College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item GABRIEL FAURE (1845-1924): INNOVATOR OF THE FRENCH MODERN STYLE AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS FOR CELLO AND PIANO(2003) Oh, Jooeun; Elsing, Evelyn; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)Gabriel Faure was a deeply influential leader in establishing modem trends in early twentieth-century French music. His individualistic compositions include both traditional and modern aspects incorporated into his own distinctive style. This doctoral project is a study of Faure's contributions to French chamber-music and explores especially his works for cello. In the first chapter of this dissertation, a brief biography of Faure is presented, and Faure's personal relationships with several influential contemporaries, including Camille Saint-Saens, are discussed. The second chapter describes Faure's highly effective career as Professor and then Director and reformer at the Paris Conservatoire. In the third chapter, Faure's chamber music is discussed, with emphasis on his works for cello. His works can be divided into three time periods, each representative of the composer's unique musical style and illustrative of Faure's stylistic development throughout his career. The fourth and final chapter examines the evolution of Faure's musical approach, while his complete works for the cello are analyzed and compared. Diverse reactions of his contemporary critics to Faure's late-period chamber works are also presented. As part of this doctoral project two recitals of works by Faure and his contemporaries were performed at the University of Maryland School of Music. The works performed in the first recital include Camille Saint-Saens' Romance for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 36 ( 1877); Maurice Ravel's Sonata for Violoncello and Violin ( 1920-22); Claude Debussy's Sonata for Violoncello and Piano ( 1915); and Faure's Violoncello Sonata No. I in d minor, Opus I 09 ( 1917). The second recital incorporated selections from all three of Faure's compositional periods: Elegie for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 2-1 ( 1880); Papillion for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 77 ( 1885), Romance for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 69 ( 1894 ), Sicilienne for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 78 ( 1898, originally 1893 ); Violoncello Sonata No. 2 in g minor, Opus I I 7 ( 1921 ); and Piano Trio in d minor, Opus I 20 ( 1922-1923 ).Item Haarlem Tabletop Still-Life Painting, 1610-1660: A Study of Relationships Between Form and Meaning(2003) Gregory, Henry Duval V; Wheelock, Arthur K. Jr.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)Scholars have considered Dutch still life and its meaning from a variety of methodological perspectives and have often reached different opinions on the prevalence of intentional moralizing meaning in these pictures. This study approaches meaning - that is, messages specifically religious or moralizing in nature - in still-life painting by focusing on paintings produced in Haarlem between 1610 and 1660 and assessing their capacity for meaning in terms of their visual structure and the objects featured in them. Drawing on a database of 630 paintings created for this study, I analyzed the patterns that developed in Haarlem tabletop still-life painting; from the objects and foods used in these paintings to their thematic types and compositional characteristics. The results of these analyses foster an understanding of the most typical forms of the Haarlem tabletop still life. However, these analyses also pennit one to identify works exceptional in visual structure and/or use of objects that convey unmistakable messages focused on christological and vanitas themes. A prime example of a painting with these qualities is a large canvas by the artist Willem Claesz. Heda (1635 - National Gallery of Art, Washington). The compositional structure in this picture focuses one's attention on a roll along the front edge of the table. A contrast between the roll and the rest of the table is evident: the latter has been consumed while the former is untouched. The presence of elements connoting transience - an extinguished candle and a broken berckemeier - underscores the allegorical nature of this painted table and sharpens the contrast between the roll as symbol of Christ and the rest of the table as a worldly, ephemeral indulgence. While most tabletop still Iifes painted in Haarlem between 1610 and 1660 were not overtly allegorical, a significant number were. The methodology in this study allows one to identify these paintings and assess the nature of their meaning.Item Using AquaticHealth.net to Detect Emerging Trends in Aquatic Animal Health(MDPI, 2013-05-17) Lyon, Aidan; Mooney, Allan; Grossel, GeoffAquaticHealth.net is an open-source aquatic biosecurity intelligence application. By combining automated data collection and human analysis, AquaticHealth.net provides fast and accurate disease outbreak detection and forecasts, accompanied with nuanced explanations. The system has been online and open to the public since 1 January 2010, it has over 200 registered expert users around the world, and it typically publishes about seven daily reports and two weekly disease alerts. We document the major trends in aquatic animal health that the system has detected over these two years, and conclude with some forecasts for the future.Item The Measurement Problem from the Perspective of an Information-Theoretic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics(MDPI, 2015-10-28) Bub, JeffreyThe aim of this paper is to consider the consequences of an information-theoretic interpretation of quantum