The Anthem in America: 1900-1950 (open access)

The Anthem in America: 1900-1950

During the first half of this century, a wealth of anthem literature was published and performed in the United States that, as a result of the deluge of new publications since those years, has been either forgotten or is unknown to modern church musicians. The purpose of this study is to make the best of this music known, for much of it is still both suitable and desirable for contemporary worship. The research is grouped into six chapters that are entitled: The Quartet Anthem, "Anthems in the Anglican Tradition," "Prominent Choral Ensembles and the Dissemination of the Anthem," "Anthems by Prominent Music Educators," "Anthems in the Russian Style," and "The Negro Spiritual."
Date: August 1982
Creator: Fansler, Terry Lee
System: The UNT Digital Library
Busoni's Doktor Faust (open access)

Busoni's Doktor Faust

It is the intent of this thesis to shed a new investigative light upon a musician whose importance as a creative personality and aesthetician has been sorely underestimated or at least unappreciated by fellow musicians and audiences of his own and succeeding generations, a musician who formulated a new musical aesthetic which involved the utilization of compositional techniques diametrically opposed to those which had held dominant influence over the musical world for more than half a century, a musician who attempted to fuse the Italian sense of form and clarity with Teutonic profundity, complexity, and symbolism. This musician was Ferruccio Busoni. This thesis will concentrate on the history of the Faust legend and Busoni's final work, his opera Doktor Faust (c. 1924), the creative problems opera imposed upon Busoni, and his attempt to solve them vis-a-vis his own personal aesthetic.
Date: August 1976
Creator: Harrison, Charles Scott
System: The UNT Digital Library
Carlo Milanuzzi's Quarto Scherzo and the Climate of Venetian Popular Music in the 1620s (open access)

Carlo Milanuzzi's Quarto Scherzo and the Climate of Venetian Popular Music in the 1620s

Although music publishing in Italy was on the decline around the turn of the seventeenth century, Venice emerged as one of the most prolific publishing centers of secular song in Italy throughout the first three decades of the 1600s. Many Venetian song collections were printed with alfabeto, a chordal tablature designed to facilitate even the most untrained of musicians with the necessary tools for accompanying singers on the fashionable five-course Spanish guitar. Carlo Milanuzzi's Quarto Scherzo (1624) stands out among its contemporary Venetian song collections with alfabeto as an anthology of Venetian secular songs, including compositions by Miniscalchi, Berti, and Claudio and Francesco Monteverdi. Issues surrounding its publication, instrumentation, and musical and poetic style not only contribute to the understanding of Venetian Baroque monody, but also help to construe a repertory of vocal music with defining characteristics usually associated with popular music of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
Date: August 2001
Creator: Gavito, Cory Michael
System: The UNT Digital Library
Centonization and Concordance in the American Southern Uplands Folksong Melody: A Study of the Musical Generative and Transmittive Processes of an Oral Tradition (open access)

Centonization and Concordance in the American Southern Uplands Folksong Melody: A Study of the Musical Generative and Transmittive Processes of an Oral Tradition

This study presents a theory of melodic creation, transmission, memory, and recall within the Anglo- and Celtic-American culture of lower Appalachia, from the time of the earliest European settlers until the present. This theory and its attendant hypotheses draw upon earlier published ideas, current theories of memory and recall, and the results of applying a computer-supported analytical system developed by the author. Sources include previous studies of folksong melody, song collections, and earlier investigations of the psychology of memory. Also important are portions of an anonymous treatise on traditional Celtic musical scales and an authoritative, modern interpretation of this document. A final body of sources is a small group of sound-recordings.
Date: August 1984
Creator: Bevil, J. Marshall (Jack Marshall)
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: An Exponent of the Parisian Symphonie Concertant (open access)

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: An Exponent of the Parisian Symphonie Concertant

The symphonie concertante, a product of the late eighteenth-century Parisian concert societies, provided a vehicle for display of the virtuoso style sought by contemporary audiences. The works of the Chevalier Joseph Boulogne de Saint-Georges, one of its chief exponents, served as strong influences on the development of the form and its diffusion throughout Europe. The symphonies concertantes of Opus VI, No. 1 and Opus X, No. 2 (according to thematic numbering of Barry S. Brook) date from ca. 1775 and 1779 respectively. A complete set of parts for each is to be found in the private collection of M. Andre Meyer in Paris (Opus VI) and in the Universitetsbiblioteket at Lund (Opus X). The thesis contains background material on contemporary Parisian musical society and the life of Saint- Georges, and a modern scoring of the above symphonies concertantes with analysis and conclusions.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Braun, Melanie
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Christmas Cantatas of Christoph Graupner (1683-1760): Volume 2 (open access)

