Metaphor and Mimesis in an Animal Soundscape serves as a supplementary document for two pieces of contemporary concert music; HOWL, for viola, saxophone and fixed media, and Pastorale for viola and fixed media. Both works quote the second movement of Antonio Vivaldi's violin concerto, La Primavera. This quotation is used to support a musical program which explores the larger topic of metaphor in music. In addition, both pieces play with contemporary trends in music including, but not limited to, acoustic ecology and spectralism.

This study assessed music educators' health literacy, musician health literacy, and intentions to teach the health-related Fine Arts TEKS in ensembles. An online survey was developed using the integrated behavior model, Newest Vital Sign (NVS), and Musician Health Literacy Questionnaire (MHL-Q19). Texas music educators who taught secondary band, choir, or orchestra were recruited via email and social media. Results: This survey yielded N = 207 respondents, with 43%, 29%, 14.5%, and 13.5% teaching band, choir, orchestra, and multiple ensembles, respectively. Most participants (67.6%) demonstrated adequate health literacy by answering at least four items correctly on the NVS. Attitude (p =.47) and personal agency (p =.30) were significant predictors of behavioral intention, while perceived norm was not (R2 =.484). Including NVS total score and MHL-Q19 total score in the model showed that while both factors improved the model (ΔR2=.038), only NVS total score was significant (p =.26) in predicting behavioral intention. Music educators in this study had adequate health literacy, which may contribute to their intentions to teach health concepts in ensembles. However, future efforts to improve these intentions should focus on bolstering perceived norms and personal agency by providing music educators with opportunities to take charge of implementing these concepts …

The following thesis documents the collaboration process behind Idle Flux, a collaboration between Samuel A. Montgomery, a graduate composer at University of North Texas, and Emily Jensen, a graduate choreographer at Texas Woman's University. Comprising an 18-minute stereo fixed media composition and choreography for seven dancers, Idle Flux seeks to challenge the traditional spatial relationship between audience members and performers through restructuring seating and stage arrangements while featuring immersive sound design in multiple venues. This thesis considers multiple sources of inspiration, including Immersive Van Gogh® Exhibit Dallas, John Jasperse's Canyon, Zoe | Juniper's BeginAgain, Francisco López's installations, Alexander Ekman's A Swan Lake, Imagine Dragons' "Enemy," Son Lux's "Dream State (Dark Day)," and Ryan Lott's dance compositions. This thesis also examines the interdependent collaborative relationship between composer and choreographer by considering the issues of autonomy and creative control, examining previous collaborative models proposed or implemented by Van Stiefel, José Limón and Norman Lloyd, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Doris Humphrey and Norman Lloyd. In addition, this thesis discusses the creative process and foundational concepts behind the fixed media composition, including the use of sound samples, exploration of timbre through synthesizers, development of motives and musical language, and the spatialization of sound …

Creativity is not a hierarchical, but an intertextual, rhizomic process, pulling from a vast array of interests, experiences, and influences. These feed into each other, to inform and motivate artists as creating persons in an ongoing process we call the creative act. Anytime an artist sets out to make something, they are experiencing a dynamic yet concentrated moment of energy in the chaotic cloud of creativity. To demonstrate this, I explore several ideas that inform my piece, Codex Symphonia, including musical influences, but also visual art, film, literature, philosophy, social theory, and politics. In this document, I show that the act of creating a musical work is a deeply personal process that relies heavily on the experiences and vast network of influences on the composer. With this document I look to the contextual structure(s) that point to the possibilities that a work might exist. That is to say that the composition Codex Symphonia is a specific result of an extensive network of ideas and influences not coming from a single origin—it is, in fact all of them together at the same time in a metamodernist act of reconciliation.

Semi-occluded vocal tract exercises (SOVTEs) have been a topic of research and interest among voice specialists for over three decades. An SOVTE is "any exercise in which the vocal tract is made partially closed at or near the lips." When this kind of occlusion occurs there are numerous consequences that follow, but of primary interest is a beneficial change of impedance. These beneficial changes are still being studied, but efficiency in phonation, as well as a shift in the configuration of the vocal folds during phonation are two significant findings thus far. Efficiency in vocal production is paramount to a performer's vocal health. Therefore, a dissipating impedance or a hindering reactance would be undesirable. Research over the last three decades has largely addressed the degree of reactive inertance possible through such impedance and its health benefits on the speaking and singing voice. The performing arts health aspects of these benefits are increasingly relevant to professional voice users. Although research on SOVTEs has become plentiful and widely available to voice teachers, it is unknown how or if this population is digesting the current performing arts health research and implementing it within their vocal instruction. Understanding the extent to which SOVTE science …

Bach and Chopin were both virtuosi on their respective keyboard instruments and were considered as successful performers. This study analyzes the Influence of the Preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier of J. S. Bach on the Preludes and Etudes of Chopin. They both exploited their keyboard instruments to the fullest. The study concluded that what Bach achieved in his preludes and fugues, Chopin imitated in the spirit of his age.