mechanics for the measurement problem. The motivating idea of the interpretation is that the relation between quantum mechanics and the structure of information is analogous to the relation between special relativity and the structure of space-time. Insofar as quantum mechanics deals with a class of probabilistic correlations that includes correlations structurally different from classical correlations, the theory is about the structure of information: the possibilities for representing, manipulating, and communicating information in a genuinely indeterministic quantum world in which measurement outcomes are intrinsically random are different than we thought. Part of the measurement problem is deflated as a pseudo-problem on this view, and the theory has the resources to deal with the remaining part, given certain idealizations in the treatment of macrosystems.Item The Transnational Turn in African Literature of French Expression: Imagining Other Utopic Spaces in the Globalized Age(MDPI, 2016-05-18) Orlando, Valérie K.This article focuses on African literature published since 2000 by authors of French expression. While contemporary authors’ subjects are varied—ranging from climate change, human rights, to ethnic cleansing—they also imagine new “what ifs” and other utopic spaces and places that extend beyond postcolonial, Africa-as-victim paradigms. Literarily, authors such as Abdelaziz Belkhodja (Tunisia) and Abdourahman A. Waberi (Djibouti) have effectuated a transnational turn. In this literary transnational turn, Africa is open to new interpretations by the African author that are very different from the more essentialist-based, literary-philosophical movements such as Negritude and pan-Africanism; cornerstones of the postcolonial literary frameworks of the past. Belkhodja and Waberi offer original narratives for Africa that, while describing their countries as utopias, also traverse the very dystopic realities of our time.Item On Quantum Collapse as a Basis for the Second Law of Thermodynamics(MDPI, 2017-03-09) Kastner, Ruth E.It was first suggested by David Z. Albert that the existence of a real, physical non-unitary process (i.e., “collapse”) at the quantum level would yield a complete explanation for the Second Law of Thermodynamics (i.e., the increase in entropy over time). The contribution of such a process would be to provide a physical basis for the ontological indeterminacy needed to derive the irreversible Second Law against a backdrop of otherwise reversible, deterministic physical laws. An alternative understanding of the source of this possible quantum “collapse” or non-unitarity is presented herein, in terms of the Transactional Interpretation (TI). The present model provides a specific physical justification for Boltzmann’s often-criticized assumption of molecular randomness (Stosszahlansatz), thereby changing its status from an ad hoc postulate to a theoretically grounded result, without requiring any change to the basic quantum theory. In addition, it is argued that TI provides an elegant way of reconciling, via indeterministic collapse, the time-reversible Liouville evolution with the time-irreversible evolution inherent in so-called “master equations” that specify the changes in occupation of the various possible states in terms of the transition rates between them. The present model is contrasted with the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) “spontaneous collapse” theory previously suggested for this purpose by Albert.Item "Many Hands Hands": Early Modern Englishwomen's Recipe Books and the Writing of Food, Politics, and the Self(2006) Field, Catherine; Donawerth, Jane; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)"Many Hands Hands" is a study of early modern Englishwomen's recipe (or "receipt") books. It traces how women explored and expressed matters of food, politics, and self in culinary, medicinal, and cosmetic recipes. The receipt book genre was closely associated with the work of the early modern house, where women were accepted as authorities in matters of household management; thus, the receipt book was particularly accessible to women as they searched for modes of self-expression. Through recipe practice, the housewife managed her own body, as well as the bodies of those under her care (such as her husband, children, servants, and neighbors); at the same time, she occasionally exerted pressure on the body politic of the state. In this period, domestic activities within the home were often politicized, and I argue that the housewife's role and recipe practice were considered central to definitions of English nationhood. In addition to surveying women's manuscript recipe collections, I also analyze printed representations of their recipe practice from the beginning and middle of the seventeenth century. In Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well (c.1604), the female practitioner is represented as powerful and capable, yet Helen's specialized knowledge about the (royal) male body makes her a troubling and disturbing figure to the other characters in the play, including Bertram of Rossillion, the man she hopes to marry. The play ultimately valorizes Helen's practice, however, and it reinforces an empirical world view, where with the proper "how to" (or recipe), bodies are knowable and healable, in spite of their transgressive (if predictable) desires. By the middle of the seventeenth century, "how to" books of recipes (in print and in manuscript) come to be increasingly influenced by utopian writings. Printed cookbooks attributed to women reveal utopian longings in the form of royalist nostalgia, a desire to reclaim the past as a place of good household management and national economy. Recipes became a mode through