Matching Items (17)
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- All Subjects: Music History
- All Subjects: Social Network Analysis
- All Subjects: Song cycles
- Genre: Academic theses
- Creators: Ryan, Russell
- Creators: Liu, Huan
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
In most social networking websites, users are allowed to perform interactive activities. One of the fundamental features that these sites provide is to connecting with users of their kind. On one hand, this activity makes online connections visible and tangible; on the other hand, it enables the exploration of our connections and the expansion of our social networks easier. The aggregation of people who share common interests forms social groups, which are fundamental parts of our social lives. Social behavioral analysis at a group level is an active research area and attracts many interests from the industry. Challenges of my work mainly arise from the scale and complexity of user generated behavioral data. The multiple types of interactions, highly dynamic nature of social networking and the volatile user behavior suggest that these data are complex and big in general. Effective and efficient approaches are required to analyze and interpret such data. My work provide effective channels to help connect the like-minded and, furthermore, understand user behavior at a group level. The contributions of this dissertation are in threefold: (1) proposing novel representation of collective tagging knowledge via tag networks; (2) proposing the new information spreader identification problem in egocentric soical networks; (3) defining group profiling as a systematic approach to understanding social groups. In sum, the research proposes novel concepts and approaches for connecting the like-minded, enables the understanding of user groups, and exposes interesting research opportunities.
ContributorsWang, Xufei (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis advisor) / Kambhampati, Subbarao (Committee member) / Sundaram, Hari (Committee member) / Ye, Jieping (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Arnold Schoenberg's 1908-09 song cycle, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten [The Book of the Hanging Gardens], opus 15, represents one of his most decisive early steps into the realm of musical modernism. In the midst of personal and artistic crises, Schoenberg set texts by Stefan George in a style he called "pantonality," and described his composition as radically new. Though stylistically progressive, however, Schoenberg's musical achievement had certain ideologically conservative roots: the composer numbered among turn-of-the-century Viennese artists and thinkers whose opposition to the conventional and the popular--in favor of artistic autonomy and creativity--concealed a reactionary misogyny. A critical reading of Hanging Gardens through the lens of gender reveals that Schoenberg, like many of his contemporaries, incorporated strong frauenfeindlich [anti-women] elements into his work, through his modernist account of artistic creativity, his choice of texts, and his musical settings. Although elements of Hanging Gardens' atonal music suggest that Schoenberg valued gendered-feminine principles in his compositional style, a closer analysis of the work's musical language shows an intact masculinist hegemony. Through his deployment of uncanny tonal reminiscences, underlying tonal gestures, and closed forms in Hanging Gardens, Schoenberg ensures that the feminine-associated "excesses" of atonality remain under masculine control. This study draws upon the critical musicology of Susan McClary while arguing that Schoenberg's music is socially contingent, affected by the gender biases of his social and literary milieux. It addresses likely influences on Schoenberg's worldview including the philosophy of Otto Weininger, Freudian psychoanalysis, and a complex web of personal relationships. Finally, this analysis highlights the relevance of Schoenberg's world and its constructions of gender to modern performance practice, and argues that performers must consider interrelated historical, textual, and musical factors when interpreting Hanging Gardens in new contexts.
ContributorsGinger, Kerry Anne (Author) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Mook, Richard (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Libby Larsen is one of the most performed and acclaimed composers today. She is a spirited, compelling, and sensitive composer whose music enhances the poetry of America's most prominent authors. Notable among her works are song cycles for soprano based on the poetry of female writers, among them novelist and poet Willa Cather (1873-1947). Larsen has produced two song cycles on works from Cather's substantial output of fiction: one based on Cather's short story, "Eric Hermannson's Soul," titled Margaret Songs: Three Songs from Willa Cather (1996); and later, My Antonia (2000), based on Cather's novel of the same title. In Margaret Songs, Cather's poetry and short stories--specifically the character of Margaret Elliot--combine with Larsen's unique compositional style to create a surprising collaboration. This study explores how Larsen in these songs delves into the emotional and psychological depths of Margaret's character, not fully formed by Cather. It is only through Larsen's music and Cather's poetry that Margaret's journey through self-discovery and love become fully realized. This song cycle is a glimpse through the eyes of two prominent female artists on the societal pressures placed upon Margaret's character, many of which still resonate with women in today's culture. This study examines the work Margaret Songs by discussing Willa Cather, her musical influences, and the conditions surrounding the writing of "Eric Hermannson's Soul." It looks also into Cather's influence on Libby Larsen and the commission leading to Margaret Songs. Finally, a description of the musical, dramatic, and textual content of the songs completes this interpretation of the interactions of Willa Cather, Libby Larsen, and the character of Margaret Elliot.
