This thesis surveys a variety of songs and arias for high soprano which feature the nightingale; examines the musical elements that symbolize, refer to, or imitate the nightingale; and compares these musical elements with transcriptions of the nightingale's song. The first chapter reviews the symbolic development of the nightingale and its role in poetry and literature. The interior chapters address a selection of musical compositions that feature the nightingale and its song. The final chapter establishes a relationship between the sound of the actual sound of the nightingale and the musical gestures created by composers to imitate the nightingale.

Aaron Copland has been in the forefront of the American musical scene since the 1920s. He has been called an "American composer" for his ability to formulate the essence of American folk music into a wide variety of mediums. The variety and scope of his compositions encompass a diverse array of styles and techniques. From the jazz influenced works that dominated his early period to the works for Hollywood films, from the chamber music that was directly influenced by his Jewish background to the partial acceptance of serial technique, Copland has managed to delve equally into all these styles. Yet, one could arguably rank his works for the stage as his most popular and generally most successful compositions of his career. The extent to which the American public has accepted these works as being "folk" is a case for the genius and adaptability of Copland's talent. Although works like Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, and Lincoln Portrait command the attention of the general public, of whom Aaron Copland was constantly aware, there are works for the piano that deserve and demand close study by pianists. One such work is the Piano Variations. Written in 1930, it has been acknowledged as a twentieth …

Composer William Bolcom (1938-) has shown a remarkable capacity for incorporating disparate materials and combining them to create original compositions, while often using traditional genres and forms. This style has earned Bolcom the reputation as a leading composer of American postmodernism. This study provides a brief sketch of Bolcom's development as a postmodern composer, his repertoire for violoncello and piano, and it examines his compositional style as applied in his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1989). In the Sonata Bolcom applies a wide variety of musical vocabulary from serious and popular traditions. He juxtaposes contrasting ideas to create and resolve rhythmic, melodic and harmonic tensions and amalgamates concepts of three centuries of music history into one new integral work. All these disparate elements with classical, romantic, impressionist, expressionist, modernist and popular connotations are molded together to form a serious piece of musi c with a sense of humor. The three contrasting movements of the Sonata share many common rhythmic, melodic and harmonic traits. The movements form a congruent work of Classical and Romantic spirit, often reminiscent of Brahms' music, despite the mixed use of traditional, popular, and modernist musical languages.

There are two major, well-known operas based on plays of Tennessee Williams. He refused many times throughout his life to give permission for his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, to be set as an opera. It was not until the 1960s that he granted permission for Lee Hoiby to choose any of his plays as a basis for a new opera. Hoiby chose Summer and Smoke, a play which was written at approximately the same time as Streetcar. Lanford Wilson created the libretto for the opera which was given its premier in 1971 by the St. Paul Opera Association. In 1994 representatives of the Williams estate granted permission to the San Francisco Opera to commission an opera based on A Streetcar Named Desire. With a libretto by Philip Littell, the opera was composed by André Previn and given its premier in 1998. These two plays share common themes, character types, character relationships, and literary symbols due in part to the autobiographical nature of Williams's writings. The plays exhibit a cinematic nature and possess common dramatic elements such as the symbolic use of sets, props, and musical leitmotifs as a result of his attempts to create a new "plastic" style of …

American composer Roger Reynolds was born on July 18, 1934, in Detroit, Michigan. At age 14, he determined to study piano after hearing a recording of Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat major, Opus 53 played by Vladimir Horowitz. Even though his piano teacher Kenneth Aiken recommended that he continue his study at the Curtis Institute of Music, Reynolds followed the suggestion from his parents that a musical career was not practical. After receiving a bachelor degree of engineering physics at the University of Michigan, he worked in the industry for a short period of time. In 1957, he returned to Michigan and resumed his study of music by taking a class called Composition for Non-Composers under the instruction of Ross Lee Finney. Reynolds continued his compositional study with Finney and Gerhard who were influenced by the Second Viennese School until he finished the master's degree (B.M. 1960, M.M. 1961). Variation was written under the auspices of The Banff Centre for the Arts in 1988. This piece was dedicated to Peter Serkin and premiered by Alec Karis, a faculty member at UCSD, on December 3, 1991 at Merkin Concert Hall, New York. This large-scale set of variations for piano is one of …