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 …

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," …

Muzio Clementi's symphonies were first performed in London between 1786 and 1796. After an extended hiatus from 1796 to 1813, his symphonic works appeared on programs again from 1813 to 1824. Clementi's career as a symphonist corresponds closely with trends in London's concert life. The reception of Clementi's symphonies during his lifetime has frequently been misinterpreted by scholars who oversimplify the use of "science" in musical discourse of the day and fail to consider the positive connotations of this adjective, so frequently applied to Clementi. Musical discourse at the time addressed the science and art of music emphasizing a composition, or its composer's, science, harmony, effects, genius, and the audience's response. Though an unstated ideal, reviews evince a preference for balancing scientific and artistic display. Reviews of Clementi's symphonies suggest he initially struggled to balance the technical and artistic qualities of his compositions but succeeded, according to reviews, in finally doing so in 1796. After his early efforts, Clementi was consistently praised as worthy to stand among the current and most prestigious composers of the continent: Haydn and Mozart initially, and Beethoven and Rossini later.

The Dido myth has evolved and been adapted by many cultures over the centuries. Each Dido was altered to fit the needs of its creator, their society and customs. Despite these variations, every Dido retelling is derived from the Virgilian Dido, historical Dido, or chaste Dido narrative, or a combination of these stories. The pasticcio opera, Ópera armónica al estilo italiano que se intitula Dido y Eneas draws on the general Virgilian plot but emphasizes the chaste Dido narrative. The changes in the plot of Dido y Eneas reflect societal gender norms, theatrical conventions, and historical figures, specifically Queen María Luisa Gabriela, from eighteenth-century Spain. The Dido of Dido y Eneas can be divided into two main personas: Dido the queen and Dido the lover. Her arias, which come from preexisting Italian operas, convey the dramatic text very well. However, no matter what persona Dido portrays, she never fully loses control nor lets her passions rule her actions. Even in the moments before her suicide, her aria, "Punta intrepida," lacks the overt emotionality found in the popular Dido lament made famous by Purcell. This thesis aims to situate Dido y Eneas within the history of the Dido narrative and gender …

This thesis investigates possible connections between the music of Erik Satie (1866-1925) and the later surrealist movement, turning to Parade (1917) in a case study that seeks to understand surrealism in music through the idea of self-exploration, a well-established interpretive approach in studies of surrealism in the visual arts. This thesis seeks to redefine surrealism in music not as a set of concrete musical characteristics, but as a collection of techniques meant to evoke subconscious turbulence by blurring the boundary between the "outside" and "inside," between conscious and subconscious, leading to a new discovery of higher or deeper truth. Satie's music aligns with the psychoanalytic elements of the discourse on surrealism. Psychoanalysis, pioneered by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and his followers in the 1890s in Vienna, permeated France around the time of the creation of the work. It inspired early surrealist techniques like automatism, illusory formal structures, collage, and stylistic allusion. This thesis demonstrates that such techniques can be discerned throughout Parade, not only in Satie's music, but also in its scenario, staging, costumes, and choreography. As such, Parade was a foundational work for the surrealist movement, with Satie's music contributing with the other media equally to the emotional and psychological …

This dissertation explores the use of topics for dramatic purposes in Mozart's Così fan tutte. The five analytical chapters are organized around a central question: how do pastoral and fanfare topics shape the plot of Così fan tutte? Chapter 2 highlights the role topics and tropes play in emplacing and nuancing emergent meaning in the Così fan tutte motto. Chapter 3 examines transformative topical tropes in "Ah guarda, sorella." Chapter 4 shows how the horn fifths and fanfare topics in "Per pietà, ben mio" frame Fiordiligi's choice: the Albanian or Guglielmo. Chapter 5 illustrates the relationship between fanfare topics and galant recitative schemas to articulate formal boundaries between accompanied recitatives and arias. The expectations of closure emplaced by the examples from Così fan tutte nuance a reading of "Hai già vinta la causa!" from Le nozze di Figaro. Chapter 6 discusses the role of recitative intrusions and their articulation of the Count's unrest in "Vedrò mentre io sospiro." Detailed analyses and close readings of the topics and tropes in this dissertation drawn from throughout Così fan tutte showcase Mozart's rich deployment of topics in varied musical and dramatic roles.

This dissertation reexamines the music-theoretical writing of Georg Jospeh Vogler (1749-1814) in light of his educational background. His system, which is often characterized as "awkward" or "self-contradictory," is actually indicative of the rationalist/humanist preferences of Vogler's main source of training: the Jesuit Order. I argue that Vogler's theories and compositional style have been marginalized, partially due to their incompatibility with the more prevalent systems of his era, which were predominantly based in empirical modes of thought.

This dissertation argues how motivic saturation on the musical surface complicates a conventional harmonic interpretation in Fauré's late chamber works. Using motivic segmentation and linear analysis, I illustrate how the abundance of foreground motives has far-reaching implications for tonal voice leading and overall coherence. The outcomes of motivic saliency are twofold, influencing harmonic progressions by 1) altering traditional syntax or 2) replacing traditional syntax to provide the primary form of tonal coherence. I unpack the voice-leading consequences of stratifying motives over one another and bring in two larger, emerging concepts: 1) key duality as disjunction between melody and bass and 2) tonal coherence from the tonal profile of motives. In the first case, either the melody or the bass projects its own center or key separate from the other parts, producing a sensation of key duality. In the second, a single motive furnishes the main source of tonal grounding by unfolding a structural harmony that the surface sonorities obscure. While motivic saliency is a consistent trait across Fauré's late repertoire, the two phenomena above increase over time.

This dissertation asserts the value of James Lyon's Urania to the field of American music history as a vital contribution to the development of music in the British colonies prior to the War for Independence. While previous scholarship acknowledges Urania's importance as the first publication in America to contain music by a native-born composer, this study argues that its subscription list and selection of anthems (both of which were new to the field of American music publishing) contribute to the status this compilation is due. The confluence of the English chapel tradition and American singing school tradition contributes to the theological universality and accessibility of its twelve anthems. An introductory chapter discusses the secondary literature upon which this study is based - notably that of Oscar Sonneck and Richard Crawford - and posits applications for the idea presented herein beyond the field of musicology. Chapter 2 provides biographical information on James Lyon and contextualizes Urania within the broader framework of the English chapel tradition and the American singing-school tradition. Chapter 3 discusses the marketability of music in colonial America and explores the biographies of the subscribers to Urania using modern databases. Chapter 4 concerns the confluence of music and sacred …

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 …

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, …