Music

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LISTENING TO REVOLUTION: A SURVEY OF CULTURAL AND MUSICAL REVOLUTIONS THROUGH THE STUDY OF SELECTED VIOLIN REPERTOIRE
(2024) Konkle, Emily Grace; Stern, James; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The written portion of this performance dissertation examines cultural and musical revolutions in relation to the study of selected violin repertoire. The document is divided into two chapters, each of which contain program notes highlighting a specific element relating to revolutions. Chapter one of the document will explore revolutionary composers who charted new compositional pathways by employing novel creative techniques in their writing. Chapter two will survey how cultural and social revolutions—both past and present—have affected the evolution of music throughout history by means of their direct impact on the arts. This document will consider how the selected repertoire reflects revolution and will ultimately provide a tangible way for artists and audience members to connect with repertoire across all genres, from Biber’s Passacaglia to Corigliano’s STOMP.
Conducting Classicism: Theory and Practice in Late Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Performances of Beethoven's Symphonies
(2023) Szwarcman, Gregory; Haldey, Olga; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis explores the orchestral performance practice of the late nineteenth century,specifically how it pertained to conductors’ interpretations of Beethoven’s symphonies. By this time, two competing conducting styles were widely perceived to have existed with respect to these works: a Classical and a Romantic aesthetic, each of which claimed to best fulfill the composer’s intentions. The former stressed the need for transparency with the performer maintaining steady tempi with little interference from the conductor, whereas the latter emphasized the active involvement of the conductor, particularly through wide ranging tempo modifications. While scholars have analyzed written nineteenth-century sources that describe these conducting styles, it is much less clear how they were manifested in actual performances. Likewise, studies of early orchestral recordings tend not to contextualize their findings with nineteenth-century aesthetic debates, preferring instead to contrast these performance styles with those practiced today. By comparing concert reviews to early recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies made by conductors born in the nineteenth century, I elucidate precisely how the descriptive language of observers of concerts during the late-Romantic era corresponded to the sounds they heard. I argue that a clear distinction can be made between the Classical and Romantic approaches to conducting an orchestra, while maintaining that the differences were often more nuanced than observers liked to admit.
Music Literature During the Allied Occupation of Japan and Debates on the Future of Japanese Music, 1945-1949
(2023) DeBell, Joshua Blake; Robin, William; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Research on how countries under military occupation developed their music range from studies of the American occupation of Germany to studies of the Allied Occupation of Japan. Even though studies on Japanese music under occupation mainly focused on how composers dictated this culture, Japanese scholars should also be considered because scholarly writings have historically influenced what styles and aesthetics the Japanese endorsed. This study examines music literature from the University of Maryland’s Gordon W. Prange Collection. From 1945 to 1949, this literature is characterized by scholars studying the hōgaku, European, and American art music traditions. They also advocated that readers appreciate composers, pieces, styles, and genres from European art music, American art music, or hōgaku to establish a new music culture for Japan. However, these authors were divided on whether this music should only employ Western and Japanese styles or be a fusion of both. By examining this literature, this study offers an analysis of an under-researched perspective on music during Japan’s occupation and provides a new musicological approach toward examining occupation cultures.
DEPARTURE, CONFLICT, AND REBIRTH IN THE MUSICAL LANGUAGE OF FRANZ LISZT
(2023) Chen, Tzu-yi; Haggh-Huglo, Barbara H; Gowen, Bradford; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
“Departure” is a starting point to examine how Franz Liszt responded to and expressed his life away from his homeland through the musical language of selected piano works. After his initial departure from Hungary, Liszt’s relocations, changes of occupation, and artistic vocations led to conflict and disillusionment and at the same time reawaken his creative craft and religious calling to God to which his emotional experiences and spiritual calling give witness. While the idea of departure in Liszt’s case often signifies a geographical separation, it also reflects the resulting inner conflict, which fundamentally shaped his choices of compositional tools that he used to express conformity or deviation from musical traditions. This study examines five spiritually influenced programmatic piano works dating from 1839 to 1877 in light of Liszt’s physical and musical departures and demonstrates how he infused an evolving selection of extramusical inspirations into his program music, forms, and harmonic language. It provides a timeline connecting the events of his life and his artistic development. The tension and conflict of his inner life and creativity, after many twists and turns, will be shown to have led to his reconciliation with his Catholic faith, but first led him to compose program music. Liszt encountered a variety of extramusical inspirations around the mid-1830s. His reading of literature, ranging from epic poems to poetry collections influenced him heavily. As a result, he began to conceptualize program music. All five examples discussed here drew inspiration from literary texts, but his symphonic