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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921), who was considered a Wagnerian due to to his past work in Bayreuth and the Wagnerian traits of his Hänsel und Gretel, seems to have believed that to define himself as a composer, he had to engage somehow with that designation, whether through orthodox Wagner imitation or an assertion of his independence from Wagner's musical legacy. The latter kind of engagement can be seen in Humperdinck's Königskinder (1897), in which he developed a new kind of declamatory notation within the context of melodrama, thus fulfilling Wagnerian ideals as well as progressing beyond them. The effectiveness of Humperdinck's effort is seen in the ensuing critical reception, in which the realities of being heard as a Wagnerian composer are clarified.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

This study concerns the declaimed performance of recitative in early French opera. Because the dramatic use of the voice was crucial to the opera genre, this investigation begins with a survey of historical definitions of declamation. Once the topic has been described, the thesis proceeds to thoroughly study three treatises dealing with sung recitation: Bacilly's Remarques curieuses, Grimarest's Traité de recitatif, and Dubos' Reflexions critiques. Principles from these sources are then applied to representative scenes from the literature. The paper closes with a commentary on the relationship between spoken and sung delivery and on the development of different declamatory styles.

The three respond motets from Matins for the Dead by Robert Parsons constitute an important part of the sacred Latin repertory of mid-sixteenth-century England, illustrating central features of the English mid-century style. Although he worked within a conservative musical tradition, Parsons experimented with that tradition in personal and individual ways. Specifically his modal and thematic construction as well as his practice of musica ficta are singled out for closer analysis. Consequently, a methodology for editorial decisions concerning musica ficta is developed. Two special problems, the simultaneous cross-relation and diminished fourth, are shown as the result of normative polyphonic processes and vertical structures.