This paper discusses the portrayal of the character of Carmen in the novel written by Prosper Mérimée and in the opera written by Georges Bizet. Sharon Grahnquist provides historical background to the character and her creation, and offers and interpretation of the intended performance.

This paper investigates Henri Murger's novel, Scenes de la Vie de Bohème, as a model for the opera composed by Giacomo Puccini La Bohème. Colleen Hughes Mallette discusses the historical background of the works and examines the music and story.

This paper analyzes Carl Nielsen's Concerto for Flute and Orchestra. Marilyn Seale Depp identifies the significance of the piece and explores its melodic development, also providing background on Carl Nielsen's philosophy and composition style.

This paper analyzes Ralph Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel and asserts that the songs are a song cycle rather than just a collection of songs set to to the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson. Richard Porter Cole performs a musical and poetic analysis of the songs and makes suggestions to aid performers of the piece.

This paper analyzes Johann Sebastian Bach's Cantata No. 52, Falsche Welt, dir trau' ich nicht. Janette Cook Williams presents findings on the evolution of the sacred solo cantata and examines the style of Bach's work.

This paper discusses the development of jazz that occurred in the Storyville district of New Orleans. Bernard Norman Rose explores the history of the area and the influences that resulted in a synthesis of music.

This paper explores the musical significance, history, and development of Vincenzo Bellini's four chamber arias. Nancy W. Barfield discusses the life of composer Vincenzo Bellini, his musical style, and the style of the arias themselves.

This paper describes the creation and impact of Franz Liszt's "Dante" Sonata. Bill Blaine gives historical context and elaborates on the literary and philosophical influences evident in the piece before providing an examination of the music.

This paper analyzes the music of the Liederkreis, Op. 39 to provide insight into the nature and style of the piece. Robert Farias Austin, Jr. explores the history of the German Lied and the life of the composer, Robert Alexander Schumann.

German Chorales is a great resource of church music in use today. This study investigate the Seventeen German Protestant Chorales. The researcher hoped that the important work of reviving the invaluable source of inspiration and sacred song will continue and grow.

This paper analyzes the piano compositions of Sergei Prokofieff and identifies four elements evident in the literature: classicism, innovation, toccata, and lyricism. Elisabeth Euwer Roberts traces the history of his works and the evidence of these elements in them.

Two compositions, live electronic music for instrument and computer, have been analyzed in the essay to reflect one of my aesthetics principles, content-driven composition, and the solutions that the I have applied to solve the problems which have occurred in practice. By content-driven, I mean that compositional process, material, mood, and affect are expressions of content drawn from visual art, literature, nature, religion, traditional aesthetics and other non-musical sources. During the journey of exploration, I was often deeply moved and inspired by a historical moment, a real-world story, a film, a poem, a statement, an image, a piece of music, or a natural law. In content-driven works, these elements play a major role in the creative processes.

Heinrich Schenker's concept of the auxiliary cadence can be considered as a middleground manifestation of the Ursatz; his definition of the auxiliary cadence caters only to tonal compositions with a single background tonic, such as Brahms's songs. However, there exist compositions in which the a single background tonic cannot be easily ascertained. Such unorthodox compositions, in fact, can be found even prior to Brahms's songs. In such cases, although the opening and closing tonics are different and are often categorized as large-scale auxiliary cadence structured compositions, they do not operate within the single-tonic based tonal paradigm upon which Schenker formed his idea of the auxiliary cadence. Such compositions may be approached as a novel type of auxiliary cadence and described as "process-driven." The thesis presents and contrasts examples of both types of auxiliary cadences in songs by Schubert, Brahms, and Berg.

