Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) stands central to the music history of the Brazilian twentieth century. His music represents a synthesis of the European art influences he absorbed and his quest to find a true Brazilian identity, which was not rooted in the deliberate imitation of Brazilian folk elements, but rather in the natural assimilation of them in his compositional style. His early compositions embody strong post-romantic, impressionistic tendencies, especially in regard to their harmonies and use of tone color, whereas the works from the 1920's and onwards show Villa-Lobos increasingly asserting his unusual and strong voice. Villa-Lobos's large-scale composition for piano, Rudepoêma, was composed between 1921 and 1926, and stands as one of the most significant contributions to the Latin-American piano literature. Despite of its importance in Villa-Lobos's oeuvre, it has largely eluded analytical attention. Discourse on Villa-Lobos is often marked by a somewhat one-dimensional approach that identifies the folk and rhythmic elements as the most important characteristics of his compositional style, and displays a certain reticence with regard to in-depth analysis of other parameters of his works. This study redresses the imbalance in the general approach to analytical assessment of Villa-Lobos's oeuvre by illustrating that pitch organization plays an indispensable …

Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer, was born in 1935. Most of the works at the beginning of his career were for piano in the neo-classical style. After that, he turned his interest to serial music and continued creating works with serial techniques throughout the 1960s. After his "self-imposed silence" period (during the years 1968-1976), Pärt emerged with a new musical style, which he called tintinnabuli. Although, this technique was influenced by music from the medieval period, the texture and function of its musical style cannot be described easily in terms of any single musical technique of the past. This study explores the evolution of Arvo Pärt's tintinnabuli technique in its first decade 1976-1985, which is divided into three different types. It provides musical examples from the scores of selected works, Für Alina, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, Cantate Domino canticum novum, Missa Sillabica, Stabat Mater and Es sang vor langen Jahren, and their analyses with supporting interpretative sketches. The goal of this thesis is to provide the reader a basis for understanding and recognizing the different types of Pärt's tintinnabuli technique.

The purpose of this critical essay is two-fold. First, the essay presents a detailed critical analysis of my original composition, Blueline Concerto for bass trombone and wind ensemble. Second, using Blueline Concerto, the essay presents preliminary findings of my study to develop an approach to composing that takes into account the musicians' health, specifically regarding noise induced hearing loss (NIHL). Through various hypothesized composition- and orchestral-based approaches, I test effectiveness on changes in NIHL risk while also noting that artistic merit and compositional integrity is preserved.

The purpose of this research was to explore historical perspective of brass music. There is a brief history of brass bands in Britain. Furthermore, the paper examines the differences between two brass band pieces in the repertoire, A Western Fanfare by Eric Ewazen and Brass Symphony by Jan Koetsier. Both of these pieces were compared and contrasted against the author's newly composed work for brass, Two Companion Pieces for Brass Ensemble. The paper covers different techniques commonly used in brass writing and points these techniques out in all three pieces.

Benjamin Britten’s life and music have been the subject of study from early in his musical career. Current trends in psychological analysis of Britten’s music tend to focus on common themes, such as homosexuality, pacifism, the sense of the outsider, and the loss of innocence. Similarly, theoretical analyses tend either to provide general categorizations of the technical elements in Britten’s music or to apply a singular preconceived concept as a tool for understanding his compositions. These approaches have yielded significant information but leave aspects of Britten’s personality and music unilluminated. Britten’s Op. 47, Five Flower Songs, are a collection of five part songs for a cappella chorus that are often included within the canon of 20th century choral literature. This paper examines a new perspective on Britten’s music by examining the relationship between Britten’s friendships and their influence on his compositions. Through the examination of these relationships information is revealed that allows for a new method of analysis that is particularly relevant to the Five Flower Songs. The opus was dedicated to two botanists for the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary. Contained within specific movements are extra-musical references to scientific characteristics of the flowers that are the subjects of …

Dario Castello's Sonate concertate in stil moderno is a collection of 29 trio sonatas in two volumes, with 10 of them employing the sackbut. These works represent a significant repertoire for the sackbut in an era where specific instrumentation was only starting to become a convention. While these pieces are often studied, performed and recorded in Europe, most American trombonists are not aware of their existence. This study seeks to acquaint the American trombonist with the sonatas of Castello and to provide performance suggestions for those less familiar with this genre. Chapter 1 presents a survey of the current literature on Castello. Chapter 2 provides an historical background for music in Venice in the early 17th century, while Chpater 3 focuses on the composer and his music for sackbut. Chapter 4 investigages the sonata in early 17th century Venice. Chapter 5 provides an insight into early baroque performance practice by discussing principles such as affect, tempo, ornamentation, diminution and articulation. Examples from the ten sonatas are used to illustrate these principles, providing the modern trombonist with a framework in which to study Castello's music. The final chapter discusses the implications of this study on the American trombone curriculum.

