Chapter I of this thesis details contemporary historical views on the origins of the violin and its terminology. Chapters II through VI study the methodologies of makers from Italy, the Germanic Countries, the Low Countries, France, and England, and highlights the aspects of these methodologies that show influence from one maker to another. Chapter VII deals with matters of imitation, copying, violin forgery and the differences between these categories. Chapter VIII presents a discussion of the manner in which various violin experts identify the maker of a violin. It briefly discusses a new movement that questions the current methods of authentication, proposing that the dual role of "expert/dealer" does not lend itself to sufficient objectivity. The conclusion suggests that dealers, experts, curators, and musicologists alike must return to placing the first emphasis on the tradition of the craft rather than on the individual maker.

This study is concerned with the examination of choral symphonies by major nineteenth-century composers. Its purpose is to delineate the common characteristics which these works have. Emphasis is given to the investigation of the choral elements in the symphonies. Detailed musicological studies of nineteenth-century music are minimal; there has. been a particular lack of interest in nineteenth-century works for chorus. Therefore, the principal sources of data for this study were the full scores of the following nine symphonies: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Berlioz' Romeo and Juliet and the Funeral and Triumphal Symphony, Mendelssohn's Lobgesang, Liszt's Faust Symphony and Dante Syrmphony, and Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 2., 3, and 8. Other important sources included major biographies of the composers of the symphonies listed. chapter is devoted to each of these composers, subdivided as follows: a general survey of the composer's other works for chorus and/or orchestra; the historical facts connected with the composition and first performance of the individual symphonies; analysis; and conclusions.

The Stammbueh or album of Johann Stobaeus, MS Sloane 1021 in the British Library, is dated January 8, 1640. Stobaeus, its owner, was Kapellmeister in Konigsberg, East Prussia. The album contains 164 pieces for ten- or eleven-course lute, including dances, secular pieces with generic titles, and settings of chorale tunes. Other major material includes two short sets of lute instructions; instructions for singers of liturgical music; poems by members of the Komgsberger Diahterkre's; and short rhymes and epigrams, many of which concern the lute. The dissertation presents a complete modern edition of the lute music and lute instructions, with commentary; biographical data concerning Stobaeus, with background material about Konigsberg and East Prussia; a selection of poems and epigrams, featuring all poems concerning the lute; and commentary on the literary material, especially the evidence it provides that the manuscript might have been compiled in its entirety around the written date of 1640, even though the music is old-fashioned.

This study is a translation of and commentary on an eighteenth-century treatise written by Juan Miguel Urtasun de Yrarraga. Its purpose is to contribute to the field of knowledge of eighteenth-century Spanish materials, making an original work of that era accessible to the reader unfamiliar with the Spanish language.

Francis Poulenc’s three-act opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-1956) depicts the struggles of the novice nun Blanche de la Force during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. The use of Latin liturgical music at critical points in the opera conveys the ritualistic nature of Catholic worship. The spiritual message of mystical substitution, along with the closely related notion of vicarious suffering, imbue the opera with a spirituality that offers a sharp contrast to earlier operatic settings of Catholic texts, particularly during the age of grand opera. Marian devotion also plays an important role in the opera. The final tableau of the opera stages the execution of Blanche and her sisters, complete with the sound of a guillotine, with the nuns singing the Salve Regina as they proceed to the scaffold. The multivalence of the final tableau highlights the importance of voice and its absence. While the nuns, onstage spectators, and the guillotine are audibly present in the scene, the priest participates solely through gesture. The surfacing of the Lacanian Real in the silent moment of traumatic shock that follows the guillotine’s first fall allows for intertextual references to the opera in Poulenc’s Sonate pour Flûte et Piano (1957) to …

Many consider Gace Brulé (c1160-c1213) and Thibaut IV, Count of Champagne, (1201-1253) to have been the greatest trouvères. Writers on this subject have not adequately examined this assumption, having focused their energies on such issues as tracking melodic variants of individual works as preserved in different song-books (or chansonniers), the interpretation of rhythm in performance, and creation of modern editions of these songs. This thesis examines the esteem enjoyed by Gace and Thibaut in both medieval and modern times which derives from their exemplarity of, rather than difference from their noble contemporaries.

