Occupational burnout is a concern to the health and longevity of clergy and musician careers. However, no known study has assessed occupational burnout among pastoral musicians. A literature review revealed pastoral musicians anecdotally experienced multi-tasking, workplace politics, inequality of workload, competing liturgical styles, lack of job security, lack of financial security, and lack of rest, among other indicators of burnout. Therefore, the aims of this paper were to: (1) describe pastoral musicians as a population; (2) identify the prevalence rate of burnout among pastoral musicians; (3) investigate the relationship between pastoral musicians' burnout and religious coping; and (4) investigate the relationships between pastoral musicians' burnout and depression, anxiety, and stress. In 2021, an online questionnaire was designed to assess burnout among pastoral musicians. Dissemination techniques included emails to members of the Hymn Society of North America and via social media to collect data from pastoral music directors in the United States of America. The survey yielded n = 1,050 respondents: 83.8% experienced one or more symptoms of burnout (41.3% with low efficacy; 12.4% with high emotional exhaustion; 21.3% with high cynicism; 8.8% with burnout). Ineffectiveness was positively correlated with negative religious coping. Emotional exhaustion and cynicism were positively correlated with …

The Dido myth has evolved and been adapted by many cultures over the centuries. Each Dido was altered to fit the needs of its creator, their society and customs. Despite these variations, every Dido retelling is derived from the Virgilian Dido, historical Dido, or chaste Dido narrative, or a combination of these stories. The pasticcio opera, Ópera armónica al estilo italiano que se intitula Dido y Eneas draws on the general Virgilian plot but emphasizes the chaste Dido narrative. The changes in the plot of Dido y Eneas reflect societal gender norms, theatrical conventions, and historical figures, specifically Queen María Luisa Gabriela, from eighteenth-century Spain. The Dido of Dido y Eneas can be divided into two main personas: Dido the queen and Dido the lover. Her arias, which come from preexisting Italian operas, convey the dramatic text very well. However, no matter what persona Dido portrays, she never fully loses control nor lets her passions rule her actions. Even in the moments before her suicide, her aria, "Punta intrepida," lacks the overt emotionality found in the popular Dido lament made famous by Purcell. This thesis aims to situate Dido y Eneas within the history of the Dido narrative and gender …

This dissertation argues how motivic saturation on the musical surface complicates a conventional harmonic interpretation in Fauré's late chamber works. Using motivic segmentation and linear analysis, I illustrate how the abundance of foreground motives has far-reaching implications for tonal voice leading and overall coherence. The outcomes of motivic saliency are twofold, influencing harmonic progressions by 1) altering traditional syntax or 2) replacing traditional syntax to provide the primary form of tonal coherence. I unpack the voice-leading consequences of stratifying motives over one another and bring in two larger, emerging concepts: 1) key duality as disjunction between melody and bass and 2) tonal coherence from the tonal profile of motives. In the first case, either the melody or the bass projects its own center or key separate from the other parts, producing a sensation of key duality. In the second, a single motive furnishes the main source of tonal grounding by unfolding a structural harmony that the surface sonorities obscure. While motivic saliency is a consistent trait across Fauré's late repertoire, the two phenomena above increase over time.

Starting in the mid-2010s VR's high cost of entry became low enough for consumers and artists to explore and experiment with the technology. There have been a few VR operas developed by medium to large sized teams such as Michel Van Der Aa's Eight (2018) and Alexander Schubert's ⁂ASTERISM⁂ (2021), but no widespread work has been produced by a small team comprising only a librettist and composer. Vessels engages in this process with a libretto written by Bea Goodwin and music, audio processing, visual design, and programming by Christopher Poovey. The first step in the process of creating Vessels was the creation of the song cycle Songs from Vessels for soprano, extended tenor, flute, bass flute, A clarinet, viola, contrabass, percussion, and live electronics. These songs are the basis of the micro-opera Vessels which presents recordings of the songs with live processing alongside two songs exclusive to the opera in a VR environment with immersive projections and audio. The development of an ensemble and electronic work along with a VR micro-opera necessitates the implementation and creation of software. Both the Grainflow and cpDelayNetworks packages for Cycling ‘74 Max are pivotal to audio processing in both versions of the work. In …

Based on the poetry of Jehanne Dubrow, professor of English at the University of North Texas, Stateside: An opera in one act uses the mythology of Penelope and Odysseus to tell a story of a modern day military wife. David T. Little's opera Soldier Songs, Sarah Kirkland Snider's song-cycle Penelope, and Stateside are dramatic musical works influenced by the genre, instrumentation, and formal structures of popular music that broadly deal with the emotional and internal elements of military life. These three works prioritize narrative structure of the text in relation to character, and employ elements of popular music harmony, melody, and structure. The critical essay analyzes selections from Soldier Songs and Penelope and explains the compositional process of Stateside. The creative document consists of the full score of Stateside: an opera in one act.

Untune the Sky is a collection of ten original preludes, dances, and songs for microtonal viola da gamba in 7-limit just intonation with voice and live electronics that incorporates elements of Baroque music, traditional Irish dance music, extended just intonation tuning theory, and live electronic audio processing techniques. This thesis thoroughly describes the work and contextualizes its relationship to its historical and contemporary influences. The first sections explain why extended just intonation and viola da gamba were chosen as the central elements of the work. This is followed by a description of the structure, instrumentation, notational conventions, and intended performance practice of the work. The final section contains a musical analysis of the form, harmony, and structure of each piece in the collection. For researchers and interested performers, Appendix A contains a brief catalog of existing microtonal viol repertoire listed with a description of the microtonal techniques used.