Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Into the Archives: The Founding and Evolution of the College Band Directors National Association as Shown by its Archives at the University Maryland(2024) Higley, Christine Lopez; Votta, Jr., Michael; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1941, William D. Revelli, the Director of Bands at the University of Michigan, sent a letter to college band directors throughout the United States encouraging them to attend the first meeting of the University and College Band Conductors Conference (UCBCC) at the Congress Hotel in Chicago on December 22-23, 1941. This letter included the topics that would be discussed at this meeting including Policies and Philosophies of the Marching Band, Band Budgets, Financing the Commencement Band, and more. After this initial meeting, the plan was to meet again the following year, but because of complications due to World War II, the organization did not meet again until 1946. In 1947, it was moved that the UCBCC change its name to the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA). All this information is found in the documents of the National Conference Proceedings of The Performing Arts Special Collections archives at the University of Maryland, which is home to many historical documents. This dissertation is an exploration of the contents of the CBDNA National Conference Proceedings from its foundation in 1941 to 2011. These contents include administrative records, correspondence and information bulletins, membership listings, financial records, committee reports, surveys, questionnaires, publications, articles, conference programs and proceedings, photographs, and oral histories. This document explores the history of the CBDNA and its development according to what is included in these archives. This is not a comprehensive history of the CBDNA, but a compilation and description of the documents stored in the Special Collections at the University of Maryland. The dissertation is organized into decades and discusses the priorities of National Conference Proceedings throughout each decade.Item The Wind Band Works of the MENC Contemporary Music Project Library(2018) Coffill, Brian Albert; Votta, Michael; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since the mid-twentieth century, there has been a continuous effort within the wind band profession to improve the quality of the available repertoire. From 1959 through 1973, the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) and the Ford Foundation contributed to this enterprise through the Contemporary Music Project (CMP), placing seventy-three promising young composers in-residence with public school systems across the United States of America. These composers were assigned to collaborate with school music programs to create a new body of literature suitable for performance by school bands, orchestras, and choirs. Hundreds of works were written, and, in the late years of the program, the participating composers were invited to submit representative compositions to the CMP Library, which was to become a publication house and resource for music educators. The works in this vast collected repository have since languished in obscurity; existing scholarship on the CMP Library is similarly meager, with little modern scholarship, none investigating the body of collected wind works. This dissertation reopens the investigation into the CMP from a modern perspective, shining a scholarly light onto this neglected portion of the wind repertoire. This study is in two parts: the first part defines the evolution of the modern wind band, framing the investigation into CMP repertoire in the context of present-day ensemble performance practice, then describes the Contemporary Music Project and the Contemporary Music Project Library in-context. The second examines the Contemporary Music Project Library works written specifically for wind bands, exploring each work with modern performance considerations in mind, and updating the 1969 MENC/CMP publication The CMP Library: Works for Band, Winds, and Percussion with new information on each composer and individual work, creating a set of resources for modern conductors and music educators to utilize for contemporary performances.Item Prisms and Polyphony: The lived experiences of high school band students and their director as the prepare for an adjudicated performance.(2012) Miles, Stephen Wayne; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry is called by the question: What are the lived experiences of high school band students and their director as they prepare for an adjudicated performance? While there are many lenses through which the phenomenon of music preparation and music making has been explored, a relatively untapped aspect of this phenomenon is the experience as lived by the students themselves. The experiences and behaviors of the band director are so inexorably intertwined with the student experience that this essential contextual element is also explored as a means to understand the phenomenon more fully. Two metaphorical constructs - one visual, one musical - provide a framework upon which this exploration is built. As a prism refracts a single color of light into a wide spectrum of hues, views from within illumine a variety of unique perspectives and uncover both divergent and convergent aspects of this experience. Polyphony (multiple contrasting voices working independently, yet harmoniously, toward a unified musical product) enables understandings of the multiplicity of experiences inherent in ensemble performance. Conversations with student participants and their director, notes from my observations, and journal offerings provide the text for phenomenological reflection and interpretation. The methodology underpinning this human science inquiry is identified by Max van Manen (2003) as one that "involves description, interpretation, and self-reflective or critical analysis" (p. 4). I have reflected on the counterpoint of the student experience, and both purposefully and inadvertently, viewed this counterpoint through the various windows O'Donohue (2004) suggests await our gaze in the inner tower of the mind (p. 127). The student experience showed itself through the ensemble culture, the repertoire studied, the rehearsal process, and the adjudicated performance itself. Student conversations and reflections indicate that they experienced both discovery and transformation as they interacted with the music, each other, and their director throughout this process. The fresh prismatic and polyphonic understandings that emerged may offer the possibility for others to consider more deeply the context of how students experience who they are within an ensemble and how that experience shapes their musical understandings and personal growth.Item Music Education in Prince George's County, Maryland, From 1950 to 1992: An Oral History Account of Three Prominent Music Educators and Their Times(2004-11-23) Moore, Judy Williams; McCarthy, Marie; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation documents the professional lives of three prominent music educators in Prince George's County, MarylandLeRoy Battle, Maurice Allison, and Dorothy Pickardwhose careers from 1950 to 1992 spanned the period of school desegregation and its aftermath. The professional lives of Battle, Allison, and Pickard, their philosophies of teaching, and the instructional strategies they used in building music programs of distinction are examined employing methods of oral history. The interviews of twenty-three other Prince George's County professionals, including a county executive, a superintendent, county teachers, and county administrators, combine with testimony of the three music educators in creating the fabric of this historical dissertation. Set in Prince George's County, scene of dramatic societal change between 1950 and 1992, county educational, cultural, societal, and political processes are explored to gain understanding of the lives and times of Battle, Allison, and Pickard. Although the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling ended the era of "separate-but-equal" schooling in the United States, it was not until December 29, 1972, that a countywide system of busing of students was ordered in Prince George's County to enforce racial balance in schools. Busing altered the racial distribution in county schools and was thought by many to have precipitated "white flight" of Prince George's residents to surrounding jurisdictions. Remaining county residents voted to limit taxes for county services, creating a financial burden for the schools, the police, and the county government. Subsequently, the white-to-black ratio in the county and the schools altered. Through advocacy efforts of teachers, concerned residents, and students, the elective programs in Prince George's County Public Schools were twice spared from elimination, in 1982 and again in 1991. Music education remains an active part of the Prince George's County School curriculum due in part to the work of Battle, Allison, and Pickard, music educators who displayed creativity in the face of adversity. They set an example for other educators of how to produce, maintain, and support quality-performing groups in music education.