The fact that Davis changed his mind radically several times throughout his life appeals to the curiosity. This thesis considers what could be one of the most important and definitive changes: the change from hard bop to modal jazz. This shift, although gradual, is best represented by and culminates in Kind of Blue, the first Davis album based on modal style, marking a clear break from hard bop. This thesis explores the motivations and reasons behind the change, and attempt to explain why it came about. The purpose of the study is to discover the reasons for the change itself as well as the reasons for the direction of the change: Why change and why modal music?

This study examines two of the smaller American choral societies that together existed for just over 30 years, 1888 to 1919: The Gounod and New Haven Oratorio Societies of New Haven, Connecticut. These societies are important because, especially in the case of the New Haven Society, they were closely related to Yale University and the work of Horatio Parker. One must assume from the onset that the two choral groups examined in the following pages did not have the prominence of the many larger New England choral societies. However a more detailed knowledge about the struggles, successes, influence and leadership of two smaller societies illuminates a field of research in the history of American choral music that has been largely ignored.

The purpose of this study is to assemble information needed to assess, understand and hopefully correct muscular hyperfunction that is related to tongue tension in singing and speech which inhibit freely, efficiently, and comfortably produced beautiful singing. This text will include a definition of freely produced, fully resonating tone for beautiful singing, major components of vocal technique, physiology related to singing and speech production, hyperfunctions associated with tongue tension, tongue involvement in the articulation of the four major singing languages, and will present exercises for training the muscles of coordination in a manner conducive to singing and speech.

This paper delineates meaningful relationships of passions, emotions, feelings, affections, nuances and aural perceptions of expressions and utterances, for understanding human artistic possibilities historically and contemporarily in the fraternal arts of music and poetry, with reference to sounds, silences, sequences, rhythms, rhymes, repetitions, retards, accelerations, tempos, harmonies, melodies, forms, etc., in four poetic and three musical compositions uniquely created by its author.

Something About Marybell is a children's book with audio compact disk, in which I combined three art forms: storytelling, illustrating, and music composition. The nature of the story reflects my love of animals, which has been the essence of all my previous works as well. Beyond the technical matters I practiced and obstacles I encountered while working on each of the aforementioned art forms, the most important point I discovered was that all three were consistently interrelated, and I never could develop one medium without considering the others. Working on this project also was a journey to trace my major influences in different subjects. My drawing style is influenced by cartoons and animation films, which are now considered significant artistic styles in Japanese subculture. My music composition reflects a broad influence from many composers' works working in a variety of genres, especially piano works, of all eras. There are two specific works I studied as model works for this project: Poulenc's L'Histoire de Babar le petit éléphant (The Story of Babar the Little Elephant) and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. It was a challenge to blend one stylistic approach into another to accurately realize my musical conception.