Music Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2796
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Item TONES IN BLACK: A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN BASS/BARITONES IN CLASSICAL MUSIC: IN THE ECHOES OF ANCESTORS, A PIONEER’S VOICE(2024) McIlwain-Lightfoot, VaShawn Savoy; Short, Kevin C.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation project has three major foci: a) to trace the history of classically trained African American Bass/Baritone vocalists through performance, recordings, and narrative; b) to recognize the historical performances of African American Bass/Baritone vocal pioneers and the significant contributions they made to the accessibility of opportunities for other African Americans within these voice types; and c) to discuss how Bass/Baritone community performances can promote social connectedness and DEI in opera. In addressing these foci, the paper will emphasize how the performances of Bass/Baritone vocal artists, past and present, have a) made African Americans, in general, more acceptable to White audiences and b) changed the perceptions of White Americans about who African Americans are and what they are capable of. Methodology involved securing physical/digital historical data from newspapers, journals, and books; collecting photos, programs, and articles from the private library of a former University of Maryland professor; conducted oral history interviews of students and progeny of the first African American Baritone to sing with a major opera company in the U.S. (Todd Duncan); delivered community performances domestically and internationally as a current example of the legacy of African American classical vocal artists, specifically Bass/Baritones. This project’s accounting of historical performances can serve to recognize unknown or forgotten contemporaries and predecessors.Item OLD MUSIC FOR A NEW WORLD: PERFORMING STANDARD REPERTOIRE WITH CONTEMPORARY SENSIBILITIES(2023) Vaughn, Rhiannon Evans; Kier, Craig; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Society and current events shape the art of their time. Many works of operatic and song literaturethat are considered masterpieces have elements that are challenging to modern audiences–be it their composer’s personal beliefs, embedded racism and sexism, or other unfavorable aspects. How to deal with these controversial elements of standard repertoire is not wholly agreed upon and the divide on how to engage with them is often generational. Those of an older generation often espouse the inherent value of these works, whereas those of a younger generation struggle to see beyond their faults. This does not have to divide the classical world of singing–with sincere and careful thought, discussion, and research it is possible to engage with works that have a checkered past and to continue to grow the canon and our understanding of it. Supplementing materials accompanying this dissertation project including video recordings of each performance event.Item AN EXPLORATION OF SELECTED VOCAL WORKS BY GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE (1892-1983)(2022) Bryant, Zachary Franklin; Short, Kevin; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)French composer and pianist Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) is commonly known as the sole female member of the French music collective Les Six, however her prolific career and abundance of compositions encompass a range of artistic endeavors and compositional expertise beyond this customary title. Important primary sources detailing her inspirations, compositional philosophies and artistic insights include a short, self-dictated memoir, letters, contemporary articles, critical reviews, interviews and music scores. Many of her manuscripts have remained unpublished or lost amid the destruction of World War II. And though a large number of her works enjoyed performances during her lifetime on Radio-France, archive recordings are unavailable to the public and subsequent performances have been rare by both French and international institutions. The vocal works of Tailleferre therefore offer fertile ground for further analysis, exploration and consideration for standard repertoire and academic discussion.The first performance event features a lecture introducing the life and works of Germain Tailleferre, similar in format and content to a higher education song or opera literature lecture. The discussion includes biographical information, compositional characteristics and analysis and performances of two song sets and operatic excerpts. The second and third performance events share the U.S. premiere of the complete operatic cycle Quatre opéras bouffes: petite histoire lyrique de l’art français, du style galant au style méchant. The Part 1 performance features La fille d’opéra and Le bel ambitieux and the Part 2 performance features La pauvre Eugénie and M. Petitpois achète un château. Supplemental materials accompanying this dissertation project include video recordings of each performance event and the complete supertitle files created with original translations and utilized during the performances of Quatre opéras bouffes.Item THE IMPACT OF GENRE FUSION AND IMPROVISATIONAL