Music

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A Blue Tin Pan: Musical, Cultural, and Personal Contexts of Jazz in the Music of Harold Arlen
(2020) England, Sarah Jean; Warfield, Patrick R; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation explores the compositions of songwriter Harold Arlen, viewing them as musical portraits of the immigrant experience and the racial politics of the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. This approach reveals how Arlen’s upbringing in a racially diverse neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, where Jewish American immigrants and African Americans formed the core of the community, as well as his early years playing in jazz bands and his tenure at the Cotton Club, left a permanent and indelible mark on his compositional style. I trace the influence of African American popular music on his compositional approach, structure, and style. In doing so, this dissertation adds a more nuanced view to narratives about Jewish American songwriters’ use of jazz and blues in Tin Pan Alley song by demonstrating their specific application in the works of one composer. In addition to musical function, the personal and cultural implication of jazz elements in Arlen’s music are also explored.
"The Biggest Con in History": American Myth-Making in the Stage and Screen Adaptations of Anastasia
(2018) Weyman, Jennifer Elizabeth; Haldey, Olga; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The story of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova has been engrained in the American imagination for nearly a century. This tale has often been told on stage and screen, depicting Anastasia and her most famous impersonator: Anna Anderson. The adaptation of Anna and Anastasia’s tale that has made the most lasting impact is the 1951 French play, Anastasia, by Marcelle Maurette, and its 1954 English translation by Guy Bolton. Four more adaptations have followed that progenitor play: the 1956 film, Anastasia; the 1965 operetta, Anya; the 1997 animated film, Anastasia; and the 2017 musical, Anastasia. These five artistic adaptations evolved from one another, navigating their own history alongside changing American values. This thesis situates each production within American sociopolitics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, revealing how each production is far more indicative of American ideals than Russian history, particularly with regards to immigration, foreign policy, and feminism.
A Character Singer in Male Attire: Annie Hindle in America, 1868–1886
(2017) Ace, Rachel; Warfield, Patrick R; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In 1868 Annie Hindle brought to the American variety theater male impersonation, in which a female character vocalist assumed a realistically male stage persona to sing men’s comic songs about courting women. But Hindle’s gender-transgressive behavior was not limited to the stage: her romantic relationships were primarily with other women, twice disguising herself in male dress to marry. Despite what appears a clear connection between the onset of male impersonation, gender-transgressive dress, and same-sex desire, scholarship on male impersonation has treated a reading of Hindle’s act that engages with the category of sexuality as speculative. Through an examination of Hindle’s repertoire and performance context, this thesis demonstrates that her performance should be read as a form of sexual commentary. Because in the nineteenth-century United States male dress signaled that a woman engaged in same-sex practices, this thesis reads male impersonation as a recognizable representation of unconventional sexual identity.
"Jazz is Back": Alternative Jazz Venues and Gentrification in Washington, D.C.
(2016) Jackson, Benjamin James; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Gentrification has dramatically changed the urban landscape of Washington, D.C. Non-profit alternative jazz venues have become important sites for negotiating this complex process that is re-shaping the city. Each such venue aligns itself with one of the two primary factions of gentrification: new urban migrants or long-term residents. Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Jazz Night in Southwest fosters a community of repeat-attendees resisting social displacement. The Jazz and Cultural Society unabashedly foregrounds ties to long-term residents in highlighting a black identity and its local interconnectedness. CapitolBop’s Jazz Loft demonstrates the difficulties that come with trying to cater to a young audience, and at the same time, resist gentrification. These venues present three perspectives on gentrification and together bring light to the overlapping complexity of gentrification.
Singing of the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
(2014) Voelkl, Yuanyuan Sun; Provine, Robert C.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation explores the continuity and conformity, as well as changes and diversity of Amish musical life by investigating major rituals, activities, musical genres and repertories of the Lancaster Old Order Amish. The three major areas this dissertation studies are church singing, youth singing, and wedding singing. The two main musical genres are 1) unison singing of slow-tunes in German and 2) fast-tunes in unison and four-part harmony in both German and English. This study emphasizes recent developments and changes in Amish musical life, focused on Lancaster County. It documents the Amish efforts to preserve their slow-tune tradition by introducing written notation and compiling tunebooks since the 1980s, and by the introduction of musical education and harmony singing to the Lancaster Amish since the 1990s. The study identifies a spectrum of six types of youth singing, whose musical diversity correlates with other diversities of life within the Amish community. Through musical analysis and historical investigation of slow-tune origins and formation, this study details the relationships of Amish musical styles and practices with their religious beliefs and cultural values. This dissertation concludes that music reveals two contrasting sides coexisting in Amish society. Slow-tune singing of texts from the sixteenth-century Ausbund hymn collection at church is mainly homogeneous throughout Lancaster County and at present remains relatively stable. Slow-tunes not only represent the continuity and conformity of Amish religious beliefs and cultural values, but also are a crucial guardian of the Amish faith, which is the core of the sustainability of Amish society. By contrast, fast-tunes reflect changes and diversity of Amish life and reveal the adaptation and assimilation of outside influence. The musical characteristics and singing styles of the Amish are guided by their religious beliefs and cultural values to facilitate congregational singing. The exploration of origins of slow-tunes and fast-tune melodies shows that in the realm of music, Amish singing has never been immune from outside influences. Both in the sixteenth century and today, the Amish [early Anabaptists] have always borrowed, adapted, and assimilated musical sources and influences from their environment to serve their own spiritual purposes.