ContributorsMcLain, Christi Marie (Author) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The unmeasured Fantasias by Johann Gottfried Müthel appear as part of a collection of pedagogical exercises to foster improvisation. The information he gives in the notation of his fantasias can be elucidated with a historiographical interpretation of musical rhetoric. Müthel developed musical figures and contrasting textures in accordance with contemporary rhetorical principles of inventio, dispositio and elaboratio. An analysis of Müthel’s G-minor Fantasia provides a link between musical rhetoric and performance, as seen through its improvisatory gestures. Issues of performance practice that arise in the G-minor Fantasia are the execution of ornaments, rhythmic alterations, registration, and articulation. This paper explores primary sources contemporary to Müthel to make sense of these issues. The unmeasured Fantasias are written for a keyboard with pedal. At the time that they were written, the pedal fortepiano and pedal clavichord were seen by musicians such as Carl Phillip Emanual Bach to be the superior instruments for performing improvisations. While the notation and texture of the Fantasias suggests that Müthel intended them for organ, a consideration of the possibilities provided by the fortepiano suggests that it may be more suited to conveying aspects of the galant aesthetic.
ContributorsMealey, Natalie (Author) / Marshall, Kimberly (Thesis advisor) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Organ culture of the late nineteenth century played an important role in the development of cities on the American Western Frontier. By 1869, the transcontinental railroad connected cities across the United States, enabling coast-to-coast travel and spawning a new tourist industry. Rail travelers stopping in Utah frequently visited the Tabernacle and were impressed by the organ, requesting to hear it played. The Salt Lake Tabernacle free daily organ recital program was initiated to meet that demand. This came at a critical time in the growth of the city as it sought to develop a positive image of itself. These organ recitals became a highlight of travelers’ journeys across the United States, shaping the image of Utah as a place of culture and refinement. Although free daily organ recital programs sprang up across the country during the early twentieth century, very few persisted for more than a decade. Today, the only two remaining continuous free daily organ recital series are given on the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ and on the Wanamaker organ in Philadelphia. Location, promotion, purpose, and programming were key factors vital to the early and continued success of the program. At a time when attendance is in decline for organ recitals, and indeed for all classical art music, the elements of this uniquely successful program may suggest new approaches for sharing organ music.
ContributorsHarris, Valerie (Author) / Marshall, Kimberly (Thesis advisor) / Saucier, Catherine (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Between the years of 1818 and 1833 the Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist, Carl Czerny (1791–1857) wrote one of his greatest compositions, the f minor Grand Piano Sonata, Op.178 for piano four hands. Overshadowed by composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Frederic Chopin, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and possibly because of Czerny’s prolific pedagogical output, this work has received little scholarly attention and is rarely performed.
The aim of my paper is first to provide a concise background of the composer for better insight of his ideas and influences and, second to provide a theoretical framework and analysis of the composition to show how this piece is uniquely set in the musical backdrop among early nineteenth century piano music. Further, I will demonstrate performance concepts and ideas of the composition highlighting his instructional mastery. There are two components for this project including a research paper and a lecture recital.
I hope this project could bring more musicians and audiences to Carl Czerny’s serious and concert music as he categorized his music. He had been a great model of true artist, he composes, teaches and perhaps not the greatest promoter of his own music like the contemporaries. However, he devoted most of his life to development of music and the new generation of pianists, which is the most honorable of an individual.
The aim of my paper is first to provide a concise background of the composer for better insight of his ideas and influences and, second to provide a theoretical framework and analysis of the composition to show how this piece is uniquely set in the musical backdrop among early nineteenth century piano music. Further, I will demonstrate performance concepts and ideas of the composition highlighting his instructional mastery. There are two components for this project including a research paper and a lecture recital.
I hope this project could bring more musicians and audiences to Carl Czerny’s serious and concert music as he categorized his music. He had been a great model of true artist, he composes, teaches and perhaps not the greatest promoter of his own music like the contemporaries. However, he devoted most of his life to development of music and the new generation of pianists, which is the most honorable of an individual.