Three works by Tippett stand together among his compositions because of their similarity of subject and performance medium. All are large works for soloists, chorus and orchestra, on meditative librettos, and intended for unstaged presentation. Only A Child of Our Time is given the genre designation "oratorio" by Tippett. An in-depth analysis of these works and the model for A Child of Our Time, Handel's Messiah, reveals that though they neither present religious subjects nor, in the case of The Vision of Saint Augustine and The Mask of Time, exhibit traditional formal divisions associated with oratorio, Tippett's works do indeed belong to the oratorio repertoire of the twentieth century.

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.

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.

In this study of vocal chamber duets the various approaches used in duet writing from the late sixteenth century through the nineteenth are examined. Various meanings attributed to the terms "vocal duet" and "chamber duet" are considered, and an appropriate delineation of the genre is determined. The study begins with examination of bicinia, dialogues, and concertato madrigals of the late sixteenth century, three kinds of works related to the continuing lines of interest in duets of later centuries: pedagogical duets, dialogue duets, and duets shaped by general musical trends. After a foundation has been laid in the sixteenth century, examples of duets of various kinds for the next three centuries are considered. It is seen that a discontinuity in the history of the vocal chamber duet occurs during the Classical period. Operatic and chamber duets prior to this time show great similarities in style. Operatic and chamber duets of the nineteenth century show distinct differences in style. At the same time that differences between operatic and chamber duets were increased, the differences between solo and duet chamber works by the same composer were decreased.

In 1939, composer Julia Smith's first opera Cynthia Parker dramatized the story of a Texas legend. Smith manipulated music, text, and visual images to make the opera accessible for the audience in accordance with compositional and institutional practices in American opera of the 1930s. Transparent musical themes and common Native Americans stereotypes are used to define characters. Folk music is presented as diegetic, creating a sense of authenticity that places the audience into the opera's Western setting. The opera is codified for the audience using popular idioms, resulting in initial but not lasting success.

Music that is categorized as part of the Indianist movement in American music (ca. 1890-1925) typically evokes Native American culture, ritual, story, or song through compositional gestures. It may also incorporate Native American tunes. Amy Beach (1867-1944) is considered to have composed five Indianist works, but her Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet, op. 80 has not been included as one of them. This thesis rethinks categorization of the piece, seeking the "Indian" in it through examination of its gestures, instrumentation, and relationship to contemporary Indianist compositions.

Domenico Gabrielli's seven trumpet sonatas are among seventeenth-century trumpet repertoire predominant in the instrumental tradition of the basilica San Petronio, which flourished roughly from the election of Maurizio Cazzati as maestro di cappella in 1657 until the dissolution of the orchestra of the church in 1695. Fostered by numerous occasions for performance, the Bolognese trumpet works tend to exhibit a uniform musical style imposed by musical academies. After a discussion of the probable cause of the termination of the instrumental tradition and of the role of musical academies, this paper will be primarily concerned with formal aspects of fast movements of Gabrielli's sonatas. Despite the fact that the predominant organizing principle of the fast movements appears to be textural, a step toward ritornello form is taken in some of the movements, in which tutti and solo sections are independently developed. In particular, the recurrence of identical material in tutti confirming different keys, the thematic relation between tutti and solo, and the symmetrical and balanced tonal plan are unmistakable seeds of full ritornello form. The text is followed by critical notes and transcriptions of the seven sonatas.