much women and men could reflect on the "how to" workings of the body in order to improve the health of the individual and, ultimately, the body politic of the state.Item “Freedom in Their Hands is a Deadly Poison”: Print Culture, Legal Movements, and Slaveholding Resistance on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, 1850-61(2018) Chaires, Jacob Wayne; Bonner, Christopher; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goal of this thesis is twofold: to explain the rise of slaveholding anxiety in relation to the growing free black question, as well as to articulate how slaveholders sought to regain their power. I argue that slaveholders on the Eastern Shore politically organized around ideas and concepts produced in newspapers. Slaveholders utilized new ideas about race and the law to organize, and call upon the General Assembly to enact tougher sanctions on free black mobility. Newspapers are not only a means by which to quote mine, but they are also living, breathing, cultural organisms. They both reflect slaveholding anxieties, as well as play into them. They both record local news events, as well as conspicuously pair those local stories with similar stories from other counties, states, and nations.Item Voices of the Cello: Speak, Sing, Play; An Aesthetic Examination of Style Periods in the Cello Repertoire and How They Relate to the Viability of Transcription(2019) Singer, Daniel Pecos; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This dissertation was produced in conjunction with three cello recitals as part of a Performance Dissertation Project. Each recital focuses on music from style periods ranging from the Baroque to the twenty-first century and seeks to demonstrate how the aesthetic language of a composer or style period affects the viability of transcription. The recitals also highlight the unique qualities of the cello, both when playing music originally for another instrument and when performing music specifically written for it. The first recital includes music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Schubert. Bach’s Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV 1012—performed on a five-string Baroque cello—shows how the spoken quality of the Baroque idiom in Bach’s music allows for transcription between instruments. The Sonata in A minor for Arpeggione and Piano, D. 821 by Schubert offers an opportunity to expose the vocal quality of the ello while exploring the limitations of transcription in this aesthetic language so inspired by song. The second recital focuses on transcriptions within the violin family of instruments by including a transcription of the Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78 by Johannes Brahms, as well as César Franck’s Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano. While the Franck only needs minor adjustments for the cello version (the piano part is untouched), the Brahms is transposed from G major to D major in order to be suitable for the cello. The final recital completes the arc by culminating in music written specifically for the cello—music that would be impossible to imagine on any other instrument. First the Sonata for Solo Cello, Op.8 by Zoltán Kodály develops the unique sound of scordatura by lowering the pitch of two lower strings by one half step (from C and G to B and F-sharp). Similarly, the Sonata for Solo Cello by György Ligeti is so cellistic in its conception that it is essentially unviable on any other instrument. Finally, Crest, Clutter, Clamor by Bradley S. Green was designed specifically for the physical characteristics of the cello, thus making it a quintessential example of cello specific writing. The first recital was performed on November 26, 2018, with Ruth Bright on the piano in Ulrich Recital Hall. The second recital took place on March 6, 2019 in the Gildenhorn Recital Hall with Andrew Welch and Alexei Ulitin on the piano. The final recital was completed on May 5, 2019 in Ulrich Recital Hall.Item The Clarinet Repertoire and Musical Aesthetic of William Thomas McKinley(2019) Morales, Melissa; DiLutis, Robert; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)The clarinet repertoire of William Thomas McKinley is varied and interesting, but seldom performed today. The few recordings that exist were created by an elite contingency of soloists and chamber musicians who were close friends and colleagues with McKinley. Outside their premieres and these few recordings, his music has seldom been performed. While many of his works are challenging and engaging, most were never published and thus remain inaccessible. Through several engraving projects and performances, this dissertation brings light to a corner of the clarinet repertoire seldom explored and heard today. For this project, I have completed performance editions of several McKinley works and presented them on recital. I plan to make the editions themselves available through later publication. This will make his music more accessible for performers and audiences alike. A recital on McKinley’s influences, including Aaron Copland, Mel Powell, Gunther Schuller, and Lukas Foss, took place on December 7, 2018 in Gildenhorn Recital Hall. The recital on April 19, 2019 in Leah Smith Recital Hall concentrated on McKinley’s development and career trajectory, featuring For One, Mostly Blues, Two Romances for clarinet, violin, and piano, and Intermezzos No. 1 & 2. The final recital took place on May 4, 2019 in Ulrich Recital Hall and featured what could be considered his greatest works and clarinet duos, Clarinet Duets Book 1, Clarinet Concerto No. 2, and Clarinet Sonata. The recitals were recorded on compact discs and are archived within the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM).