Though cadences have long been recognized as an aspect of modality, Gallus Dressler's treatise Praecepta musicae poeticae (1563) offers a new understanding of their relationship to mode and structure. Dressler's comments suggest that the cadences in the exordium and at articulations of the text are "principal" to the mode, shaping the tonal structure of the work. First, it is necessary to determine which cadences indicate which modes. A survey of sixteenth-century theorists uncovered a striking difference between Pietro Aron and his followers and many lesser-known theorists, including Dressier. The latter held that the repercussae of each mode were "principal cadences," contrary to Aron's expansive lists. Dressler's syntactical theory of cadence usage was tested by examining seventeen motets by Dressler and seventy-two motets by various early sixteenth-century composers. In approximately three-fourths of the motets in each group, cadences appeared on only two different pitches (with only infrequent exceptions) in their exordia and at text articulations. These pairs are the principal cadences of Dressler's list, and identify the mode of the motets. Observations and conclusions are offered regarding the ambiguities of individual modes, and the cadence-tone usage of individual composers.

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.

The musicians in E. T. A. Hoffmann's tales and essays demonstrate traits remarkably similar to those of shamans. Hoffmann uses the same imagery to describe the journey of the composer into the "realm of dreams," where he receives inspiration, as the shaman uses to describe the spirit world to which he journeys via music. Hoffmann was a major force in changing the 18th-century view of music as an "innocent luxury" to the 19th-century idea of music as a higher art. As a German Romantic,author, he subscribed to the idea championed by the Schlegels that true poetry is based on myth. In this thesis, Hoffmann's writings are compared with shamanic mythology to demonstrate a similarity beyond mere coincidence, without drawing conclusions about influence.

This study examines the relationship between sonnet form and musical form in Benjamin Britten's sonnet cycles with a view toward identifying the musico-poetic form how the musical form interprets the poetry. Several issues come to the fore: 1) articulation of the large-scale divisions of the poetic form in the music; 2) potential of the musical setting to make connections between lines of the text ; 3) potential of the musical setting to follow or imitate the thought processes of the poem; and 4) placement of the departure and return.

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.

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 …

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.

De preceptis is considered a major source of information on the origins of fauxbourdon, despite its being regarded as a disorganized compilation of multiple authorship, uncertain date, and unknown provenance. Internal cross-reference and writing mannerisms, however, show it to be a compilation of a single author's writings. Comparison of its pedagogical content to that of other theory treatises suggests that it was written c. 1500, not the accepted c. 1480. Evidence also indicates that Guillaume Garnier, a Flemish associate of Tinctoris and Gaffurius working in Italy, was its author. De preceptis ought to be considered a source, not for the origins of fauxbourdon, but for its reception-history, evidenced by the centrality of the parallel-consonance duet in Guilielmus's composition formulas, many of which resemble the frottola.

This dissertation describes the musical and religious support of the Medici family to the Medici Chapel in Florence and the historical role of the church of San Lorenzo in the liturgical development of the period. During the later Middle Ages polyphony was allowed in the Office services only at Matins and Lauds during the Tenebrae service, the last three days of Holy Week, and at Vespers anytime. This practice continued until the end of the sixteenth century when more polyphonic motets based on the Antiphon and Responsory began to be included in the various Office hours during feast days. This practice is documented by the increased number of pieces that appear in the manuscripts. Two of the transcriptions from the church of San Lorenzo included in the appendix are selected from this later repertoire.

Conductors are oftern associated with a specific body of work in their repertoy. Gustav Mahler's conducting repertory contained some major Wagnerian works, including Tristan und Isolde. Mahler's first performance of Tristan took place during his tenure at the Stadttheater in Hamburg (1891-1897). It remained an integral part of his repertory through his tenure at the Vienna Hofoper (1897-1907), and was one of eight works he conducted at New York's Metropolitan Opera (1907-1910). This study includes a brief history of Mahler's education and a description of his conducting style characteristics. It traces the reception of Mahler's production of Tristan from Hamburg to New York, and focuses on his performances at the Hofoper and at the Metropolitan Opera. Sources used to determine performance changes he made include letters, personal reminiscences of friends and critics, and newspaper and journal reviews.

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, …

John Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950-51) holds a unique position within the composer’s oeuvre as the first work based in part on chance-derived compositional procedures. Cage entered into such practice gradually, incrementally abandoning subjective taste and personal expression through the course of the work. Drawing from the philosophical framework provided by Cage’s "Lecture on Nothing" (1950) and "Lecture on Something" (c. 1951-52), this thesis explores the aesthetic foundations of the concerto and examines Cage’s compositional methodology throughout its three movements. Special attention is paid to the procedure underlying the first movement, whose analysis is based largely on the composer’s manuscript materials for the work.

The present study reconstructs the musical milieu in which Vincenzo Ruffo's 1542 motet collection was conceived through an examination of the archival materials surviving from each of the major musical establishments known to be active in Milan 1535-1550. The relationship of the 1542 collection to Milanese musical activity. Its publication problems and its current position in source studies are then explored in light of the archival information that is currently available.