Dubuisson (fl.1666-c.1685) is the sole French viol player-composer between Nicolas Hotman (1613-1663) and Le Sieur de Sainte-Colombe (d.c.1700) whose works are extant. His four suites from a Library of Congress manuscript (1666) are the oldest dated French music for the bass viol; his approximately 125 pieces are contained in five manuscript sources. This thesis brings together, for the first time, all the music from the five sources for study and analysis. Together with the few biographical details, this material is used to assess his position within the French viol school. Brief histories of the viol and the suite in France precede a discussion of Dubuisson's contributions to the evolution of the genre.

Scholars have considered Italian chamber recitative laments only a transitional phenomenon between madrigal laments and laments organized on the descending tetrachord bass. However, the recitative lament is distinguished from them by its characteristic attitude toward the relationship between music and text. Composer of Italian chamber recitative laments attempted to express more subtle, refined and sometimes complicated emotion in their music. For that purpose, they intentionally created discrepancies between text and music. Sometimes they even destroy the original structure of text in order to clearly deliver the composer's own voice. The basic syntactic structure is deconstructed and reconstructed along with their reading and according to their intention. The discrepancy between text and music is, however, expectable and natural phenomena since text cannot be completely translated or transformed to music and vice versa. The composers of Italian chamber recitative laments utilized their innate heterogeneity between two materials (music and text) as a metaphor that represents the semantic essence of the genre, the conflict. In this context, Italian chamber recitative laments were a real embodiment of the so-called seconda prattica and through the study of them, finally, we more fully able to understand how the spirit of late Renaissance flourished in Italy in …

Critics who discuss Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony often write about aspects that run counter to their conception of what a symphony should be, such as this symphony’s static nature and its programmatic elements. In nineteenth-century Boston and London, criticism of the Pastoral Symphony reflects the opinions of a wide range of listeners, as critics variably adopted the views of the intellectual elite and general audience members. As a group, these critics acted as intermediaries between various realms of opinion regarding this piece. Their writing serves as a lens through which we can observe audiences’ acceptance of ideas common in contemporaneous musical thought, including the integrity of the artwork, the glorification of genius, and ideas about meaning in music.

In the history of seventeenth-century European music the court of Christian IV (r. 1588-1648) occupies a position of prominence. Christian, eager for fame as a patron of the arts, drew to Denmark many of the musical giants of the age, among them the lutenist John Dowland and the composer Heinrich Schltz. Sadly, except for financial records and occasional letters still in the archives, few traces remain of these brilliant years in Denmark. The music composed and played during this half century has largely disappeared, most of it probably in the tragic fire of 1794 that destroyed the old Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen and with it the court music archives. Except for the recently-discovered Clausholm Fragments, only three specimens of keyboard music from the period remain: Ny kgl. Saml. 1997 fol. (Obmaus Tablature), Gl. kgl. Saonl. 376 fol. (Copenhagen Tablature), and mu 6703.2131/6 (VoigtlaJnder Tablature). It has generally been assumed that the manuscripts were of German origin. The present study, however, demonstrates a probable Danish origin for the third, possible Danish connections for the second, and establishes that the first is of Austrian provenance. The Obmaus Tablature is an amateur's preservation of a German keyboard style already outdated. This slender manuscript, …

This dissertation examines pre-Kantian rational philosophy and the development of the discipline of aesthetics in the North German Enlightenment. With emphasis on the historical conception of the physiological and psychological experience of music, this project determines the function of music both privately and socially in the eighteenth century. As a result, I identify the era of rational aesthetics (ca.1750-1800) as a music-historical period unified by the aesthetic function and metaphysical experience of music, which inform the underlying motivation for musical styles, genres, and means of expression, leading to a more meaningful and compelling historical periodization. The philosophy of Alexander Baumgarten, Johann Georg Sulzer, and others enable definitions of the experience of beautiful objects and those concepts related to music composition, listening, and taste, and determine how rational aesthetics impacted the practice, function, and ultimately the prevailing style of music in the era. The construction, style, and performance means of the free fantasia, the most personal and expressive genre of the era, identify its function as the private act of solitude, or a musical meditation. An examination of pleasure societies establishes the role of music in performance and discussion in both social gatherings and learned musical clubs for conveying the morally …

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.

