Music Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2796
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Item THE CORNO D'AMORE - A BAROQUE TRANSCRIPTION PROJECT(2019) Drew, Justin Thomas; Miller, Gregory E; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Throughout my musical career, I have always enjoyed Baroque music, especially in a church setting. I have had some opportunities to experience this first hand on the horn, but realized that the Baroque repertoire available to a horn player is incredibly limited. Furthermore, there became a realization that French horn music students do not interact enough with Baroque music. While undergraduate Music Education and Performance majors seek a complete education and experience in performing all genres of music, horn players are often left with a void of music and techniques from the Baroque Period. It is also not common for students to own period instruments, nor is it common for university studios to own these instruments. The baroque horn also follows Baroque tuning A=415, which is far lower than the modern traditional tuning, which is A=440. Therefore, I have created four Baroque transcriptions for Horn and Organ to add to the horn repertoire. Two transcriptions were taken from Oboe concertos and two from Oboe D’amore concertos. All of these works were originally accompanied with small string ensemble and continuo. I chose Oboe and Oboe D’amore because the melodies were accessible for the modern day horn player, where flute, violin, viola, and cello features brushed up against virtuosity. These melodies also embody four different types of baroque style and melodic mastery. The project includes a professional recording, the sheet music of the transcriptions, and a CD cover with liner notes. The CD was recorded at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church on November 10, 12, 17, and 25, 2019. The horn used was a Lukas Horn #4 with an Osmun Chicago cup and Geyer rim. The organ is a Rieger Tracker Organ designed by Josef von Glatter-Gotz in 1973-4, performed on by Julie Vidrick Evans. My engineer and producer was Neil Brown, through the recording company Arts Laureate. The arrangements were created using the music writing software, Sibelius. The cover photo is credited to Kyung Jung at Yellowhale Photography.Item Isle of Gold - a story in music(2018) Samson, Matthew David Arling; Gibson, Robert; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Out of the great abundance of stories available to humans throughout history, opera composers and their librettists have favored a surprisingly small subset of these stories in the production of their works. Thus, a significant amount of very interesting subject matter has remained largely unexplored by the compositional community. One such seldom attempted story is Plato’s tale of Atlantis, both its existence and its fall. At present, only a small handful of composers have attempted large scale musico-dramatic works dealing with the legend, and arguably none of these works have taken hold in the greater operatic canon, if they are even known in the first place. Despite its neglect, this particular legend, which depicts the conflict of an idealized primal state with one ruined by arrogance and both of their eventual destructions by catastrophe, is ripe for interpretation. This work is an attempt to begin to begin to address the story’s neglect. My focus in exploring the topic and composing this stage piece has been foremost on the idea of repetition, and key to that exploration has been the use of carefully structured anachronism. Symbolically, Atlantis can be made to function as a stand-in for nearly any powerful nation or empire in nearly any time period. As such, textually, “the Isle” as it is called in the piece, is ostensibly placed in the distant past; however, there are textual elements that problematize this assumption, such that it could indeed be set in the distant future or even as a continuously repeating event, removed from the normal workings of time. Similarly, the orchestration consists of essentially only instruments present in an early baroque orchestra, and while they are generally asked to play in a conventionally baroque style, the harmonic, melodic, and formal material is decidedly contemporary. Furthermore, from time to time, both the instruments and voices are asked to perform techniques and in styles borrowed from many different times and places. All these elements and others taken together serve to underscore the universality and timelessness of the tale, especially highlighting its relevance to the modern world and our place in it.Item FROM PICTURE TO SOUND: A CONDUCTOR'S STUDY GUIDE TO THE ST. JOHN PASSION OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH(2018) Kim, Kieun Steve; Maclary, Edward; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Bach’s music is filled with musical allegories. These musico-theological symbols are often concealed to modern eyes and ears. Scholars have worked diligently to help modern musicians gain a better understanding of this learned musician’s musical allegories, theological symbols, and, in the words of John Butt, his dialogue with modernity. It is the conductor’s job to help reveal the meaning of these symbols so that the performers can translate the visual representation of the score into a sonic realization for the listeners. This study guide to the St. John Passion is an attempt to help conductors understand Bach’s musical, textual, and theological intent. The St. John Passion was written for a liturgical purpose— to edify Bach’s Leipzig congregation and to help them comprehend the essential meaning of the Passion story. The work is both a musical proclamation of Scripture and a detailed dramatization of that narrative. Therefore, it is critical for conductors to examine not only the musical structures and motives, but also to study the text carefully. The Passion text of John’s gospel is unique and differs from the Synoptic Gospels. This dissertation provides musical analyses of this Passion by examining key passages of the Scripture in the original Greek and Hebrew, and using the lenses of theologians by whom Bach was influenced. This includes relevant scholarship as well as examinations of musical interpretations of recordings of the St. John Passion by acclaimed conductors through comparisons of score illustrations of each conductor’s interpretations. Deepening the surface level understanding of the text, and Bach’s depiction of it, will broaden the conductor’s choices to intensify both musical rhetoric and dramatic sound. This method of 1) analyzing musical motives and structures, 2) studying exemplary interpretations, and 3) dissecting key words of the biblical texts in the original languages will enhance the understanding of Bach’s theology and enable the conductor to encourage the musicians to perform Bach’s music more enlightened and inspired. This, in turn, will strengthen the conductor’s and the performers’ rendition of the St. John Passion and augment the power and drama of its music.Item Transcribing Viola da Gamba Literature for the Modern Double Bass(2015) Alger, Shawn; Murdock, Katherine; Manzo, Anthony; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The double bass, in its modern incarnation, dates from the late nineteenth century, which means that any performer wishing to play solo music from an earlier era must resort to transcriptions. For modern bassists wishing to play music from the Baroque era, the options of existing transcriptions are severely limited. Currently a handful of composers dominate the landscape of baroque music for double bass, and the music tends to borrow from either violin or cello repertoire. The fact of the matter is that Baroque music is tremendously underrepresented when compared against the entire oeuvre of available music for the double bass. This dissertation will present a collection of transcriptions from viola da gamba literature in a variety of styles and genres in order to illustrate the potential this music has for expanding the baroque repertoire for double bass. The scope of this paper will include solo music with accompaniment, unaccompanied transcriptions, and music for two and four basses. In transcribing these works I have kept as close to the original manuscripts and publications as possible with regards to bowing and notation. Deviations from the original have been clearly marked so that modern performers may decide for themselves how faithfully to reproduce what the composer wrote. It will also serve as a starting point toward reinventing this wonderful body of music that has heretofore been taken for granted.