UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item Pastoralism in British Cello Music: Solo and Chamber Works from the 1940s to the Present Day(2022) Colle, Syneva; Kutz, Eric; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This performance dissertation explores solo cello repertoire with connections to the English pastoral style. Although pastoralism peaked in popularity between the two world wars, its essential features have been newly embraced by several twenty-first century British composers. Each work discussed here displays some or all of the following pastoral traits: references to the folk music traditions of the British Isles, musical depictions of nature, melodic or harmonic modalism, non-functional (“coloristic”) chordal writing, expressions of nostalgia, and references to historical British music. The performance programs are comprised of works for unaccompanied cello, works for cello and piano, a cello duo, and a cello concerto with string orchestra accompaniment.Item The Legacy of the Students of Charles Villiers Stanford in the Viola Repertoire(2021) Hougham, Kathryn V.; Murdock, Katherine; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Sir Charles Villiers Stanford is well known to British history, but poorly recognized by those outside of the British Isles. Irish born but a life-long loyalist, Stanford was passionate about his identity as a British gentleman. While home rule was constantly on the political agenda in Ireland, Stanford fully immersed himself into English life, first at the University of Cambridge, and later as a founding faculty member of the Royal College of Music, London. Stanford believed that the British need not copy the Germans in their music, but could develop their own talent and national identity of sound. Stanford’s early career coincided with a boom in musical criticism, making the effort to create an English Musical Renaissance possible with the help of original music, highly trained musicians, and a blossoming force of literary critics to spread the word. While musicologists debate the validity of the term “renaissance” in association with Stanford and Hubert Perry’s output of music, there is no denying that Stanford’s extended tenure at the Royal College of Music created an army of composers who were fertile soil for an explosion of viola repertoire in the twentieth century. This dissertation explores a small section of the output of Stanford’s students’ work for the viola. The first portion of this project features Stanford’s own hand, a clarinet sonata, which was inspired by the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas and similarly adapted for the viola under the approval of the composer. The recording features some lesser-known works of Stanford’s students, including works by Gordon Jacob, Frank Bridge, Herbert Howells, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Rebecca Clarke. The recital features an unpublished Sonata by Edgar Bainton, Vaughan Williams’s Four Hymns for tenor, viola and piano, and Morpheus by Rebecca Clarke. It is my hope that through this plethora of artistic beauty, Stanford’s legacy in the viola canon will be elevated to reflect the tremendous impact he left on our repertoire.Item COLONIAL CHOREOGRAPHY: STAGING SRI LANKAN DANCERS UNDER BRITISH COLONIAL RULE FROM THE 1870s – 1930s(2018) Madamperum Arachchilage, Sudesh Mantillake; Lee, Esther K; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In textbooks the terms “Kandyan dance” and its equivalent in the Sinhala language “udarata nätuma” are used to describe the dance tradition that was predominantly practiced in the Kandyan region of Sri Lanka. Nationalist histories portray Kandyan dance as a continuation of a pristine tradition that was passed down from ancient Sinhala kingdoms. As the Sinhala nationalist discourse glorified Kandyan dance vis à vis its Tamil counterpart, it obscured the British colonial encounter with Kandyan dancers by leaving out a part of the rich history of dance. As I demonstrate in this dissertation, colonialism transformed to a significant extent the Kandyan dancescape of the British colonial period, particularly between the 1870s and 1930s. Therefore, this dissertation re-examines the history of the so-called tradition of Kandyan dance with the focus on the British colonial encounter with performers of the Kandyan region. As a Sri Lankan dancer, I try to trace and interpret the histories of dancers that were ignored or shrouded in silence in colonial and Sinhala national histories. As a historian, I interpret archival materials through textual and visual analysis while as a dancer, I interpret archival materials through my embodied knowledge of Kandyan dance. I examine: How did the Sinhalese devil dance become a showpiece during the British colonial period, setting the ground for it to be elevated with the new name of “Kandyan dance”? Who defined its aesthetic parameters and repertoire? How did the performers respond to their colonial experience? I argue that, with the help of the native elites, the colonizers displaced, mobilized, manipulated, staged, and displayed performers of the Kandyan region for the benefit of colonial audiences through processions organized for British royal dignitaries, colonial exhibitions, photographs, and travel films. I call this process “colonial choreography”, which defined the aesthetic parameters and repertoire of Kandyan dance. However, the dancers were not just the victims of colonial choreography but also contributors to colonial choreography through their creativity and resistance. Therefore, I also argue that while collaborating with the colonizers, the dancers responded creatively to their experience and covertly resisted the colonial masters.Item British Viola Repertoire of the First Half of the Twentieth Century(2015) Luce, Gregory; Murdock, Katherine; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The aim of this dissertation performance project has been to obtain a familiarity with the sound and emotional palette of the British viola repertoire of 1900-1950. The music of this time and place has a uniquely soulful, pensive, and internally wrought emotional quality which translates perfectly into the character of the viola. The first recital consisted of music written for the world’s then-preeminent viola virtuoso, Lionel Tertis (1876-1975). This