The Christmas Cantatas of Christoph Graupner (1683-1760): Volume 2

An assessment of the contributions of Christoph Graupner's 1,418 extant church cantatas is enhanced by a study of his fifty-five surviving Christmas cantatas, written for the feasts of Christmas, St. Stephen's, St. John's, and the Sunday after Christmas. Graupner's training in Kirchberg, Reichenbach and at the Thomas School in Leipzig is recounted as well as his subsequent tenures in Hamburg and Darmstadt. This volume contains the appendices and bibliography.
Date: August 1992
Creator: Schmidt, René R.
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Comparative Study of Harmonic Tension in Hindemith's Piano Sonatas and in His Theoretical Writings (open access)

A Comparative Study of Harmonic Tension in Hindemith's Piano Sonatas and in His Theoretical Writings

The purpose of this paper will be to compare the Hindemith theory of harmonic tension as set forth in his book, Craft of Musical Composition, with his actual use of harmonic tension in compositional practice. The compositions used for this study are Hindemith's Sonaten für Klavier, published in 1936, consisting of three sonatas*. Although these pieces were published one year before the theory book, it seems reasonable to assume that Hindemith was at least formulating the ideas that would go into his book, and quite possibly was already writing it. The copyright date of the book is 1937. Therefore, any conclusions derived from the following analysis will not be affected to any degree by the time lapse between the writing of the two works in question. Analysis of the Sonaten für Klavier by Paul Hindemith reveals the fact that each of the sonatas is very different from the other two; hence, conclusions which apply to all three works are not generally possible.
Date: August 1957
Creator: Tull, Charlotte
System: The UNT Digital Library
Composing Symbolism's Musicality of Language in Fin-de-siècle France (open access)

Composing Symbolism's Musicality of Language in Fin-de-siècle France

In this dissertation, I explore the musical prosody of the literary symbolists and the influence of this prosody on fin-de-siècle French music. Contrary to previous categorizations of music as symbolist based on a characteristic "sound," I argue that symbolist aesthetics demonstrably influenced musical construction and reception. My scholarship reveals that symbolist musical works across genres share an approach to composition rooted in the symbolist concept of musicality of language, a concept that shapes this music on sonic, structural, and conceptual levels. I investigate the musical responses of four different composers to a single symbolist text, Oscar Wilde's one-act play Salomé, written in French in 1891, as case studies in order to elucidate how a symbolist musicality of language informed their creation, performance, and critical reception. The musical works evaluated as case studies are Antoine Mariotte's Salomé, Richard Strauss's Salomé, Aleksandr Glazunov's Introduction et La Danse de Salomée, and Florent Schmitt's La Tragédie de Salomé. Recognition of symbolist influence on composition, and, in the case of works for the stage, on production and performance expands the repertory of music we can view critically through the lens of symbolism, developing not only our understanding of music's role in this difficult and often …
Date: August 2016
Creator: Varvir Coe, Megan Elizabeth, 1982-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Critical Reaction to Serge Koussevitzky's Programming of Contemporary Music with the Boston Symphony Orchestra 1924-1929 (open access)

Critical Reaction to Serge Koussevitzky's Programming of Contemporary Music with the Boston Symphony Orchestra 1924-1929

Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924-1949, had, throughout his career, a reputation as a champion of modern music. The anticipation of his arrival in Boston in 1924 sparked a great deal of public debate about his reported modernism which the critics reflected and contributed to. This thesis analyzes the critical reaction, preserved in scrapbooks of newspaper clippings at Symphony Hall, Boston, to Koussevitzky's programming of contemporary music during his first five years with the BSO.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Morgan, Richard S. (Richard Sanborn)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Drama and Characterization in Opera Settings of "A Midsummer Nightʼs Dream" by Britten and Siegmeister (open access)

Drama and Characterization in Opera Settings of "A Midsummer Nightʼs Dream" by Britten and Siegmeister