This thesis concerns the performance of identity in the music of Indian American jazz musicians Rudresh Mahanthappa and Vijay Iyer. In combining the use of Indian classical music elements with jazz, Iyer and Mahanthappa create music that is inextricably tied to their multifaceted identities. Traditional musicological analysis is juxtaposed with a theoretical framework that draws on postcolonial theory and the history of Asian immigrant populations to the U.S. I chronicle the interactions between Indian and Western music and link it to larger issues of Asian American identity formation and activism through music. Through interviews and transcriptions of studio recordings, I identify specific compositional and improvisational strategies of the musicians. I emphasize the role of individual agency in the formation of second-generation identities, drawing attention to the distinct ways that Iyer and Mahanthappa approach their music. Finally, I connect this research to a larger discourse on Indian American artistic identity.

In their shared goal of communicating left-wing principles to children through music, Marc Blitzstein's Worker's Kids of the World (1935), Aaron Copland's The Second Hurricane (1937), and Alex North's The Hither and Thither of Danny Dither (1941) exhibit a fundamental unity of purpose that binds them both to each other and to the extensive leftist pedagogical efforts of their time. By observing the parallel relationship among these three children's works and contemporary youth organizations, summer camps, and children's literature, their cultural objectives and stylistic idiosyncrasies emerge as expressions of a continuously evolving educational tradition. Whereas Worker's Kids comes out of the revolutionary Communist aesthetics of the Composers' Collective and the militant activism of The Young Pioneers, The Second Hurricane and Danny Dither reflect the increasingly accommodating educational efforts of the American Popular Front.

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 study deals with the four-composer Polish musical association, Young Polish Composers' Publishing Company, which became commonly known as the group Poland in Music. Young Poland in Music is considered by Polish and non-Polish music historians to be the signal inaugurator of modernism in Polish music. However, despite this most important attribution, the past eighty-odd years have witnessed considerable confusion over the perceptions of: 1) exactly who constituted the publishing company, 2) why it was founded, 3) what the intentions of its members were, and 4) the general reception its members' music received. This paper addresses and resolves this multiple confusion. Chapter I presents an introductory survey of the political, socio/cultural, and musical developments of Poland between 1772 and c1900, the period of the Polish Partitions through the beginnings of the "Young Poland" era. Chapter II presents a discussion of the facts surrounding the founding of the publishing company, as well as a discussion of the eighty-odd years of historical misinterpretations that have developed about the composers' company and its relationship to "Young Poland in Music." Chapter III discusses the interpersonal relationships of the composers and other persons directly involved with them and their company, and the impact that these …

In eighteenth-century Britain, many aristocrats studied music, participated as amateurs in musical clubs, and patronized London’s burgeoning concert life. Richard Fitzwilliam, Seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion and Thorncastle (1745-1816), was one such patron and amateur. Fitzwilliam shaped his activities – participation, patronage, and collecting – in a unique way that illustrates his specialized tastes and interests. While as an amateur musician he sang in the Noblemen’s and Gentlemen’s Catch Club (the premiere social club dedicated to musical performance), he rose to the highest level of patronage by spearheading the Handel Commemoration Festival of 1784 and serving for many years as a Director of the Concert of Antient Music, the most prestigious concert series in Georgian Britain. His lasting legacy, however, was his bequest to Cambridge University of his extensive collection of art, books and music, as well as sufficient funds to establish the Fitzwilliam Museum. At the time of his death, Fitzwilliam’s collection of music was the best in the land, save that in the Royal Library. Thus, his collection is ideally suited for examination as proof of his activities, taste and connoisseurship. Moreover, the music in Fitzwilliam’s collection shows his participation in the contemporary musicological debate, evidenced by his …