This dissertation contextualizes Brahms's vocal quartets within a largely forgotten discourse about Hausmusik that flourished in German-speaking lands in the second half of the nineteenth century. In numerous texts about Hausmusik from ca. 1848-1900, authors conceived the genre as an aesthetically and politically conservative expression of German identity and connected its accessible style to an ideal of social cohesion in the pre-industrial age. Similar issues of national identity and musical style arise in the reception of Brahms's quartets, which, I contend, was informed by the works' generic status as Hausmusik. Critics either praised Brahms's works for their simple, folk-like style or disparaged their complexity, artifice, and foreignness. Ultimately, I argue, Brahms sought to elevate the genre of Hausmusik in his vocal quartets by integrating aesthetic and cultural values associated with this genre with a more sophisticated musical style. The works' stylistic and generic ambiguity and the disparity in critics' responses reveal competing aesthetic, political, and cultural world views immediately before and after German unification. Chapter 2 shows how discourse about Hausmusik constructed German identity in the private sphere by promoting a folk-like aesthetic and accessible musical style over the perceived cosmopolitanism and commercialism of Salonmusik and other repertoires. Chapter 3 …

The purpose of this study is to examine the acoustic implications of using aspirated, well-coordinated, coup de la glotte, and hard glottal onset methods, in order to compare and contrast the radiated acoustic spectra. Twenty-five singers trained in bel canto singing style were asked to sing 5-second samples on three pre-determined pitches comprising the low, middle, and high range in male and female voices. Each participant was instructed and trained to sing the three pitches with the four methods. EGG was used with audio perception to verify onset type, and VoceVista Video Pro was used to analyze power spectra. A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (rMANOVA) was performed with the SPSS General Linear Model function, with onset type as the within-subjects variable to determine main effects and interaction effects on harmonic amplitude (up to 5000Hz) from the independent variables. A significant main effect was found for onset type and more specifically, a significant acoustic difference was found between the well-coordinated and coup de la glotte onsets. Substantial inconsistencies were found in the execution of the well-coordinated onset, as well as in participants' reported preferred onset compared to their baseline measurement of executed onset type. Intentional study of the phonatory …

In this dissertation, I develop and apply an original voice-leading method to the music of Shostakovich. Between the years of 1926 and 1948, his music involved extreme chromaticism that required analytical views from both Russia and the West. In the mid-twentieth century, Russian theorists such as Lev Mazel' and Alexandr Dolzhansky wrote about the modal language of Shostakovich's works, but their writings lacked how to identify them within extremely chromatic passages. In the West, scholars describe his music as both tonal and atonal, sometimes combined within one work. I unify these two views with my voice-leading system consisting of an intervallic resolution of the doubly augmented prime (DAP), which appears seemingly random on the musical surface, but occurs for specific compositional reasons. First mentioned by name in Aleksei Ogolevets' 1946 "An Introduction into Contemporary Musical Thought," the DAP served no harmonic or modal purpose. While Ogolevets mentions and includes examples that show this interval, he does not discuss its resolutions nor how it functions in musical contexts. This structure, however, has broader conceptual and analytical implications. Therefore, I develop a method based on the voice leading and semitonal resolutions of the DAP, which I apply to the music of Shostakovich. …

The extended Lydian Locrian theory of harmony (ELL) is a system of analyzing harmonies and progressions according to their position along a vast spectrum of colors. The musical premise is that chords and progressions spanning upwards around the circle of fifths sound brighter, whereas chords and progressions spanning downwards around the circle of fifths sound darker. This simple premise gives rise to a complex but unified system of harmonic structures and relations, a system which provides a valuable tool for analyzing and composing music, especially of advanced tonal genres. ELL not only provides fruitful techniques for analyzing certain kinds of traditional harmonies and progressions but also provides a framework for discovering more exotic and colorful harmonies and progressions.

Often neglected in the musicological coverage of revolutionary music and theater, the Thermidorean Reaction phase (1794–1795) of the French Revolution was a period of governmental transition, in which Parisian theaters enjoyed the institutional and generic freedoms of the Le Chapelier Laws of 1791 in addition to relaxed enforcement of censorship. In recent years, Mark Darlow and Julia Doe's work has advanced understandings of operatic genres during the early years of the Revolution, which they characterize as a balance between "rupture and continuity" with artistic conventions of the ancien régime. I extend their methods of analysis to the second half of the revolutionary decade, exploring the impact that Thermidorian theatrical politics and legal (de)regulations had on operatic genre through the lens of Sapho (1794). This tragédie lyrique premiered at the Théatre de Louvois, a venue of ambiguous status within Paris's theatrical hierarchies. Featuring a libretto by Constance de Salm and music by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini, Sapho falls within the period of temporarily suspended theatrical privilege initiated by Le Chapelier and borrows key formal elements from "great" and popular operatic styles. The opera facilitates a discussion of how composers and librettists collaborated to navigate the rapidly shifting political and legal climate of Thermidor. …