poems were inspired by poetry and painting. After arriving in Weimar in 1848, he developed his program-music concept in his symphonic poems and in important published piano works including revisions of earlier piano works. He learned to be more selective in quoting from a program in his compositions—he typically included poetry to introduce musical scores or as inserted texts in musical scores—and in the mid-1850s, he further defined his thoughts on musical forms and programs in his essay of 1855, On Berlioz’s Harold in Italy. During his subsequent prolonged sojourn in Rome, the unexpected failure of his marriage plan and the loss of his two children brought heightened awareness of destiny and death. These tragic events led him to reduce the numbers of themes expressing different moods. That allowed him to delve into his quoted program more deeply, which he accomplished by experimenting freely with various harmonizations. In his programmatic works that were spiritually influenced, Liszt responded to the tension he felt between his Christian ideals and his worldly desires by the divine and the diabolical in his music, by including quoted literary texts in the score that inspired him, and by using harmonies based on different scales. His musical conception of the divine was inspired by the musical heritage of the Church, which he evoked with pentatonic and hexatonic (whole-tone) scales, Gregorian chant-inspired themes and melodies, and harmonizations based on the Church modes. In his spiritually inspired compositions, Liszt also favored F-sharp major, representing heaven, as his key of choice, and he balanced a selection of consonant or perfect intervals versus dissonant harmonies and diminished intervals based on his readings of spiritually inspired literature. In contrast, his diabolical side is manifested in tritones, diminished seventh chords, chromatic scales, unexpected modulations, and his “diabolical” themes, which were part of his programmatic plan and represented by thematic transformations. This study describes his nuanced compositional progress in his conception and application of new forms—a modified one-movement sonata form, a freely structured passacaglia theme and variation form embedding a recitative and answered by a chorale, a three- act dramatic form—and in his use of increasingly sophisticated compositional techniques. He transformed themes to advance the plot of the quoted poetry, composed melodies to ‘sing’ the syllables of an absent but musically implied and thus quoted text, and even deliberately placed the texts of a Lutheran chorale or from the Latin Bible within his musical scores to make his piano compositions resemble vocal or liturgical choral music. These observations show how Liszt’s physical departures from Hungary, Paris, Weimar, and Rome fundamentally stimulated his artistic growth, in that his resulting life as sinner and saint, and his inner spiritual conflicts awakened both his diabolical nature and his ultimate search for the divine. Liszt succeeded in representing his strongly felt inner departures with deeply informed imagination in his piano music. I performed these five compositions on February 16, 2021, in Gildenhorn Recital Hall at the University of Maryland. Both live and studio recordings of this performance can be found in the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland.
REBECCA CLARKE, THE VIOLIST: HER CAREER AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICE ON AN EMERGING SOLO INSTRUMENT IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
(2023) Castleton, Caroline Maxwell; Murdock, Katherine; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) was a violist and composer of the early twentieth century whose career spanned thirty-five years. The scholarship on Clarke tends to focus on her career in composition while neglecting her immense contributions in the field of viola performance. My written dissertation traces her performance career, including her education, influences, international travel, chamber ensembles, performance reviews, collaborators, and radio broadcasts as found in contemporaneous primary sources. The second chapter draws specific conclusions about Clarke’s playing style and performance practice based on marginalia found in works she studied and performed. A new discovery resulting from this research is a cadenza for the Casadesus Viola Concerto, written by Clarke and pasted into her sheet music. In support of this project I performed a solo recital at the University of Maryland on February 11, 2023. I selected six works representative of Clarke’s professional accomplishments and her particular style of playing: Sussex Mummer’s Christmas Carol by Percy Grainger; Variations on “Bonny Sweet Robin” by Ethel Smyth; Komm’, Süsser Tod by Johann Sebastian Bach; Zwei Gesänge, op. 91 by Johannes Brahms; Dumka by Clarke herself; and Viola Concerto in B Minor by Henri Casadesus, including Clarke’s cadenza. My performances of these works may be found as supplemental files to the dissertation document.
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.
SIX WORKS BY FRANCIS JOHNSON (1792-1844): A SNAPSHOT OF EARLY AMERICAN SOCIAL LIFE
(2022) Kramer, Hayden James; Warfield, Patrick R; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this project, I have sought to reconcile conflicts and inconsistencies in the literature on FrancisJohnson, explicate his relevance in the past and present, and, most significantly, to stage and record new performances on his works. As both a musicologist and multi-instrumentalist, I found myself uniquely suited to contribute to the discourse on Johnson via the mediums of both lecture and recital in this public-facing thesis project. From this research, I have explored how one might combine insights from the study of historical literature and musical manuscripts to arrange Johnson’s music for contemporary performance while also explaining the challenges of doing so. I have also sought to give voice to a historical musician who has been under-represented in the discourse and under-performed as a result.
