The Musical Fallout of Political Activism: Government Investigations of Musicians in the United States, 1930-1960 (open access)

The Musical Fallout of Political Activism: Government Investigations of Musicians in the United States, 1930-1960

Government investigations into the motion picture industry are well-documented, as is the widespread blacklisting that was concurrent. Not nearly so well documented are the many investigations of musicians and musical organizations which occurred during this same period. The degree to which various musicians and musical organizations were investigated varied considerably. Some warranted only passing mention, while others were rigorously questioned in formal Congressional hearings. Hanns Eisler was deported as a result of the House Committee on Un-American Activities' (HUAC) investigation into his background and activities in the United States. Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, and Aaron Copland are but a few of the prominent composers investigated by the government for their involvement in leftist organizations. The Symphony of the Air was denied visas for a Near East tour after several orchestra members were implicated as Communists. Members of musicians' unions in New York and Los Angeles were called before HUAC hearings because of alleged infiltration by Communists into their ranks. The Metropolitan Music School of New York, led by its president-emeritus, the composer Wallingford Riegger, was the subject of a two day congressional hearing in New York City. There is no way to measure either quantitatively or qualitatively the effect of …
Date: August 1993
Creator: McCall, Sarah B.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Repetition and Difference: Parodic Narration in Kander and Ebb's "The Scottsboro Boys" (open access)

Repetition and Difference: Parodic Narration in Kander and Ebb's "The Scottsboro Boys"

The American musical team John Kander and Fred Ebb created many celebrated works, yet musicologists have carried out little research on those works. This study examines the role of music in the parodic narration of Kander and Ebb's final collaboration, The Scottsboro Boys. Kander and Ebb use minstrelsy to tell the story of the historic Scottsboro Boys trials with actors portraying the Scottsboro Boys as minstrels; at the same time, they employ a number of devices to subvert minstrelsy stereotypes and thereby comment on racism. Drawing on African American literary theory, sociolinguistics, and Bakhtin's dialogism, this study illuminates how Signifyin(g), a rhetorical tradition used to encode messages in some African American communities, is the primary way the actors playing the Scottsboro Boys subvert through minstrelsy. This study not only contributes to the discussion of Signifyin(g) in African American musicals and theatre as a tool of subversion, but also provides an example of non-African American creators—Kander and Ebb—using Signifyin(g) devices. They use these in the music and the book; in particular, Kander and Ebb do some Signifyin(g) on Stephen Foster's plantation melodies.
Date: August 2013
Creator: Wolski, Kristin Anne
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
Le Nuove Musiche: Giovanni Battista Bovicelli? (open access)

Le Nuove Musiche: Giovanni Battista Bovicelli?

This thesis is a comparative study on the late 16th century manuals of ornamentation by Girolamo Dalla Casa, Giovanni Bassano, Riccardo Rognoni, and Giovanni Battista Bovicelli. The study demonstrates that the latest Renaissance manual should be given more credit for the innovative ornamentation style that was to come in the Early Baroque era. Bovicelli's use of sequence, dissonances, and less moving notes for more rhythmic varieties are features most often associated in the style of the Baroque. Unfortunately, the topic of ornamentation in the late Renaissance is most commonly discussed as a group of different entities writing in the same style. The research for this paper is intended to separate the manuals of the late Renaissance, focusing on the separate styles that led to the work of Giovanni Battista Bovicelli.
Date: August 2010
Creator: Gámez Hernández, Carlos
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
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
The Theoretical Treatises of Josef Matthias Hauer (open access)

The Theoretical Treatises of Josef Matthias Hauer

This study makes available in English translations the three most important theoretical writings of the Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer (1883—1959), whose experiments with atonal and dodecaphonic music are discussed in the treatises. The treatises are Vom Wesen des Musikalischen: Grundlagen der Zwolftonmusik, Vom Melos zur Pauke: eine Einfuhrung in die Zw51ftonmusik, and Zwftlftontechnik: die Lehre von den Tropen. In addition to the translations and commentary the dissertation includes a sketch of Hauer's career and an examination of his claim that he—not Arnold Schoenberg—was the inventor of the dodecaphonic school of composition.
Date: August 1980
Creator: Harvey, Dixie Lynn
System: The UNT Digital Library
Scoring for the Specter: Dualities in the Music of the Ghost Scene in Four Film Adaptations of Hamlet (open access)

