In this document, I discuss the creative process of a piece for instruments, electronics, and video titled Music for the End of the World in the context of the Anthropocene and music's relationship with it. The document is divided into two parts: Part I, divided into three chapters, is a critical essay and Part II, the score for Music for the End of the World. In the first two chapters, I present the conceptual basis for the creation of the piece and discuss relevant musical references. In the third chapter, I describe the creative process in detail and explain how the aesthetic decisions I made relate to the original concept. The first chapter starts by defining the Anthropocene and pointing out some connections between music, colonialism, and ecology. It also highlights some of the Anthropocene potential implications for the arts through the lens of Timothy Morton's post-humanist philosophy. In the second chapter, three important references for the creation of Music for the End of the World are presented: Luigi Nono's Prometeo; Francisco López La Selva; and João Pedro Oliveira's Neshamah. In the third chapter, I present the creative process of Music for the End of the World in detail. It …

Since the reveal of the Black-White achievement gap in 1966, leaders and policymakers have attempted to close the gap to no avail. The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was to examine the relationships between self-efficacy, grit, and academic achievement of Black and White students. For the first two research questions,I sought to determine whether there were relationships between self-efficacy, grit, and academic achievement as defined by the PSAT 10 Reading or Math results. Students were administered self-efficacy and grit surveys to establish their corresponding self-efficacy and grit levels. A Pearson correlation analysis was performed to determine the bivariate relationships between participants' self-efficacy and grit levels and their 2021 PSAT 10 Reading and Math results. Statistical significance was discovered; specifically, a positive correlation existed between Black students, grit, and their academic achievement on PSAT 10 Math. For the final two research questions, I solicited students' perspectives of self-efficacy and grit and how they perceived the two constructs were associated with their academic success. Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted to better explain student perspectives from their Phase 1 survey responses, which produced themes associated with self-efficacy and grit. Students shared how they perceived these traits impacted their academic …

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) was a leading composer, virtuoso pianist, and well-known pedagogue during the late Classical and early Romantic periods. His music was important and frequently performed during his lifetime, but his piano preludes, Op. 67, seem to have been completely forgotten. These preludes reflect the traditional use of the prelude, with many traditional piano techniques. The influence of Hummel's Op. 67 on the next generations is clearly shown in the similarities in their compositions, especially the works of Chopin. This dissertation includes a formal analysis of the preludes and a discussion of each specific type of piano techniques with practicing suggestions, providing a pedagogical guide for students on how to use Hummel's works to prepare for other composers.

Carl Czerny (1791-1857) was an Austrian piano teacher, composer, pianist, historian, and theorist, who made many contributions to the musical world. He wrote many pieces of music over the course of his life, the most familiar to us being his exercises. His other types of work are less known and studied nowadays for various reasons. Yet it cannot be denied that Czerny was a very important figure who should not be allowed to fade away. We must delve deeper into his life and uncover more of his pieces, to reveal aspects of his work that are unknown for us. This study concentrates on the forgotten piece Fantaisie sur des mélodies de Beethoven, Op. 752. This is one of the pieces that I included in a World Premiere release recording issued by Toccata Classics. The intent of the program for the recording was to change the traditional concept of Czerny's work and show that his compositions are worth adding to today's recital repertoire. The program included five forgotten pieces by Czerny, of which Op. 752 was the most complicated and virtuosic. The purpose of this study is to analyze the piece and illustrate practicing methods or solutions for the technical challenges …

Prior research has provided evidence that the disclosure of internal controls material weaknesses (ICMWs) is a powerful input attribute in misstatement prediction. However, the disclosure of ICMWs is imperfect in capturing internal control quality because many firms with control problems fail to disclose ICMWs on a timely basis. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the existence of ICMWs, including both the disclosed and the undisclosed ICMWs, improves misstatement prediction. I develop a two-stage machine learning model for misstatement prediction with the predicted existence of ICMWs as the intermediate concept; my model that outperforms the model with the ICMW disclosures. I also find that the model incorporating both the predicted existence and the disclosure of ICMWs outperforms those with only the disclosure or the predicted existence of ICMWs. These results hold across different input attributes, machine learning methods, and prediction periods, and training-test samples splitting methods. Finally, this study shows that the two-stage models outperform the one-stage models in predictions related to financial reporting quality.

Shakespeare references humoral medical theory and social definitions of gender throughout much of his work. His references to medical practices like purging, the siphoning of excessive emotional fluids to bring the body into balance, are more than allusions to medical theories. Shakespeare's works unveil and challenge early modern approaches to emotional experience, most particularly when it comes to traumatic experiences that overwhelm comprehension. In Titus Andronicus (1592), The Rape of Lucrece (1593), Hamlet (1603), King Lear (1608), and Macbeth (1606), Shakespeare invokes humoral theory to articulate the early modern traumatic experience and to criticize the efficacy of purging in representations of trauma. For Shakespeare, the siphoning of destabilized emotions, through metaphorical and rhetorical practices, has dangerous consequences for bodies coded as feminine.