ELEMENTS IN 21ST-CENTURY OPERAS ON VOCAL PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICE(2019) DuBose, Sequina; Balthrop, Carmen; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the 21st century, opera composers are expanding beyond traditional boundaries by incorporating improvisatory elements and musical style elements from non-classical genres. The purpose of this study is to point to the impact these trends will have on vocal pedagogy and performance practice. The opening chapters of the dissertation provide historical context by examining the role of improvisation in the Baroque era and beyond, along with details concerning key shifts in audience culture, vocal aesthetic and performance practice throughout history. Chapter two also incorporates narratives from key industry practitioners, voice pedagogue Dr. Rachelle Fleming, and American Opera Projects Artistic Director, Mila Henry. Chapter three consists of a discussion of the research methodology and the key researchers and methodologists that influenced the study. This study is a narrative inquiry that employs an analysis of narrative approach and paradigmatic reasoning in its analysis, inducing themes and relationships between the concepts that reveal themselves in the data and literature. Chapter four includes narrative research and analysis based on interviews that have been conducted with composers and singers from four innovative operas: Charlie Parker’s Yardbird (Daniel Schynder), I Dream: A Rhythm and Blues Opera (Douglas Tappin), Blue Viola (Peter Hilliard), and The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock (David Lang; the composer intentionally uses lowercase script in the titles of his works). Each composer and singer offers a unique perspective regarding the interpretation of and preparation for contemporary operatic works and furthers the argument that academic voice programs will benefit from an expanded curriculum that prepares singers to meet the evolving demands of the opera industry. The final chapter provides personal testimony from the author and suggested vocal and dramatic exercises for incorporating improvisation in a manner that may be of use in university opera workshops, group voice classes, and voice studios. This body of research documents the stylistic and technical considerations that modern opera singers and teachers take into account in order to branch out and explore operatic works that have genre-bending and/or improvisative elements. Based on the findings from this study it is recommended that voice teachers cross-train by teaching classically trained singers to adapt their singing methods to various styles.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 An Operatic Contribution to a Literary Conversation: Locating Henry James' Ambiguity in Benjamin Britten and Myfanwy Piper's "The Turn of the Screw"(2018) Athanasiou, Evangeline Katerina; Haldey, Olga; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1954, Benjamin Britten and Myfanwy Piper’s chamber opera, "The Turn of the Screw," premiered at the Venice Biennale. They adapted their story from the late eighteenth-century Henry James novella of the same title. Soon after its publication in 1898, James’ "The Turn of the Screw" sparked a literary debate focusing on the credibility of the main narrator, a young governess who claims to see ghosts while in charge of two children isolated in a country house. During the 1950s, when Britten’s musical career was steadily advancing, the literary debate moved in the direction of reconciling the argument over the governess’ credibility. This study primarily expands upon musicological scholarship from Philip Rupprecht as well as literary scholarship by Shlomith Rimmon, along with various other studies concerning music, literature, and adaptation. Through a textual and musical analysis of James’ ambiguity as realized in Britten and Piper’s "The Turn of the Screw," this study demonstrates that the opera should be considered among the contributions to the mid-century critical trend toward the synthesis of the two dominating interpretations of the novel from the twentieth century.Item House of Winter: Opera in One Act(2018) Pazdziora, Eric; Wilson, Mark E; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)House of Winter is a one-act dramatic musical composition, approximately 70 minutes in duration, with a libretto written by Dr. John Patrick Pazdziora. It is scored for four singers and chamber orchestra including strings, woodwinds, harpsichord, and frame drum. The opera combines music and text with thematic material evocative of Scottish folk songs in a narrative exploration of the experience of an elderly woman facing the end of her life and reflecting on her lost cultural traditions and identity through encroaching dementia.Item Sexism and Imperialism in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Blitzstein's Regina: A Performance Study(2016) Eversole, Anthony Duke; Mabbs, Linda; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation project comprises three major operatic performances and an accompanying document; a performance study which surveys aspects of sexism and imperialism as represented in three operas written over the last three