Although Shakespeare deliberately downplays characterization in his moonlit dream fantasy, both Britten and Siegmeister exploit this dramatic element as the basis of their opera settings of the play. Through the operas, the shallow characters take on new dimensions, creating musical experiences existing quite independently of Shakespeare, while at the same time retaining the atmosphere of a dream-fantasy. Placing emphases upon varying aspects of the play, the two composers create entirely different revelations from the Bard's dream. This paper presents a study of the way in which drama and characterization are treated in the operas, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Night of the Moonspell.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Allen, Debra K. (Debra Kaye)
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Dramatic and Musical Unity of Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens (open access)

The Dramatic and Musical Unity of Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens

The discussion concentrates on Hector Berlioz's second opera, Les Troyens, which is Berlioz's final large work written between 1855-1858. The study demonstrates how the opera is unified through its drama and music. Les Troyens, a five-act tragic opera that is based on Virgil's Aeneid, is perhaps one of Berlioz's least known major works. The orchestral score had not been published in its entirety until 1969, when a two-volume edition of the opera was published by Bärenreiter in the New Edition of the Complete Works of Hector BerIioz. The first complete recording of Les Troyens, conducted by Colin Davis, was released by Philips records in 1972. These two sources have made an analysis of this important work of the nineteenth century possible. The study includes a survey of the dramatic influences of Virgil and his Aeneid, and the poetry of Shakespeare, in addition to the musical influences of Gluck's operas, the compositions of Lesueur, the symphonies of Beethoven, Weber's opera, Der Freischütz, and the French grand opera style, which all contributed to the opera.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Menn, Marta C.
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Edition of Verse and Solo Anthems by William Boyce (open access)

An Edition of Verse and Solo Anthems by William Boyce

The English musician William Boyce was known as an organist for the cathedral as well as the Chapel Royal, a composer of both secular and sacred music, a director of large choral festivals, and the editor of Cathedral Music, the finest eighteenth-century edition of English Church music. Among Boyce's compositions for the church are many examples of verse and solo anthems. Part II of this thesis consists of an edition of one verse and three solo anthems selected from British Museum manuscript Additional 40497, transcribed into modern notation, and provided with a realization for organ continuo. Material prefatory to the edition itself, including a biography, a history of the verse and solo anthem from the English Reformation to the middle of the eighteenth century, a discussion .of the characteristics of Boyce's verse and solo anthems, and editorial notes constitute Part I.
Date: August 1975
Creator: Fansler, Terry L.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Educating American Audiences: Claire Reis and the Development of Modern Music Institutions, 1912-1930 (open access)

Educating American Audiences: Claire Reis and the Development of Modern Music Institutions, 1912-1930

The creation of institutions devoted to promoting and supporting modern music in the United States during the 1920s made it possible for American composers to develop an identity distinct from that of European modernists. These institutions were thus a critical part of the process of modernization that began in the United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. There is substantial scholarship on these musical institutions of modern music, such as the International Composers’ Guild and the League of Composers; but little to no work has been done on the progressive musical institutions of the 1910s, such as the Music League of the People’s Music Institute of New York, which was founded by Claire Reis. This thesis addresses the questions of how and why American musical modernism came to be as it was in the 1920s through an examination of the various stages of Reis’s career. The first chapter is an extensive study of primary source material gathered from the League of Composers/ISCM Records collection at the New York Public Library, which relates to Reis’s work with the PML in the 1910s. The second chapter uses the conclusions of the first chapter to shine new light on an …
Date: August 2013
Creator: Freeman, Cole
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Famous Mr. Keach: Benjamin Keach and His Influence on Congregational Singing in Seventeenth Century England (open access)

The Famous Mr. Keach: Benjamin Keach and His Influence on Congregational Singing in Seventeenth Century England

Benjamin Keach (1640-1704) was a seventeenth-century preacher and hymn writer. He is considered responsible for the introduction and continued use of hymns, as distinct from psalms and paraphrases, in the English Nonconformist churches in the late seventeenth century, and is remembered as the provider of a well-rounded body of hymns for congregational worship. This thesis reviews the historical climate of seventeenth-century England, and discusses Keach's life in terms of that background. Keach's influence on congregational hymn singing, hymn writers, preaching, and education is also examined. Keach's writings and contributions to hymn singing are little known today. This thesis points out the significance of these writings and hymns to seventeenth-century religious life.
Date: August 1984
Creator: Carnes, James Patrick
System: The UNT Digital Library
Foreignizing Mahler: Uri Caine’s Mahler Project As Intertraditional Musical Translation (open access)