Scoring for the Specter: Dualities in the Music of the Ghost Scene in Four Film Adaptations of Hamlet

This document's purpose is to analyze dualities found in different films of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Each version brings different ideas to it. By analyzing each version and focusing on the Ghost Scene, comparisons of the scene's symbolism are made between the musical scores. The beginning chapters provide a history of film, film music, the play, and events up to the ghost scene. After these chapters come analyses of the scene itself. Each version uses different parts of the play for its own purposes, but there are many commonalities between them. The score for each version of the Ghost Scene will be analyzed independently of each other. This work will contribute to musicology, film research, Shakespeare studies, and English scholarship.
Date: August 2002
Creator: Dunn, John T.
System: The UNT Digital Library
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
Oracy, Literacy and the Music of Adam De La Halle: The Evidence of the Manuscript Paris, BibliothèQue Nationale f.fr. 25566 (open access)

Oracy, Literacy and the Music of Adam De La Halle: The Evidence of the Manuscript Paris, BibliothèQue Nationale f.fr. 25566

This study examines the thirteenth century Artesian trouvère Adam de la Halle in the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale f.fr 25566 as it pertains to the oral/literate model for explaining characteristics of musical traditions. The fortuitous collaboration of a single scribe with a single composer on a musical collection encompassing a cross-section of thirteenth-century styles and idioms make this repertoire uniquely appropriate to a comparison of musical oracy and literacy.
Date: August 1996
Creator: Keyser, Dorothy
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
Mus. Ms. 1511b: A Historical Review of a Lute Manuscript in the Herwarth Collection at the Bavarian Library, Munich (open access)

Mus. Ms. 1511b: A Historical Review of a Lute Manuscript in the Herwarth Collection at the Bavarian Library, Munich

The purpose of this paper is to create a modern transcription/edition and an historical study of Munich Mus. Ms. 1511b thereby helping to define the social and pedagogical ramifications of lute repertoire from the mid-sixteenth-century. Because of the amateurish nature of the compositions, the conclusion of this study is that a member of the Herwarth family probably used the manuscript for learning purposes. Dance, grounds and other related forms found in the manuscript are discussed. Also included is an incipit concordance that can be used as a cross-reference for further research.
Date: August 2007
Creator: Beasley, Douglas William
System: The UNT Digital Library
Melodic Organization in Four Solos by Ornette Coleman (open access)

Melodic Organization in Four Solos by Ornette Coleman

The thesis presents annotated transcriptions and detailed analyses of four improvised solos by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, a leading figure within the free jazz movement. The four solos, all of which were recorded in 1959, are: "Ramblin', " "Lonely Woman," "Congeniality," and "Free." -The focus of the analyses is upon Coleman's techniques for creating melodic continuity and development. Introductory chapters survey Coleman's career and examine his original theoretical system, "Harmolodics. " The thesis concludes with an annotated bibliography and discography.
Date: August 1989
Creator: Cogswell, Michael
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume I (open access)

The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume I

The great number of musical sources preserved in manuscript and printed form clearly reflects the prominent position held by the lute as a musical instrument during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Only a relatively small portion of this vast literature is presently available to scholars and interested laymen in the form of modern transcriptions. Referred to as "l'instrument noble par excellence," the lute's popular and fashionable appeal is evidenced by the large number of composers who dedicated themselves to this instrument. Among the number of outstanding lute composers living in Italy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was Giulio Cesare Barbetta (c. 1540-after 1603). During his lifetime Barbetta published a total of four books of lute pieces containing arrangements of polyphonic compositions of various Renaissance composers as well as a large number of original compositions including .preludes, airs, fantasias, and dance pieces. Although Barbetta achieved importance as a leading figure in the Italian school of lute composition, there is little readily available material, either biographical or musical; this study provides the scholar, the performer, and the listener with biographical data and a modern edition of the composer's complete works.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Thomas, Benjamin W., 1937-
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
Perspectives on the Musical Essays of Lorenz Christoph Mizler (1711-1778) (open access)

Perspectives on the Musical Essays of Lorenz Christoph Mizler (1711-1778)