ContributorsShui, Ho Michael (Author) / Pagano, Caio (Thesis advisor) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Norby, Christopher (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The purpose of this study was to: (1) record and describe a brief history of the life and career of Bolivian composer Dr. Nicolás Suárez Eyzaguirre, and (2) write an analysis from a vocal performer's perspective of Suárez's song cycle for soprano and piano, Monólogos del Desierto, with texts by Dr. Guillermo Mariaca Iturri.
In August of 2013, I traveled to La Paz, Cochabamba, and Coroico, Bolivia, with translator Dr. Marie Cooper Hoffman for thirteen days in order to conduct interviews with Suárez, his family, his colleagues, his composition professors, and other professional musicians. In addition to both in-person and e-mail interviews, I reviewed television productions, videos, and newspaper/magazine articles that featured interviews with Suárez and/or reviews of his works. Also, I familiarized myself with Suárez's compositional style by performing a leading role in the 2011 world premiere of his opera El Compadre; collecting and listening to as many recordings of his works as I could find; and reading the transcript of Suárez's Doctor of Musical Arts Lecture Recital. For this study, I focused specifically on the compositional style of his three-song cycle Monólogos del Desierto. A performance of the work will be part of my defense of this paper.
In August of 2013, I traveled to La Paz, Cochabamba, and Coroico, Bolivia, with translator Dr. Marie Cooper Hoffman for thirteen days in order to conduct interviews with Suárez, his family, his colleagues, his composition professors, and other professional musicians. In addition to both in-person and e-mail interviews, I reviewed television productions, videos, and newspaper/magazine articles that featured interviews with Suárez and/or reviews of his works. Also, I familiarized myself with Suárez's compositional style by performing a leading role in the 2011 world premiere of his opera El Compadre; collecting and listening to as many recordings of his works as I could find; and reading the transcript of Suárez's Doctor of Musical Arts Lecture Recital. For this study, I focused specifically on the compositional style of his three-song cycle Monólogos del Desierto. A performance of the work will be part of my defense of this paper.
ContributorsStanford, Allison (Author) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
In an interview with the author, composer Chen Yi shared thoughts regarding her inspiration to compose the piece As in a Dream. She composed the first version in 1988 for soprano, violin, and cello. Left unpublished, this work was re-done in 1994 with the Chinese instruments zheng and pipa in place of the violin and cello. As in a Dream is a setting of two linked poems of six lines each by Qingzhao Li, one of the earliest female poets in China. Chen Yi kept the voice part the same in the two versions, but adapted the accompaniment to suit the Chinese instruments.
This study of As in a Dream focuses on the 1994 version, and especially on the first song, with a view to introducing the singer to its Chinese elements. To help performers to understand better the text of the set, a translation and transliteration of the two poems by Qingzhao Li are offered with line-by-line interpretation. An introduction to the history and characteristics of the zheng and the pipa is supported by examples of the uses of these instruments in the songs. Drawing upon information provided by Chen Yi in the interview with the author, a discussion follows of Mandarin speech tones and their effect on the melodic design of As in a Dream, with music examples. An examination of traditional Beijing Opera styles of singing, with insights provided by Rao Lan, the soprano for whom the work was written, leads to a description of the fusion vocal technique required for performance of As in a Dream and some of the rules for diction in Mandarin Chinese.
Intended as an introductory guide for the soprano contemplating performance of Chen Yi’s As in a Dream, this study also reveals the combination of Eastern and Western musical characteristics in these songs and gives examples of how the music interprets the veiled meaning of the poetry.
This study of As in a Dream focuses on the 1994 version, and especially on the first song, with a view to introducing the singer to its Chinese elements. To help performers to understand better the text of the set, a translation and transliteration of the two poems by Qingzhao Li are offered with line-by-line interpretation. An introduction to the history and characteristics of the zheng and the pipa is supported by examples of the uses of these instruments in the songs. Drawing upon information provided by Chen Yi in the interview with the author, a discussion follows of Mandarin speech tones and their effect on the melodic design of As in a Dream, with music examples. An examination of traditional Beijing Opera styles of singing, with insights provided by Rao Lan, the soprano for whom the work was written, leads to a description of the fusion vocal technique required for performance of As in a Dream and some of the rules for diction in Mandarin Chinese.