Rachmaninoff's Performance Style As Heard In His Recordings: An Artistic And Technical Survey
(2022) HENRY, DAVID; Gowen, Bradford; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation explores the piano recordings made by Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, in particular the works he recorded multiple times, identifying the larger developmental arc of his playing during the twenty-four years of his latter career. We show that the common axes of technique and interpretation provide an insufficient lens through which to understand his changing style; instead, we propose an additional dimension of identity which better captures Rachmaninoff’s evolution as a performer. Furthermore, this point of view allows a separation of his recordings into three distinct periods. Rachmaninoff stands as a unique figure in modern musical history, reflecting an improbable convergence of events: 1. he was a world-renowned composer for the first half of his career. 2. upon the emergency of the Russian revolution in 1917, he emigrated with his family to America at the age of forty-five, industriously working to become one of the leading concert artists of his generation. 3. he was one of the first pianists to leave a recorded legacy. Appropriate historical and biographical context is provided to better understand Rachmaninoff and his times, and to place his recordings in a fuller context. We also present the current state of knowledge and availability of Rachmaninoff’s extant recordings, the various technologies by which they were made, and the recording companies with which Rachmaninoff chose to work. We describe the importance of matrix numbers, alternate takes, potentially unreleased recordings, piano rolls, and unintentional recordings. Rachmaninoff’s recordings currently exist across many fragmented sources, some difficult to learn of and acquire. This dissertation thereby provides a modern guide to these recordings in hope of aiding future scholars.
Drink, Dance, and Devotion: The Role of Restoration Popular Music in Creating a Protestant English National Identity
(2021) Massey, Elizabeth D; Warfield, Patrick; King, Richard; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In Restoration England (1660–1707), religious disputes between Protestants and Catholics dominated not only politics but everyday life and mapped onto the long-simmering conflicts between England and France. Popular music both referenced these seemingly constant tensions and also participated in reifying the antagonistic, xenophobic relationship between the two religions and regions. Drawing upon theories of musical topic, intertextuality, semiotics, and nationalism, this dissertation presents three case studies of how Restoration popular music helped to create a Protestant English national identity. The folia, a ground bass and one of the most popular foundations for musical structure in the history of Western art music, became disassociated from its original genre and, through texts and performance practices, became a set of fixed melodies that indexed and embodied a community among those in Restoration England. Building on this idea, a second case study expands the musical content from melody to genre by focusing on the cibell dance and how it functioned to produce a sense of historical continuity in England, eventually becoming an invented tradition. In a final case study, the musical focus is expanded yet again to consider both the metrical psalm and ballad genres. The musical and thematic relationship between the proper tune for Psalm 124 and the ballad tune “Fortune My Foe” speaks to how popular music moved across boundaries of venue and genre, and in doing so, helped to make commonplace the idea of the Protestant Self—defined against the Catholic Other—as the standard for belonging in and to England.
Women’s Voices in a Fourteenth-Century Chansonnier: Representation and Performance in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308
(2021) Ruisard, Rachel Anne; Haggh-Huglo, Barbara; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The chansonnier, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308, contains over 500 Old French lyrics, many unica, and numerous chansons de femme. Scholars of medieval lyric have associated the female voice with repetition and simplicity, but I demonstrate that representations of women in the Douce 308 lyrics instead bend formal conventions and subvert genres. Using case studies from the chansonnier’s pastourelles, ballettes, motets, rondeaux, jeux-partis, and grands chants, I examine the representations of women as shepherdesses, nuns, beguines, malmariées, maidens, and debate participants, and demonstrate how their voices resist genre norms while reinforcing courtly behaviors and female stereotypes. In the pastourelles, shepherdesses’ refrains express resistance within male-framed narratives; when refrains are absent, the shepherdess is subject to violence. The contrast of registers and social relationships in the pastourelles is mirrored by the poem preceding them, Jacques Bretel’s Le Tournoi de Chauvency, where women act as arbiters of chivalry during the day, and at night act in scenes that juxtapose courtly and popular culture through characters and intertextual references. Chansons de malmariée and chansons de nonne show religious women desiring love in higher and lower registers and borrowing refrains from the fabliau, grand chant, pastourelle, chanson d’ami, romance narrative, and Biblical texts. Unmarried women’s voices in the ballettes resist stereotypes of the female voice by manipulating narrative expectations and citing ambiguous refrains. In jeux-partis, women rewrite discourses of chivalry by expressing desire. My case studies, here within the courtly contexts of Bretel’s Tournoi, contribute to our understanding of the woman’s voice in Old French lyric and demonstrate that female-voiced lyrics participated in the late-thirteenth-century shift from courtly to popular genres in French song through the manipulation of refrains and juxtapositions of register, genre, and gender by their poets. I show how the texts of Douce 308 also contribute feminine fantasies of pleasure and power in love within a lyric tradition that privileged male pleasure and perspectives.

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