This study provides commentary on Mizler's Dissertatio and Anfangs-Gründe des General Basses. Chapter V is an annotated guide to his Neu eröffnete musikalische Bibliothek, one of the earliest German music periodicals. Translations of Mizler's biography in Mattheson's Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte and selected passages of Mizler's Der musikalischer Staarstecher contribute a sampling of the critical polemics among Mizler, Mattheson, and Scheibe. As a proponent of the Aufklärung, Mizler was influenced by Leibnitz, Thomasius, and Wolff. Though his attempts to apply mechanistic principles to music were rejected during his time, his founding of a society of musical sciences, which included J. S. Bach, Telemann, Handel, and C. H. Graun as members, and his efforts to establish music as a scholarly discipline deserve recognition.
Date: August 1984
Creator: Pinegar, Sandra
System: The UNT Digital Library
San Juan Ixcoi Mass: A Study of Liturgical Music in Northwestern Guatemala (open access)

San Juan Ixcoi Mass: A Study of Liturgical Music in Northwestern Guatemala

The San Juan Ixcoi Mass is part of the San Miguel Acatan Repertory which was found in the northwestern highlands of Guatemala before being purchased by the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Even though the authorship and date of the mass cannot be established, the mass is similar to works from the Josquin generation. Not discounting the few transcription difficulties as well as isolated compositional weaknesses, the San Juan Ixcoi Mass demonstrates the reasonably high quality of music that was performed and even possibly composed in northwestern Guatemala three centuries ago. A modern performance edition of the mass complete with critical notes and commentary on the transcription is included within the thesis.
Date: August 1979
Creator: Garven, Richard O.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Die Opernprobe by Albert Lortzing: a Critical Edition (open access)

Die Opernprobe by Albert Lortzing: a Critical Edition

The purpose of the present edition of Albert Lortzing's Die Opernprobe is to restore and clarify the composer's original intentions, which were often obscured or altered by the first published version, which appeared in 1899. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part One contains an introduction which discusses Lortzing's place in the history of German opera, the details surrounding the composition of Die Opernprobe, the musical and dramatic structure of the opera, and the sources used in the preparation of this edition. Part Two consists of a critical edition of the orchestral score, with the complete text of the spoken dialogue and stage directions. Critical notes and an English translation of the full text are included in two appendixes.
Date: August 1990
Creator: McDaniel, Jan (Pianist)
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume III (open access)

The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume III

The great number of musical sources preserved in manuscript and printed form clearly reflects the prominent position held by the lute as a musical instrument during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Only a relatively small portion of this vast literature is presently available to scholars and interested laymen in the form of modern transcriptions. Referred to as "l'instrument noble par excellence," the lute's popular and fashionable appeal is evidenced by the large number of composers who dedicated themselves to this instrument. Among the number of outstanding lute composers living in Italy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was Giulio Cesare Barbetta (c. 1540-after 1603). During his lifetime Barbetta published a total of four books of lute pieces containing arrangements of polyphonic compositions of various Renaissance composers as well as a large number of original compositions including .preludes, airs, fantasias, and dance pieces. Although Barbetta achieved importance as a leading figure in the Italian school of lute composition, there is little readily available material, either biographical or musical; this study provides the scholar, the performer, and the listener with biographical data and a modern edition of the composer's complete works.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Thomas, Benjamin W., 1937-
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume II (open access)

The Lute Books of Giulio Cesare Barbetta: A Polyphonic Transcription of the Composer's Complete Works and an Analysis of the Fourteen Fantasias Volume II

The great number of musical sources preserved in manuscript and printed form clearly reflects the prominent position held by the lute as a musical instrument during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Only a relatively small portion of this vast literature is presently available to scholars and interested laymen in the form of modern transcriptions. Referred to as "l'instrument noble par excellence," the lute's popular and fashionable appeal is evidenced by the large number of composers who dedicated themselves to this instrument. Among the number of outstanding lute composers living in Italy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was Giulio Cesare Barbetta (c. 1540-after 1603). During his lifetime Barbetta published a total of four books of lute pieces containing arrangements of polyphonic compositions of various Renaissance composers as well as a large number of original compositions including .preludes, airs, fantasias, and dance pieces. Although Barbetta achieved importance as a leading figure in the Italian school of lute composition, there is little readily available material, either biographical or musical; this study provides the scholar, the performer, and the listener with biographical data and a modern edition of the composer's complete works.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Thomas, Benjamin W., 1937-
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
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
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)
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