centuries by examining the implications of prejudice through research as well as through performances of the major roles found in the operas. Mr. Eversole performed the role of Sharpless in the 2014 Castleton Festival production of Madama Butterfly (music by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa), conducted by Bradley Moore. In 2015, Mr. Eversole sang the title role in four performances of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni with the Maryland Opera Studio at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, conducted by Craig Kier. Also as part of the Maryland Opera Studio 2015-16 season, Mr. Eversole appeared as Oscar Hubbard in four performances of Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s 1939 play, The Little Foxes. These performances were also conducted by Craig Kier. The accompanying research document discusses significant issues of cultural, geographical, and sexual hegemony as they relate to each opera. It examines the plots and characters of the operas from a postcolonial and feminist perspective, and takes a moral stance against imperialism, sexism, domestic abuse, and in general, the exploitation of women and of the colonized by the socially privileged and powerful. Recordings of all three operas can be accessed at the University of Maryland Hornbake Library. They are: Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (the role of Sharpless) July 20, 2014, Castleton Festival production, Bradley Moore, Conductor Castleton, Virginia Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni (title role) November 22nd, 2015, Maryland Opera Studio, Craig Kier, Conductor Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, UMD Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, (Oscar Hubbard) April 8th, 8016, Maryland Opera Studio, Craig Kier, Conductor Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, UMDItem Antonio Salieri's La calamita de' cuori (1774): Sources, Form, Context(2016) Abbazio, Jessica Marie; Haggh-Huglo, Barbara H.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Antonio Salieri’s La calamita de’ cuori (1774) warrants musicological attention for what it can tell us about Salieri’s compositional craft and what it reveals about the development of form in Viennese Italian-language comic opera of the mid- and late-eighteenth century. In Part I of this dissertation, I explore the performance history of La calamita, present the first plot synopsis and English translation of the libretto, and describe the variants between Carlo Goldoni’s 1752 libretto and the revised version created for Salieri’s opera. I have collated Salieri’s holograph score, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Mus. Hs. 16.508, with four copies having different relationships to it, and I propose a stemma that represents the relationships between these five sources. The analyses in Part II contribute to our understanding of formal practices in eighteenth-century drammi giocosi. My study of Salieri’s La calamita reveals his reliance on a clearly defined binary structure, referred to in this dissertation as “operatic binary form,” in almost half of the arias, ensembles, and instrumental movements of this opera. Salieri’s consistent use of operatic binary form led me to explore its use in drammi giocosi by other prominent composers of this time, including Baldassare Galuppi’s La calamita de’ cuori (1752), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Il dissoluto punito, ossia Il Don Giovanni (1787), and selected arias by Pasquale Anfossi, Florian Leopold Gassmann, Giuseppe Gazzaniga, Franz Joseph Haydn, Giovanni Paisiello, and Niccolò Piccinni dating from 1760 to 1774. This study showed that Salieri and his peers adhered to a recognizable tonal plan and set of design elements in their operatic binary forms, and that their arias fall into three distinct categories defined by the tonality at the beginning of the second half of the binary structure. The analysis presented here adds to our present understanding of operatic form in mid- and late-century drammi giocosi and shows that in La calamita de’ cuori, Salieri was following the normative formal procedures of his time.Item Pénélope in the Press, 1913: The Early Critical Reception of Gabriel Fauré's Only Opera(2012) Houghton, Jenny Marie; Haldey, Olga; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gabriel Fauré's single full-scale opera, Pénélope, has been virtually forgotten since it premiered in 1913. This thesis provides the first detailed account of Pénélope's critical reception during the year of its premiere. Given that the opera was received enthusiastically by the press, many Fauré scholars have blamed the opera's demise on poor timing. Close examination of the 1913 reviews reveals, however, a deep-seeded bias on the part of the press. By the time Pénélope premiered, Fauré was an influential and beloved member of the French musical community. Thus, we find that the reviews are as much a tribute to his personal character as they are an assessment of his opera. By properly contextualizing the reviews, we gain a clearer understanding of Pénélope's true merits and weaknesses, which may help guide a future for the work in the twenty-first century.