Sources for the Reevaluation of George Frederick Root's Career: The Autobiography & A Secular Cantata
(2013) Brown, Caitlin Elizabeth; Warfield, Patrick R; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Music scholarship has failed to fully assess the impact of the American composer George Frederick Root beyond his work in the church, classroom, and home. Most famous for composing "The Battle Cry of Freedom" and acting as music education pioneer Lowell Mason's associate, Root's other contributions to American music are often overlooked, particularly his body of secular cantatas for amateur choirs. This paper examines the commonly relayed biography of Root, Root's place in American historiography, and the advantages of examining his own autobiography. Finally, this paper presents a case study of The Haymakers and its possible place in future studies of Root. By better examining his career, we see that George Frederick Root was a typical nineteenth-century American man and that he was also a composer notable for his ability to serve the musical needs of his audience. Root pioneered large-scale choral works targeted at amateur performers with his secular cantatas and, consequently, served a wider swath of American performers and listeners.
The Brandstetter Tunebook: Shape-Note Dissemination and the Germans of Western Maryland
(2012) Barnett, Joshua Rush; Warfield, Patrick; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The newly discovered personal tunebook of Maria Brandstetter (1820) reveals that shape-note hymnody was alive in the mountains of Western Maryland in the early nineteenth century. The tunebook's presence in the region fills in a gap left by the usual dissemination story of shape-note hymnody, which emphasizes an exchange between Eastern Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The tunebook is also connected to the German community that migrated from Pennsylvania into Maryland and Virginia in the early 1800s, and thus sheds light on the musical culture of the German-American immigrants of Western Maryland. Finally, the contents of the Brandstetter tunebook suggest that pivotal Virginia shape-note composer and compiler of the Kentucky Harmony, Ananias Davisson, may have first been exposed to shape-note music by migrating Germans like the Brandstetter family.
Participatory Music Making and Affinity in Washington, DC Irish Sessions
(2011) Flynn, Erin Michele; Witzleben, J. Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The Washington, DC metropolitan area hosts a vibrant Irish music scene. Like those in many Irish sessions found throughout the world, the District's network of musicians plays traditional dance tunes at local Irish pubs. This research, centered on ten weekly Irish sessions, explores how DC participants navigate authenticity and develop their skills within a social community. Musicians of varying skill levels perform together and include both those of Irish descent and those with no Irish heritage. Issues such as degrees of strictness with regard to tunes played, instruments permitted, and session etiquette demonstrate each session's unique characteristics. This thesis discusses the influence of participatory music making and affinity, since Irish session musicians perform primarily for themselves. Based on field research through participant-observation and interviews, and expanding upon recent discussions of tradition and imagination in sessions worldwide, I analyze Irish sessions in DC in terms of participatory music making and socializing.
"Get Listenin' Kids!": Independence as Social Practice in American Popular Music
(2011) Schnitker, Laura Beth; Witzleben, J. Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation examines the concept of independence--defined as alternative approaches to the creation, distribution and consumption of music that actively resist cultural hegemonies--as an ongoing tradition in American popular music. While previous studies of independence have focused on specific independent record labels or eras, this project views independence as a historical trajectory that extends to the beginnings of the recording industry. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the social field frames my investigation of the ways in which independence becomes socially and musically manifested in communities of musicians, mediators and audiences. I explore how these communities articulate their distinction within the dominant music industry by responding to the social and aesthetic chasms created by the centralization of media. This study is divided into two sections. The first focuses on independent record labels and local radio broadcasts in the first half of the twentieth century, when "independent" referred to either a record label that distributed outside major label channels, or a radio station unaffiliated with a network. In the second section, I show how the modern concept of independence became more overtly political with the emergence of the punk movement of the late 1970s. I follow the subsequent development of independent underground networks in the 1980s through their present-day fragmentation in twenty-first century internet culture. I conclude with an ethnographic examination of independent music performances in order to show that, while independence remains situated in ideas about community, authenticity and autonomy, it is subjectively understood and constructed by individual members of independent communities. The primary research for this study draws from eight years of personal experience as a freeform DJ and active consumer of independent music, as well as seven years working as a sound archivist at the University of Maryland Broadcasting Archives. Because this is a study of popular music, I engage with several interdisciplinary theoretical areas, including ethnomusicology, musicology, sociology and media studies, in order to conceptualize some of the patterns that shape independent social practices.

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