Webern scholarship has not comprehensively examined op. 25, drei lieder. If the selection of text for op. 25 is viewed as one work in three movements they create a ternary form (A-B-A1). To show how this form is developed in the music the author creates a new analytical system based on Schoenberg's Grundgestalt which is defined by three basic ideas: symmetry, liquidation, and variation. The relationship between the voice and accompaniment and Webern's deliberate manipulation of the text is used to reveal the use of a program which is then tied to the numerical symbolism of 2 and 3.

The quantity of classical guitar literature reached a new peak late in the twentieth century with many famous guitarists publishing their own works for solo classical guitar. This increase in the published guitar literature resulted in a decline of the relative analytical discussions of contemporary guitar works. Sérgio Assad is a perfect example of an active guitarist/composer whose works are frequently performed in guitar recitals and yet very little discussion has been provided attempting to gain a deeper understanding of his compositional language. The purpose of this study is to two-fold: first, to show that Fantasia Carioca (1994) is a very carefully organized work and includes an intricate network of thematic material developed through a spectrum of intervallic gestures, of which all derive from the main theme of the piece; second, to provide a deeper insight into the compositional language of Sérgio Assad through a demonstration of different compositional procedures to which the composer resorts. This one-movement piece reveals a high level of organization present in Sérgio Assad's style. The entire thematic material is carefully derived from the main theme. Each thematic unit shows a set of predetermined characteristics that allow these units to react to particular textures and situations. …

The purpose of this study was to provide a description of teacher perceptions concerning behavioral and physiological vocal issues among current gender groupings in sixth-grade choir classrooms through the collection of survey research data. Participants selected for this study consisted of registered Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area choral directors of the Texas Music Educators Association. Results of the study indicated that more girls were enrolled in sixth-grade choir than boys and that mixed choirs were more common than gender-specific choirs in sixth grade. Results also indicated that teachers perceived evidence of early voice change among both sixth grade boys and girls, and that there was a difference in behavior as students showed signs of puberty.

Don Gillis wrote Symphony No. 5½ (1947) in order to reconcile the American public with modern art music. By synthesizing jazz (as well as other American folk idioms), singable melodies, and humor, and then couching them into symphonic language, Gillis produced a work that lay listeners could process and enjoy. The piece was an immediate success and was played by orchestras across the globe, but it did not retain this popularity and it eventually faded from relevancy. This study focuses on elements that contributed to the initial efficacy and ultimate decline of the work. Due to its pervasive popular influences, Symphony No. 5½ is a crystallized representation of time in which it was written, and it soon became dated. Don Gillis did not harbor the idea that Symphony No. 5½ would grant him great wealth or musical immortality; he had a more pragmatic goal in mind. He used every musical element at his disposal to write a symphonic work that would communicate directly with the American people via a musical language they would understand. He was successful in this regard, but the dialogue ended soon after mid-century.

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 …

A study was undertaken to identify the effect of head flexion/extension on singing voice quality. The amplitude of the fundamental frequency (F0), and the singing power ratio (SPR), an indirect measure of singer’s formant activity, were measured. F0 and SPR scores at four experimental head positions were compared with the subjects’ scores at their habitual positions. Three vowels and three pitch levels were tested. F0 amplitudes and low frequency partials in general were greater with more extended head positions, while SPR increased with neck flexion. No effect of pitch or vowel was found. Gains in SPR appear to be the result of damping low frequency partials rather than amplifying those in the singer’s formant region. Raising the amplitude of F0 is an important resonance tool for female voices in the high range, and may be of benefit to other voice types in resonance, loudness, and laryngeal function.

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) stands as one of the most unconventional twentieth-century Russian composers, particularly with respect to his piano works. The overwhelming majority of Scriabin's compositions—sixty-seven of his seventy-four published works—were written for solo piano. His etudes from 1905 forward are revolutionary, especially compared with his earlier Chopinesque style. Among Scriabin’s twenty-six etudes, his Op.49, No. 1 (1905), Op.56, No. 4 (1908) and the last three etudes of Op.65 (1912) date from his last period of composition. In the Op.49 etude, Scriabin started to abandon traditional tonality. He omitted the key signature altogether in the Op.56 etude. The final three etudes of Op.65 feature constant dissonances on ninths, sevenths and fifths. Alexander Scriabin’s last five etudes represent the culmination of his compositional development and innovations at the piano. Several factors coalesce in these etudes, including unusual harmony, bichords, non-tonal hierarchy, and structural symmetry. Most of these factors derive in some fashion from Scriabin’s increasing reliance upon the so-called “mystic chord” in his late works. This study will illustrate how Scriabin explored new sonorous and aesthetic ideas in his late etudes by means of these innovations.

