LAND OF DREAMS is an opera in one act based on poems by the English poet William Blake. The work is for chamber orchestra, dancers, and an actor, as well as the vocal cast listed below. Cast of Characters Thomas Soprano The Father Baritone The Nurse Alto The Mother Mezzo Soprano The opera divides into eight sections with a total performance time of approximately forty minutes. Each section represents a different stylistic approach to the musical material. This juxtaposing of various styles is reflective of the eclectic nature of the text. The setting is England around 1800, the scene is a child's (Thomas) bedroom. All of the dramatic action takes place in this room in the various stages of the conscious (awake) and unconscious (asleep) states of the child's mind.

A New Song is a sacred contata in four parts written for mixed chorus, soloists, narrator, congregation, and chamber ensemble consisting of organ, brass ensemble, and percussion. It is designed to be performed within the limitations of a church sanctuary. The text is taken from the New American Standard Version of the Bible. The four parts are based on prophecies found in the book of Isaiah and the fulfillment of these prophecies as found in the New Testament books of Matthew, Luke, and John. The texture and orchestration throughout the contata change according to the mood of the text. For practical performance purposes, vocal parts are based on traditional harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic patterns, leaving the more complex patterns to the instrumental parts.

The purpose of the thesis is to analyze formally, harmonically and melodically the five movements of the suite both as separate movements and inclusively as one cohesive unit. The thesis will be written in three parts: Part One will include a biographical sketch of the composer, a general discussion of his music, background information on the suite and Dett's antecedents and contemporaries influencing him. Part Two will discuss the following: A) Form, B) Harmonic Analysis, and C) Melodic Analysis and the influences of black folk idioms. Part Three will include the keyboard music of Dett's contemporaries as compared to his suite in terms of their contrasts and similarities.

In current musicological research, considerable attention is given to the description of melodic structure and pitch organization. But it is problematical that the analytical concepts and terminology of the Common Practice Era are largely inadequate for meaningful description of melody of Asia and medieval Europe. For most traditions of melody in Asia and medieval Europe, there is some sort of developed system of theory, but each system is limited to the repertory it describes. Consequently, the comparative study of melody in these fields has been seriously hampered, and much published research in melody has had to concern itself with the formulation of analytical approaches more than the actual study of melody. This study attempts to resolve this problem by offering for consideration an analytical model, the acoustic melodic formula, that is of use in the comparative study of melodic structures and formulas in Asia and medieval Europe. The acoustic melodic formula is a structural design consisting of three conjunct intervals, namely, a lower perfect fourth, a middle third of varying intonation, and an upper third, also of varying intonation. In addition to identifying the acoustic melodic formula in Japan, Korea, central Asia, and Jewish, Byzantine and Latin chant, this study …

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an auditor's past musical training and experience on the intelligibility of selected vowel sounds at differential pitch levels. The specific problems of the study were to investigate the effects of extensive vocal music training, extensive non-vocal music training, and limited or no music training on an auditor's ability to discriminate accurately selected vowel sounds performed at various pitch levels. The effects of pitch and vowel sound on auditor recognition of vowel sounds in singing and the ability of each singer to be intelligible to auditors was also investigated.