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 …

Modest Musorgsky completed two versions of his opera Boris Godunov between 1869 and 1874, with significant changes in the second version. The second version adds a concluding lament by the fool character that serves as a warning to the people of Russia beyond the scope of the opera. The use of a fool is significant in Russian history and this connection is made between the opera and other arts of nineteenth-century Russia. These changes are, musically, rather small, but historically and socially, significant. The importance of the people as a functioning character in the opera has precedence in art and literature in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth-century and is related to the Populist movement. Most importantly, the change in endings between the two versions alters the entire meaning of the composition. This study suggests that this is a political statement on the part of the composer.

This study examines the finale of Beethoven's choral symphony and focuses on its inspirations and aims to invoke critical theories involving genre, namely genre's "horizon of expectation", and lead to an enriched perspective that points toward a number of compelling aspects of the Choral Finale overlooked by previous commentators.

The tragedie en musique of Quinault and Lully was a highly successful new genre, representative of contemporary Parisian life. However, it is still largely viewed in the negative terms of its detractors, the proponents of classical tragedy. The purpose of this study is to redefine the tragedie en musique in terms of seventeenth-century modernism. An examination of the society and poetry of the contemporary gallant world provides the historical framework for an analysis of both the libretto and music of Quinault and Lully's Atys (1676). This study attempts to bridge the historical and cultural distances that until now have hindered accessibility to this major new genre in seventeenth-century literature and music.

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.

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.

Recent Berlioz studies tend to stress the significance of the French tradition for a balanced understanding of Berlioz's music. Such is necessary because the customary emphasis on purely musical structure inclines to stress the influence of German masters to the neglect of vocal and therefore rhetorical character of this tradition. The present study, through a fresh examination of Berlioz's vocal-orchestral scores, sets forth the various orchestrational patterns and the rationales that lay behind them.

The Italian seicento has been considered a dead century by many literary scholars. As this study demonstrates, such a conclusion ignores important literary developments in the field of librettology. Indeed, the seventeenth-century operatic libretto stands as a monument to literary invention. Critical to the development of this new literary genre was the prologue, which provided writers with a context in which to experiment and achieve literary transcendence. This study identifies approximately 260 dramatic works written in Venice between the years 1637 and 1682, drawn together for the first time from three sources: librettos in the Drammaturgia di Leone Allacci accresciuta e continuata fino all'anno MCDDLV; the musical manuscripts listed in the Codici Musicali Contariniani; and a chronological list of seventeenth-century Venetian operas found in Cristoforo Ivanovich's Minerva al Tavolino. Of the 260 Venetian works identified, over 98 begin with self-contained prologues. This discovery alone warrants a reconsideration of the seventeenth-century Italian libretto and the emergence of the dramatic prologue as a new and important literary genre.

Hector Berlioz's Messe solennelle, his first publicly performed work, was important to his establishment in Paris as a composer. Although he later destroyed the Mass, he reused parts of the Resurrexit movement in three of his later works: Benvenuto Cellini (1836), the Grand messe des morts (1837), and the Te Deum (1849). This study examines the Resurrexit and its subsequent borrowings. In each instance that Berlioz borrowed from the Resurrexit, he extracted large sections and placed them in the context of later works. Each time that borrowing occurred, Berlioz constructed the surrounding music so that portions from the Resurrexit would fit stylistically and a seamlessly into the texture. In each borrowing, he left the melody unaltered, changing harmony and orchestration instead. This pattern of borrowing demonstrates that Berlioz developed his concept of melody early in his career, and that his method of self-borrowing was consistent in each subsequent use of the Resurrexit.

Disputes concerning the origin of the term bambuco persist among scholars in Colombia, as well as controversies regarding the process of notating the traditional bambuco (3/4 or 6/8), when it penetrates the written tradition of popular music. Composers writing popular and salon bambucos increasingly perceived the advantage of notating it in 6/8. This study investigates the traditional bambuco and its assimilation into nineteenth and twentieth-century cultivated tradition, with emphasis on piano pieces by representative Colombian composers of art music. I include specific analyses of Cuatro preguntas (ca. 1890) by Pedro Morales Pino (1863-1926), ChirimÍa y bambuco (1930) by Antonio MarÍa Valencia (1902-1952), Bambuco en si menor by Adolf o MejÍa (1905-1970), El bambuco by Manuel MarÍa Párraga (c. 1826-1895), and Trozos Nos. 6 and 158 (1927-1970) by Guillermo Uribe HolguÍn (1880-1971).

This thesis examines a collection of three songs, "In Flanders Fields," "He Is There!," and "Tom Sails Away," written by Charles Ives in 1917, from primarily a literary perspective involving Transcendentalism and intertextuality. Ives's aesthetic builds upon the principles of Transcendentalism. I examine these songs using the principles outlined by the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists, and Ives's interpretations of these beliefs. Another characteristic of Ives's music is quotation. "Intertextuality" describes an interdependence of literary texts through quotation. I also examine these songs using the principles of intertextuality and Ives's uses of intertextual elements. Familiarity with the primary sources Ives quotes and the texts they suggest adds new meaning to his works. Transcendentalism and intertextuality create a greater understanding of Ives's conflicting views of the morality of war.