Since the 1960s, several gifted Korean composers, including perhaps most notably Young Jo Lee (b. 1943), have been internationally acclaimed for their work. In Western countries, however, there has been a scarcity of academic studies examining the artistry of the music of these Korean composers. Nonetheless, as one of today's most recognized composers in Korea, Young Jo Lee has been invited to numerous international concerts, conferences, and festivals where his works have been played and discussed. A salient feature of his compositions is the fusion of Korean traditional music and the elements of Western compositions, such as in, for one distinctive example, his piano composition, Piano Honza Nori. This musical study describes and analyzes how Lee integrates Korean traditional elements with Western musical ideas in Piano Honza Nori. Results of this study will contribute to the limited literature on the analysis of contemporary piano composition that integrates Korean traditional elements.

In the art of song composition, American composer Samuel Barber was the perfect storm. Barber spent years studying under superb instruction and became adept as a pianist, singer, composer, and in literature and languages. The songs that Barber composed during those years of instruction, many of which have been posthumously published, are waypoints on his journey to compositional maturity. These early songs display his natural inclinations, his self-determination, his growth through trial and error, and the slow flowering of a musical vision, meticulously cultivated by the educational opportunities provided to him by his family and his many devoted mentors. Using existing well-known and recently uncovered biographical data, as well as both published and unpublished song juvenilia and mature songs, this dissertation examines the importance of Barber's earliest musical and academic training in relationship to his development as a song composer.

The choral music of Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984) falls clearly into two distinct compositional periods. Born in Munich, Germany as Paul Frankenburger, the composer received formal, classical training at the Munich Academy of Music. His compositions from this period are an amalgamation of many styles, and they include influences of Bach, Handel, Mahler, Debussy, and Strauss. In 1933, Ben-Haim, along with other trained artists and composers, immigrated to Palestine as part of the Fifth Aliyah. Prior to this wave of immigration, Palestine had not yet received any serious composers, and musically, was still in its infancy. Eager to divorce themselves from the West and identify with their new home in the East, Ben-Haim and his fellow transplant composers sought a new musical language and a unique voice for Israel. Enamored with the exotic sounds of his new environment, Ben-Haim began to absorb elements of Eastern Mediterranean music into his compositions. As a Westerner, he was not familiar with these Eastern traditional folk song melodies, modes, and scales, and he required outside source materials from which to draw. This document examines two choral works, one from each of Paul Ben-Haim’s style periods, Joram (1933) and Kabbalat Shabbat (1968), and identifies …

American musical theater and film composer Harold Arlen is largely overshadowed by his contemporaries, such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. However, his music serves as a viable alternative for singers of all skill level studying a classical technique. By studying the music of Harold Arlen, singers will utilize a wide range, legato line, negotiations of register, mood shifts, and varying tessituras. The following document considers the importance of Arlen’s music by analyzing eight of his songs from three prominent decades of compositional output. The eight songs examined are grouped by the decade of their composition: the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Each song is evaluated by determining the musical benefits included in each song and also the skill level required of the singer.

Harold Shapero’s Sonata for Trumpet in C and Piano is a significant work that it is rarely performed and studied. Shapero’s composition contains musical attributes that demand artistically accurate choices if the style of this jazz-influenced sonata is to be achieved. Written in 1940 in dedication to Aaron Copland, the Sonata for C Trumpet and Piano makes use of a variety of stylistic influences, blending those of early 20th century jazz with Stravinsky-influenced neo-classicism. The intent of this study is to examine the unique performance practice implications and musical considerations of Harold Shapero’s Sonata for C Trumpet and Piano in correlation to the composer’s implementation of jazz idiomatic elements within the constructs of neo-classicism. The first section of this study examines the historical context necessary for understanding the social and musical conditions of the early to mid 1940s. The second section addresses the musical elements that characterize this work; the primary focus of this section is an exploration of Harold Shapero’s implementation of jazz idioms into his first composition for trumpet. The final section of the study interprets the utilization of idiomatic jazz elements within the work so as to allow the trumpet player with little jazz experience to accurately …

This document examines the works by Sir Harrison Birtwistle that feature the trumpet as a solo instrument, with extra emphasis placed on The Silk House Tattoo. This document also features a performance guide for the trumpet parts of The Silk House Tattoo. Pedagogical methods for learning the most challenging passages are evaluated, and daily exercises based on the specific demands of each excerpt are offered.