Intended as an introductory guide for the soprano contemplating performance of Chen Yi’s As in a Dream, this study also reveals the combination of Eastern and Western musical characteristics in these songs and gives examples of how the music interprets the veiled meaning of the poetry.
ContributorsIp, Hoi Lam (Author) / Britton, David (Thesis advisor) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Contemporary online social platforms present individuals with social signals in the form of news feed on their peers' activities. On networks such as Facebook, Quora, network operator decides how that information is shown to an individual. Then the user, with her own interests and resource constraints selectively acts on a subset of items presented to her. The network operator again, shows that activity to a selection of peers, and thus creating a behavioral loop. That mechanism of interaction and information flow raises some very interesting questions such as: can network operator design social signals to promote a particular activity like sustainability, public health care awareness, or to promote a specific product? The focus of my thesis is to answer that question. In this thesis, I develop a framework to personalize social signals for users to guide their activities on an online platform. As the result, we gradually nudge the activity distribution on the platform from the initial distribution p to the target distribution q. My work is particularly applicable to guiding collaborations, guiding collective actions, and online advertising. In particular, I first propose a probabilistic model on how users behave and how information flows on the platform. The main part of this thesis after that discusses the Influence Individuals through Social Signals (IISS) framework. IISS consists of four main components: (1) Learner: it learns users' interests and characteristics from their historical activities using Bayesian model, (2) Calculator: it uses gradient descent method to compute the intermediate activity distributions, (3) Selector: it selects users who can be influenced to adopt or drop specific activities, (4) Designer: it personalizes social signals for each user. I evaluate the performance of IISS framework by simulation on several network topologies such as preferential attachment, small world, and random. I show that the framework gradually nudges users' activities to approach the target distribution. I use both simulation and mathematical method to analyse convergence properties such as how fast and how close we can approach the target distribution. When the number of activities is 3, I show that for about 45% of target distributions, we can achieve KL-divergence as low as 0.05. But for some other distributions KL-divergence can be as large as 0.5.
ContributorsLe, Tien D (Author) / Sundaram, Hari (Thesis advisor) / Davulcu, Hasan (Thesis advisor) / Liu, Huan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
With the rise of social media, hundreds of millions of people spend countless hours all over the globe on social media to connect, interact, share, and create user-generated data. This rich environment provides tremendous opportunities for many different players to easily and effectively reach out to people, interact with them, influence them, or get their opinions. There are two pieces of information that attract most attention on social media sites, including user preferences and interactions. Businesses and organizations use this information to better understand and therefore provide customized services to social media users. This data can be used for different purposes such as, targeted advertisement, product recommendation, or even opinion mining. Social media sites use this information to better serve their users.
Despite the importance of personal information, in many cases people do not reveal this information to the public. Predicting the hidden or missing information is a common response to this challenge. In this thesis, we address the problem of predicting user attributes and future or missing links using an egocentric approach. The current research proposes novel concepts and approaches to better understand social media users in twofold including, a) their attributes, preferences, and interests, and b) their future or missing connections and interactions. More specifically, the contributions of this dissertation are (1) proposing a framework to study social media users through their attributes and link information, (2) proposing a scalable algorithm to predict user preferences; and (3) proposing a novel approach to predict attributes and links with limited information. The proposed algorithms use an egocentric approach to improve the state of the art algorithms in two directions. First by improving the prediction accuracy, and second, by increasing the scalability of the algorithms.
Despite the importance of personal information, in many cases people do not reveal this information to the public. Predicting the hidden or missing information is a common response to this challenge. In this thesis, we address the problem of predicting user attributes and future or missing links using an egocentric approach. The current research proposes novel concepts and approaches to better understand social media users in twofold including, a) their attributes, preferences, and interests, and b) their future or missing connections and interactions. More specifically, the contributions of this dissertation are (1) proposing a framework to study social media users through their attributes and link information, (2) proposing a scalable algorithm to predict user preferences; and (3) proposing a novel approach to predict attributes and links with limited information. The proposed algorithms use an egocentric approach to improve the state of the art algorithms in two directions. First by improving the prediction accuracy, and second, by increasing the scalability of the algorithms.
ContributorsAbbasi, Mohammad Ali, 1975- (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis advisor) / Davulcu, Hasan (Committee member) / Ye, Jieping (Committee member) / Agarwal, Nitin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014