the content of the electroacoustic music, voice, and video. Chapter 4 discusses scoring techniques, revealing approaches and methods undertaken to solve issues relating to notation …
Date: August 2000
Creator: Lillios, Elainie
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Music Criticism in the New York Times and the New York Tribune, 1851-1876 (open access)

Music Criticism in the New York Times and the New York Tribune, 1851-1876

This doctoral dissertation discusses music criticism in the New York Times and the New York Tribune from 1851-1876.
Date: July 17, 1980
Creator: McKnight, Mark, 1951-
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Singing Songs of Social Significance: Children's Music and Leftist Pedagogy in 1930s America (open access)

Singing Songs of Social Significance: Children's Music and Leftist Pedagogy in 1930s America

In their shared goal of communicating left-wing principles to children through music, Marc Blitzstein's Worker's Kids of the World (1935), Aaron Copland's The Second Hurricane (1937), and Alex North's The Hither and Thither of Danny Dither (1941) exhibit a fundamental unity of purpose that binds them both to each other and to the extensive leftist pedagogical efforts of their time. By observing the parallel relationship among these three children's works and contemporary youth organizations, summer camps, and children's literature, their cultural objectives and stylistic idiosyncrasies emerge as expressions of a continuously evolving educational tradition. Whereas Worker's Kids comes out of the revolutionary Communist aesthetics of the Composers' Collective and the militant activism of The Young Pioneers, The Second Hurricane and Danny Dither reflect the increasingly accommodating educational efforts of the American Popular Front.
Date: December 2008
Creator: Haas, Benjamin D.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Hearing History: Musical Borrowing in the Percussion Ensemble Works, Duo Chopinesque and Chameleon Music (open access)

Hearing History: Musical Borrowing in the Percussion Ensemble Works, Duo Chopinesque and Chameleon Music

Duo Chopinesque by Michael Hennagin and Chameleon Music by Dan Welcher represent two of the most significant percussion ensemble compositions written in the last twenty years. Both works are written for the mostly mallet type of percussion ensemble wherein the keyboard instruments predominate. However, the most unique aspect of these two pieces is their use of musical quotation. Duo Chopinesque borrows Chopin's Prelude in E minor in its entirety, while Chameleon Music borrows portions from four Mozart Sonatas. This paper places each work within the history of the percussion ensemble, and in the larger history of musical quotation in the twentieth century. In addition, the compositional characteristics of both works are examined with particular emphasis on each composer's use of borrowed material from the music of Mozart and Chopin. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between quoted material and newly composed rhythmic motives.
Date: December 1999
Creator: Fulton, Stephen L.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Information Structures in Notated Music: Statistical Explorations of Composers' Performance Marks in Solo Piano Scores (open access)

Information Structures in Notated Music: Statistical Explorations of Composers' Performance Marks in Solo Piano Scores

Written notation has a long history in many musical traditions and has been particularly important in the composition and performance of Western art music. This study adopted the conceptual view that a musical score consists of two coordinated but separate communication channels: the musical text and a collection of composer-selected performance marks that serve as an interpretive gloss on that text. Structurally, these channels are defined by largely disjoint vocabularies of symbols and words. While the sound structures represented by musical texts are well studied in music theory and analysis, the stylistic patterns of performance marks and how they acquire contextual meaning in performance is an area with fewer theoretical foundations. This quantitative research explored the possibility that composers exhibit recurring patterns in their use of performance marks. Seventeen solo piano sonatas written between 1798 and 1913 by five major composers were analyzed from modern editions by tokenizing and tabulating the types and usage frequencies of their individual performance marks without regard to the associated musical texts. Using analytic methods common in information science, the results demonstrated persistent statistical similarities among the works of each composer and differences among the work groups of different composers. Although based on a small …
Date: May 2016
Creator: Buchanan, J. Paul
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library