This dissertation and accompanying lecture recital explore the unique textural features in the works of Steven Mackey as exhibited in See Ya Thursday (1993).A rigorous formal, harmonic, and motivic analysis will highlight the compositional characteristics of textural structure and aural perspective that exist in the work. Illumination of these compositional elements can help to identify and minimize the technical complexities that exist within this piece for the performer. In addition, this document provides brief biographical information on Steven Mackey and his works, and on See Ya Thursday as it relates to other pieces in the advanced marimba literature. Finally, it is the aim of the author to add a resource to the relatively limited amount of research on Steven Mackey with this analysis of See Ya Thursday.

Beginning and intermediate piano students typically study the repertoire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This pedagogical approach leaves them underprepared to approach compositions written since the latter part of the twentieth-century which are significantly different in terms of harmony, rhythm, meter, and compositional procedure. Therefore, a step-by-step method is necessary to prepare a student for the challenges of learning twentieth and twenty-first century piano music. Civil War Variations (1988), by Logan Skelton, is an excellent example of a piece that presents a number of challenges characteristically found in late twentieth-century piano music. The twenty-five variations that comprise the work incorporate a series of twentieth-century musical techniques, namely complex rhythms, extreme dissonance, frequent metric changes, dissonant counterpoint, the inclusion of blues scales and rhythms, and new notations. The purpose of this study is to identify the technical, musical, structural and notational challenges posed by a work such as Logan Skelton’s Civil War Variations; examination of this piece will lead to suggestions regarding repertoire that a teacher may assign to beginning, intermediate, and advanced students in order to prepare them logically and in a step-by-step fashion to cope with and meet the challenges posed by this and other compositions having similar …

Korean composer Isang Yun (1917-1995) was one of the few successful Asian avant-garde composers to blend philosophical elements from East Asia with Western techniques such as the twelve-tone method, Hauptton, Hauptklang, and Umspielung. In addition to the integration of Western and Eastern influences, a significant feature of Yun´s compositional language, found throughout his oeuvre, is the application of East Asian philosophical tenets into his works. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a greater understanding of Isang Yun's life and music, more specifically the Quartett für Horn, Trompete, Posaune und Klavier. The dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first chapter of the dissertation presents introductory data, including the purpose and significance of the study. The second chapter provides pertinent biographical facts about Isang Yun and his works, obtained through research of authoritative books, journal articles, and interviews. The third chapter offers references to traditional Korean brass instruments in terms of their historical background, structure, and timbre. In addition, it also focuses on the processes by which Yun incorporated the compositional techniques of Hauptton, Hauptklang, and Umspielung to the work and their relation to Tao philosophy. The fourth chapter consists of an analytical and stylistic study of the Quartett; …

Duet literature remains largely untapped as a pedagogical tool in the undergraduate voice studio. This dissertation examines the ways in which eight duets for female voices, although not written primarily for pedagogical use, may be used to teach four main areas of voice technique: intonation, vocal agility, legato singing, and dramatic skills. Duets are chosen primarily from the standard repertoire and are in English, German, French, Italian and Latin. The compositional styles range from the Baroque period through the 20th century. Genres include art song, oratorio, and opera. Each chapter focuses on one of the four vocal skills listed above, and includes examinations of two duets whose vocal writing (rhythm, tessitura, intervals, tempi, and text) make them appropriate candidates for pedagogical use in the improvement of that specific skill. Both male and female teachers of singing may utilize this project as a practical resource and model in how to use other duets, including those for other voice types, for similar purposes in their teaching studio. This project also demonstrates how the experience of singing duets helps students develop ensemble singing as they listen and respond to each other. Finally, this project offers voice teachers an additional pedagogical tool to help …

James Wintle's, Northwest Miniatures for flute, trumpet and piano is a unique work in the chamber music repertoire. In addition, the use of auxiliary instruments makes this piece a rarity in the flute and trumpet chamber music repertoire. There are a limited number of resources presently available to performers regarding Northwest Miniatures.This dissertation provides a pedagogical performance guide addressing the inherent challenges for the flutist and this instrumentation and serves as a new resource for performers and scholars of this work. It provides a performance analysis of the piece along with pertinent pedagogical information and exercises to assist the flutist. Insight from the composer on how to address these challenges is also included. Because there are a limited number of scholarly resources available on the subject of flute and trumpet chamber music, this dissertation is a significant contribution to this genre of repertoire.