program included Vaughan Williams’ Romance for Viola and Piano, Frank Bridge’s Two Pieces for Viola and Piano (Pensiero and Allegro Appassionato), Arnold Bax’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, and finally York Bowen’s thrilling Sonata No. 1 in C Minor. The second recital contained the chronologically ordered complete works for viola and piano of Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979). Thanks to the monumental sonata of 1919, Rebecca Clarke is thought of by many as a composer, but she was most certainly a remarkable violist as well, making her one of the last performer-composers to continue the legacy of the great composer-virtuosi of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Clarke was at the very forefront of a time when female composers were beginning to be accepted socially. She is removed by only fifty or so years from the time of Clara Schumann, another great female artist, but is perhaps more remarkable in that her instrument of choice was not as widely accepted as a solo instrument at that time. The final recital consisted of several works chosen to showcase the viola’s unique relationship with British composers over time. The first half of the recital featured three under-celebrated works by Arnold Bax: Concert Piece, Trio in One Movement, and Legend. The second half of this program reached back into the late Renaissance with a pair of pieces by John Dowland arranged for violin and viola, then finishing with Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae of 1950, which was inspired by these two works.Item TIME WARPS AND ALTER-NARRATIVES: GAY AND LESBIAN ENGAGEMENTS WITH HISTORY IN BRITISH FICTION SINCE WORLD WAR II(2013) Clark, Damion Ray; Cohen, William A; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Contemporary British gay and lesbian authors engage with history through two distinct methods I call fixed moment/cultural critique and abstract moment/fantasy space. The fixed moment/cultural critique model focuses on a fixed historical moment, usually from the recent past. By focusing on this fixed moment, authors explicitly engage in critiques of the present that question society's homophobia and gay and lesbian people's participation in their own oppression. The abstract moment/fantasy space model uses moments from the distant past, often collapsing historical and narrative time and space to create a fantasy space for lesbians and gay men to reflect on their own cultures and identities and to create links with their literary and historical ancestries. Mary Renault's The Charioteer (1953) and Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty (2004), both demonstrate the vein of historical engagement in gay and lesbian British fiction that builds a political argument challenging heterosexual cultural and political definitions of homosexuality and detailing the effects of such definitions on gay people. They do this while rooting this discussion in a specific near past iconic historical British moment: World War II for Renault, and the height of Margaret Thatcher's rule in the 1980s for Hollinghurst. The second vein of historical engagement is one that holds as its purpose gay and lesbian cultural fantasy. Neil Bartlett's Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall (1990) and Who Was That Man?: A Present for Mr Oscar Wilde (1988) and the Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet (1998) explore authorial engagement with the more distant past as a means of examining the present and creating possible futures. The past in these works is not one sharply defined locus; rather it is broadly defined periods that the authors seek to collapse with the present. In the Coda, I turn to the films of Derek Jarman and Isaac Julien, and the plays of Alexi Kaye Campbell and Jackie Kay to see how the fixed moment/cultural critique and abstract moment/fantasy space models apply to contemporary British art mediums outside of narrative fiction.Item Tyrant! Tipu Sultan and the Reconception of British Imperial Identity, 1780-1800(2013) Soracoe, Michael; Price, Richard; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation argues that the figure of Tipu Sultan and the spectacle of the Mysore Wars were a key contributor to shifting British attitudes about empire in the late eighteenth century. Tipu was the ruler of the Indian state of Mysore, acknowledged by contemporaries to be a powerful ruler, a military commander of great distinction - and a hated foe of the British East India Company. Tipu fought three separate wars against the Company; during the course of these conflicts, he was portrayed by the British as a cruel and tyrannical despot, a fanatical Muslim who forced his subjects to convert to Islam and tortured captured British soldiers in his foul dungeons. The widespread presence of this negative "Tipu Legend" testified to the impact that empire and imperial themes exhibited on British popular culture of the era. Tyrant! explores two key research questions. First of all, how did the Tipu Legend originate, and why was it so successful at replacing alternate representations of Tipu? Secondly, what can this story tell us about how the British came to terms with empire - despite initial reluctance - and forged a new imperial identity between 1780 and 1800? Using archival records, newspaper print culture, and popular art and theatre sources, I argue that the vilification of Tipu was linked to the development of an imperial culture. Expansionist Governor-Generals consciously blackened the character of Tipu to make their own aggressive actions more palatable to British audiences at home. Through a process of reversal, preventive war came to be justified as defensive in nature, protecting the native inhabitants of Mysore from the depredations of an unspeakable despot. The increasingly vilified and caricatured representations of Tipu allowed the East India Company to portray itself as fighting as moral crusade to liberate southern India from the depredations of a savage ruler. Company servants were recast in the British popular imagination from unscrupulous nabobs into virtuous soldier-heroes that embodied the finest qualities of the British nation. The study of the faithless and violent character of "Tippoo the Tyrant" ultimately reveals much about how empire is constructed at home and abroad.