Foreignizing Mahler: Uri Caine’s Mahler Project As Intertraditional Musical Translation

The customary way to create jazz arrangements of the Western classical canon—informally called swingin’-the-classics—adapts the original composition to jazz conventions. Uri Caine (b.1956) has devised an alternative approach, most notably in his work with compositions by Gustav Mahler. He refracts Mahler’s compositions through an eclectic array of musical performance styles while also eschewing the use of traditional jazz structures in favor of stricter adherence to formal ideas in the original score than is usual in a jazz arrangement. These elements and the manner in which Caine incorporates them in his Mahler arrangements closely parallel the practices of a translator who chooses to create a “foreignizing” literary translation. The 19th-century philosopher and translation theorist Friedrich Schleiermacher explained that in a foreignizing translation “the translator leaves the writer alone as much as possible and moves the reader toward the writer.” Foreignizing translations accentuate the otherness of the original work, approximating the foreign text’s form and syntax in the receiving language and using an uncommon, heterogeneous vocabulary. The resulting translations, which challenge readers with their frequent defiance of the conventions of the receiving linguistic culture, create literal, exaggerated readings that better convey authors’ characteristic use of their own languages for a new audience. …
Date: August 2015
Creator: Ritchie, J. Cole
System: The UNT Digital Library
Form and Meaning in Benjamin Britten's Sonnet Cycles (open access)

Form and Meaning in Benjamin Britten's Sonnet Cycles

This study examines the relationship between sonnet form and musical form in Benjamin Britten's sonnet cycles with a view toward identifying the musico-poetic form how the musical form interprets the poetry. Several issues come to the fore: 1) articulation of the large-scale divisions of the poetic form in the music; 2) potential of the musical setting to make connections between lines of the text ; 3) potential of the musical setting to follow or imitate the thought processes of the poem; and 4) placement of the departure and return.
Date: August 1994
Creator: Stroeher, Vicki Pierce
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Fourteen Seréstas of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) (open access)

The Fourteen Seréstas of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

The Fourteen Seréstas of Heitor Villa-Lobos comprise a group of songs that expresses Villa-Lobos's compositional technique for the voice. These songs are challenging as a topic because not much historical or analytical research has been done on them. I approach the topic by providing historical background on the modinha and how it relates to the serésta. This is followed by a descriptive analysis in the order of the set, which includes musical examples, chart diagrams, and comparisons of the seréstas to other works. I hope to have contributed valuable information to the research of these songs since Villa-Lobos wrote over ninety solo vocal songs which still await analysis and discussion. This thesis is a contribution toward narrowing this gap.
Date: August 1999
Creator: Sánchez, Noé
System: The UNT Digital Library
French Theories of Beauty and the Aesthetics of Music 1700 to 1750 (open access)

French Theories of Beauty and the Aesthetics of Music 1700 to 1750

Studies of eighteenth-century French musical aesthetics have traditionally focused on questions of taste treated in the critical literature of the day. During the first half of the century, however, certain French writers were dealing with aesthetics in the stricter sense of the word, proposing theories of beauty that suited existing philosophical values. The treatises in which these ideas were set forth--Jean-Pierre de Crousaz' Traité du beau, Jean-Baptiste DuBos' Réflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture, Yves-Marie André's Essai sur le beau, and Charles Batteux' Les Beaux arts réduits à un même principe--are among the first learned writings to present the musical experience in something other than a mathematical or pedagogical light. This study investigates not only the role music played in these theories of beauty, but also the methodological problems inherent in translating this data into historical information.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Dill, Charles William
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Full Anthems and Services of John Blow and the Question of an English Stile Antico (open access)

The Full Anthems and Services of John Blow and the Question of an English Stile Antico

John Blow (1649-1708) was among the first group of boys pressed into the service of King Charles II, following the decade of Puritan rule. Blow would make compositional efforts as early as 1664 and, at the age of nineteen, began to assume professional positions within the London musical establishment, ultimately becoming, along with his pupil and colleague, Henry Purcell, London's foremost musician. Restoration sacred music is generally thought of in connection with the stile nuovo which, for the first time, came to be a fully accepted practice among English musicians for the church. But the English sacred polyphonic art, little threatened by England's largely political Reformation, embodied sufficient flexibility as to allow it to absorb new ideas, thereby remaining vital well into the seventeenth century. Preserved from decisive Italian influences by the Interregnum, the English sacred polyphonic tradition awoke at the Restoration full of potential for continuing creative activity. In addition to studying Blow's polyphonic compositions, including the transcription of several not available in modern edition, this paper seeks to address the unique nature of the English polyphonic tradition which allowed it to retain its vitality throughout the seventeenth century, while other polyphonic traditions were succumbing to the ossifying influences …
Date: August 1990
Creator: King, Deborah Simpkin
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Function of Oral Tradition in Mary Lou's Mass by Mary Lou Williams (open access)

The Function of Oral Tradition in Mary Lou's Mass by Mary Lou Williams

The musical and spiritual life of Mary Lou Williams (1910 - 1981) came together in her later years in the writing of Mary Lou's Mass. Being both Roman Catholic and a jazz pianist and composer, it was inevitable that Williams would be the first jazz composer to write a setting of the mass. The degree of success resulting from the combination of jazz and the traditional forms of Western art music has always been controversial. Because of Williams's personal faith and aesthetics of music, however, she had little choice but to attempt the union of jazz and liturgical worship. After a biography of Williams, discussed in the context of her musical aesthetics, this thesis investigates the elements of conventional mass settings and oral tradition found in Mary Lou's Mass.
Date: August 1996
Creator: Fledderus, France
System: The UNT Digital Library
Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807-1867): His Life And Symphonies (open access)

Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807-1867): His Life And Symphonies

Ignacy Feliks , a Polish composer active in Warsaw, is best known for having been a colleague of Frederic Chopin while they were both composition students of Jozef Eisner. As an early nationalist composer, Dobrzynski is examined within the context of nineteenth-century Warsaw's musical culture and political situation. Dobrzynski early training was provided by his father, who was Kapelmeister at the Ilinski court in Romanow. The most important achievements of the career which followed Dobrzynskifs move to Warsaw in 1825 include second place in an 1835 Viennese contest with the Second Symphony, a German tour in I8I8, and the directorship of the Teatr Wielki in 1852. Cast in the late eighteenth-centurv style, Dobrzynski two symphonies were composed in 1829 and 1831. These works show knowledge of Beethoven's music and exhibit Dobrzynski's skill at orchestration. Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 15, is the more important work because of national elements in each movement, as well as its success in a Viennese symphony contest in 1835. Although a precedent for national elements is seen in studying the development of the Polish symphony in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Dobrzynski's contribution shows an intensification of musical patriotism which was inspired …
Date: August 1981
Creator: Smialek, William
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
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Keyboard Suites of Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell (open access)

The Keyboard Suites of Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell

This work largely concerns the roles of Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell in the history of English keyboard music as reflected in their keyboard suites. Both, as composers of the Restoration period, integrated the French style with the more traditional English techniques--especially, in the case of Purcell, the virginalist heritage-- in their keyboard music. Through a detailed examination of their suites, I reveal differences in their individual styles and set forth unique characteristics of each composer. Both composers used the then traditional almain-corant-saraband pattern as the basis of the suite, to which they added a variety of English country dances. At the same time they modified the traditional dances with a variety of French and Italian idioms, thereby making distinctive individual contributions to the genre.
Date: August 1989
Creator: Kim, Hae-Jeong
System: The UNT Digital Library
Liturgy, Music, and Patronage at the Cappella di Medici in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, 1550-1609 (open access)

Liturgy, Music, and Patronage at the Cappella di Medici in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, 1550-1609

This dissertation describes the musical and religious support of the Medici family to the Medici Chapel in Florence and the historical role of the church of San Lorenzo in the liturgical development of the period. During the later Middle Ages polyphony was allowed in the Office services only at Matins and Lauds during the Tenebrae service, the last three days of Holy Week, and at Vespers anytime. This practice continued until the end of the sixteenth century when more polyphonic motets based on the Antiphon and Responsory began to be included in the various Office hours during feast days. This practice is documented by the increased number of pieces that appear in the manuscripts. Two of the transcriptions from the church of San Lorenzo included in the appendix are selected from this later repertoire.
Date: August 1995
Creator: Kim, Hae-Jeong
System: The UNT Digital Library